Barbara: Hi, I’m here with Stephanie Hayes today, part of the Lucky 13 series. Welcome. Glad to have you here.

Stephanie Hayes: Thanks for inviting me.

Barbara: I’m just going to dive right in ’cause I’ve been hanging out with you, doing stuff with you, being in your programs for a really long time now. And I am not going to get the initial date of the program, but there was a pre-pandemic program. I’m going to call it 2018. Was it… Okay. Wow. Okay. That’s a tremendously long time ago. And so I was in one of your programs. At the time it was really a huge mindset shift for me. Honestly, a lot of your programs have that impact on me. I was doing things in a very small way. Everything was custom. Everything I did, every proposal was its own individual thing. None of my processes were repeatable. In that program back at that time, what was the landscape of small service-based businesses then? And what were you seeing that made you want to build that program at that time?

Stephanie Hayes: I grew up professionally in the corporate world in the technology sector. What’s so interesting about that is that I got to consult into very big companies, but I ran a little tiny startup business. And so you got to see what happened in a small business and what happened in a big business, and the opportunity to marry both those things together. And so when I started working with solo entrepreneurs and small business owners at that time, it was starting to just be a new thing that it was actually pretty accessible for people like you and I to just hang our own shingle and go out there on our own, whether we were intending to build a “business” or not. I think that’s where a lot of people started, they just wanted to do the work that they could do, but they wanted to do it on their own. They started doing that, and they got to that point where they were like, “What is this?” And they never called themselves a business, right? They would call themselves a freelancer. They would call themselves a graphic designer or whatever it might be. I remember sitting in Texas at a client retreat with one of my clients, and we were putting a bunch of stuff up on the wall. And it was like mapping out your own journey. And I remember looking at it and going, “What am I building?” What am I really building? I had a software company, and that was definitely a thing, but in all of this other stuff, I felt like I was just a flag in the wind, right? I was just doing whatever came to me, and then I’d shift to something else. But what was I really building?

As part of this client engagement, we had been looking into this program where they would teach you how to build these websites that would generate traffic, and then you would sell the site for more two or three years down the road. And it was like a flywheel. It got me to start thinking—you can buy and sell businesses and assets of businesses at almost any price. I bought a website for five hundred dollars and sold it for five thousand. That whole marketplace started getting me thinking, all of these solo entrepreneurs that I was working with, they were just in this hamster wheel of get more clients, deliver the work, get more clients, deliver the work. The work that I was doing back then was around business model design. So you were part of that very first program where you had gotten to that place where you were thinking, “Can I mature this? I feel like I’m just doing stuff all the time.” We had gone through the process of really doing the six pillars around your business and building something really intentional.

And then I started to think, if you’ve done that, there are all these opportunities to get more leverage out of your business, so it’s not this constant get more clients, deliver the work, get more clients, deliver the work. I started to think people like you and like me, and all of the folks who are in our program, they’re actually building something of value inside their business, and they don’t even know it. And I had bought that client’s business. But I didn’t buy the entity, I bought the assets of the business. It just all started connecting to me where I’m like, you could build something inside your business and sell it. So it doesn’t mean you’re going to stop being Barb the graphic designer or selling services, but you’re also going to start thinking about how you can create something else in your business that really feels like you’re building something, and you’re investing in something, and you’re creating something that eventually is going to have value that you could sell. And this whole idea sort of ate my brain and started blowing up for me. And you were one of the first groups that I actually started talking to about it, and I think it really resonated with you, and it really resonated with the folks in our Assets to Exits program because it made sense, right? I get to stop thinking about my business as when I stop, it stops, and I can start investing in building something that one day can actually give me a bigger exit return, right? I’m not talking about VC exits. I think that’s the problem, people think that’s the only way to exit a business or get that kind of cash payout. And I want all of these small business owners to know that there’s a whole matrix of different opportunities to actually get a cash payout or a bigger income drop for something that you’ve been investing in and building.

