Episode #36: 3 Things You Need to Put Your Business on the Fast-Track with Terra Bohlmann

Announcer (00:02): Welcome to the fast track entrepreneur podcast with your host TerraBohlmann.com, You are about to get filled with business strategies, advice and motivation to get you prepared to fast track your five year plan in less than one year. So buckle up and let's create your first class business with clarity and confidence.

Terra Bohlmann (00:30): Welcome to the fast track entrepreneur. I'm your host and business strategist, Terra Bohlmann, super excited to share with you today. The three things that you can put in place in your business to put it on the fast track. It's like my favorite thing to talk about, which is why we're calling this the fast track entrepreneur I'm beyond thrilled to break down the three things. It's just three things that has taken me a decade to figure out. So let's hop on it. All right. So the first thing that you need to have in place so that you can fast track your business. Success is a five year plan. Why a five year plan? Why not a one year plan? Why not a 30 year plan? I believe five year plans are stretch a ball, but not so overwhelming where you can't see a decade from now.

Terra Bohlmann (01:37): And I also think one year plans, they just don't give you enough time to make things happen. And in reality, when you have a five year plan in place, you actually get more momentum and more attraction in one year than if you just put a one year plan in place. So I am crazy about planning. I love it. I think it's super important to fast track your success to really define three things. Primarily the first thing in a plan, where are you now? Let's get real with where are you now in both your business and in your life. Then we want to know where do you want to be in five years and five years? What I do to put myself in a five-year mindset, because I haven't, it's hard for me to even think five years. So I have to literally do things like add five years to my age.

Terra Bohlmann (02:29): I'm 43, I'm 48, my husband's 49 or he'd be 50. My kids, my oldest son now is 17. I have to add five years. He's graduated from college. My twins are going to be driving because they're 11 years old now. So they're made driving in five years and my sweet dog, Skyler's going to be almost eight years old. So I put the people around, I add five years and I really put myself in that space. And I think, okay, I'm five years. I've been in business 15 years. Wow. Like where, what do I want to have happened in five years? Like when I blink and if I were in a time machine where I can go fast, forward five years, what does that look like? So from a business perspective, how much revenue are you making? How much profit are you making? How much, how many clients are you serving?

Terra Bohlmann (03:29): You know, what, what are you selling? How are you delivering it? Like, just really think about a lot of those things who's on your team. You know, do you have a big team? Do you want a huge company with hundreds of people? Or do you just want you in a few contractors, like really put yourself in that mindset from a business perspective, but don't underestimate what it would be like from your life perspective too. Do you see yourself living in the same house? Do you have a new house? Have you downsized? What car are you driving? All that kind of stuff is, is real. And we want to think in terms of the future. So then what you do and you don't need to take notes on this or anything because I have a workbook that I'm going to, I'm going to give you that literally walks you through this.

Terra Bohlmann (04:15): This is always my step one with my private clients, the five year plan, where are you now? Where are we going? Right? And then more importantly, what are the gaps that are in your way? What are the blocks that are in your way stopping you from achieving that five year plan? And what's really cool about this is when you take the time to think about where you are now, where you're going, then you look at the gaps and you can think, huh, what's gonna stop me from achieving that. And so let's pre anticipate all the worst case scenario, things that may not even happen, but you're going to think about it. And then it's going to allow your brain to go, okay, I'm prepared for that. Okay. I'm prepared for that. Here's what I would do if that happens or, you know here's how I can maneuver that.

Terra Bohlmann (05:04): Oh, here's how I don't know how to do XYZ. Well, here's how I can learn that as fast as possible. Here's who I could hire that would just do that for me. So it allows us, our brains to figure out the how right. And then when we're in it and we're in month three of our five year plan. It's funny how, if you're, when you're super intentional, all these things, these opportunities will open up for you. I know it sounds crazy, but I want you to trust me on this. I've seen at time, it happened time and time again with many clients and it happened in my own business. So five year plan, I give it away for free. On my website. You can go to Terra, bohlmann.com/workbook. So Terra Bohlmann with [inaudible] dot com slash workbook, or it's even on my homepage. A lot of the times where you can just click the link, you can download it.

