Why Your Business Has Hit a Ceiling (And It’s Not About Sales)

Welcome.

With your host and business guru, Nikisha King, this podcast is the ultimate destination for women creative entrepreneurs who want to break free from burnout. If you are overwhelmed by client demands and feel like you're doing this all alone, you, my friend, are in the right place.

Now, let's dive in for steps to take back your time and some simplify your workflow. All right, Nikisha, take it away.

Welcome to the iconic CEO podcast, where creatives fall in love with systems. Now, have you ever felt like your business has hit a ceiling?

You're working harder, you're selling more, maybe even growing your team, but behind the scenes, things still feel messy. They feel overwhelming or dependent on you.

To keep everything moving, we what if the real issue isn't sales, visibility, or even marketing, but the systems holding everything together? Today, I'm joined by Colleen Carswell, the CEO and founder of Structured to Scale.

With 18 years of hospitality experience, starting as a wedding coordinator on Royal Caribbean Cruise, Colleen now works as a fractional coo, helping businesses build stronger systems, retain incredible teams and and scale without burning everyone out. Her bold philosophy, systems Before Sales, has been featured in Forbes, Success, Travel and Leisure, and USA Today.

If you ever wonder what it actually takes to scale sustainably, this conversation is for you. Let's dive in and welcome. Colleen. How are you, my love? Thank you so much for joining me today.

Yeah, I'm fantastic. Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure. And I know that I just did your bio for you, but is there anything you wanted to add?

Because you and I will be geeking out on this podcast about systems because we're systems lover. But I wanna know, is there something about you you would like the audience to know that's special?

Yeah.

No, I think you did a great job with the bio in hitting all the key points, and I think that we're probably gonna dive in to quite a bit of things today. I think your brain and my brain work similarly, and I'm excited to have this conversation.

All right, so I'm going to jump on in. I want to know your philosophy. Systems before sales.

In a world that glorifies, let me tell you, marketing, because we see it everywhere and visibility first. Can you break down what that really means and why prioritizing internal infrastructure actually accelerates a revenue instead of slowing it down?

Yeah, I think it has to do with accelerating the revenue, but also being able to capture more of the revenue and your profits.

I think a lot of us get so focused on the revenue piece and generating revenue, and we see these people Online who are like, I just had a seven figure week and you're like, oh my God, that's amazing, I want that. But you don't see behind the scenes that they're pumping out so much money into the ad spend or whatever else it might be.

And then how are they actually living into those sales once they come through the door?

And I have worked with enough businesses to date to know that what people are touting online about their revenue is not what their profit looks like at all. And a lot of times they have no profit left over.

So I don't care, and I say this all the time with all the love of my heart, like I don't care if you have a multimillion dollar month. If you are not keeping that money, it's not going to do anything for you.

So if we can really focus on the systems and making sure that the infrastructure built out on the back end can sustain the sales that you're bringing in first, that's going to create a much better, much more sustainable business model for you than just going out and getting all the sales and having all the sales come in.

I will give an example of this that's outside of businesses, but when that I experienced personally myself when I, you know, not to talk politics, but there was a time that I was on TikTok and I was doing, you know, I was really focused on some political things and I was just always videoing, just recording videos. Nothing was ever popping off and I was, you know, I didn't expect anything.

And then one of my videos did because you never know which one's gonna hit. And one of the ones that I said, hey, why don't you email me? That one popped off and I had to quick.

I was getting at the height of it, I was getting a new lead every five seconds to my inbox. Like it was wild and insane and that level of chaos would completely like it was just something. It wasn't my business.

So I wasn't worried about like crushing my business.

But that kind of visibility, if you were marketing and something popped off and your systems on the back and couldn't support it, then you would be in for a world of chaos and hurt. And what that can trickle down into too is going back into business.

You bring in the way in which you bring in a new customer or a new client, that sets the tone for that entire relationship. It also sets the tone for word of mouth referrals. So if you're bringing in somebody and it's just chaos and clutter and Messy.

Well that's going to infiltrate your word of mouth marketing as well. It could be a positive or it could be a negative. And a lot of times if, if our systems aren't set up right, it's a negative.