Barbara: Yeah. I think about it especially in the context of the current program, the idea that when I’m ready to retire, I’m not just going to turn off the lights and shut the door, right? It was mind-blowing. There’s actually someone who might want to buy my book of business, buy some of the processes that I’ve put together in terms of how I approach branding, and it was just absolutely eye-opening. And now I look at my business as part of the assets that I own in my own life, including my house and other things that will be providing for me in retirement someday. And it’s a really big mindset shift. I think even in the early stages of that first program, I alluded to the fact that I was that person who was like, “Find more business, do the work. Find more business, do the work. What the heck am I doing?” Over and over.

Stephanie Hayes: What are you doing with this?

Barbara: Yeah. And I think the other thing was that nothing was repeatable, so I was doing it all from scratch every time. And I have now a lot of the processes and project plans and the way that I approach different kinds of projects that I still use today that I created in the context of that program with the pillars. And my question for you is, what do you see happen to small businesses that kind of stay stuck in that churn hamster wheel cycle?

Stephanie Hayes: Honestly, they don’t know what’s possible for them, right? And a lot of people start up these businesses as someone who has a craft or a skill. They didn’t start as business people. And so to expect a business owner who became a business owner because they were good at something to also know what all the possibilities are for them with the business, that’s what I see my role as, is to educate and inspire people to do something different. And everyone’s going to have… I will never be the person that sells you a formula, right? “Do this, and then you’re going to have this great business.” But you’ve seen this with the other people in our program, that applying the concept and applying the thinking results in different decisions that you make around what you’re spending your time and energy and effort on. And I think the first thing is that education. And then the second thing is the belief. The belief and the understanding that you can do this. Because we get sold this bill of goods by the celebrity coaches who say, “Just follow my formula,” and listen, it never works, okay? It just doesn’t. One out of 100 are going to have some success with one of these formulaic things. But this is the whole premise of everything I’ve ever talked about, is that we are all individuals and we have individual businesses, and businesses are like people. They are little organic systems that have totally different footprints. You may be a graphic designer and there may be another graphic designer, and you have totally different businesses ’cause you’re different people who want different things, who have different perspectives and different interests and all of that. And this is also why competition is a goofy concept too. You’re going to have people who want to work with you because of who you are, and you’re going to have people who want to work with her because of who she is. And I really advocate for businesses to be these very intentional, aligned, business owner driven entities, and that’s what our first program was all about, is designing your business for you and who you are rather than what a textbook is going to tell you to do.

Barbara: Yeah. And I think that sort of anticipates my next question, which is really around as someone’s transitioning through that, I experienced this myself, there’s some resistance from the business owner when you first introduce these ideas, and I’m curious what you think about where those resistances are coming from, how they show up, and maybe why they show up at those points. I have some of my own ideas, but I’d love to hear your perspective on that.

Stephanie Hayes: I do think there’s a little bit of an epidemic, especially for women, that they don’t trust themselves, right? And so many times I see women who I would consider to be feminists default to looking to men to give them the answers when they’re not sure or they’re feeling uncertain. I see this so much. If a man comes to them and says, “Oh, this is the way that you need to do it,” they will default to that because they don’t trust themselves. My goal has always been to help people who own businesses out and understand and showcase what they actually do know and how much they have already built. To the asset-based business model, a lot of business owners say, “Oh, I don’t have any assets. I run a service-based business.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you do.” There’s nine types of assets you can build inside your business that are aligned with what somebody would pay for, right? I think the belief is a really big one, and then there’s a lot of fear of doing the wrong thing. And that’s where resistance comes from with any of these new ideas, is that I’m not confident as a business owner because I’m confident in the work that I do, but I’m not confident as a business owner because I was never educated in business. And so I feel very fearful of doing the wrong thing or being judged, and all these people out there are telling me to follow this process. Customer avatar, then do this, then do that, and I should just follow that process. And you’ve got this other person out here with some crazy new idea. Why would I put my money on that, right? So I think that’s where a lot of the resistance comes from, is they’ve never heard of this before, and they’ve never understood that this is a possibility. So there’s a lot of evidence-based stuff that needs to come out, and I probably need to do a better job of having that as well. But I think the resistance comes from very much not trusting themselves and worrying about doing the wrong thing.