Terra Bohlmann (06:00): It's called destination success, map out your five-year plan ASAP. So five year plan, I give it away for free because I think it's that important. And what I know for sure is when you have a plan, it doubles your chance for success and research shows. I think the university of Scranton did a study on this and 92% of people don't accomplish their goals. And that's insane if you take the time to actually put your goals together, we want to have a plan in order to accomplish that. And that's what this workbook does. It, it works you through it. Be part of that 8%. I want that for you. Step one, to be the fast track entrepreneur is have the five year plan, none of this, if I just hustle a little workout and let's be super intentional with it, and it's the five year plan gonna work out perfectly.

Terra Bohlmann (06:59): Now you may accomplish what you want in five years in less, which yay. That's awesome. Here's what I think. And I tell my kids this all the time, shoot for the moon and you will land among the stars. So shoot for the five year plan. You may land in the three years zone. You may land in the seven years old, but it's going to be your North star to help you get to where you want to go. Step one, five year plan, right? The second thing I want to share with you on what you need to be on the fast track in your business is to have the right mindset. And there's a lot of experts out there that teach us mindset. The main things that I've seen. And I say this because I had the plan, I had the strategies, but my mind wasn't right in the sense of I was doing things to sabotage my own success.

Terra Bohlmann (07:50): So everything I talked about on this podcast is really I can I come at it with my vulnerability of like telling you what worked for me and what didn't work for me and what wasn't working was my mind. So I had the strategies and it was really frustrating. I had the plan, I had the strategies, but because I was scared to put myself out there because you know, you're going to get people who maybe don't want to agree with you. And I want him to say maybe because you're going to have people who disagree with you, you're going to have people who simply just don't like the way your voice sounds. You're going to have people who have an opinion on your hair. You're going to have an opinion on what you say in your business. You're going to have an opinion. Like people are going to have an opinion.

Terra Bohlmann (08:34): And I really come from a people pleasing background. And so there was so much that was blocking me in my mind from having that success that I wanted. And I'm still working on it. Like I'm still not at my, at the success level that I really want for myself. And not even just for me personally, but I want it because I know it's purposeful work that I'm to do, and I want to help impact other women entrepreneurs lives. But you have to do the personal development work around your own mindset in order to get there. And I say it in probably, I feel like every episode, but it's true as women, if we want to know all the insecurities that we have inside of us, go open a business and they will all come to the top. Right? All of those things, all the guilt, all the struggles that we have about putting ourselves out there in a way that makes us uncomfortable, right?

Terra Bohlmann (09:30): Putting ourselves out there and opening ourselves up for criticism, putting ourselves out there and doing things so freaking scared that you're literally shaking, but you're doing it because you know, your impact and that purpose you have inside of you is so much bigger than your fear and that it takes time, right? It's not something I wish I could wave a magic wand for myself and every single client I've ever worked with, or really any other woman entrepreneur that has a goal in her business. And she has things that she wants to do for the world. And if I could wave that magic wand and make your mind so open and not bog you down in any fears, I would do it in a heartbeat, but really the mindset work is it's hard. And that's why I put it off for so long because I felt like I could get through things through grit, but when it came to actually doing the things I struggled and I know I had to go on this journey for a reason and I'm, I went on the journey.

Terra Bohlmann (10:36): I was through the mud and the muck and in the trenches and doing all the things that I thought I should be doing and all the things I learned in college and working and consulting firms and all the things right, which I was a good employee at like executing once, give me a systems game on. Right. But when I had to go do it for myself, all of a sudden things come up, like I have a fear of failing. You know, I had this major fear around actually success too, which was even stranger. There's so many fears out there that we have to push ourselves through and understand and get to the root cause of why we feel that way and why that's stopping us. And there's, I could go on and on and like 800 podcast episodes about all the different fears. The second thing that you have to make sure you're investing in is a positive mindset.

Terra Bohlmann (11:30): And a lot of it goes back to childhood things that happened, or just the way we programmed our brain or we didn't. But the way our brain was programmed as a child that make us show up the way we do in our business and for ever. And so I classify myself as an ambivert, so I'm not extroverted. I'm not introverted. I'm in the middle. Some days I'm super extroverted. Those typically are the days I record podcasts, but it's some days I'm really extroverted. I'm super excited to go to live events. I'm, I'm like, I'm pumped, I'm energized by people. I want to go to the neighborhood parties. I want to, I want to do all those things. And then I have days where all I want to do is read my Kendall or all I want to do is watch the real Housewives of Beverly Hills and say, what's going on or Netflix or whatever show.

