After three decades in business and working globally with coaches, consultants, and other service-based experts, Diana Lidstone has gathered her proven methods that have helped thousands of entrepreneurs and professionals accelerate growth and explode profits to create her growing movement:

#worklessearnmore

In this episode we discuss:

• The pitfalls of being a perpetual creator (Keep it simple, sweetheart!)
• Why it’s important to get clear on exactly what success looks like for you
• 5 ways to simplify your business to make your marketing easier, and to add more joy & profit to your business
• Diana’s G+R+O=W Equation
• The power of building a business that’s aligned with who you truly are

Diana is the best-selling author of Shift into Rich: Navigate the 9 Roadblocks to Small Business Success, and delivers a simple yet powerful growth strategy for service-based professionals who are serious about going to the next level of success, so they can enjoy more profit, more free time, and less hustle.

Learn more with Diana’s free resource, “Top 5 Proven Client-Getting Secrets”

https://dianalidstone.com/5-proven-client-getting-secrets

And check out The GROW Equation Business Podcast for tips, strategies & interviews to help you grow your profits, your free time and your joy!

https://dianalidstone.com/blog/podcast/

Susi Vine: Thanks for joining us this week on the show. I am coming to you still from the Podapalooza event. And so I have a short and sweet conversation with the lovely Diana Lidstone who has been guiding entrepreneurs through creating businesses that work for them to have business success with less hustle.

And certainly without that grind, I know you’re going to get a lot from this conversation. Thanks for joining us. Enjoy.

Welcome back. So happy to have you with us on this episode of Happified. We are still coming to you from Podapalooza. So this is a short and sweet conversation from the podatorium.

And I am joined now by Diana Lidstone, the business grow master. Diana delivers growth strategy for service-based professionals who are serious about going to the next level of success resulting in more profit, more free time and less hustle. Hallelujah. Using her biz growth scorecard. She’ll walk you through some, the intuitive process of hashtag work, less urgent.

To get the life you want, you know, and I still use the term side hustle a bit, but I am definitely an advocate of putting down the hustle and working with flow. So I’m really excited to learn about what you’re sharing, what your inspiration is and how you’re moving people into this, this space.

Diana Lidstone: Well, thanks so much for having me.

This is my first time here. It is a fast paced busy day with lots of good stuff. Yeah. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. So, yeah. Good one. So I talk about work less, earn more. That’s a relatively new brand for me. But I’ve always been a business owner. And so I grew up in the culture of. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to work hard.

So I’m sure that a lot of your listeners perhaps grew up in that same thing. And originally I talked about hustle in terms of marketing hustle. So marketing hustle is what I call is kind of throwing all this marketing stuff at the wall. So throwing spaghetti at the wall, it’s doing all these different things, but then I realized that really.

Many entrepreneurs hit a wall in their growth of their business. They hit a wall where their businesses and growing anywhere. It’s the same wall that kind of leads them to overwhelm and to burn out. And that wall is what I try to get them over. No, I shouldn’t say that. Right. I should say I do get them over, right.

Susi Vine: Effective that we’re missing when we’re in the weeds,

Diana Lidstone: when you’re in the weeds. Yeah. That’s another way of putting it or somebody said to me, yeah. I seem like I’m working to keep my employees employed. What was something else? Oh a lawyer that I work with said, you know, I’m just after 10 years, she said, I just want to throw in the towel and go get a job.

And I, it made me almost want to cry because. She’s a really fricking smart lady and we have turned her business around and I did an interview with her for my own podcast. And she was just like bubbly and happy talking about all the money she had sitting in the bank. She didn’t know what to do with and all the taxes she was going to have to pay on it.

And I said, well, that’s a really different problem than you had a few years ago. Yeah.

Susi Vine: Yeah, there is hope. And, and I love that you are, and I’ve been digging into this myself recently and, and I am not a, a career entrepreneur, if you will. I’ve done good work for other people and every now and then I wonder, would it be easier to just go back to work?

I love to help people feel more empowered in how they show up distress. But when I produced an online event at the end of last year, I really wiped myself out. And so it was really interesting to observe, no matter how many tools I have available, how much perspective I’m able to offer other people when it comes to ourselves, even when we know better, we don’t always do better.

