Hello, welcome back. I'm going to dive into the 10 things I have quit in my business to make more money, but not just that. To also be happier, to feel way more at peace and to really enjoy my business and my life. I am a former busybody and I used to pride myself on being the busiest person that I knew. It took a very severe burnout in 2017, I've shared before, that landed me in the hospital to realize that, that was no way to live my life and that is not what success looks like. It's the polar opposite of success.

So we're going to get into it if you're excited about this. I very much so am, because this is very personal to me and a lot of I've never actually shared. I'm kind of nervous to share some of these things because they go against a lot of what's out there and honestly might be a little hard to understand. I think the only reason I feel confident in saying all these things is because I haven't been doing them for a while and it's been proven to work and to make a bigger impact by cutting them out, as well as growing my business and my income at the same time. So if you're excited, hit the like button. It's a little thing you can do to help me reach more people in the algorithm because the whole purpose of this channel is to make entrepreneurship available to everyone. I try to make them as jam packed as possible. If you know, you know.

Let's get into it. First and foremost, there's a book that I highly recommend that really was a game changer for me, and you may have heard of it. It's called Essentialism. This really is the most practical guide to doing less and why it's so important. A quick little anecdote from this book that really changed my thought process was the word priority is derived from a Greek word. It means the one, but we have taken that word and destroyed it and turned it into priorities. There's never been a reason to have more than one priority, but we have created this busy culture that thinks we got to have 19 things to do on a daily basis. So it helped me kind of understand, okay, if I can just focus on one thing and keep that as my top priority and really audit a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis, what's unnecessary, it's going to make things so much more efficient. It's so much more impactful and really serve the greater purpose that I'm here to serve and to create the legacy that I want to create with my business, which I talk about often.

So understanding that concept was really key and that's why I wanted to share that with you. Another little quote from this, which I just think is so important is, 

"If everything is your priority, then nothing is your priority." 

I have said something along those lines before often on this channel. Try to do everything, you're really doing nothing. If you try to serve everyone, you're really serving nobody. So it's counterintuitive because we think that the more people we reach, the more things that we do, the more success we're going to have. But it's actually the opposite in terms of doing less, focusing more, being more intentional and doubling down on the things that are working instead of trying to diversify your attention on everything. That's what leads to real success.

So without further due, let's get into the 10 things I quit in my business to make more money and to be a way happier person. Number one, growing my social media audience. When I was first getting started in my business, I felt like the number one thing I had to do was I had to have an audience. This was after working in social media behind the scenes for years, not having brand and still getting consistent clients. But for some strange reason, the minute you hop into the online space, you feel this pressure to grow, grow, grow. I know I've mentioned this before, but when you really do the math of the purpose behind what you're doing on social media...

So for me, I'm on social media to impact my ideal client, customer and viewer. Subscriber, follower, whoever that may be, I don't need to reach everyone. In fact, reaching everyone can oftentimes work against you or against me, because then you have people on your channel who maybe are interested in one thing you talk about, but they're not really there for you. They're not invested in what you're talking about, and they really don't care about your bigger purpose. So it took me a while to learn this, but I am very, very focused on quality over quantity when it comes to my audience and my community.

When you break down the math and the numbers, I have an audience of just under a million across all platforms. I have 2,300 clients in the one program that we have. So when you look at that, there's just no way that I need an audience that is that big. I am grateful, but a lot of the audience growth that has happened for me happened out of a lot of experimentation, testing, trying things. And a lot of those things are not things that I talk about anymore or am really interested in anymore. This is why that lesson is so important for me to relay to you.

Before you get started on social media, being clear on your intent is vitally important because it's going to build the right audience and not this random audience that probably will lose interest eventually. That's just the cold hard truth. But if you create content that's super aligned with their values, what they're interested in and what you are going to be interested in creating your legacy around, you're never going to get sick of it and your audience is always going to be interested.

This also goes hand in hand with paid advertising. So once I had a proven offer, and a proven business model, and social proof and credibility, I started investing in paid ads. Recently we have drastically reduced the amount that we're putting into paid advertising, because paid advertising oftentimes is growing our audience in hopes of reaching more potential clients to become a part of your offer, business, et cetera. We just realized we just don't need to be pouring that much money into a paid traffic. So we have, I mean, I want to say by 10 X reduced it and it's been incredible because it allows us to really focus on the community that we already have built. That goes along way and it has created even more scalability and profitability in our business.