Terra Bohlmann (12:26): Right? Like I just need to relax and just kind of be right. Or sometimes I have days where I just want to, I just need silence and I just wanna breathe. So I am I'm both. And it doesn't, and it doesn't matter if you are an introvert and you are looking at the extra first going, how do they do that? How are they on all the time? I'm so exhausted just being around them. And then, you know, you look at the extroverts, look at the introverts are like, I would be so bored. I couldn't survive if you locked me in a room for eight hours with a book. Right. So I guess it does give me some sort of way to understand and see both which that's like the story of my life with duality. I'm also a Gemini. So there's like one I have two sides is, you know, like there's a lot of duality in my life, but it allows me to understand from a mindset standpoint, both sides.

Terra Bohlmann (13:26): And when I get it to the root cause and I can rationalize, Oh, okay, that's a silly fear, Terra. That was because when you were 10 years old, that teacher told you, you had bad handwriting when you were learning cursive and now, and that hurt you so bad. And now you just don't want to fail at anything you don't want to, you don't want to be criticized and it's not just a handwriting, it's anything. And so you keep bringing that stuff forth, which doesn't make sense in your adult age. That's like your 10 year old brain being scared. And I just use that one as an example. I mean, it's nothing majorly traumatic, but it was enough to hold me back to like, you know, be a perfect writer. And then I really focused on perfection. And if you find yourself being a perfectionist on things and you know, it needs to be perfect before I launch it, or, you know, I've not made a secret that I've rebranded my website about six times in the last 10 years and, you know, waiting for some one to anoint you as good enough, we're going to be waiting a long time.

Terra Bohlmann (14:33): So I'm here to tell you, you are good enough. You can launch ugly. You can do things that you would have never thought you'd be able to do. And guess what, when you do at once, it's not so scary the second time. And then you do it the third time and it's not scary and it's just working our minds so that we're in a space to really grow. So the second thing to focus on to be a fast track entrepreneur is your mindset. Especially if I can hone in on one or two of the mindset, sides of things, it's the awareness of how you do one thing is how you do everything. And I know that sounds some may sound deep, but how you show up and do one thing tends to be how you do everything in your life. So if you're finding yourself stalling in your business or being stuck or trying to find that next thing, like ask yourself, where else is that showing up in your life?

Terra Bohlmann (15:35): Or where else has it shown up in your life? And then how did you get through it? And then duplicate that, right? We don't need to make this mindset, you know, like a big mystery of cloud. It's really just start it. All mindset is and creating a new mindset about something is creating a new neuro pathway in your brain. So it's very much our brains being comfortable. And we all know change is hard, but it's an, I'm a change person of like, I'd like to do my little baby steps to, to work my way out where I had just interviewed a woman who like she can, she just goes all in on things, right. And she's not a baby stepper. So you're there like a baby stepper. Like I call it, maybe you how you would know usually two ways, one way is the way you get into a pool or you get in and waiter like get in and you go deep.

Terra Bohlmann (16:28): Or are you just a jumper? Like my husband, I am married to a jumper and he's like, good. I'll get in the pool. And I'm like, he just jumps in or dives in. And I'm more of a, let me go down the stairs. And I'll like, Oh, it's cold. Ooh, the whole time. You know, so, and it doesn't, it doesn't matter on the, how you get into action. I just want you to get into action. And if you know, you're a jumper or you're a waiter, that's okay. That, that's how you're gonna do your mindset work too. It may just be, I'm going to focus on my money mindset, right. And I'm going to do that work and understand how I grew up around money and the messages that I was given about money. Does it need to be how I show up about money now in my adult life?

