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EP 268 - Amanda Moffett

Ellen Yin51min

Ellen Yin

00:00

You're listening to cubicle to CEO episode 268, when you're overworked in your business, the last thing you want to do is add an after hours commitment, but a strategic evaluation process completed in the evenings over a two week window is exactly what allowed this week's guest to cut her weekly working hours from 45 down to just 15.

Ellen Yin

00:19

Serial entrepreneur and founder of the pursuit company, Amanda Moffett developed the gold framework out of this experiment, an approach she utilized to streamline her business, get rid of anything that wasn't necessary and make her operations as efficient as possible.

Ellen Yin

00:35

After working through this framework solo, she brought it to her team, and they saw improvements in just 24 hours after implementing new systems. Here's the step by step framework that reimagined Amanda's business and reduced the chaos.

Ellen Yin

00:52

Welcome to cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. Every Monday, go behind the business in a case study style interview with a leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.

Ellen Yin

01:34

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I have Amanda Moffett here with us, and I'm so excited because Amanda is also a listener of the show. And these are my favorite type of case studies, because we love featuring listeners and people who really understand the show format.

Ellen Yin

01:49

And Amanda's really juicy case study for us today, it's all about how she implemented this gold framework in her own business to reduce her working hours from around 45 hours a week down to 15 hours a week, which is so impressive, you basically shaved off, like a full week's worth of tasks off your plate.

Ellen Yin

02:08

So anyways, before we get into that, Amanda, I would love to hear your cubicle to CEO story. What was that catalyst that launched you into entrepreneurship?

Amanda Moffett

02:19

Yes, so I feel like I have a pretty unusual start into the business world. I was offered to buy a business when I was 17 years old. I always had that entrepreneurial bug, but it's not like I had any big ideas or things that I knew I was going to do when I graduated high school or something. But my old boss, who used to own this dance studio locally, offered for me to buy it when she moved and I was 17 at the time, and I bought it about a month or so after I turned 18 years old, and within my first Year, I doubled my revenue and just scaled, hired, fired. I was just launched, like, full time into the business world from absolutely nothing. I mean, like, think of the average 17-18, year old, you know.

Amanda Moffett

03:12

And so I bought this business that was already completely established. It had multiple employees, about 100 clients at the time, and was just very much so a functioning business that I just had to jump into and learn from the ground up. And all of a sudden I was the boss. All of a sudden I was the CEO. And so it was very fun, very exciting, extremely difficult, and taught me so much about life and business very quickly.

Ellen Yin

03:45

That's incredible. I mean, I really was a blessing. Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, that's huge. I've never known anyone who was basically straight out of high school and got offered such a big opportunity to take over a business, and huge kudos to you for having the bravery to do that as well. I don't know if at you know, the age of 17 or 18, I would have had the courage to take on such a big responsibility.

Ellen Yin

04:09

So that's incredible. And I love that you have that brick and mortar experience to now, kind of, you know, help you look at business, I'm sure, through a more broad lens, because you have run different types of businesses, because I understand now, obviously you're focused on online coaching services and programs, but let's talk about for your current business, how you refocused your chaotic business schedule from, like we said before, 45 hours a week, into 15 hours a Week, and before we even get into that gold framework that we talked about, I'd love for you to set the stage for our listeners and kind of just talk about how you were feeling in that time period before you implemented this.

Ellen Yin

04:53

Like, what was your day to day like? How did you wake up? What was your nervous system feeling?

Amanda Moffett

04:59

Oh, man. My nervous system was not feeling good things. I was absolutely overwhelmed so stressed. Felt like such a failure all of the time. I felt like I was lacking so much. I was so confused. My skin was not thick at all yet, and my feelings would get hurt so easily throughout the business world, I felt like I was this tiny little fish in a storm in an ocean, just being thrashed around and not having a good time.

Amanda Moffett

05:36

And so it was not good. I did not feel positive things most of the time, and it was actually pretty depressing, and gave me a lot of anxiety. It was hard to fall asleep, it was stressful to wake up. It was very difficult. And so that is definitely a catalyst for why I decided things need to change. I need to make a pivot. This is not what I want to live my entire life, like I know that other people experience business differently than I am right now. I need some of that.

Ellen Yin

06:14

I can absolutely relate to that Amanda and I feel like every single person listening to this podcast has probably also felt those feelings at one point or another in their business. So you kind of decided, all right, I need to change something about this. I'm going to do essentially, like an assessment of my business for myself.

Ellen Yin

06:34

And you came up with this framework, gold, g o l d, and we'll kind of go through each one individually. Did you come up with this kind of all on your own, by the way, or was this based off of something you had read or heard or learned somewhere else?