So there's all these different types of systems that really help to support the sales process that in my opinion, with a background in sales need to be in place first before we focus on generating revenue.

I was like, it felt so hard that I tried to do the easy. The easy was social media visibility and nowadays a lot of people don't like social media and easy sales.

But if I made a sale, what would happen is I would have some PDF document they would sign, I would have some. Back in the days we didn't have a lot of CRM so we would do like some type of PDF. That was a proposal.

Now we have CRMs, but people just use it just for that, the 10% of its capacity or capability instead of the 90%. And it's because the idea of creating a system is I don't know where to start. I don't know what that looks like.

What's the best CRM that's going to make my life easy. And as you know, I personally don't think it's a CRM. I think it's the way you want your people to experience you.

So tell me someone right now listening to this who's like one. I'm a creative, so systems make me feel too structured, they make me feel too boxed in. That's one person right now who's listening.

The other person's like, yeah, system would work, but I have this CRM, the 10 million that's out there, but it just is too much. I don't know where to start. I don't know what to do. Can you help them with one special tip of like, what does it even mean to start?

Where do they start? And just give them a glimpse of what that looks like?

Yeah, I think, I mean if we're talking about. First let's pivot to the creative mind. I think we need to stop thinking about systems as structured and start thinking about systems as supportive.

You can support your creative mind with systems. Like it doesn't mean that you have to put yourself into a box.

And I would never advocate for anybody put them into themselves into a box because I think that's where the magic is, so how can you actually take your skill set and how your mind works and how can you have a system that allows you to do more of that?

And I think that that is the piece that's missing in these conversations is that people just think, oh, it's so rigid and it's so structured and that doesn't flow with my creative spirit. But what if it allowed you to be more creative? What if it allowed you to tap into more of what lights you up and makes you energized?

And that's what I want you to think about when you're thinking about systems to the point of where do I even start in this system? You know, that could be all over the board depending.

So first I would make sure that you have the data around where your biggest pain points are at this particular time and just get focused on that.

Because if you can allev that biggest pain point with the smallest little systems tweak, then you're going to start feeling that momentum and that momentum is going to cause you to want to do more because you're going to see, oh my goodness, the system can support me. The system does allow me to be more creative. I want more of that. And so you'll keep going down this path.

But I think focusing on pain point, one pain point, not everything, and then very small, small tweaks. And that's what I like to focus on a lot. Like what's the smallest tweak we can make to have the biggest impact and then just keep going from there.

I think sometimes people will see a CRM to your point and a lot of them so much these days and it is overwhelming and you want to do it all and you're one person or you're a small team and that's just not realistic.

Like, we just have to change our mindset of one small step today is going to catapult me and give me that momentum to take the next one, the next one, the next one. And when I have clients who do that method versus just hit the ground running and do it all at once, it's much more sustainable.

It doesn't burn you out. We're pretty keen to burn out in this business.

And if we start to try to take on everything, which a lot of times our entrepreneur minds, our creative minds wants to do, then we will hit that wal and we will burn out versus just, just baby step your way there. You're going to go so much further when you do that.

I love that. That is so, so true.

Now you know when you said baby steps, some people think of a system structure, sops, and they start to get in that realm because you have the CRM. And then a lot of people talk about standard of procedures, SOPs. And of course everyone's like, I want to SOP. I want to SOP. This is a system.

I want you to help with the myths, myths about SOPs. I want you to help us figure out, is that something we need to focus on or is that something we can leave to the side?

Like, when does that become part of this system or structured process.

I love SOPs. So I talk about it. And I know not everybody is that way. Like, I, I work with a lot of creative clients.

I work with clients who have a lot on their plates.

SOPS is just like, like they don't want to talk about it, they don't want to think about it, they don't want to know that they don't have the right SOPs documented. And I get that. For me, I think about SOPs kind of at a Mac of systems like SOP Systems Operate Operations and procedures or processes. Sorry.

And then the SOPs themselves, standard operating procedures is how we actually document each of those things. When it comes to documentation, I highly recommend we document all the things.

