Welcome to Business and Balance, your go-to newsletter for online business owners ready to reclaim their time and sanity. Each week, you’ll get practical tips, time-saving tools, and strategies to streamline your services, grow your business, and create space for what truly matters. It’s all about working smarter, not harder, so you can build success and savor life.
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Pre-P.S. This email contains affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase, I may make a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products that I trust and truly believe in.
Heyy Reader,
I'm a little late on this email today. Usually I write my emails the week before. The last two weeks, I've been dealing with an allergic reaction to the cedar trees in our yard.
I knew I was allergic to cedar. When I was a kid I'd had hives because we used a cedar tree for our Christmas tree that year. Since then, I've mostly been able to avoid them.
When we moved to Mississippi in July, I noticed that there were 4 LARGE evergreen trees in the yard. I was a little nervous. Every time I played near them with the kids I would get red and itchy.
A couple of days after Christmas, my kids and I were playing under the trees and the next day I was so itchy and red. It just kept getting worse and worse. I went to urgent care and they gave me some steroids and sent in a referral to an allergist. Fast forward to the weekend and my throat was swollen and my jaw was tense. I was really starting to freak out.
I went back to urgent care early this week and got another steroid injection and a different steroid to take at home. Since then, I've been so dizzy with a terrible headache and locked in my bedroom with an air purifier trying to avoid going outside. I've barely been out of bed. The allergist hasn't called me yet, so I'm going to call them after lunch today.
I'm trying to make some cute little business analogy for this, but frankly, I'm too tired and my brain isn't letting me think.
I hope your winter (or summer if you're in the Southern Hemisphere) has started off better than mine!
🤝 COLLAB CORNER
MASTER YOUR TECH MIGRATION
My friend, Elizabeth Neumann, is a Funnel Strategist & Tech Automation Specialist. She supports driven Coaches, Course Creators & Service Providers with their Tech & Automation Strategy and Set up - so they can move their business forward, avoid tech fails and focus on serving their audience & clients.
Today, she is sharing her Master Your Tech Migration Checklist with you for free. With her 8-step checklist, you can migrate your tech without messing everything up!
NEW BLOG POST
UNLOCK THE POWER OF RELIABLE SUPPORT
There's seriously nothing better in your business than strong support. I know from personal experience and from the experiences of my clients that it is hard to come by.
An OBM can be a game changer for your business. With the help of an OBM, you can build a business that thrives and supports your unique vision. Read our newest blog post to learn more about how an OBM can provide you with the support you need for your business to scale to the next level.
THE EMAIL EXPERIMENT
ADVICE FROM 50 EXPERTS OVER 12 MONTHS
You can achieve great things with the right kind of information at your fingertips.
Even more when it’s broken down for you into bitesized actions, easy to implement, test out and see results.
And that’s why if you’re serious about improving your email marketing, having the help of 50 email industry leaders and up-and-coming experts can make all the difference in creating the impact you want to see in your world.
If you’ve been wanting to improve your email marketing, there really is no time like the present. The Email Experiment™’s doors are open for you this week.
You’ll receive brand new bitesized lessons, as they unlock week-by-week through the whole of 2025. So if you want to step boldly into next year with over 50 experts by your side to improve your email marketing, this is your invitation to join us in The Email Experiment™.
The Email Experiment™ is available for a one-time investment of $37. No hidden upsells, downsells or other shenanigans.
SUPERCHARGED SYSTEMS
ACCESSIBILITY WITH SOPS
I've gone in to a lot of businesses where the SOP format is a long written process. This is how many of us are taught to create SOPs and it's a great way for some people to learn.
But it's important to remember that reading is not how everyone learns. And, when some people see a page or two of writing, they freak out. Some people just get totally overwhelmed. Not to mention, there are people with learning disabilities and such that struggle with the written word.
Making sure to use a video and/or images in your SOPs is essential to helping your team fully process the processes you want them to learn and replicate from your SOPs.
When it comes to making videos to accompany an SOP, I like to use Loom. I even pay for the AI so that I can get automatic captions for the videos. It really makes a difference.
If you aren't a fan of Loom, I have seen a lot of people suggest Komodo. I haven't used it yet, but I am definitely going to be learning more about it.
DELEGATION INSPIRATION
LET ME CONNECT YOU WITH MY ASSISTANT
The only thing better than a scheduling link is being able to tell someone, "Let me connect you with my assistant" to handle all your calendaring needs.
One of the easiest ways to add balance to your life as a business owner is to let someone else handle your calendar. It's a super simple thing to hand off that most VAs have extensive experience working with and they can pick up your process fairly quickly.
Then when meetings come in, they can accept them, reschedule them, or do whatever you need them to do with them for you and you don't even have to worry about it. You just have to show up where you're needed.
Depending on how many meetings you take each week, having someone to handle your calendar can give you back quite a bit of time!
If you haven't already delegated calendar management to a virtual assistant, I highly recommend it!
TIME FOR WHAT YOU LOVE
WHAT STORY ARE YOU WRITING?
It's all over social media that 2025 is the year of the personal brand.
That being said, what story are you writing?
What are you putting out there about yourself? What are you letting people know? What do you want to be known for?
By putting your story out there into the world, you share a piece of who you are and what you love with the rest of us. And that makes us love you even more! Plus, it reminds you why you do what you do and helps you to keep going.
I hope you've had an uneventful return to work this week. I can't wait to see what 2025 has in store for you.
Talk Soon,