Terra Bohlmann (17:14): So money mindset is a huge one, as well as how you do. One thing is how you do everything. We want to be really clear with being okay, that money is not dirty. That money isn't bad word. It's actually really good and money. What I learned about money and my own personal mindset really was very simple. It was like, money is energy. Money is a piece of paper. And when we're the ones, that's human beings who put value on money. And so by transacting money, it feels like, Ooh, but I don't know if I'm can value myself enough to accept that money. Right? So money is one of these things. That's a really deep, deep thing. And I just invite you. One of my favorite books around money mindset is by Denise Duffield Thomas, and she's going to be coming on the podcast soon, but she has a book called get rich, lucky bitch, get rich, lucky B.

Terra Bohlmann (18:13): And it is a great book about our money mindset and all the stories that we tell ourselves or have been told. You know, my mom used to say, I, Terra, I'm not the first national bank. I always remember that. And then I also like fast forward 20 years later. And I was like, there is a first national bank, like there's a lot of first national banks. So all these things are, they're subconsciously programmed into our brains, right. And that makes our money mindset really not as healthy as it should be when we're in business, especially when it comes around, raising our prices or setting your prices or, you know, paying out to other people and that kind of stuff. So we want to really have a healthy relationship with money. So that's another important mindset. And then like a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset as entrepreneurs.

Terra Bohlmann (19:04): We always want to be in a growth mindset and it's okay to always be a student when you're an entrepreneur. Trust me, the fast track entrepreneur is always learning. And when I talked to, I talked to tons of women, like I love it. I do consultations all the time. I just relax. Just calm conversations. I have conversations with women who may or may not become clients. Totally fine, but I love talking to them. And when they come to me, it's like, Oh, I'm so overwhelmed. There's just so much. I didn't think it would be like this. Or I was so great at what I did in the corporate world. And now I feel just so scattered and I just feel stuck. There's so much to learn. I mean, that goes on and on. Right. And in reality, there's always going to be something to learn when business, and if we just kind of flip the script, flip our mindset around it of like, wow, I really get the opportunity to always be learning.

Terra Bohlmann (20:01): This is so cool. It doesn't mean I need to be changing the, how I run my business, but to learn new things like that's cool. That's very much a growth mindset versus a fixed one, which is, you know, like, Oh, I'm as good as I'm going to be. Right. I don't need to continue to invest in myself or invest in my people and whatnot. So mindset. That's the second thing. The third thing, and these are in sequential order for me is the third and final thing is strategies. And we can just call them business strategies. So when you have six business strategies defined and they can be a high level business strategy that you think about and document one time, and then you can tweak over time to make them more efficient. But oftentimes so many entrepreneurs just go into business and they haven't. Pre-Thought about the business strategies behind things.

Terra Bohlmann (21:00): So let me give you an example. The first strategy I always put into place through my business map method, which I worked with on my client, with my clients, the first strategy is have a strong business foundation. What is your business foundation? What does it look like? What's it feel like what's your branding? What's your vision? What are your operations? Like? What are your core values? That kind of stuff like let's build a really strong foundation in your business. And then after that is in place, then you're building. If you think of building a house, you want to have a really rock solid foundation to build up the next floor. If not, if that's shaky, which oftentimes it's, you know, women go into business and they're just, they either don't do all the foundation things they're supposed to do, or they literally don't know they're supposed to do them.

Terra Bohlmann (21:47): And then they go back to try to fix it. And it's really expensive and time intensive. And it's exhausting, right? So I like solid business foundations. So once we have your solid business foundation strategy clear, then we want to build out what your signature offers are and how much they cost. And then after that, then it becomes, okay, well, now that I know what I stand for and who I am and how I serve my perfect client profiles, which is all in your foundation, I have my perfect offers to solve their problems. And I know how much I'm selling them for. And then after that, I need to know how am I going to sell them. So the third strategy is the sales process that you need to set up. What's your unique sales process. How I sell is different than how you sell, right?

Terra Bohlmann (22:39): How I've learned to sell. And it costs me a ton of money to learn how to sell. And I learned from a mail and there's a lot of great sales systems out there, but I kept finding myself not doing the work or sabotaging that success because it didn't feel like me, it felt icky to me. Like I'm a very much, I want to work with you when you're ready. And if you need a few days to think about it, I'm fine with that because that I'm a processor. So my clients, you know, they'll either be I'm all in let's go, or they will actually take a few days and think about it. So, and that's fine. I just want to give people that space to do that because I'm more interested in your transformation and your results, not the money you're going to pay me because it's not my main driver.