Not just because this is my, this is what I do, but also because it's going to save you down the road. And I think what we have to do is shift our mindset from, okay, this might take me a few extra minutes today.

I might be investing a little bit more time today. And I say investing very intentionally.

But down the road, when it comes to the fact that you need to bring on somebody else to do this role, or you need to look at this process a little bit more holistically, you already have it ready to go for you when you get there. The other kind of myth around is like, I need to SOPS. People think of like having 500 SOPS all at once.

And if you don't have this big book of sops, do you really have sops? And it's just, that's not the case. Like, just start again, baby. Stepping it right.

And the reality of it is now, yes, it used to be I have a document I have to type out step by step. I do a thing and I type it out. I do a thing and I type it out. We don't have to do that anymore.

Which is amazing with like tools like AI and with different video recordings so you can use for our team personally, like, we use Scribe, which allows you to kind of follow your mouse around the screen as you're doing something in real time. It takes the screenshots, it writes out the steps you're doing, and boom, you have an sop.

Or we use loom to record a video, or we use AI like Claude, and we, we say, here's a transcript of my team meeting, please turn this into an sop. And it's done in a matter of seconds. So I think people have it in their minds of one. It's too big, it's too overwhelming.

And then now I have these SOPs that later on are going to serve me so well when I go to train somebody or whatever it is that you're needing to use as SOPs for. I think it's just really, really advantageous.

And we can, we can start thinking about it a little bit differently now because of all the supportive tool. We have.

Such a great point. And that's the, that's the interesting part.

I honestly think sometimes because we have so many tools, people will still create more of an excuse, right? Which one do I use? Which one is the right one? Because my people are perfectionists, right? So there's a right and wrong world here right now.

And they're like, well, okay, but there's loom, there's scribe, and all the things. And it's like, which one? I don't think it matters.

I think you just start, and wherever you start, you're going to figure out if it works for you or not. But no one can tell you Scribe, you have. I love that you gave us options.

I think options are great, but just go sign up to one if you don't have it already and try it and do it. And it's, it's a beautiful thing to have loom.

I'm a loom user and I just record the thing and I send it to my team member and they get to look at it and they get to use it to do it. And then sometimes if I find there's a glitch in what they did, I go, there's a part that's missing I need to add. Right? So that's a great, great tip.

And I love that you said, when you have some form of an SOP and you bring on people, this is where things start scaling. Whoever's listening, this is it. This is the moment when we bring people on, our business has the opportunity to grow.

And no not everyone wants to steal from you. No. Not everyone wants to run away with your ip, your intelligent or your intelligent product.

But what I want you to realize is that growing a business will have some form of hiring people. And it's another question I want you to share a little bit more on.

You teach about team service before customer service, which is really interesting because a lot of people focus on customers.

Yeah.

And which challenges traditional hospitality thinking. This is, this goes really against that. What are the biggest operational blind spots you see when it comes to retaining your top talent?

Or how can finder founders create an environment where their team thrives and it doesn't sacrifice their profit?

Yeah, I love this. I love this.

And I think to go back to your original point about SOPs, and a lot of times, you know, you might not be in a stage right now in your business that you're bringing on people, but as business owners, we should always be thinking about the long term as well.

So even short term, even if it's just you and one other person, perhaps long term, if you're wanting to scale, we have to be thinking about that as well. So that's why SOPs are so important when it comes to your team.

And when you get to that point where you're bringing on people, I really believe, and let me go back actually, so I believe in team service before customer service because I believe that team service is customer service. I think that's the piece that people are missing when we pour into our customers.

So, for example, I've again, my background is resorts, hospitality, cruise ships, country clubs. Everything about that is focused on customers.

But a lot of times if, if, let's say our gm, for example, is over delivering and over promising and bringing in all these different events and we can't, because a lot of my, my background was in events in the hospitality realm, but bringing in all these events and we just don't have the team or the infrastructure to be able to support them, then that's going to cause your team to burn out, that's going to cause your team to look elsewhere and that's going to cause you to have a lot of turnover, which unfortunately in the hospitality industry specifically, we have a lot of turnover. And what people don't realize about turnover is it's one of the things that I call an invisible profit eater.