It’s so easy to fall into that pattern.

Diana Lidstone: Yeah, it is. It is. And it becomes this never ending cycle. Or I got to do more. And I go back to entrepreneurs or creative people. That’s a good thing. And it’s a bad thing because when something doesn’t work as perhaps we anticipated, or we don’t get as much results, our first inclination is to go out and create something new and then something new and then something new.

And so I don’t know about you, but it’s been. I’ve gone to people’s websites and looked and they have like 57 different offerings. And I go, well, how can you be a go-to expert? How can you be a thought leader? How can you be a master of all of those things? So we’re class earn more is really about simplifying and yeah.

Getting rid of a lot of stuff and really focusing on the things that are working.

Susi Vine: Beautiful. So, and is that, is that the secret, the secret sauce, is that how you help entrepreneurs feel like they are running their business rather than their business running rampant over them? Right.

Diana Lidstone: Right. So one of the, I mean, I want to share five simple ways that people can simplify their business, but it all starts with knowing what your definition of success.

And here’s the reason I say that, you know, I’m at a certain stage of my life and a certain stage of my business where success means to me X, Y, and Z. You know, if you were in your mid thirties, maybe success is going to be somewhat different, right? So I don’t need a million dollar business. I don’t need half a million dollar business.

A multiple six figure businesses fine. And if I can only work three days a week, that’s even better. And so knowing exactly what you want is the first step. But if you want to really simplify your business, I’ll quickly share five tips. One is to micro niche. Now I know a lot of people, they know what niching is.

But really micro niching. So an example is a grief specialist that I work with grief specialty is, you know, fairly big business. And when I talked to her about what really fulfilled her, what brought her joy, what part of grief? She said, it’s children. I went over. And then I said, so how would you break it down?

She broke it down into three different age groups. And I said, which one of those are you like you would do all day every day, if you never got paid. And she picked one and I went, that is your micro niche. That’s what we’re going to market. That’s how you’re going to be. Part of the grow equation is the G get known as the undeniable authority get known.

All right. That’s the G so

Susi Vine: already have everything

Diana Lidstone: you can’t be. Right. Right. So the ways you’re going to simplify, you’re going to micro-niche number two is you’re going to solve one. See that one, the problem or your micro-niche

Susi Vine: okay. Temptation. We’re not selling medicine oil. It doesn’t do everything.

Diana Lidstone: Bright, shiny object syndrome. No one problem. And this is what you’re going to market. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to only solve one problem for them. It means what you’re going to market. Okay. So. The third is have one core program, product or service. So some people call that a flagship. Some people call it a signature program.

I call it a core compelling offer. You have one and then you can upsell or down sell. So I have my private coaching. An upsell might be a retreat, a down sell might be a private VIP. One thing. When you think of all the other stuff that you can get rid of already

less stress, less overwhelm, less frustration, anybody else’s

Susi Vine: shoulders dropping from the ears, it

Diana Lidstone: also makes your marketing so much easier. Right? Right. So we’ve got micro niche. One problem, one core offer number four. One lead generation strategy. So what do I mean by that?

There’s so many ways you can get leads and prospects and whatever. Some people, it may be their pot podcasts. Maybe it’s speaking on stages. Maybe they’ve got a Facebook group. Maybe they do email. What is the one thing? That you’re going to become the master at. And it’s also about how you best engage with your ideal client.

So early on in my career, I was lucky to have a business coach who said, Diana people engage with you. People trust you when you get on stage and when you do live. And so I learned that by getting on stage, which scared the living bejesus out of me was the way that I got clients. And for many years I had my own life events, post pandemic.

It’s more about getting on virtual stages. It’s about speaking on podcasts and that type of thing. Pick one way that you’re really going to, that your clients, prospects are going to resonate with you. And the last of the fifth is to focus on one social media platform.

Not a bazillion, I’m loving this math

Susi Vine: is anybody having trouble? Keep up one teeny tiny niche. One problem that you solve one offering for to solve that problem. It’s all coming together. Yes.