Amanda Moffett

06:49

So I came up with the gold acronym, and I created the framework around it to make it tangible for other people to use. But the original, like actual, practical, what you're doing inside of the framework. It was actually inspired by something that my now husband, but my boyfriend at the time, encouraged me to do. So naturally. He was one of those people who I went to on a bad day or explaining my stressors and all of those things in business. And he said, Hey, I have an idea.

Amanda Moffett

07:24

Let's just go out to lunch. Let's sit down with pen and paper, and I'm just going to help you organize your thoughts, and let's just see if we can figure some of this stuff out, which, you know, is amazing to look back on. I'm so grateful for him, and I just pray that everyone listening has someone like that in their lives. And so he helped me kind of do this, basically the gold framework, and I've added a little bit to it and made it like tangibly relatable to people and something that they can do in their own lives and business.

Ellen Yin

07:59

What a wonderful husband and partner at the time. Yes, very, very lucky that you had that support system in your corner. So with G then go internally. And the big takeaway I got, as I was kind of reviewing these notes before we hopped on our call, is it really forces you to not just fix what you're already doing. Like, it's not fixing your current business. It's actually making you reimagine what your entire business even looks like, right?

Ellen Yin

08:29

So tell us about that process for you. Like, how did you start to reimagine and what, what kind of things were you discovering as you went internally?

Amanda Moffett

08:38

Yes, I love that word you used reimagine, because that's exactly what it is. It's like innovating and reimagining what could be. So what that looked like for me was sitting down at a nice meal in a calm environment, and I just literally had a pen and my journal, and I just wrote out my biggest dreams, the things that were truly, truly important to me. And the key element to this is to not think about your current reality. If you do, you will be holding yourself back.

Amanda Moffett

09:15

And so what I did was I just wrote out my biggest dreams, no matter how big or scary they seemed. You just write out, what is your ideal vision for your life, your ideal vision for your team, for your business, for your numbers, for your reach, anything you can think of that you would actually want in your life, in your business and so that go internally. For me, it looked like being in a safe, comfortable, happy, calm environment, a nice restaurant.

Amanda Moffett

09:45

And I was a nice restaurant by the water. I'll never forget where I was sitting, and it was my pen and paper and my dreams and thoughts, and it was, honestly so fun, like it's really healthy, and it kind of. Healing to do this of thinking, okay, I get to choose what I do in my life, and I get to choose my next steps. I don't have to stay here. Let's see what I can come up with. What do I actually want?

Ellen Yin

10:13

I love that, and I feel like you and I are so similar in being able to do our best thinking by the water with pen and paper. So I can absolutely relate to that too. What was one big, scary, audacious vision that you had written down at that time that felt very unlikely or realistic, but has actually come true since then? Can you think of one?

Amanda Moffett

10:35

Oh, yeah, immediately, right off the bat, I wanted to be less involved with like direct client communication, direct client touch points. I wanted to more so manage a team who was really excellent at executing the services we actually provide. And so at the time, I was very much so a touch point, and very much so in the email inbox and doing all of the actual day to day things.

Amanda Moffett

11:05

At that time, I had not cultivated a team that, you know, took initiative by themselves and truly were leaders in their own right yet. And so a big dream of mine was to truly be in that seat of CEO, managing a team who did the work rather than be super direct, one on one with clients regularly, weekly.

Ellen Yin

11:27

Awesome. And I'm sure you know that's essential to the ability to scale as well. So I can see how that vision really came to fruition in your own business. O then, so if G is all about the what, not the how, O is really about? Okay, now let's actually bring this into reality. You're organizing into categories all of the different areas of your business, right?

Ellen Yin

11:50

So tell us what were the categories in your business at the time, and was this something that you, I guess, were even cognizant of before you did this exercise. Was this something you thought about or was this really eye opening for you and why?

Amanda Moffett

12:05

This was extremely eye opening for me, because I had never thought about it like this. So something my like I said, my now husband, my boyfriend at the time, he said, let's just write out everything that's on your mind, every little task that you have to do today, every future dream, every random communication that you don't want to forget for next month, every single thing that is clouding your mind and stressing you out right now.

Amanda Moffett

12:31

Write it down so it's like a big, huge, like brain exercise, a brain dump of just put it down on paper until you can't think of anything else, and then you start to see patterns. You start to see, oh, wow, most of this stuff has to do with maybe the tech end of my business, or maybe most of it is actually personal life things. Maybe you have less going on in your business than you thought, and it's actually just your life stuff that's stressing you out. But you start to see what's actually in your brain down on paper, which is extremely powerful.

