220: Think Big Framework: 6 Steps to Reclaim Your Time, Energy, and Confidence

Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the She Thinks Big Podcast. I am so glad you're here today from wherever you are. I have to start thinking about different places you could be listening from. An airplane, an airport, a train, a bus, or a soccer field. Where are you? I want to know.

But today, listen, we are diving into something that I think is going to change the way you approach things. It is what I call my six-step framework. It helps answer the question, “Hey, Andrea, what's your process?” Now, I want to caution you. My process is the same for everyone and it's not the same for everyone.

Every client I work with is unique. That is part of the benefit of working with a coach that gives you personalized attention. It's part of what gets you exactly what you need in the coaching relationship because each of us has our own unique business. Even if it's the same industry, your business is different than the next person's.

Everyone is unique, but yet we all go through the same cycles. This Think Big Framework is really designed to help you navigate those cycles again and again. Whether you're just starting out, you're scaling up, you're pivoting to something new, this process is really here to guide you every step of the way.

I am going to put a link in the show notes to the written out process here but listen in because I'm going to walk you through each of the six steps so that you get a sense of why this works. We created this actually, at the end of 2024, after observing businesses for almost seven years.

No matter where they are in their journey, they need structure to move forward. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to grow, however. That's what this framework is there to do, is to support you, to clarify your next steps, and to make sure that your business aligns with your vision of your life. This is one you might want to take notes on too. Grab your notebook and settle in. Are you ready? Here we go. Remember, there are six steps. Here's step one, assess where you are. This goes back to the analogy of the GPS. It wants to know where we're starting.

Is it from your current location? Is it from a different address? Before the GPS can give you directions on how to get from here to there, it needs to know where you are right now. Same goes for you and your business and your life. I know this can kind of feel uncomfortable.

You might be looking at things you wish were different, but trust me, awareness is power. I want you to ask yourself too, in this stage, what's working, what's not working, where are you spending your time, and you might realize that you are caught up in busy work and not making time for what really moves the needle.

I have a client, I'm going to call her Sally. So Sally is really working 12-hour days. But she wasn't seeing the growth in her business that she wanted. When she did this assess where you're at assessment, this step of the framework, she realized that she was spending hours on tasks that didn't align with her goals or that didn't align with who she wanted to be as a human.

Once she got clear on that, she was able to shift her focus and see real momentum. Now, I'm going to do an episode on each one of these six steps. I'm going to get really deep, I think in actually the next episode, next week's episode, so you might want to listen to these together on this step one, because I give you three questions that you can ask yourself to understand what's happening right now.

Step one is assess where you're at. Step two is something that we've done a lot of talking about on this podcast. This step two is really where you meet your future you and you start to think bigger. Now that you know where you are, you've got to meet the future you.

This step is so important because if you don't know where you're going, how are you going to get there? If you don't know what you want to happen in the future, how are you going to get there? Right now, together, we could do this. If you can close your eyes safely, I invite you to do so.

Take a moment to picture yourself five years from now. What does your business look like? What do you look like? Maybe you've lost weight. Maybe you're in better shape. How do you spend your time? Now, one of my clients—I'm going to call her Lisa—really struggled with this because she kept, I'm going to call it “kept playing small.”

She kept playing safe. She was doing what all the industry gurus told her to do. But once she allowed herself to meet future you and to dream bigger, she realized that she wanted to transition from charging a flat fee to charging an hourly rate. That shift in mindset changed everything for her.

She realized that she didn't want to run her business like the books tell you to. She wanted to run her business in a way that gave her the freedom to keep working with clients long-term after the project was over, so to speak, or gave her room to grow out of the scope of the project.

That hourly fee was going to do that. You're going to meet future you and you've got to think bigger. We will link an episode in the show notes that talks about future you and what I mean by that, if you're not familiar yet. That was step two. Now we're going to go to step three, which is turning your vision into action.

Now in a Vision Into Action Intensive, which you've heard me talk a lot about, we do steps one and two in lightning speed, but we do do steps one and two, because step three is now that you've painted that big vision, now that you've talked to future you, it's time to break it down into steps.

This is where most people get stuck. You see the future, you see the dream, but you don't know how to bridge the gap. Let me tell you about someone named Mora. She wanted to scale her business. She actually had lots of things that she wanted to do, but she had no clear roadmap.

We sat down and broke her vision into, I'll call them bite-sized actions for the year, for the quarter, for the month. Then instead of feeling overwhelmed about how this was all going to happen, she had clear action steps. Guess what? This gave her the confidence to take action because she knew what the next best step was.