Barbara: Yeah. I agree completely. And I also think that, that fear as a central theme, people will seek comfort or even anesthesia in the form of keeping busy. “Wow, if I’m keeping busy, I must be getting somewhere and achieving something.” And really you’re just keeping yourself on that same hamster wheel, and it’s a way to avoid the discomfort of stepping into…

Stephanie Hayes: Oh, yeah.

Barbara: You need to become to get to that next level. I think there’s a lot of resistance. I speak from experience. There has been for me in that very same spot.

Stephanie Hayes: I don’t know if you read any of my Substacks, but my Substack is all about the integration of business and self, right? I don’t know how many times I’ve written about the busyness trap, right? That busyness feels more justifiable than thinking, than being calm. I’m just about to publish one on the fear of calm. So many of these ladies that I’ve worked with, as soon as they get anxious or uncertain, they default down to doing work. Rather than go out there and do something uncertain, like I have to go out and I have to find referral partners. I’m a huge advocate of referral and relationship-based selling as opposed to ads. That’s tough, right? That’s difficult. It’s uncertain. I don’t know if I’m going to be successful. So instead, I’m going to go redesign my program, or put some more social media posts out there. And that’s the hamster wheel. But you’re right. It’s the, let me just do something so I’m doing something rather than sitting back and actually thinking. I remember in that first program, the first time I tried to sell it, nobody bought it. One of the pieces of feedback I got was, “Oh, six months, that’s a long time. I don’t need to commit six months.” So Barb, how long has it taken you to adjust your business?

Barbara: 10 years.

Stephanie Hayes: And that’s the thing…

Barbara: Here we are 10 years later still working on it. Have I made progress? Yes, but it really takes a lot of time.

Stephanie Hayes: People think you have to arrive somewhere. And you’ve heard me say this a million times over the last 10 years. If you are approaching your business with this expectation you’re going to arrive somewhere and finally be in this place, your business is already dying. If you can surrender to the fact that being in business and as a business owner is a never-ending evolution, which is what makes it fun, right? You keep creating and recreating, and you should. We’re all judging ourselves because we haven’t reached this milestone or this place that we think we’re supposed to be in, and so there’s all this discomfort, and so they keep doing stuff and trying new things with this never-ending frustration that I’m not there yet. But if you looked back 10 years now, how far you’ve come, I’ve watched you evolve. It’s amazing, right? It’s been so great because you got intentional about what you’re doing. But a lot of people don’t get there because they get frustrated that they haven’t arrived, and that’s the fun of business is that it’s just constantly evolving. I don’t know how many new projects I start every year, my business is all over the place. But I know where I’m going, right? I know what my intention is, and that’s what we all have to be aware of.

Barbara: Yeah. Awesome. The current program, Assets to Exits, has really changed how I think about my business. And I alluded to that again, like it’s actually something of value, and I’m not just going to turn off the lights and walk away when I’m done. But the idea that even my small boutique studio has something that I’m building toward that’s going to be worth something to a buyer someday, that was genuinely new to me. How do you help people wrap their heads around that concept when it feels too big or too far away?

Stephanie Hayes: Yeah, I think first of all, we have to look at your business and identify… we did an asset inventory, right? That was the first part of that program. People are always surprised at how much they’ve already built inside their business already, and I think doing that first opens up your eyes that there’s something there that I’ve already done. So I don’t have to take on this huge new project to invent something new. But I think that nine types of assets gives people inspiration to start seeing that there is something that somebody might want down the road. And if you’re intentional about building it you can achieve that. But it’s going to be different for everyone, right? You chose certain types of assets because of how they were aligned with what you wanted to do and what your business was. And then we’ve got someone else who is deciding to build an event asset, like a retreat with a brand that they can develop over a few years, and then eventually sell it to someone else to manage. There’s so much possibility. I think rooting it in stories like your own helps people see what’s possible, that’s obviously the first step for people to that belief.