Amanda Moffett

13:04

So after you get all of it written down, and you truly can't think of anything else to add to this list, then you do the organizing into categories, and you start to see, oh, wow. All of these have to do with team. So you can create a category of team. All of these have to do with my kids. All of these have to do with that one really difficult client. All of these have to do with my podcast. All of these have to do with this project, you know. And then you organize into categories.

Amanda Moffett

13:32

So what you're left with is everything that was clouding your mind and going on, and all the projects and the tasks and the team members and the clients and your personal life things too. I think that's a really important aspect, because we're not just business owners, we're, you know, spouses and parents and friends and all of these things. And so what you're left with is seeing your whole brain and life in categories organized on paper in front of you, and that alone, honestly, takes away so much stress. Just seeing it in that way is really powerful in and of itself. And so that's what I did.

Ellen Yin

14:10

And for you, when you were organizing into these categories, what categories for your business did you notice emerged as kind of like the mammoths of your business, if you will, like the ones that kind of encompass most of your thoughts and stresses and brain space, if you will.

Amanda Moffett

14:27

Mostly it was client communication, all the back and forth, handling all of the details for all of the client communication and future projects, upcoming events, timelines for that type of thing, projects that are coming down the pipeline. And I had also a category for personal because it was happened to be during the time when I was about to get engaged and we were serious about moving forward and getting married. And so there were a lot of personal things going on, too.

Ellen Yin

14:59

Yeah. I can remember that season of life because I'm recently married, only, you know, we just celebrated a year this past August. So anyways, I do remember how much just like, mental space that took up in my time, and it felt really distracting, you know, from the business, or maybe the business was distracting from, you know, the preparing for marriage. So that's really helpful, I think, to see on paper, like you said, all of the different things that are actually occupying your time and your energy.

Ellen Yin

15:29

Now we move on to L the label piece. So once you had all of these areas and these tasks in your business organized into categories, you then went through and labeled what you currently do from a scale of zero to three, zero being, I want to get rid of this 100% like you're very certain about that, and three being, I definitely want to keep this. So I was actually curious the Zero to Three rating scale.

Ellen Yin

15:54

Why Zero to Three instead of zero to 10? Is there, like, a specific reason behind that, or is it just kind of like arbitrary?

Amanda Moffett

16:00

I think for me, zero to 10 sounds overwhelming, and it feels like I would procrastinate and overthink. Is it a six? Is it a seven? Like I feel like it's too many numbers for my brain. I need simple. I need tangible. I need practically helpful. And I know that busy CEOs need that too. And so I think the zero to three, it's kind of like decision fatigue. It allows you to just have a clearer path, and you don't have to, like, analyze too deeply in your gut, your instincts, like, when you look at this list, when you write everything out, when you categorize everything, you will instinctually know, oh, wow, those three things, those are zeros.

Amanda Moffett

16:46

I know they're zeros right away when I look at this page, and for some reason it just feels like zero to three felt a lot more tangibly helpful. Because when you're doing this type of exercise, a lot of the times you're overwhelmed already. That's why you're even doing this. That's why you're you're even thinking about this. And so the last thing you need is like a complicated, larger scale, having to think of more numbers that just didn't sit right with me.

Ellen Yin

17:13

No, I actually think it's so smart. I was thinking that's probably why you chose the the smaller scale. But I always like to ask, because I'm super curious about how people's brains work, and if it's the same as you know what the train of thought that I was going down. So glad to know that, yes, it was just about eliminating that decision fatigue. And did you also apply this process of rating your tasks just for your own tasks, or did you have all your team members do this for their own tasks as well.

Amanda Moffett

17:44

I only did this myself, so I intentionally didn't include my team in this, because I wanted it to very much be like truly from the top, my leadership, my brain. Because what this was, was it was more than creating a more efficient to do list for me, this was like we talked about earlier, reimagining how I wanted my business to look like.

Amanda Moffett

18:09

It was truly like very big, consequential decisions. Honestly, it might have been decisions that ended up changing the team structure, or, you know, how we even package our services like really big things? And I wasn't ready to bring the team I had at that time into that type of leadership, visionary decision making,

Ellen Yin

18:32

Completely understandable. And speaking of asking yourself those kind of consequential questions, you know, in our research leading up to this interview, you had shared some of the questions that you had asked yourself as you were scoring these different tasks and areas in your business that helped you gain clarity on whether it was a 012, or three.

Ellen Yin

18:52

So I don't know if you have those questions in front of you, Amanda or just like stored in your head, but I'd love to go through those questions, because as I was reading them, I thought, wow, these are so powerful. Do you want to share some of those questions?