It's one of those things that we don't see on a spreadsheet, but that it massively, massively impacts a business not only from a financial standpoint of, okay, now I have to maybe we don't have an sop. I don't know how I'm going to bring this person on now. I have to go out, hire somebody, train somebody, use my time to do that.

And it also is going to impact your, your energy levels within your team, which I speak a lot about is your time energetics.

Like what your energy is doing is actually going to impact your business and it's going to impact it financially as so when we're talking about serving our teams and making sure that our teams feel supported, that's why, that's one very big reason why it's so important. I personally believe that when you bring on like the very first experience marker for a new employee is when you put out the job description.

Because we have to think about the people. We have to think about our team like we think about our customers and our clients.

These are people, these are people who are spending their time and energy and resources to apply to work for you. And I think people who are doing that and especially people who are applying so much to so many people and they, and they really want to get a job.

When we don't set those expectations and the tone up front, that's frustrating for them. That's going to leave a bad taste with them. And yeah, that can actually come back to hurt us long term whether we hire them or not.

So for me, in our job descriptions, when we create this for our clients, we have our normal stuff of like what is this job, who is the company? But then we have an expectation set section which goes over. This is our hiring timeline. Here's where you will can expect to hear back from us.

And if you don't, you're not gonna. Here's when, here's when we're gonna do our interviewing. This is the date you can expect to start.

Not only does that set the expectations from them, it also keeps you as a business owner accountable to the timeline. So I really think from the very beginning is when it matters.

Then once you're in the thick of things, checking in with your team regularly is going to be key. And I talk about this a lot of times. You will see, especially at, in corporate world, which is where I'm from, you will see performance reviews.

Will see exit reviews. Performance reviews to me are necessary, but they're very transactional. Hey, here's what you did.

Well, here's if you do this for me, I'm going to give you this. Normally a salary increase. Exit reviews, way too little, way too late, right?

You, they, they no longer want to tell you what you did right and did wrong, and that's what you're trying as a business owner to glean into is like, oh, tell me why you're leaving. Well, I don't want to spend my time anymore telling you anything else that's going to help you bring on more people later on. Right.

For whatever reason that they left. So what I say is kind of the sweet spot is a stay review or a stay interview.

You can search it by two different ways, but that's checking in with your team and setting a very dedicated, very specific, very intentional time on the calendar to say, how about you tell me how I'm doing? What are your goals both internally at this company and externally?

Because the truth of the matter is probably not everybody's going to stick with you forever. And I think there's a lot of concern around that. Well, if I just hire this person and then I spend my time training, they're just going to leave me.

Well, if you have that mindset that's going to really influence how you do that whole process.

Whereas if you're like, okay, I know you're going to leave me, I find that performance reviews are transactional, whereas stay reviews are very relational.

And if you have just a performance reviews, just a transactional piece, as soon as they find another transaction that's going to serve them better, I. E. More money, then they might just move.

Whereas if you build out that relationship with your, with your employee, yeah, they might leave some one day for whatever reason that might be, but they're going to be be. They're going to do that in a way that's more supportive to you because they respect you, they have a relationship with you.

So these stay reviews allow you to really get inside their head to understand where they're at. You're going to benchmark where they're at currently. Meaning, hey, if I gave you a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you in this job right now?

And if they say a five, okay, cool, let's talk about that right now. And then next time when we meet, because consistency is key. Next time when we meet, let's look at this again.

And if you're a seven, fantastic, we moved up. If you're a four, what happened? Is it a current state for today or is it a current state or is it because of something that's happening overall?

All in the last quarter since we last chatted. But I think that's the piece that's missing is we don't really open ourselves up to have that conversation. And consistently have that conversation.

Because all data, all feedback is good feedback, right? And we want to know how our employees are feeling. We want to know how we can serve them better.

Because when we serve them better, they serve our customers better. And I think that's the key point when it comes to team service before customer service.

Such great points. And the part that you said to tie it all together in a bow was when we take care of our team, they take care of our clients.

And I think so people, so many people miss that. I think they know that.