Let me tell you, in six months, she doubled her revenue. Yeah, crazy stuff. Okay, which brings me to step four. We also will link a whole playlist on Spotify about the Vision Into Action Intensive in case you're really interested in learning more about how to figure out what the next actions should be.

All right, so step four, rev up your resources. Your vision needs some fuel. This means assessing what resources you already have and what you need to invest in, whether it is time, money, talent, or systems.

Emily was someone who was wearing all the hats when I met her. She was marketing. She was sales. She was operations. But when we looked at her resources, time, money, energy, people, we realized that she could create more money, have more time to spend as she wanted to, and have more energy if she started to seriously consider hiring.

We first started with just a VA and that one hire freed up hours each week really allowing her to focus on revenue-generating activities. Step four is kind of, you don't have to do it all alone. For most people, the revving up of the resource of human brainpower, revving up your people, and your team gives you more freedom of time, money, and energy, which is what you're looking for.

That's step four. It's a little bit about hiring. It's a little bit about time management. We can link some episodes in the show notes about those things as well. Step five. Now that you've revved up your resources, it's time for you to shift into what I call your zone of extraordinary achievement.

This is where you move from doing everything to focusing on doing the things that are within your genius zone and the things that only you can do. You cannot scale if you are constantly bogged down in things that aren't your expertise, that aren't necessary, that aren't the things that only you can do.

Think about this. I want you to think what would it look like or what would it feel like if you spent the majority of your time doing what you love and what you're best at. Too often I see us get stuck in the weeds, me included. I see you get stuck in the weeds. I see you doing admin work that drains you. I see you doing social media. I see you actually trying to manage the whole hiring process. I see you sometimes being scared to delegate, but once you start to delegate and focus on your strengths, you not only become happier, but you also triple your productivity.

I'm going to guess triple your productivity. Imagine if you did double your revenue, double the amount of time you had for free time, and triple your productivity as a business as a whole, I'd be in for that. I've seen this happen to me when I make the right hires, and when I realize what can I do and what only can I do and leave the rest to other people.

Step five is shifting into your zone of extraordinary achievement. We do have a handout, a free download, a rubric matrix on the zone of extraordinary achievement, which we can link in the show notes. Here we go, last step, final step. This is where everything comes together.

The goal of this framework isn't just success, it's really freedom. Your business should support your life, not the other way around. Think about that, I'm going to say it again. Your business should support your life, not your life supporting your business. Your business should just be one part of your life.

One of my clients, Rachel, built a thriving coaching business, but she was tied to it 24/7 for real. We worked together to build a plan that allowed her to step back without losing momentum. Now she works 20 hours a week, she travels, she spends more time with her family, all while working 20 hours a week and making more money than she ever has before.

That's the power of a freedom plan. To review, step one, assess where you are. Step two, meet your future you and think big. Step three, turn your vision into action. Step four, rev up your resources. Step five, shift into your zone of extraordinary achievement. Step six, fly your freedom plan.

I've got episodes over the past 220 that hit on all six of these things, but I just wanted to package them so you can see the progression that my clients go through as they start to change the way they think about their business and what they do in it. I want you to know that I am on your team.

You don't have to figure this out alone. There are a lot of things that you probably have to do alone personally and in your business. But you don't have to figure this all out alone. The Think Big Framework isn't just a system, it's a way to reclaim your time, your energy, and your confidence.

So it's worth putting time and energy and resources into using it. Here's your next step. I want you to start by writing down which of those six steps do you think you've nailed and which seemed fuzzy. Get clear on where you are now and where you want to go.

If you're a journaler, that's what I would be journaling on, where you are now and where you want to go, because we're going to do that together through a Vision to Action Intensive, and really through any type of coaching. If you want support to make this happen, let's connect.

Hop on my schedule. Let's do a complimentary strategy call. We're going to assess where you're at. We're going to think about where you want to go. We're going to think about what's getting in the way of making that happen. What's the worst thing that could happen on that call? You leave with an aha.

Now, if this episode resonated with you, I really want you to make sure that you're subscribing to the podcast and sharing it with a friend. You need to become a connector. Share this. Connecting is powerful, super powerful. You're capable of so much more than you realize and I'm here to help you make it happen. All right, my friends, until next time, keep thinking big.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

If you found value in today's episode, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're ready to take this learning a step further and apply it to your own business and life, head to andreaslinks.com and click the button to schedule a discovery call. Until next time, keep thinking big.