“ I tripped and fell into entrepreneurship. I had no idea in mind for my business, and now I have that future understanding of where I want to go.

Location – Kalamazoo, Michigan

Company name – LLY Communications

Services – Content Service, Content Marketing for nonprofits and service-based businesses

Team members – Started with 1 | Now has 4 – promoted copywriter to content strategist

• SM Coordinator
• Admin Assistant
• Web Developer

Revenue – Hit 6 figures for the first time in GA. | On track to increase revenue to 30% from last year in 2022.

Joined 2021 | Renewed | Graduated May 2022

Challenges | Program Solutions | Life After Grindaholics

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Challenges before Grindaholics Anonymous

When I first joined, I had just hired someone six months prior, and I still had a lot of anxiety about having my clients know that I had hired help. I had concerns about keeping up the deliverable quality with a team because all of my clients at that point. I felt like my clients invested because they liked my ideas, principles, and deliverables.

I had no idea how teaching someone else to do that same thing and follow the same things would be necessary to them. There were no words for how to train someone to do what I was doing. So I had a lot of fear around building a team because I felt like all my clients would leave or the work would suffer. That was one of my biggest things.

I was stressed out; I felt constantly overwhelmed, and I had no future in mind for my business. I was very reactive; I left my toxic job and needed something to replace my income. In the beginning, I had no plan to keep this going.

Solution Grindaholics Anonymous Provided

I think the draw to Grindaholics Anonymous is like, “How do I hire a team?” but then there’s a lot that happens before that in the program. And a lot of it is necessary work that has to happen before that. So the offer was auditing and mapping out how I deliver my service was really big. I joined another coaching program focused more on finances but identifying who’s involved in what delivery piece and all that stuff. I had none of that mapped out, and the program helped.

That was the first step in envisioning how you can even transfer some of that work to somebody else, getting it out of my head. So much of the program is how to get the things in your head and on paper so you can train somebody else to do it.

The org chart mapping was amazing as someone who tripped and fell into entrepreneurship. It forced me to view my company in longer terms than just the next couple of months or the following year. The earlier modules are when you think, “Oh, this is like a real thing. This business is like a real thing. It’s not some little business. I have a real business that employs people.”

Those were like unexpected benefits. I got to the point where I could write a job description that attracts the right person to my company, but that was promised to me when I signed up. I knew that would happen, but the unexpected things that happened first before I even got were some of the biggest “aha” things.

Life after Grindaholics Anonymous

Everything is different. I see farther into the future now. We serve clients better now because I have a team, and I know how to lead a team. We have a clear vision and a promise for delivering to our clients. We have processes for a lot of things. We have a workflow and an understanding of how everybody’s roles feed and flow into each other. I have a company culture now that I like.

I was at the tail end of the content when my first six months were up. But I renewed for the community. I just loved the calls. There is so much to learn when you don’t even know what types of questions to ask. The calls are so good because other people ask questions and you learn things.

As far as the day-to-day goes, I still work full time, and I’m still fairly deep in client delivery. But I have a plan for making that shift in the next quarter. On average, in a given month, I am still working 70% in client delivery, but some months it’s 50% which is moving in a huge direction. I remember telling someone, “What do I even do if I’m not doing client delivery?” And now I’m like, “I have a shit ton of work to do outside of client work. I need to do less client delivery to do all the other work. “

One of the biggest benefits that I’ve seen in the last couple of months is being able to pivot without freaking out. Because I have that future understanding of where I want to go, I have an org chart that I can look at to figure out what the next hire is.

Before, if something needed to get done, I used to feel like it was much easier to do it myself rather than take the time to train someone. Now I’ll record a loom video and put it in our SOPs folder so everybody can access it and have a meeting about it.

“I have systems in place to have somebody else do work in my business, and this frees up my capacity to do something different.”

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