Amanda Moffett

19:03

Yes, I don't know if I remember, like verbatim, what you're thinking of, but I definitely have some great questions. So a really great question that I had floating around in my head the entire time is, if I had a magic wand and I knew the exact way to make this happen overnight. What would I change right now? Because sometimes, when we just ask ourselves, well, what is most important, we start to get all logistical in our minds, and we kind of overcomplicate it, and we think of only the here and now, not what could be, what you could be working towards, and then you limit yourself, and all of a sudden you're not actually at your goals, because you were kind of thinking and playing small the whole time.

Amanda Moffett

19:48

So kind of that idea of a magic wand of truly, if I could change this overnight, and it would always be like this from now on, what would I actually get rid of? What would I implement? In or add, what would I shift around? So that was really powerful for me, because it kind of cuts through the noise that my own brain would make, you know, and you make up excuses for yourself sometimes, and you over complicate things and all of this stuff.

Amanda Moffett

20:15

And so that question really helped bring a lot of clarity to what I was actually there for you. Know, another good question might be, what do you want your week to look like? What do you want your literal mornings on Wednesday to look like? Do you want to sleep in? Do you want Wednesdays to be a heavy meeting day? Do you want to start work at 1pm every day? Do you want to start work at 11am and end at one like you need to ask yourself, what do I literally want my actual life to look like if we don't ask ourselves questions like that?

Amanda Moffett

20:50

All of a sudden, the weeks and the years roll by and you aren't living in in what your dreams were and you could have been.

Ellen Yin

20:58

Yeah, that's so true, and I like that you start with again, what? What does your ideal schedule, your ideal life look like? Instead of, how do I build an efficient schedule for my tasks and then just plug that into my life? It's like you're not letting the confines of what you're doing dictate what your schedule looks like. And said, You're saying, okay, I only have between the hours of, you know, nine to one, if that's like your working hours. Now, how do I do the opposite and make sure that what I'm doing actually fits into my dream lifestyle?

Ellen Yin

21:31

So I think that's a great perspective shift. And some of the other questions that really stood out to me that you had submitted ahead of time, that you had, you know, ask yourself as you are going through I'm just going to quickly list them for our listeners, because they're too good for them to miss out on. So obviously, like, kind of more high level questions, like, what currently gives me joy in the business and what gives me dread, right? Like, what do I get drained from when I do it and it leaves me feeling empty? I also thought this question was really interesting, which tasks do I procrastinate on due to not enjoying them? That really jumped out at me, because I was like, oh yeah, there's totally things in my business.

Ellen Yin

22:11

Like I can immediately think of some things where I'm like, I always, always push that off till the very last minute. So that one, I thought, was really enlightening. Another question that you asked yourself was, if I could only keep one area of my business, which would it be? And then, conversely, if I had to delete one area of my business today, which would I choose? And I was like, wow, those are again, very consequential questions. And then the last one that I thought was very helpful is, you had already asked yourself, you know, what gives you a lot of joy in your business?

Ellen Yin

22:44

But you also ask yourself, What aspect of work Am I excited to talk about which I don't know if I've ever thought about it that way, because, you know, we always think about like, what do we internally feel excitement around, but not really, like, how do we actually express that excitement into the world?

Ellen Yin

22:59

And so, like, kind of being cognizant of what you like to talk about in your business to other people when they ask you, like, what do you do or, like, tell me about your business. I just thought that was really, really interesting. Is there any gap that I missed there that you just want to add a little bit of additional insight to?

Amanda Moffett

23:14

Yeah, no, those are very powerful questions. I'm glad you you read them out. I think those are questions that every single business owner should write down on a piece of paper, hang it up on your wall next to where you work, and just look at them like truly. Just look at them every once in a while, sit down and ponder them. Make yourself a yummy drink that you enjoy, and just sit there and think about those questions, because those are the consequential questions that literally shape your business and your life.

Amanda Moffett

23:45

Like those are the types of questions that make you switch your entire business model, because all of a sudden you've realized, oh my goodness, I don't want to have one on one clients anymore. Why do I have so many one on one clients? I want to have a membership model like but you never would have thought of that, maybe, or been courageous enough to do the actual jump. But those are the questions that really reveal a lot. They're very showing. They're very telling, you know, and I love how you mentioned, you know, what do you enjoy talking about with others?

Amanda Moffett

24:19

When people ask, oh, wow. Like, that's so cool. What do you enjoy about what you do? Like, what's your favorite part? Like, what would come to mind first, and what would you never want to bring up at a party, small talking, the procrastination comment? The question is very powerful, extremely revealing, I would say the thing or the things you're thinking of, figure out a way to either delete them and replace them, or delete them entirely or delegate them really well, yeah, those are really awesome questions. I love them. They were life changing for me.

