How to Transfer Skills Over Multiple Businesses

Hi Pretties and welcome to this episode. 

I am so delighted to answer a question today from Denise Matthews, who is part of our amazing Social Pretties community on Facebook.  Its a free group if you haven’t already joined us, I invite you to come and join us in there because it is a wonderful, safe space for female entrepreneurs and well, I just love it. It’s the best place on the internet. 

So Denise asked me a really interesting question. She asked how do you prioritise your time across multiple businesses? And do you use the same skills in all of them? Or are the product based ones different to the coaching ones? 

This is a brilliant question, Denise, thank you so much for submitting it. And, you know, I really have to think about this one because my business journey has been a journey. It’s definitely something that has evolved naturally, throughout and there has been a lot of learnings along the way that I think I have probably applied to every single arm of the brand, every single sub-brand and every offering. And I tried to think to myself, when I first started, what was the initial goal? Like  what was that? What strengths were I leaning on what was it I was trying to do? And actually, all I was trying to do was exercise some skills that I felt I wasn’t having the opportunity to exercise, which seems silly now. But back then I was very, very busy working in retail, I had a demanding job that I changed slightly because I just had my son Jack, which was wonderful, and I just wanted to kind of get something out of me from a creative point of view, I had all of these ideas and feelings and I really wanted to kind of lean into them. And they were always somewhere hanging around in the background and it just felt good for me to be able to apply them to something for my own enjoyment, for my own enjoyment, possibly even for my own mental health if we’re going to be completely honest, I had skills, I had things that I had learned throughout my career and then I had also taken some steps to go and learn more things as well, which was fantastic. And I just wanted to kind of exercise them. 

So there are some, obviously some skills that I brought to my business that I believe to be brought to it by myself. That’s not me being big headed. I think every single business owner that you speak to every single entrepreneur, especially those that have had multiple businesses in multiple areas, and done a lot of things and, you know, evolved and evolved and evolved. There is a certain amount of the business that is just built from me and what I wanted to do and what I felt good about doing and what was right for me to jump into.

And those types of skills are transferable. They’re transferable over every single element of your business. It doesn’t matter whether it is a product, a service, an event, networking, it doesn’t matter.  The things that you bring to the table you bring to the table and it doesn’t matter which table you’re sat at you bring them and you can apply them across the board. 

So for those of you out there that are listening, and you think wow, I’m really good at networking, well, whether you’re a service based business or a product based business, that networking that you can do that people relate to you and enjoy your company and connect with you easily. That is going to be just a fantastic thing for you to underpin everything that you do for you to just apply to everything that you do. If you’re great at marketing, if you’re great at graphics, if you’re great at pricing or or any of those types of things, they are entirely 100% transferable across all of the areas. 

So it’s interesting because I’m actually doing a new qualification at the moment and it has been really, really personally eye opening. And within this qualification its made me look at and kind of review the situation where we believe that if we have a weakness, we should fill that weakness gap with some learning, and I am actually a lifelong learner. So I have always looked at the world that way and I have made many, many decisions in my life, based on the things that I believed I was weak in, to go and try and fill that gap and become stronger in those areas. The qualification that I’m doing at the moment has kind of brought up the opportunity to actually consider tripling down on the things that you’re really good at. And now I say that I feel a bit silly, because some of the people that I have followed, some of the people that I have had really profound coaching type experiences with have always said triple down on your strengths, tripled down on your strengths. And it’s funny because you hear it, but you don’t really hear it you have to be in that place yourself, I think for you to really understand it. But when it comes to transferable skills, there are lots of things that you can apply across the board and they don’t have to necessarily just be your natural strengths, there are things that you will learn and there are things that you will outsource and there are things that that you can continue to look at and focus on in order to be able to make everything run, how you want it to smoothly.  Both for you inside your business for the logistics and the operations, but also for your clients and customers so that they are extremely happy with performance and delivery. 

So in terms of separating product and service base, what I will say is that there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes of both. And the reason why I really enjoy being more service based myself personally these days is because I got a little bit bored of some of the more physical aspects of having a product based business beforehand. Now the product based business is great, love it, will always be forever grateful for it and really, really, really enjoyed it. But the product based business, and for those of you who have handmade, product made, or you are connected directly to the product in some way, you’ll know that there’s actually an awful lot that goes into that. So you’re doing all of the marketing, you’re doing all of the visibility, you’re doing all of the ideal client work, you’re doing pricing, customer services, all the hats, right, all of the hats, you’re wearing them all. And then you’re actually having to make the thing, market the thing, sell the thing, when it’s sold, then you have to package the thing and deliver the thing. And for me, I was finding myself up at three o’clock in the morning hand foiling prints that were giving me a very small amount of profit. 

So from a purely business perspective, because on an enjoyment perspective, I loved it, I really enjoyed it and I found a lot of joy space whilst creating. But on a purely business perspective, it was not viable. It wasn’t viable. It wasn’t a long term business model that was going to work. And there needed to be some changes. And for those of us that have turned something that is a, an enjoyment or joy space or a talent into a monetized business, there is always that moment of transition between it becoming a hobby that you make a little bit of extra cash on, you know, like a little side hustle into actually becoming a viable business. 