Diana Lidstone: Yeah. And you know, there’s a lot of places that we can be on social media. Like. Where your ideal client is hanging out and how you can become a master at that one platform.

Now I’m not saying that for instance, I spend most of my time on Facebook because that’s where my ideal clients are. It doesn’t mean that I’m not evident in link on LinkedIn. I have, but I don’t spend a lot of my time there. Apparently I have an Instagram account my VA knows about, but I really couldn’t tell you how to works.

So again, because social media changes so much, right? We can’t be experts in all of this. And so by simplifying your business, if you look at those five areas, you let go of, what’s not working. Double down on what is working and keep going, keep going and not invent

Susi Vine: a new wheel that didn’t seem to work. I need to have a new product.

I need to talk to a new niche. I need to hop over on clubhouse. No way I need to make reels on Tik TOK. All right. And then we wonder why we’re wishing for a day job because our business is running rampant over us.

Diana Lidstone: Yeah. And you know, it’s not just that you’re spending time doing, is it reels on Instagram, but then you’ve got to learn how to do those, right.

Or you’ve got to learn how to maximize clubhouse. It’s it’s that learning that you’ve got to do so that. Be a rabbit hole for sure. So I’ll just share with you the growth equation. So it’s G R O so it’s G plus R plus oh, equals w w is the work less earn more? The G is get known. So we talked a little bit about that as the undeniable authority in your field.

And that’s really about your marketing, getting your message clear. How are you going to get out there? And before. Then there’s the R, which is about ramping up your profits. So knowing what key metrics you have to monitor and keep monitoring them so that, you know, I tell my clients, you kind of love your numbers.

You got to get in love with those numbers. They’re not sexy, but to go love them just the same. And then there’s the O which is the optimize your system. And systems give you freedom. And I know so many people say, well, I don’t want to, but you know, a system can be a word document that you copy and paste.

It can be a system, right. Or how you’re going to onboard clients, or, you know, when people get into multi-six figure businesses and I’ve worked with $10 million businesses to, you know, six figure businesses. There’s no difference. Their problems are just magnified. And if you’re trying to scale or grow a business, if you don’t simplify it first, you’re going to be scaling all those problems and making the more they’re making them.

Susi Vine: Oh, did anybody else feel that that’s terrific. What do you want to scale your successful business or the problems that you don’t think you have time to address right now? Because systems feel complicated. And one of the best tips I heard is, you know, just make a video, just record yourself saying, talking through step-by-step, you know, we don’t, we it’s easy to fall into overwhelm.

Oh, now I have to type down what I’m doing next. When you’re doing it, just talk out loud and record a voice memo. So there’s. Ways to, to simplify, obviously the topic is optimizing your systems. But wow. That really lands. What are you trying to scale? You don’t want to scale those problems to grow along with you?

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, because the goal is to work less

Diana Lidstone: and earn more. Yeah. I mean, what is your definition of success? I mean, What is it that you want your business to give you? I usually ask my clients to try to imagine three to five years down the road. You know, we pick a date whatever’s relevant for them.

Sometimes it’s retirement. Sometimes it’s their kids going off to school, whatever it is. Well, imagine what it is. You want your business to give you and how you want it to work with your life at that stage. And it’s not just a let’s see, I want so much money and I only want to work so many hours. It’s a real, it’s gotta be a really deep dive.

And I learnt this from the days when I worked with a financial advisor and he said or I would hear people say, so how much money do I have to save for retail? And he would say, well, that all depends. I would be listening, you know? Well, that all depends on what you want your retirement to look like. Do you want to, you know, have a, you know, a house in the Caribbean another house that you live somewhere else and take 10, you know, round the world cruises.

Do you just want a simple house to be close to your kids? The type of retirement that you want depends on how much money you’re going to save. No different than your. No different, it’s all about engineering. It reverse

Susi Vine: engineering. Absolutely. And I’m glad you came back to that too, because one of the things that I think it’s easy to get caught up in, and we don’t even realize it is we let our goals be shaped by other people’s visions of success.