But that other piece where someone's going to leave me, that abandonment conditioning you have, that you've been managing all your life is what will stop you from doing the best for your team, which will stop you and limit you from giving them the best opportunity to win on your behalf. Your team is a duplicate of you.

And as a leader, when they feel supported, they will do everything in their power to make sure your clients are supported. And when they do that, it speaks levels for your business to generate revenue, which equals profit.

And if you don't have a company that generates revenue, you don't have a company. This is it. This is why systems are so crucial. Because without them, your team can't become a duplicate of you. This is what Colleen is saying.

And this is what I'm saying. This is why the iconic CEO program even exists. Because we have to help people shift the way they see this whole structure.

You can deliver all day long because, you know, we all love delivering, like everyone and a creative, a planner, a florist, deliver your deliverables, do your talent and skills. But if that's all you do and there's no structure, you will never bring someone in. And when you do, you will cry more than smile or laugh.

And all we want you to realize is these are the ways to shift the way you see it. Because if you shift that, that, my friend, is your six, seven or eight figure company. That, my friend, is why you join the entrepreneurial world.

You wanted that freedom. Therefore, this is what you need to do for the freedom. The freedom doesn't come freely. It comes with really doing the things to help you get there.

Now, I want to get to know you, Colleen. We spoke a little bit about business. They have what they need.

They're going to figure out how to get their structure, and they're going to also figure out how to reach out to you. But here's what I want to know, because you mentioned this.

You started coordinating weddings on Royal Caribbean cruise ships, and now today, you're a fractional COO and a national speaker. What internal shift did you have to do?

Or what internal ship shift happened to you for you to move from executing within systems because Royal Caribbean is a system to leading and building them at a high level for other people. Tell me what happened in your life that shifted you? Like, I'm so curious because I don't know this.

Go ahead. Yeah, I think it's not just one big thing, right? Like, it's not.

I think sometimes we're like, you see the person one day and you're like, how do they get them from there to there? And it's like you think a light switch went off and they just like they're on the other side of that now.

But it's, you know, it's those tiny little incremental steps. And I really think you kind of pick it up along the way in terms of what you gravitate towards.

And I think that's so a reason for reflecting all the time. Like, what is lighting me up? What's energizing me?

Okay, keep going towards that direction and just getting really mindful and intentional and seeing where you want to go.

So I don't think at the time that I was on ships that I was like, because I, you know, I was 21 years old, I was there just to like, party and have a good time. And I don't think at that time I was like, I wonder, I wonder what my future in 20 years from now looks like. Let me, let me see how I can get there.

No, it's just like, I was in the moment, but looking back on it now, I have always gravitated towards operations. So in cruise ship world, I loved how it worked operationally.

Like, that fascinated me that we can have all these different ships across all these different fleets, operating at the same level, giving the same experience, experience to all our different customers. Like, it is mind blowing. And not only is that a business, it's a business that's floating in the middle of the ocean, right?

Like, that to me is just crazy town. And I am obsessed with that. And so I, I start reflecting, I start thinking about, okay, what was it about cruise ships that really led me here?

And then I start thinking about, okay, when I worked in hotels and I worked as, as a sale, a catering sales manager and a director of sales, I was always gravitating towards operations.

Like, always.

Like, I love sales, but I love the sales operations more. Like the behind the scenes, the systems, how do we make it all work? And it eventually led me here.

And I will say too think the, the biggest shift for me personally, if I can name just one thing, is mindset. And that's one of those like invisible profit eaters. I talk about things like confidence, energy, mindset.

We don't think a lot about that because it doesn't sound super businessy.

But if you don't have the right mindset, if you don't have the mindset that you need to scale or wherever it is that you want to go, you're not, you're not going to go there.

And so I think for me personally is investing in coaching, is investing in community, is investing in those different containers that help me move forward.

And yeah, they were pricing right, but they have allowed me to really scale, scale and elevate my business in a way that I would have never been able to years ago. And a little bit about my background because I think this is really important for people.

I think when we're in the, like when we're in the nitty gritty and things feel really hard and we're looking online, especially on social media and we're seeing all these success stories because people only show you they're shiny, they're not going to show you they're sad. And it's only after the fact that people start to share that. And I think I want to honor that as well. But I have had.