The big thing to remember is I often talk about four daily priorities and those are the only things I focus on every day. I know that goes against what I said earlier, but really when I broke it down and when I read this book, I realized it's just one priority, because everything else I was doing was leading back to the one. The one priority as a business owner and entrepreneur is to generate sales. The reason that's important is because getting people to work with you is what is the vehicle to allow you to create the impact that you want to make, and it allows you to run a business and serve at the highest level. Otherwise, you're essentially doing a hobby.

So what I realized was okay, I'm able to put out free content and that allows me to help a lot of people. But in terms of my paid program, I don't need to be working with everybody and therefore I don't need to be focused on growing, growing, growing. In addition to, I realized that when I was in a cycle of trying to post everybody on social media, and doing all the things and trying all the platforms, it just diversified my attention away from what really mattered, which is that one priority of getting people in the door to work with me so I can best serve them and help them make the impact that they want to make.

The final thing I'll say about this piece is a big thing that I did a few years ago is I unfollowed everybody. I had some messages from people being like, "Why would you do that? That's so rude." I really had to focus on me and my intention and cut out the noise. It was really beneficial to me and I don't really follow anybody in this industry at this point. I respect so many of my peers and I'm friends with so many of my peers, but I found for me that by following too many people in this online space, it kept me in the loop and the cycle of thinking I needed to grow and taking in too much information when I knew what I had worked. I trusted myself and trusting myself was a big key to not feeling the need to feed my ego and just try and rack up vanity metrics. Hopefully that makes sense.

Number two is posting random content on the internet and trying to look cool. That might sound really weird but when I look back at some of my old content and my old brand, if you want to call it that, I just am like who am I trying to be and who am I trying to impress? I don't understand. It's so not me. I think a lot of the time in my early days as an entrepreneur, I thought if I have the right brand, the right logo, the right aesthetic, it'll matter. It doesn't matter. I'll be very honest. My brand at this point, if you look at it from an aesthetic standpoint, my website's terrible. It's very outdated. I don't really have an aesthetic and I just don't care to look cool.

I think I realized the more time I spent on that surface level stuff, the less of an impact I was able to have. Also, it took away from the thing that actually mattered, which was clients and client results. It's just not a top priority at this point and what's most important for me is, I've mentioned this before, I really have a structure and an intent behind anything that I post online. The intent of it is to provide value. That value that I create and being very intentional and not feeling the need to post all the time, but to post what is necessary to support my ideal clients and knowing who my ideal clients are and only making content for them, and only making content for my ideal viewer has allowed me to make way less content, but make a much bigger impact with each of those pieces of content. In terms of helping people, supporting people. Then also in terms of getting a return on much less content.

So instead of posting five days a week, maybe I'll post once, if that. That one piece of content will generate new leads and new clients and help me serve more people. That was really important and also understanding the structure behind my content. I've shared this in the past, I have something called the HOT Script Formula. Hook, outcome, and testimonial. So ensuring that when I'm sharing value and I'm sharing content, I'm hooking people and letting them know they're in the right place and they're going to get what they're looking for. Ensuring that by the end of whatever piece of content I'm sharing, whether it's YouTube video or an Instagram post, they're going to know the answer that they're seeking and they're going to solve the problem that they're looking to solve because that's what valuable content should do.

I provide a bit of credibility to say, yeah, I've been able to do this for thousands of people. I've helped thousands of people organically scale their online courses to millions of dollars. I've been doing this for years and I've worked with thousands and thousands and thousands of humans around the world. That builds trust and that's a very simple, quick thing to do in your content to not just post randomly, not just throw up something for the sake of throwing up something. If you think about all the time that you spent trying to think of new content ideas, and this goes for myself as well, instead of focusing on the number one priority, which is generating sales for your business, and income for your business, and new clients for your business, it might be out of alignment. It certainly was for me for a long time. So the moment that I really got focused on creating a content strategy that worked, which I shared last week. The less time I spent on it, the more impactful it was.