Barbara: This program also led me to start thinking about list building, which I’d never really even considered. I’m not talking about anything that people want to hear. All of my business is that networking referral approach. But the program got me thinking about what’s possible, and that eventually led to me creating “The Vulture Chronicles,” which was my creative interview series that is entirely fun for me. And one of the things I love about how I built it is it’s not responsible for generating any direct revenue. But what it is magically doing is having people sign up every week. I get new signups every day, and I am so enjoying the creative process that I’ve built around getting those issues out. And because of all the lessons that I’ve learned in your program, it’s built in a way that feels sustainable and calm, right? I’m not like, “Okay, I’m obligated to do this every two weeks, and I have to churn out these interviews.” No. That’s not the point, ’cause then it’s just going to stink, and then people are going to read it and be like, “Yeah, she’s not really having fun with this at all.” That’s not the point. So I’m curious, are there other examples of someone that’s come into the Assets to Exits program and built something that just wasn’t even remotely on their radar when they started? ‘Cause certainly having a regular content piece going out was not even remotely on my radar when I started.

Stephanie Hayes: Yeah, Zoa’s a great example. So she has an interesting journey in terms of being an entrepreneur. She started out as a university professor, right? Total nerd, science, that sort of thing. And then she became a holistic health practitioner, and she built a whole business around yoga and a little clinic of holistic health. And she was sitting there going, “What’s my asset?” After lots of talking, what she actually ended up  was facilitating travel for neurodivergent people who have a hard time traveling because of all of the sensitivities. And then that turned into a retreat business. So she wanted to build a retreat that had a brand that she could build up over a few years, and also she enjoyed it. That is what I stand for in all of the work that we do. We have to build a business that you actually like and enjoy, and is in line with what you do well, what you like, all of that. I thought that was pretty interesting because she’s extremely introverted, and she hates marketing. But that’s what she did. That’s where she landed, and she’s loving it. That’s the whole thing. You’ve got to find what aligns with your energy, and that’s why your Vulture Chronicles work, that’s why Nicole’s new program works, because it’s fully aligned with how she wants to work and who she is and what she enjoys and what her values are and what her sort of mission is in life. If you don’t build towards that and you’re just following this process that some business guru has told you, you’re going to end up with a business that you hate, and then it’s not going to be successful.

Barbara: Yeah. So you recently ran the CEO Evolution Beta, which I completed with you. It was, again, huge mindset shifts, some very personal things in terms of where am I actually trying to get to? How do I need to evolve? How does my role need to evolve to get there? And I’m in the process of trying to refit my business so that all processes do not depend entirely on input from me. And it’s been incredibly challenging. So when you were designing the CEO Evolution, what is it that you were trying to solve for?

Stephanie Hayes: Clients are my biggest inspiration, right? And they are my biggest teachers. So I just build for what I’m seeing with the folks that I’m either servicing or that I am coming across in sales calls and that sort of thing.

Barbara: So when you created the CEO Evolution beta that I recently completed, what were you trying to solve for when you designed that program?

Stephanie Hayes: Yeah, my clients are my biggest teachers, right? They’re my biggest inspiration, and I tend to build for what I’m seeing happening with them specifically. And more than one, many clients that I was working with, would get to this place where they were on this cusp of wanting their business to be less dependent on them, but they didn’t know what that would look like, and they got stuck in the “I have to do all of these things.” And it’s not just about an obligation and a responsibility, it’s an identity piece, right? I think that even more than anything, it’s an identity piece. When you really want to move forward in your business and get to that place where the business now is where you get to do the work inside your business that you really want to do, and not that you feel obligated to do, it’s a huge identity shift. And I think CEO Evolution was a lot about… I think everybody came into it wanting the tactics. “Okay, I already know what I want to do. I just want to shift.” And I’m like, “We’re going to spend 12 weeks actually digging into the mindset and the decisions you have to make, and really think about why you’re hanging on to the work that you’re doing, and ask yourself some really tough questions.” It’s funny because in the beta, I would constantly be talking to you guys, “Is there too much thinking?” And you guys were like, “No, this was good.” So I want to be able to help those folks who are in that position where they’ve been running their business for a few years, and they know they need to transition their role in order for the business to grow. And I need them to do that because it’s so good for them. But also to get there, it’s a lot more than just a project plan. Because Michael went through it and I think he became a totally different person by the end of the 12 weeks. And I think you have some really good thinking in there as well. Definitely it’s meant for a very specific individual who has been in business five years, seven years, whatever, and they’re feeling like, “It’s time for me to have a different role in my business and I don’t know how to get there.”