So this is my second business, my second entrepreneurship journey. I originally had a wedding planning company and I started that wedding planning company in Austin right after I had my first, my first of four kids.

And I started it in Austin and I thought I was serving a very unique market because I saw in the wedding industry I had served multi million dollar weddings in resorts and then I had served very budgeted events in one of the hotels that I worked at. And I just gravitated towards DIY budget, smart price. Like I, I love them.

And I thought it was so unfortunate that they didn't have the same planning support that these bigger weddings had. And so I thought, well, how do I serve them? How do I meet them? Because nobody was, nobody was doing that at the time.

So I noticed quickly that it was working really well in Austin. And I was like, everybody loves this. This is a need. I can serve so many people. I'm going to scale.

And so I scaled immediately, I was in Austin, I scaled immediately to Dallas first and then to Houston and I got tons and tons of brides and tons of weddings and I was like, cool. Oh, now do, how do I actually execute These as a singular person. And so I had to go and I had to like, kind of backtrack it.

Like, okay, now I gotta hire, now I gotta put the systems in place. And it was for so many years playing this game of catch up where I just eventually burned out.

Like, if we're just being honest about it, like, it was too much. I scaled too quickly. It wasn't sustainable. Yeah, my business was thriving, but I was burning out.

And I think having that experience and realizing how important at that moment systems truly are, operations truly are, and how supportive that that would have felt had I done that before I scaled is why I do what I do now too. And I think that's another key point that I want to say. Like, it's never too late to, to kind of assess and start over. Right?

You can, you can start over at any, at any time.

But yeah, I just wanted to share that story as well because I think sometimes I, I hear when I share that story that it's helpful for people to, to understand that side of things. Things.

It's so good that you did share that story because that is the story of my creative community. Yeah. The people who figure it out start scaling and then they're doing it alone. The solopreneur with like 24 hats.

And then they're like, what is happening? The burnout happens because they are trying to build a system. Let me go get the CRM. Because all the Google Docs is not working.

The Excel spreadsheet no longer makes sense. Sense.

Yes.

And now they go and they get it. And now they have to learn something new while they're meeting the demand that's in their, their business. And guess what?

They can't hire someone because they have no clue. They don't have an sop. They don't have a system, there's nothing.

So now they hire someone to help them, but the person can't get it without them training the person that they don't have time for. And the burnout begins. The candle starts, starts to rapidly go down and it gets really hot.

Yeah.

And so many people create business that way because guess what? They don't have the guidance, they don't have the coach. They didn't invest in themselves because the word you said it's pricey.

And I go, it could feel that way if you have scarcity mindset. And unfortunately we were all built with that. When you're from a country of slavery, Great Depression, all these things that helped us become scarce.

And now we work in a high tech community or culture where everything is rapidly making money.

But what I want you guys to know is that nothing is pricey if it's going to help you 10x rather than 2x, what does that mean when you have a coach who's done it, like me and Colleen, we're not going to try to put you where we were in our burnout stage. We're so not going to put you there. We're going to give you the tools.

We're going to show you how, and better yet, we actually know how to come in and do it for you. A lot of coaches can't do that because not everyone is tech savvy like us. So when you hire a coach, it's not pricey.

It is part of the business investment. It is part of the professional services line in your taxes. That is what you're doing. When you can Invest.

I've invest 21,000 in myself for the first time. That has given me 100,000. I've invest the same, another 20,000. That has given me another 100,000.

When you understand what you're getting, what you're raising your hand to, when you choose to work with a coach like Colleen, you have to go, Colleen, this is what I want. I promise you she'll make it happen. And when she makes it happen, your business will either 10x or 5x whatever it is for you.

And you're gonna see your profit come in. It's not pricey. It is one of the best decisions I made.

Yeah.

Because I'm ready. Because by then I was making 60,000. You have to understand, this is not pricey. Systems are not pricey. Coaching is not pricey.

If you are an entrepreneur, the whole point of you doing this is to take a risk risk in yourself. The priciest part is not believing you can take that risk. That's it. Yeah. I love that you shared that story because everyone has a story.