Number three, undercharging and focusing too much on information. So what I mean by this is I am a bit of a bleeding heart and I want to help everyone. I often hear this from people who want to work with us in our program, et cetera. They're like, "Well, I just want to serve everyone." I also hear this when people are talking through their pricing and trying to figure out how to price their offers. They're like, "Well, I want to make it accessible to everybody." But it actually does a disservice because when you make a program accessible to everybody, you get people from all different stages of their journey wanting in on that program and getting in on that program. Then you're kind of having to customize to each spot that they're at.

A really good offer is for one specific ideal client at one specific place on their journey, seeking one specific transformation. The reason that's so important is because it allows your client, if they're at that one specific place, to hit the ground running, as soon as they get into your program. To get their results even faster. So I'm still able to serve everyone through this. I make free content every single week and I have been for years and years and years since 2015. That's crazy. That allows me to support and serve a lot of people that may never be able to actually be in my programs. But they're able to still get the guidance and the mentorship that they need. Then when they're ready, if and when they're ready, they're able to move into the program and then accelerate into the next level of their growth. So you can still make a massive impact by creating free content and reaching a lot more people through that free content, but you can create a lot more depth, and highly duplicatable and impactful results through a paid program.

So they can be complementary to one another. On top of that, I made the really tough choice last year to stop enrolling into my YouTube For Bosses program. It's now a part of the one program that we have, which is our Authority Accelerator Program, because my core focus was to be on transformation. Of course, the people that we served in YouTube For Bosses, they got incredible transformations and we had so many amazing client success stories and results throughout the years. But our clients still have access to that program. However, what I wanted to focus on was actually taking people from A to Z and building an entire business, not just a YouTube channel. Because I found that the best results were coming from people who had the business to pair with the YouTube channel. That's when I saw these explosive results and people being able to scale and make an impact beyond their wildest dreams.

So I had to make the decision to focus on transformation versus information, and to really identify the value of the outcome that I was providing. Our clients, because they're generating in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, I knew that what I was providing was super valuable and it allowed me to have the trust in myself that it was worthy of that. It's also allowed me to attract clients who are at the right place on their journey, where they're going to get the best results. It's also why we are very conscious of who we say yes to, because we don't want to say yes to somebody who's not ready.

This sounds strange I know, but this has been a huge piece of growth, even though it feels like saying no would crush your business. When in fact, knowing exactly who I serve and only focusing on getting those people into the paid programs, instead of trying to serve everyone has created exponential growth across all levels. It's given me the opportunity to create even better client results.

The fourth thing tags onto that, accepting everyone into my program. This was really hard for me, but I can honestly say this after testing all different kinds of things and all different ways of enrolling people into my programs. I will never have a program again where I don't have an application involved in that person being a part of the program. Because it allows me to know if somebody is a fit or not and if they're at a place where they're ready for it. If they're not ready for it, that's okay. We still continue to serve them, support them, provide free content to them and resources. So we can get them to a place where they are ready, but having done programs two different ways and having a program where anybody could enroll, and having a program that is application only for the last three plus years, night and day.

The biggest difference is in the quality of our values and culture that we've built because we know everybody's aligned in the same mission and everyone's able to support each other from a place of knowing exactly what everyone is going through. Whereas when you have a program that's open to everybody, everyone comes in at all these different places with all these different needs, it can lead to a lot of confusion and it can actually work against you because we would often find that some clients would be in other programs and they wouldn't have actually done the work, but they would be providing advice to other clients that wasn't founded in actual methodology. So it can be a little bit dangerous.

Never shared that before. I don't know why it makes me nervous to share that, but I think it's just important to understand that having a process to really understand your ideal client and to ensure that people are a fit before you serve them is such a benefit to them and to you, and your business, and your community and your legacy.

The next thing I quit is hiring for things I don't need. So something interesting happens when you start to grow a business and you start to get some success. There's a part of your brain that goes, I have to make it more complicated. So I have had a very big team and now we have a very lean team, a very small team, shockingly small team. But having done a lot of different iterations of my team, there is a very simple rule I live by. Hiring people who are aligned with my values and the company values, which are really a reflection of me and ensuring that if I hire somebody I would be happy to work with them for the rest of my life. We call them legacy hires and we call our clients legacy clients because they're clients that we want to work with for the rest of our lives.