Ellen Yin

24:58

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25:21

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Ellen Yin

26:10

Well, I mean, I was just going to say all the credit goes to you, because those were your questions. I just regurgitated them for our listeners. But yes, thank you so much for just kind of again. I think sometimes those questions are helpful in us finding the right score right for how we really feel about something. And after you had scored all of these tasks for yourself from zero to three, you actually then organized your answers into those column lists by 0, 1, 2, and 3. So if you can remember back, what did you discover that you had to eliminate based on how you scored your answers? And were you surprised by those answers?

Amanda Moffett

26:49

Yes, I was surprised. And I think that's the best type of brain exercise and Strategy Session is when you do find something out that you really didn't know you were going to when you went into it. So a few things I found out very quickly were, I want to delegate a lot of the in depth, detail oriented client communications. I want to delegate the phone things, the messages, the email inboxes. I want to figure out a more so, a very strategic tech side of things that I'm not a part of at all.

Amanda Moffett

27:30

And I decided I'm going to have an email address that is strictly me as a CEO. No clients have it. Only my team has it. I actually created a way that clients genuinely couldn't even get in touch with me directly, directly. Every single time they needed me, they would go to my right hand, first she would field, and then I would get the most important you know, if it's truly a question for me, that's fine. I just didn't want to get every single thing right away.

Amanda Moffett

28:00

So a big thing that I remember was client communication. That's a very tangible thing that I changed and restructured, and all of the things for that.

Ellen Yin

28:12

I feel like it's interesting too. Because, you know, at the very beginning, when you were, you know, just starting with the G, the Go internally and thinking of like your vision you already had imagined for yourself. I don't really want to be as tied to the client communications. And then clearly, by the time you got to l and labeling and like scoring, you know, these different tasks, your answers actually confirmed what you had felt all along.

Ellen Yin

28:37

And aside from your own personal you know, tasks like you, you know, kind of stepping away from a lot of that client communication and that technology side of your business because of you, you know, delegating these things. Was there any part of your business that you actually fully eliminated?

Amanda Moffett

28:55

Yes, there was. So I've since sold this first company, the dance studio. But a part of my decision was I was going to delete what in the dance world we call a competition team and so very to make it tangible for if you don't know anything about the dance world competition teams, they travel around the state, sometimes around the country, and compete at these regional and national dance competitions.

Amanda Moffett

29:23

A studio does not have to have a team like this. It can also just be regular classes and recreational and the competition team was something that gave me a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress. I did not see the pros and cons level out the way I would have liked, and so I actually changed that entire structure and actually renamed it to be performance company, and we did more local shows, and the traveling to regional competitions became optional, not mandatory, which if you've ever been in the studio world, that actually is a huge difference in the logistics of planning your entire year, planning your shows, planning performances, planning traveling events, like it's actually a lot of behind the scenes that changed based on changing that structure of how it all worked. So that was a huge, huge difference.

Ellen Yin

30:22

That's really helpful. And you know, I don't come from the studio dance world, but I did grow up dancing in different studios that were more kind of what you shifted to where it was like about the, let's say, annual recital, or like performing at local events, which I loved. And then, of course, in high school and college, I did dance team, and there were competitions related to that.

Ellen Yin

30:39

But I can totally understand what you mean by if you have any aspect of competition, part of your studio like it really does become your entire focus, and your weekends are completely occupied by that. So that was really helpful. If you've applied this framework since then in your current business, have you eliminated anything from your current coaching and education business that you maybe were surprised by.

Ellen Yin

31:04

Again, you know, something that you thought you wanted to do, but then realized, wait a second, this is actually not the right fit.

Amanda Moffett

31:10

Yes, I have, I do not take on one on one clients. I do not advertise that. I'm only membership model. Now I have one one on one client, and I it's hard to count her. She's my mom's like best friend, and every now and then I help her with some business things, she's like an aunt to me. But I do not have any true one on one coaching clients currently. And so that is a wonderful, very intentional decision.

Ellen Yin

31:42

Yes, I can see that. And for some people, it's so funny, and this is, I think, why doing this exercise is so important. Because for some people, they may realize, like I had a good business coach friend that actually realized the membership model. So the opposite was not for her, and she shut down her membership to focus on one on one clients. So I love that clarity and what is right, quote, unquote is so different for each person. So thank you. Thank you for sharing what you've discovered.

Ellen Yin

32:08

And that kind of leads us into that last piece of the gold framework, which is d draft your new plan and next steps. And so you kind of already, you know, reference that you use this scoring system to figure out what you wanted to delete entirely, what you wanted to delegate. And then the other two portions of it were you were able to identify what you wanted to simply pause for a season and what you wanted to add into your business. So that's very interesting to me.