Terra Bohlmann (23:22): And I know that because I've done all the foundation work. So after the, we get your sales process really clear on how you're going to go sell those signature offers, then it becomes how do you get it creating your visibility strategy? So right now, remember we have our foundation. We build our signature offers based on that. Then the third thing is we go and we create the sales process on how you're going to sell those signature offers. The fourth thing is the visibility. How are people going to find out about what I have to sell? So this is your marketing and it's your publicity, your exposure strategy. Like, how are people gonna know about you so that you can actually sell them something. And a lot of the times I work with women and they will spend so much time and energy on marketing to avoid feeling uncomfortable in selling.

Terra Bohlmann (24:11): Or sometimes they actually really love sales, but they don't like the marketing part. And it feels like overwhelming and whatnot. So the key is on the visibility strategy for you is you don't have to do all the things. You just need to do the right things that move the perfect customer pro profile that you've set up in your foundation to you so that you can serve them with your signature offers, right? And then after you then are visible and more clear on where those leads are going to come from that you can put people into your sales process. We need to also know after you sell them, what's your customer experience? Like, what's your onboarding? How do you onboard new customers? How do you deliver what you've sold them? And then what everyone tends to forget about is how do you transition people? And it's one of these things that can really be a beautiful thing.

Terra Bohlmann (25:05): It doesn't have to be like, Oh, okay, we're done. Bye. Have a nice life. No, let's do a beautiful transition and have a process in place that you can do that really opens that up so that if, and when they want to come back and transact with you again, it's really a lot easier. And then the last strategy, the sixth strategy that needs to be in place in your business is your dream team strategy. And notice I put dream team and the sixth business strategy, because until you have all the other strategies defined, it's really hard to go. Not just find somebody, you might be able to find somebody, if you feel overwhelmed in your business, but if they don't know what you're building and what your, what your vision is and what you're selling and how much it's for and how you're marketing your business.

Terra Bohlmann (25:53): And these are things that only you can decide the entrepreneur, the CEO, even if you're a CEO of one only, you can decide your strategies. So your dream team really is who needs to be on the bus with you helping to achieve what you want to do and what are their roles and responsibilities. And what's the expectations that you have for anyone who's a team member. And when I say dream team, it doesn't have to be full time employees, right? It could be independent contractors. It could be in a lawyer that you only use when you need him or her. And by the way, that's the best way to not have to necessarily get involved with legal things is just to have an attorney on your dream team, have a financial planner on your dream team. You need a bookkeeper, a CPA. I think everyone needs a business strategist, business coach, somebody who helps with your branding, that kind of stuff, right?

Terra Bohlmann (26:46): And then you have other positions and these, this doesn't have to be, who's going to be on your team today. Really it all comes back full circle to that five year plan who needs to be on the team to accomplish what you want in that five year plan. And so that all intersects. So I think in terms of Venn diagrams. So if you have your five year plan, you have your mindset and your strategies in place in the middle of that Venn diagram is the fast track entrepreneur. And what I love about this is I will give you the five year plan. I have a workbook that walks you through step by step, and it makes it really simple. And it's like an interactive PDF that just walks you through. And I do this with every private client that I have as well. I mean, even whether they're an $18,000 client or a thousand dollar client, we all have to start with the five year plan.

Terra Bohlmann (27:43): And so I invite you to go grab your copy@terriblemen.com slash workbook. It's my gift to you. And you can get to filling it out, gift yourself, please, please, please gift yourself some time to be your own best customer. Even if it's just 30 minutes of clear the distractions and just get to work. And once you create that five year plan, your brain doesn't know anything, but how to find those opportunities to accomplish it. Then add in the mindset, work and have your six strategies in place. You'll be on stackable. So take care and we'll talk soon on the next episode. Bye

Announcer (28:29): There, you have it. Another episode packed full of strategies and motivation that you can use every day to put your business on the fast track for a podcast, recap and more resources, visit TerraBohlmann.com. Don't forget. Subscribe to the podcast and get what you need to help fast track your five year business plan.