Everyone started in some corporate W2 position. And when they made the movement to this entrepreneurship world, they want something more.

Yeah.

We all start off saying, we want freedom, we want to make money. We don't want someone limiting us. But in reality, that's not it. There's a deeper calling, but we just don't know it yet at. Right.

So let me ask you, what is your deeper calling? Because you're not just doing this for money only. Yes. That's a perk of it. Yeah.

But you're here for a reason, and I want you to share with us what is your deeper calling? Yeah.

Yeah. First, I want to just note on your comments about coaching.

I think going back to that story of burnout, had I had coaching, had I had community, it would have been so much better. And I didn't realize in that moment, in that stage that that was a possibility.

And so when I started my next business venture, that was the number one thing I knew I needed. The very, very first thing. So I had my fourth baby, and three days later, I was like, I'm gonna do this business thing again.

And so the very first thing I did was hire a coach. And that changed everything. And I've never not had a coach.

And to your point about investing, you know, at the time I talk about this sometimes is we were on food stamps. We. We didn't have any money. We were so broke. We had maybe $5, like, not even kidding, $5 in our bank account.

We traveled up about eight hours to visit my grandmother. Didn't even have gas money to get home. But on the way there, like, I felt this calling and this knowing.

And there was this container that I just was so pulled towards, and it was $20,000. And I didn't know where that money was coming, but I knew that I had to invest in myself.

And I will say that doing that propelled me to where I am now for many reasons, because you can show yourself that you are worth it and that you're taking a bet on yourself. And, like, you are going to figure this out no matter what.

And I think a lot of times people sometimes get to that point where they're like, going back to Cor Corporate. Going back to a W2 job would be just so much easier because I get a steady paycheck, and it's a good paycheck, and I just.

I'm done with this entrepreneur thing. I don't want to do it anymore. But if you. That's typically where the breakthrough comes, like, just on the other side of that.

And so if you just keep pushing forward and if you just keep looking back at the evidence you've given yourself already to date, that's how you get there.

And I think going to your question about why I do what I do, like, that's why, like, I want to see people be able to scale and be able to get to where they want to go. I want them to understand how big and how beautiful and how bold their life gets to be if they can. Can address these certain things.

Like, I want to help them realize their goals. I want to help them impact the world in the way that they want to impact the world.

And the way that I impact the world is to be able to help business owners build businesses that can do that. And yeah, I think. I think I've had. I think all the. All the hard. The burning out my business, the scaling too quickly, the being broke at the as.

As I'll get out investing in myself, like, all these little things allows me now to get in the mindset of where my clients can sometimes be when they join my world and get them to where they need to be. And I think, too, to your point, I think that we know what we need to do. Right. A lot of the times we truly know.

I think there's also some lessons in that. Sometimes we know and we don't do because somebody else did it differently. And so we're like, well, that didn't. Like, that won't work for me.

But you, like, always trust your knowing, number one. One. But number two, sometimes, many times I find my clients know what they need to do.

Like, they come into my world and we have a conversation and I'm like, yeah, you know what you need to do, so just do that.

And it's that accountability piece of when you bring somebody on, whatever, in whatever capacity that is, once you have an accountability in your business, that also will help you get to where you need to be. And I want to be that for people.

I hear you. I hear you on that. I think that's. You and I, we share a lot of that.

The privilege to come into someone's business, the privilege to be a source of knowledge and guidance.

The privilege that we get to do that and we get to see them transform, we get to see them grow, we get to see them actually achieve the dreams that they want in a higher level without burning out.

Yeah.

It is something that I literally, when I speak to my clients, because I have very emotional moments, because these people I work with, especially women, the. The changes I see sometimes I'm like who the hell are you? Because I don't recognize this person. Like they are on fire. And I love celebrating them.

And I think you and I, our purpose, the fact that we found it, we get to live it is a privilege.

Yeah.

And we get to benefit from it financially as much as we pour out. Because that's just what financial and that's what money is about. It's about outflowing. It's not supposed to stay, it goes out.

We invested in people who believed in us and then we got to do the work and it comes back. It is a natural reason. And flow of currency, if you like current the energy, that is what it's supposed to do.