Ellen Yin

32:35

What is one new thing you actually added into your business as a result of going through this process. And then what was something that you paused for a season?

Amanda Moffett

32:44

Yeah, so something I added was a team member, because I realized, you know, you very quickly see the gap between what you want and what you're currently doing, and I realized that there was this whole chunk of tasks that were very related that I didn't love doing, but they really did have to get done. I wasn't going to delete them. It was more so like the public image, outward events, publicity type things.

Amanda Moffett

33:14

And so I hired a whole team member. And I actually I called them because I like to keep things fun in my business for my team members and I, we called her the magical moments coordinator. And so our job was. Her job was to create magical moments and just have that beautiful like public image events, decor, like the extra sprinkle on top. What you know when you work with a company, and maybe they're great, but it's pretty cut and dry and normal type services.

Amanda Moffett

33:50

And then sometimes you work with a company and they send you a special, customized card, and they call you on your birthday and they send you a treat after you finish your package with them in the mail or something, you know, those types of touch points. I actually hired someone to do all of that sort of stuff, the magical moments.

Amanda Moffett

34:11

So that was a big thing that we added, which took a ton of hours of work off of my plate weekly. I mean, so regularly. So that was a huge chunk already, and then we paused certain events throughout the year, which took a lot of hours off. And in fact, what was amazing was I, at the time, I didn't fully know this.

Amanda Moffett

34:36

Now, I live this way, but I truly believe that less is more, focusing on fewer events, fewer launches, fewer services, different offers, but going so all in on those few things, or two things, or one thing that you do is the magic sauce of business and life and joy. And peace of mind as a business owner, and so we paused a lot of the what felt like busy work throughout the year to focus on a few things and do them really well.

Ellen Yin

35:12

There's so much truth to that, by the way. Like focus, I think, is like the most underrated strategy, business strategy, really. And you can go so far if you really pour all of your time and resources into scaling one thing instead of multiple things. So absolutely agree there. So during this entire process where you were walking yourself through this g, o, l, d, gold framework, you said it took you, originally about two weeks to fully flesh out like all of your thoughts and ideas and everything for this process, and I know at the time when you started this, you were feeling extremely overwhelmed, like you said, you were waking up with anxiety.

Ellen Yin

35:50

You had all these things on your plate. So how did you actually carve out the time these two weeks amongst the overwhelm you were feeling? Did you take a trip? Did you tell your team, hey, I have to go away for two weeks and, like, give me some time to figure some things out or, yeah, how did you, how did you make this happen?

Amanda Moffett

36:07

Yeah, I very, very, practically did this at later at night. So I had that initial, like, lunch, dream date, this vision day, if you will, of getting it all down on paper and just starting the process and getting my gears turning. And then I kept it all in a Google doc so that I could access it from my phone from anywhere. And I would go through this Google Doc and write out plans and highlight things and create basically my action plan of what am I going to do with this information now?

Amanda Moffett

36:40

And what was nice is because it was on a Google Doc, I was able to access it at any time, no matter where I was. And so if I was at the gas station or the grocery store and something came to me that I just needed to write down, or I had an idea, I quickly just jotted it down. And so practically, what it looked like was just totally thinking about it regularly, mulling it over. And any little moment that I had an idea for something to do in the future or to delete or to delegate, I would just write it down.

Amanda Moffett

37:13

And then when the world was quiet and kind of my day was done, I would go into this like little mental headspace of, okay, now I'm gonna work on, like, my dream, my future, like I did my daily stuff. I kept the gears turning. I kept the operations going today. You know, I didn't, I didn't leave the country for two weeks and go on some retreat or whatever.

Amanda Moffett

37:35

And for most business owners this, this will probably look like, maybe you have, like, a weekend at a local hotel and you just go sit in a room by yourself, and that's amazing. Totally do that if you're able to, but I just took time in the evenings for myself to just dream and work in a plan.

Ellen Yin

37:54

Thank you, by the way, for painting that very realistic picture of what that looked like. Because, like you said, I think for a lot of business owners, especially those who feel stuck in the chaos of their business, it's very difficult to just totally, you know, remove themselves. And so I love that you were able to build that into your your already existing routine, and kind of find those pockets of time and then really get quiet with yourself at night.

Ellen Yin

38:17

o that was really, really helpful. Now, the results, I mean, this part, I think, is super, super cool, because it took you two weeks to kind of figure out what it is that you wanted to change or do different, to reimagine your business. But then it actually took three months for you to fully implement the systems and the changes that resulted from the clarity that you got from this exercise. So three months to implement. We'll get into that in just a moment. But another really cool aspect of this is that your team actually saw improvements within the first 24 hours. So tell us what happened in these first 24 hours.