On the services side of things, there is a lot of stuff that is behind the scenes, but it’s possibly not as physical, it’s more mental. So I might spend a lot of time researching strategies, I might spend a lot of time doing market research, I might spend a lot of time actually holding space with my clients where we can actually spend that time together, just realised I’m saying, actually a lot sorry about that. Or I, you know, I might be typing up notes, I might be sourcing resources, I might be creating digital products. So the same amount of output is probably there. However, it is just applied to your business model in a different way. What I really like about the service based stuff is it gives me a level of freedom. And that’s funny for me to say that to you right now because looking at my schedule, I look like I have zero freedom.

 But I have created that schedule, I have put that schedule in place, I have allowed it to get to the point where I’m very, very busy. And when you are in a period of growth, which we seem to always be in, we have a period of growth, and then we have a couple of weeks where we can kind of catch our breath and calm down, and then we find ourselves in growth again.  Which I’m super, super grateful for and I adore all of you Pretties. And thank you so much for coming back to us time and time again, and working with us in all of the capacities that you do. But it is something that you definitely need to consider like how do you want to work? What do you what do you want to be pinned to? And what are you going to allow? 

Now, if you have a skill set that you can transfer, and you can use between the different elements of business, then of course, that’s going to give you a stronger position. But there are elements that you may not be 100% naturally strong in and these are also transferable if you get the right fit in terms of using the right business systems for your operations, for your logistics, for a product business that might look like something small, but creates an efficiency, like a label printer – sounds stupid but when you have had to type out 150 addresses, a label printer that automates it direct from wherever you’re selling your products straight to the printer is real handy saves you a lot of time, right, just small things like that. 

With service based people, it might be your website, or your resource centres, your member hubs any of those types of things that you might be using. And this is really funny actually, because it leads me into a conversation that I had on a training that I did yesterday, I did a training for a lovely, lovely membership of physiotherapists about Canva for business and how you can use design for your business and while we were talking about the small things that create micro efficiencies, so this is a skill that is definitely transferable. Micro efficiencies are those things that you put into place that will save you a couple of seconds. Okay, so that might be like I said, like a label printer or an automated email, or a system whereby you have something that you can use time and time again, without having to recreate it every time such as a template for your graphics or anything like that. These are things that you put into play, and you get up to date with so that every time you go and do that recurring task, you have created a micro efficiency, you don’t have to start from scratch every time you’re already on your feet. These things once you get used to doing them. And once you get used to applying them across your business and they may seem like tiny, tiny things, which is why we call them micro they’re tiny things to begin with. But they really begin to pile up. And then what what you end up doing is you go through looking at all of these efficiencies and seeing where you can tighten them up even further. Because seconds turn into minutes, minutes turn into hours. And you can really save yourself a lot of time, energy and potential team wages spend or your own spend by making sure that you have these areas mapped up.  

Now, I’m not going into a money scarcity mindset by saying this because I don’t mean it in the way that it was traditionally traditionally used but it’s the same kind of mentality of look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. It’s about allowing yourself to look at the bigger picture no matter what arm of the brand you are in, what what part of your business you’re in and really look at ways that you can make it smarter, faster and more efficient so that you are always creating those great areas of growth in the smaller details. 

What I really love about micro efficiencies is nine times out of 10 it also takes away what is probably considered by myself and my team, especially, as really boring, mundane admin tasks. We are quite colourful, creative people and I  love meeting people who love admin, I love meeting people who love spreadsheets, I love meeting people who do metrics and formula because it’s just not my jam, man. It’s just not.  I’d much rather be creating something pretty or chatting to somebody on a training, or recording a podcast for you guys like this. But those things are really important and you do need to have them in your business as well. So create the efficiencies where you can, automate where you can, and then outsource the other stuff. 

I think the best way to end the answer to this question would be just to say that you listening to this right now, you have your business, or you have your business idea, and you deep down inside, know what you’re really good at, you know what you’re good at.  You know the things you can lean into to be able to create this fantastic offering for your people, try to triple down on that whatever that feeling is.  For me, it was creating good communications that were aesthetically pleasing, getting messages out there, and delivering really high quality customer service at the same time as relationship building with my clients. So that was like, that’s the fundamental, easy stuff that I was just born with, you know. So think about that. What is it about you that makes this thing of interest to you? What is it that you’re strong at? What do you love about it? What do you really want to put out in the world?  That in itself is a massive, massive, transferable skill and you’ll be able to pop that into every single thing that you do and make it your own, which ultimately, is always my top level advice. That’s always my top level advice. Don’t try to do a beige swipe file for anything, do it your own way. Be inspired, absolutely, take training yes please.  You know, go out there and learn and absorb and soak it all up but then take all of that great information, rummage through it, like an old box that you found under your bed, and pick out the bits that mean something to you, and get rid of the rest. Get rid of the rest. Don’t try and do the same as everybody else. Because you want to stand out, you want to make sure that you are seen. 

And just to end this question’s answer, I would say one of the key things that is the most important and the thing that I say all the time, I can already sense the tension from my digital business peers that are listening right now. Because they know what I’m about to say its what we say all the time. But you really just need to know who your ideal client is, you need to know who you want to work with, you need to know what it is that you’re bringing to the table for that person. And that is probably the most transferable skill across every single niche, every single business that you can possibly have. And I like to revisit ideal client very regularly, usually every quarter, if we’re incredibly busy which we seem to have pinned seem to have been incredibly busy now for the last three years.  Then possibly twice a year, but I never make it, I never let it go below twice a year. Because as we grow as a business, our ideal client evolves as well. So do always consider that when you’re thinking about how you can use those skills over multiple different areas and sub brands and packages within your fantastic business. 

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, see you soon. 

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