And so it’s so important to just sit and really ask yourself these questions. What does it look like for me? Give yourself some milestones. Five years from now, as the kids are leaving the house, what do I want my retirement to look like? Reverse engineering is so empowering because when you’re just shooting for something, that’s a morphous, you, you, you don’t know what those numbers have to look like, and I’m not a numbers person, but I love crunching some numbers and saying, oh, that’s doable.

I can do that. I’m not afraid of setting goals like that. So. Some people, if you have, if you struggle with it, give yourself an opportunity, get yourself a fresh page, a fresh doc, give yourself permission to explore.

Diana Lidstone: And then I love what you said about you know, success that there are sometimes we think it’s what we, we think success is what other people are expecting from us.

And I shared this story a little earlier today cause I just rebranded. And so when I look at the original picture that I had on my book that I published in, I think it was 2016, it’s a Navy blazer, you know, very sort of corporate looking, dark blazer. And then this year’s pictures are, you know, a Jean jacket jeans with holes in them, bare feet.

’cause that’s freaking who I really am. I’m a country girl at heart. And so I gave myself permission to be who I really am, not who I sort of thought people thought I should be.

Susi Vine: Which is really, I hope that’s something that really lands with people because what are we working so hard for to reach that success?

If we’re not going to be comfortable in our own skin, when we get there.

So how different can that feel and how much more magnetic can it be? Because occasionally there will be long nights, even though our goal is to work less and find it. We’re going to have to go through some push times. It’s the nature of, of being our business, but we also have to honor that when we are our business, if we don’t take care of ourselves, who else is going to take care of it?

Diana Lidstone: Yes. Yeah. And I think there’s a lot of people that have learned that the hard way. Right. I think one of the biggest tools, the best tool for me to protect my time has been this whole idea of Google calendar and how I can block out time. Right. That’s my time. And I only allow people to book in at certain times.

It’s, it’s, it’s my weak. It’s not their weak hate to say it, but yeah. And we, each of us can do that if we know what our definition of success is.

Susi Vine: Yeah. Terrific. I’m a huge fan of scheduling yourself. Mm, can’t forget to put that time on the calendar, especially with these meeting links that we share, then people are popping in like popcorn and, oh, I guess I won’t go to the gym.

Oh, I guess I won’t start with my journal and meditation this morning. Oh, I guess I’ll just accommodate and then we wonder why we’re running on empty. So yeah. Thank you for that. Super important. And I’ve had people say, oh, well it takes a while to get that meeting link tuned in, or to line that up with my calendar.

It’s worth a little time on the front end. Isn’t it to save yourself so much sanity for the months, the years ahead. Once you’ve got

Diana Lidstone: those tools in place. Exactly. I mean, I. You know, I am not one to, I guess it’s my generation. I don’t embrace new technology wealth. And it took me some time, you know, I used to have this paper calendar and then I was online with Google.

And, and finally, when I realized, oh, I can, for me, I blocked out Mondays. Mondays is my content day. I have clients only on two days. I don’t work Friday afternoons, whatever it is for you, you can block that time out. They don’t know that you’re meditating or doing your journal or whatever it happens to be.

Right.

Susi Vine: Right. And when you show up resourced and restored, you’re so much more present and making more of that time. Yes. Yes. For we non-digital natives are the, the younger people in the house. Definitely. Tell folks where they can find you to learn more. I, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, we covered so much in just a short bit of time, but super, super valuable tips.

Diana Lidstone: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah, my website is where I send everybody Diana, like the princess I say. Diana Leadstone L I D S T O N E.com where I have links to my podcast links to my blog. And if it’s an email diana@dianalidestone.com or Facebook, or, you know, I’m around pretty easy.

Susi Vine: Thank you so much. It’s been a treat I’m really loving this day and we’ll dive back into the podatorium and see who’s our next match, but I’m so grateful we got matched in this, in this frenzy. I’m a big, big fan of finding that aligned life and creating a business that is, you know, that serves us.

So thank you for these insights. I know I am already feeling better with them and I know our

Diana Lidstone: audience will be. Thank you so much. Take care of Suzy.

Susi Vine: Have great. Thank you.