Amanda Moffett

38:54

Yes. So what I realized was, when I'm more organized and when I have better systems in place. My team benefits from that as well, because nobody wants to work in a confused, disorganized environment. People want to be led, and people want to be a part of something that has vision and boundaries and structure in place. It's fun, because when you have organization, you actually get to fly freer, because there's not all this muddy confusion. So what I did first was I implemented a few super basic good systems.

Amanda Moffett

39:33

For example, if there were a few questions that we would get, like all the time via email. So something so practical, which is so small but very big, tangibly, if you're the one doing the work day in, day out, I created a Google doc of frequently asked questions and the perfect response that I typed out once did all the things. You know, took screenshots of examples of back and forths I created like a whole, basically a standard operating procedure layout template.

Amanda Moffett

40:05

And I told my manager on my right hand, hey, this is the Google Doc. Simply copy and paste and fill in the blanks for anything similar to this. And anytime you get a question that you've seen before, add it to this Google Doc, and right away that like practically saved my team and I time that day, that week.

Amanda Moffett

40:28

And it became one of those things where it's not just the systems that save you time, it's also the systems that make it more enjoyable for you to actually show up and makes your team enjoy their work more, because your team doesn't want to be stressed, either they don't want to be confused, either the happier they are working in their roles, the better they show up, the more ideas they come to you with. It's like this beautiful win win situation, because when they enjoy their job and when they feel like they have clarity, and it's all running well.

Amanda Moffett

41:04

All of a sudden, you have team members that want to step up more and take initiative. They come to you with great ideas, and they're excited about their work. So it's a really good thing. So super practically, I made a few like Google Docs with different systems because I was now thinking in the way of, wait a second, how do I make this easier for myself and everyone around me? Let's just simply cut down on the amount of thinking and decisions we have to make all of the time.

Amanda Moffett

41:32

And I had team members literally in that 2448 hour window say, oh my gosh. That made my day so much easier, thank you. Like that was so great. And then they would add to the systems, and then before you know it, the next week, they come to me saying, hey, so I loved what we did with this area of the business. I had an idea for this other area, and it's just it was an amazing type of thing.

Ellen Yin

41:58

Yeah, I can see how that would make a world of difference, even though, again, sometimes the things that make the biggest difference are the simplest things. It's just that we don't carve out the time or the priority to do that right, because we're already so overwhelmed trying to keep afloat with everything else.

Ellen Yin

42:14

And so thank you for giving us that really tangible example of like, one key change you made that really just instantly uplifted, like you said, everybody on your team, and empower them to be more self sufficient, if you will. So then the rest of these changes you tackled over a three month window, right? This implementation?

Ellen Yin

42:34

Can you walk us through just really high level, what the timeline of those three months look like? Like? What were you working on in the first month, second month, third month, like did you expect it to take three months? Were you expecting it to take longer, shorter? Any hindsight that you can share we would love.

Amanda Moffett

42:50

Yeah, definitely. So I did not know how long all of this was going to take, because I was just the entrepreneur boots on the ground figuring it out and rolling out all of these changes. So first I got really clear myself, so I it was very important to me that I did not go to my team with random ideas but no structure. I really wanted to know and be confident in the changes I was making, because I didn't want them to feel insecure about their job or stressed and confused just because I didn't have the answers that day.

Amanda Moffett

43:26

So I, in the first probably two to four weeks, I really figured out, what does this actually look like? Do I need to create any new documents? Do I need to write out announcement emails? Do I need to film announcement videos? Like, like, what are the changes I'm making? How do I roll this out? Who do I roll it out first to, what does that look like for our social media? Like, does the website need to be updated in areas, like, all of those types of things?

Amanda Moffett

43:56

And then I rolled it out to my team. First, super important. I'm a huge believer of your team should basically never find something out, like from a client or from your website or from your social media. There are, I think, random, nuanced exceptions, maybe, but truly like most of the time, you want to go into changes and updates with just an awesome combined force. And everyone's on the same page, everyone has clarity, everyone's excited and knows what's going on.

Amanda Moffett

44:31

And so I rolled everything out to my team first, and I basically showed them everything, explained where I was coming from, painted a picture and a vision of excitement and joy and clarity, and showed them how they fit into that as well, so that they could join me in being excited. And it was an amazing thing. They were able to basically jump on to the bandwagon, and then they were excited about coming to meet with them. Ideas. And what's amazing is when you like cast this type of vision and explain all of that to your team, as well as how they fit into the picture and why this is amazing for them too, they reciprocate that.