It's actually incredible. I love my clients and I really know a lot about them. The other day I was talking about when one of their birthdays was and when another person's due date was for their child. I'm like how I know all of this information about our clients, I don't know. But it's because I am so invested in the people that we work with, whether they're on the team, whether they're in the program and that's why going leaner on both sides has been so exciting and so surprising in how much it has changed things for the better.

I think a big piece of advice in terms of hiring is don't hire for things that you wouldn't want to do, or you don't want to do. I really do believe that you should learn all of the things in your business at least to understand them. So you can actually lead people and guide people and be a better leader. If you don't want to do something, it should be a red flag to you to go, okay, well, if I don't want to do it, do I really need to hire somebody to do this? And do I need it at all? Probably not.

Something like a podcast. I used to have a podcast. Why I had a podcast, not sure. It was great. It was awesome. I know a lot of people listened to it, but it was one of those things where I felt like, oh, I should have a podcast now. Now I should have a podcast producer. Now I should have all these things that go along with that. It was so wildly unnecessary. It wasn't necessary and I have my pillar platform, which is YouTube. So we ultimately stopped doing a podcast and then it was one less person to manage, one less platform to manage.

The next thing I quit is diversifying my attention. So to tag onto what I just said, I used to have a ton of different platforms that I focused on and I had a couple of pillars. I was doing a podcast. I had my YouTube channel and I came to the realization that that was really hurting my growth, and also my peace because it kept me in this really busy loop and cycle. I quit saying yes to everything and I also quit trying to have all these different business models. My business model now is very simple. We have one online course, online program, the Authority Accelerator. That's it. It allows me to keep my attention solely focused on that and be laser focused on ensuring that we have a great program, and we have a great community, and we have great support, and we have great client results, which we have a ton of them.

So it's worked really well. Again, if you had told me this a couple of years ago, I would've thought you were crazy, because I thought the more places I am, the more people I can reach and the better off the business will be. You now know why that's not really true. When you grow and everyone will get to this point in their business, there's this little voice in your head that goes, oh my gosh, you're getting successful. This isn't going to last. You got to grab onto all these other shiny things. You have to do all these other things. You have to make sure that you're busy, busy, busy, and out there, out there, out there so that this success doesn't go away. That's not a real voice and that voice is just your inner critic. It's trying to create a security blanket that isn't real because doing all of those things, again, just leaves you burnt out, and exhausted, and frustrated and doesn't allow you to focus your attention on what actually matters. And doesn't allow you free up the space to have a life. Not just a business, but also a life.

So I've been approached to do a ton of things. Speaking engagements. Why haven't I written a book by now? All of these things and why don't I have a ton of investments, and why am I not in crypto and working with NFTs, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's because I see all of those things as other jobs and my sole focus is to focus on the one purpose that I have and the one intention behind the business. By doing that, it's allowed me to be in a place where those are all viable options, but I'm in control and have the freedom of flexibility to choose when I want to do those things, and when's the right time for me instead of feeling like I have to, or that I'm reactive. That is the big difference and that's the freedom that everybody craves when they start a business. It's not necessarily traveling the world. That's super fun too. But also it's the freedom of just choice and making choices that feel aligned and right for you.

Number seven is hope. I know that sounds real bad. I didn't quit hope, but I quit hope in my business and what I mean by that is, I don't know how many times I've said this. So you're probably going to be like, again? Understanding the data, and focusing on the numbers and the metrics that matter in my business has allowed me to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping things work, and also trying to do all of the things. Because I'm very clear on what actually works. I know what kind of content works best. I know what kind of content resonates most with my audience. I know what is necessary to create the transformation that my clients need in my program. I know what kind of YouTube video is going to resonate most with you.

So knowing that information makes everything really easy because I have the foundation of what my purpose is and the transformation is that I'm going to create for people and everything stems from that. If you don't have a solid foundation, you're building a house that's built to fall. So having a solid foundation, which means you have a clear intent and purpose behind everything that you do because it's serving that ultimate foundation, allows everything to be easier. So when you get clear on the transformation you're going to create with your program, your offer, your service for your clients, every piece of content is easier to create. Every funnel, every landing page, every sales page, every sales conversation, whatever it may be. It's easier. Every Instagram post, Facebook live, whatever it may be. They all become easier because you know exactly who you're talking to and you know exactly what your intent behind that content is.