Guys, I want you to know that I try to get people to stop using the words, the adjectives of expensive, pricey, too much. And I'm like, let's talk about that. Because that word doesn't exist. Exist. Yeah.

It's only feels that way because you don't understand the value yet of what that thing can give you. And maybe that thing doesn't have value. Guess what, you will go spend it somewhere else that has that for you.

So it's just about value and priority, you know.

So I'm so happy you shared a little bit more about you because first and foremost every business has an owner who is human first and then we do our talent and skills. So now for founders who are listening and they realize, oh shit, my operations may be holding me back.

What's the first step that they can take today and that you can share how they can connect with you, have time with you, maybe figure out a way that they can come into your community so they can start strengthening their systems.

Yeah, I really do love to connect with people. Like I think more than anything that like operations, everything aside, like I love people. People, I love people.

And the more that I can connect with people, the better.

So honestly all you need to do with, to connect with me is just go to my website which is structured to scale.com, structured with a D to scale.com and just fill out the little pop up that pops up and then we'll, we'll set a time to, to chat and a lot of times like I will tell you, I'm never going to push you to do something that I feel like is not in the best alignment with you. Even if that means not working with me.

If there's just something that you just need a tool because sometimes it's just like you don't know what you don't know. Same for all of us, we're all just learning. Entrepreneurs are like sponges. Like, we just like, tell us all the, we want to learn all the things.

If there's a tool that I know and I'm like, hey, you know what? You don't actually need this or this. All you need is this one particular tool and you are good to go.

I'm going to give you that tool and send you on your way. Like, it's really about, I want to, I want to help people in whatever capacity I can help people.

And just having a quick 20 minute phone call can sometimes change everything. It can change the entire trajectory of your business, of your life, of all of it. And so if I can be that source, I want to be that source.

So really that's, that's the best way is either to go to my website, website, fill out that quick little form and. Or follow me on Instagram and send me a dm, which is at Colleen Carswell Underscore is where you can find me on Instagram.

Thank you. And it will definitely be in the show notes, of course. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for being a wealth of information. Colleen and I met from one of, I think another community. She was speaking and I reached out to her right away because I'm a lover of people too.

And I was like, can we connect? And she was like, yes. And our first 20 minutes we connected, we were like, oh, this is so good. And then we connected it again.

And the one thing about us is that we're very similar.

And when you find your people, you tend to hold on because I usually love holding on to people that nourish my soul because I'm first a spiritual being before I'm human. And it's part of my experience. So I want to say that I thank you for being in my world. I will always reach out.

I can't wait to meet you in person soon. And I am just honored to. And like you said, every connection will always lead to a path. And that path is the unknown.

But it's one of the, the best unknowns that I love in my life. And I think that's what people miss out when they stay isolated and they hide. So thank you for welcoming me into your world.

Thank you for allowing me to have open conversations with you. Thank you for showing up here for my community to experience you. I cannot wait for them to even get to know you more.

Because as much as you and I are in the same thing, we work with different people. We work on different processes, but we both are doing the same job. And that's what people don't get yet. We're not here to serve 8 billion people.

We're here to serve our community. And our community exactly steps into our world and we can serve them. So there is never competition. There's only community.

So I thank you so much for all of that, my love.

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

If today's episode made you realize you're ready to be seen in a new way, then I want to invite you into Invisible to visible, my 12 month visibility membership for creative professionals and women entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs who are ready for consistent leads, stronger visibility and a message that actually connects so many talented women and creative professionals into entrepreneurship with the skill, the passion and the work ethic. But without a visibility plan that feels simple or sustainable.

That's why they stay quiet, inconsistent or overlooked, even though they're incredibly gifted.

Invisible to Visible changes changes that Inside the membership you learn the Rise framework, how to reveal your identity, ignite your message, shape a visibility plan you can maintain and step into leadership with confidence. When you do this work, you stop hoping people find you and you start attracting clients who value your work. If this is your year to take.

Up space and finally, finally become visible,.

Join us using the link in the show notes. I would love to support you inside our audacious community.