Amanda Moffett

45:15

And then they'll come to you with different ideas that you never had even thought about, and you think, Oh, my goodness, that's actually an incredible idea. You're so right. That does fit in with our vision now. So it becomes like this really fun snowball effect. And then month three is when we as the team were able to roll out and announce changes and pivot things. Because in month two, it was like, talk with the team and have them work on it with me, do all of the like, nitty gritty things, play devil's advocate and clean it up and iron it out. So then in month three, it was more so, like, public visibility things.

Ellen Yin

45:58

Thank you. That's extremely helpful. And knowing all of this now, and having gone through it with you know, your previous business, then your current business, if you were to ever implement this again, well, a, actually, that's kind of a two part question, I guess. A, do you do this framework in your own business every so often, just kind of as like a quick check, even if you're maybe not feeling the pull of overwhelm anymore. And then B, having gone through this, you know before, is there anything you would do different if you were to do it again?

Amanda Moffett

46:33

So yes, I definitely do this. Currently. It's become more so a way of thinking now. So it's not like I have hit the it's not like I hit this wall over and over and have to really sit down with myself and, like, redo everything. Because now I think in this way, now I think in systems. And what's cool is when you do, like, the nitty gritty, deep work of going through this framework, once, like, super detail oriented.

Amanda Moffett

47:01

Then it becomes so familiar in second nature. Now, when you look at future opportunities and future business decisions and strategy meetings, all these things you go into it already preemptively thinking, is this something I would delete in six months? Is this something that is a full Yes? Is this something that I want to delegate right away? Like, do I have to be the one to do this, you know? And so you already, like, think that way ahead of time. And I cannot even tell you the amount of stress and the amount of work hours and the amount of overwhelm that I've saved myself over the years from literally just thinking of this framework and doing it preemptively with new things that come down the pipeline. And so, yeah, I do it regularly in my head.

Amanda Moffett

47:52

Mostly, I think it's smart maybe once or twice a year to truly, like write it out and see where you're at, because there's power in that. But now it truly is like a way of life for me. In my personal life too, it's really fun. And then looking back in hindsight, I think that something I might have done differently is involve my team more in the planning, like a little bit earlier on, maybe because they really did have a lot of good ideas, and we did work together on all of this, but I think that I might have put a bit too much pressure on myself to be like the only one coming up with everything.

Ellen Yin

48:32

Yeah.

Amanda Moffett

48:32

And this does depend on your team. It really does. Maybe you're in a business where the structure that has to change is that you have to change everyone who's on your team, but I had members on my team that genuinely, like really did care, and they were personally invested, and they would have had great insights earlier on, so I might have approached them more as like a hey, let's brainstorm together and do this together type thing.

Ellen Yin

48:58

Thank you for sharing the wisdom of your hindsight with us. I know that's invaluable, because you truly don't know until you've done it before. And I think it's really encouraging to hear too, that this gold framework has really become your way of thinking, and it's just, it's a constant. It's not like you said, it's not a thing you do once a year, and then you kind of put it on a shelf. It's like, every single day, you're thinking through some of these questions and looking forward to the future in in what you choose to even spend your time on today.

Ellen Yin

49:24

So thank you, Amanda, for coming on and sharing this. Where can our listeners continue to connect with you learn more about the work that you're doing?

Amanda Moffett

49:32

Yes. So I'm super active over on Instagram at pursuit.company, and so I hang out there all the time. That's where you'll see all of my up to date things. So I would love if you just DM me like a little voice memo, like who you are, what you're doing. I love connecting with other entrepreneurs who are passionate about life and their work. So I totally love connecting over there.

Amanda Moffett

49:56

And I also have a podcast, The Pursuit Podcast. So every week, on Monday, I share some strategies and systems and business organization things. So I love connecting those two places amazing.

Ellen Yin

50:10

Well, those links will be below in the show notes for everyone listening. And hey, Mondays are clearly an amazing day for podcast drops. So if you're already listening to Cubicle to CEO, you should definitely add the first aid podcast to your rotation so you get double the goodness on Mondays. Thank you, Amanda again, for joining us.

Amanda Moffett

50:26

Oh, thank you, Ellen, it was such a joy.

Ellen Yin

50:36

If you loved today's episode, send it to a friend. Tag us on Instagram at Cubicle to CEO or give us a five star rating at ratethispodcast.com/cubicletoceo, you can also access bonus episodes on our private podcast by joining the C-Suite, our flagship annual membership providing exclusive cash savings content and an offline community for small business CEOs. Check out the link in the show notes to join us.

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