So, it allows you to do less, impact more and knowing your numbers informs how you grow your revenue, your income, your impact, your authority, because you know what actually works and what doesn't.

 So you stop doing the things that don't work and you double down on the things that do.

Number eight, poor communication and control. So this was a biggie, but I think I had a lot of immaturity when I was first starting my business and thinking oh at one point, I'm just going to be able to go away for really long time and someone's just going to run the business and that's it. At the end of the day, I've realized that's just not my jam. I do have a ton of flexibility in my business, and of course I've taken very long vacations. I've been able to take a lot of breaks and I still do, but I love being involved in my business. I think the reason maybe I felt that way was because I felt, without knowing it subconsciously, I had built a business I didn't really like. I had a ton of business models. Everything was really difficult. I was constantly diversifying my attention. I was bringing in clients who weren't necessarily ready to get the support that we were offering. So it was creating all of this confusion, chaos and customization. Working with clients who just weren't really a fit.

Bringing on people onto my team, who I didn't need there and that caused a lot of unnecessary friction too. So having very open lines of communication, I tell my team all the time, my virtual door is always open and we have a really tight knit team and great feedback loops. Also, we have a daily meeting. Every morning we meet as a team and every month we have a team meeting with everybody in our team so that we can all be in the loop on what's going on with each other, and be there for one another and not let things fester or go too long or create resentment. Also, if something's not working in the business, we don't wait until it breaks. We actually can get ahead of it and be proactive.

So daily communication, very easy and simple communication and daily meetings have been huge. I love them because I love my team and I've gotten good at hiring, which took a long time, and hopefully this helps you avoid that. So that and then also as I let go of all of these things and trying to do all of the things, I let go of a lot of control. I recognized what was in my genius zone, which was building relationships, serving clients and creating content and really intentional content. Doing that allowed me to release the control in the things that I don't need to be involved in every single day. I have an incredible team around me that can focus on those things. I know about all of them, I'm involved in all of them, but I don't have to be focused on them on a daily basis. I know that they're working and they're running without me. So releasing that control allows me to focus more on those three things that are in my genius stuff.

Number nine, worrying about things that don't matter. I mentioned earlier worrying about my website. One day I'll get to it, but it has made zero difference in my business. I know there's people out there who have sent me looms and videos of how to make my website better. I just am like, "We don't need to right now." It's not the thing that grows the business. So website, my brand, I do... This is actually kind of embarrassing to admit. My photographer thinks it's hilarious, but I do one photoshoot a year and I kind of dread them, and mainly just because it's just not really my comfort zone. I know they're necessary because we need them for certain content and landing pages, et cetera, and events. But it's not my thing.

So I realize I don't need to do more than one and in that one, we shoot for four hours and I am so regimented about what I need to capture so that I don't have to do it again. So I used to do photo shoots once a month and that's me. Again, this is all about my definition of success and what works for me. So that was one thing I had to let go. So worrying about that, worrying about getting things like business cards or perfecting what my logo looks like. Those things just don't matter.

On another level of this, worrying about things that don't matter also for me means worrying about what other people are doing and worrying about not being everywhere and doing the things that everyone else is doing. Again, it took a long time to get to that place because it's very easy to compare. It's very easy to go, oh my gosh, if they're there, I need to be there. I just realized it doesn't matter and it didn't make a difference. Also for me, it didn't help me stay focused on what I needed to stay focused on because I was trying to learn new things that I just didn't really have an interest in. So again, because I know what works, and I know what benefits my business, and I know my metrics and I know my data, I know where I need to keep my focus. As I mentioned last week, it's really email and YouTube. That's kind of it. So that frees up so much space and time for me.

As much as people have advice and say you should do this and you should do that and you should do blah, blah, blah. I have found my own groove and I've found my own way of doing things, and it's very simple and it's very low key and it works. Like I said, our business has never been more profitable or felt more peaceful, and that's my word of the year is peace. So it's working and that's the only thing I need to focus on. Again, I stay focused on the North Star, which is the mission of elevating experts on a global stage so that they can make their unique impact and mark and build their legacy. That's my North Star. So if what I'm doing every day serves that purpose, everything else can fall away and that is the lens through which I say yes and no to things. So I hope that helps.

The 10th thing I quit is hustling. I mentioned at the beginning, the really severe burnout that I went through. At the time, the paramedics who came to my house thought I was having a stroke at 29 years old and it really did scare me straight. It changed everything. I just had to realize that the way I was doing things was not healthy for me, and ultimately if I don't have my health, I have nothing. So I have had to very much so reprogram my brain because my self worth was so deeply attached to how busy I was and how much work I was doing. I had to reprogram myself to understand that my identity and my worth is a lot more than what I do for a living.

It's still a work in progress for me, but being really proactive about not hustling and blocking off time and days for the things that really matter for me, and shortening my work week, and being on top of my work hours makes me better at everything I do. It makes me a better leader. It makes me a better entrepreneur. It makes me a better wife, dog mom, daughter, sister, friend. Having space is what leads to my best ideas and creativity. Having downtime, and having time away from my phone, and my computer that's where the magic really comes from. Then when I'm back at work, I'm happy to be there. I'm excited to be there. Again, I know this is hard to understand if you're in that grind, it's just not sustainable to work yourself into the ground all day, every day.

Of course there's periods and there's seasons where you're going to need to put in more effort and maybe longer hours, but you always need to make sure you're resting in addition to that. I remember when I used to travel a lot for work, which is something I don't do a ton either anymore. I just got to a point where I didn't really love it and I wanted to be home. But when I used to travel for work I had a friend who was an executive assistant to a very successful entrepreneur and she was like, "Why don't you take time off when you get home from your work trips?" I never even thought about it. I just thought nope, I got to come home. I got to right back to work.

My first bout with burnout happened because I had this really intense work trip, came home. Didn't give myself any break and went right back into work. So understanding that rest is just as important as work and your rest makes your work better, is a key to sustainable long-term growth. I think the only way I was able to quit hustling and that hustle cycle and hustle mentality was to understand that this is a long game. So much of that mentality comes from short term thinking and feeling like everything's going to fall apart tomorrow. Having a scarce mindset makes you feel like everything is urgent when it's just not.

I've been doing this and have had this business for over five years, and up until last year, it really didn't feel like it was going to be something that I was going to do for the rest of my life, because I always felt like it was going to crumble. Which was such an unhealthy mindset to be in because it keeps you in a space of needing to work all the time. So I just trust. I trust that I've been around for a long time and I don't plan on going anywhere, and my mission is so clear that if I can play the long game and only focus on what matters, I'm going to be a much healthier, happier version of myself. I'm going to be able to make a much bigger impact on the people that I'm meant to make that impact on.

So I don't know if that helps. Let me know in the comments, but my daily routine is very simple. My life is wildly boring and my daily life is pretty boring. I've thought about doing a day in the life and I'm like I don't even know what I'd show. It's pretty mundane. So I really didn't amp it up there by saying it was boring, but maybe boring's good. Maybe boring's interesting. 

Holy smokaroonies, that was way longer than I intended it to be. So thank you so much for still being here and my intent behind this was to show you that it is possible to stop doing things you hate and that aren't serving you and to experience the growth that you're seeking in a much healthier and happier way. I'd love to hear from you and what you took from this, and if you had any light bulbs and the comments below.

I think the thing that I want to leave you with is that your worth is so not attached to how busy you are. It's so not attached to the work that you do. 

You are a whole person with a whole life and life is really short. So you should focus on the things that you want to do more of and get rid of the things that you don't.

So this was what I did in my business, but all these things that I subtract from my business, they directly with my life as well. So I hope you know that you are worthy of space and you are worthy of rest. Are you with me? The whole mission behind this channel is to help make entrepreneurship available to everyone. So if you just give this a quick like and be sure to subscribe, greatly appreciate it. I'll see you in the next one. Thank you so much for being here. Bye.

To apply to the Authority Accelerator today, please go to: https://sunnylenarduzzi.com/apply