Barbara: Yeah. It was definitely my experience, and I was definitely at that place. I work with a lot of creative and service-based business owners. What do you think is the common theme that’s holding them back from building real wealth in their business?

Stephanie Hayes: Oh gosh. I would say this, again, coming back to this commitment… I’m going to write a book one day on identity and business owners. What we tell ourselves we are in our business is such a huge indicator of how we’re going to be able to grow and evolve. There are so many narratives that we carry with us around our worth, our value, what we should be doing and shouldn’t be doing, and the things that we actually need to do to grow we’re not doing because we’ve got all sorts of narratives in our head about what we should and shouldn’t do, and what’s right and what’s wrong, and who we are as individuals. And breaking that down, or at least understanding it and building the self-awareness as a business owner is the number one thing that you can do because your path might be that you hire someone else to run your business. Your path might be that you change what you’re offering and you step into being a totally different service provider. But creative and solo business owners have a lot more self-judgment because they are everything to their business, and dealing with that identity piece is key to getting where you want to go.

Barbara: There’s a version of your work that could feel very corporate and dry, but it doesn’t. It’s always felt very grounded and human and approachable to me. How do you hold the practical and strategic while keeping it human? Is that something intentional, or is that just like the nature of how you see things?

Stephanie Hayes: I would say it’s not super intentional. I saw the gap in the business coaching space in the sense that there were all these formulaic approaches, and I know that they don’t work. And also, I’m a person who just deeply loves to build long-term knowing relationships with people. So my brain marries what I know. I have a master’s degree in entrepreneurship, in management technology, this very systematic and rote education. I have experience in corporate, which is quite frustrating actually. But I see how things work at scale. Why can’t we bring some of those concepts to small business owners and let them use the best of those concepts in a smaller version? And that’s always what I’ve been intending to do. But I’m a people person, and I love to get to know people over the long term. That’s what I love about our relationship, is like I’ve been able to watch you grow and watch you develop over so many years. And there’s just an inherently human side of business that we completely forget about or that nobody writes about, and it is the key thing that either holds you back or allows you to flourish. It’s my job to interpret what I know theoretically about business and the things that I’m looking at. And I also think that there’s no reason we can’t bring some of those bigger concepts to small business owners. It’s not just for these guys over here. There’s a version of innovation, there’s a version of technology, there’s a version of HR that applies to small business owners. We just have to interpret it differently.

Barbara: What are you building right now that you’re most excited about?

Stephanie Hayes: Oh God, Barb. So this is an interesting time for me because I come from the technology sector. I have a master’s degree in the management of technology, right? But I hated working in the technology sector. Very male-dominated, very non-creative. And I left the corporate world because I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. But I missed the technology side. I am not a coder, I’m not a developer, but I know the tech side. I’m certified in all sorts of software development methodologies and all that kind of stuff, and I love the building side of it. And I had so many ideas, but I couldn’t execute on them and I couldn’t implement them. And my biggest skill is being able to take very abstract and complex and multifaceted ideas and crystallize them and clarify them and become really clear. If you tell me where you want to go, this mess that you have right now, I have the skills to connect those. The advent of these AI platforms now has enabled us to build things without having to know how to build them. I happen to know all of the things about how to architect them, but I’ve never been able to write code. So I am now building pieces of software for this, like seven of them right now for our people, like the people who are not serviced from a systems perspective, because they have to adopt big corporate technologies or… they don’t work. I know how they work, I know how they think, so I’m building systems that I would want, that work in a different way. Like this week I was like, “I am so frustrated with email clients,” because they are all still built on an old male corporate way of working, these list views and whatever, but that’s not really how we actually work with them. So yesterday or the day before, I decided I’m just going to build a new email client for myself in the way that I want to work. And I sat down with Claude and I have the advantage of knowing how things are supposed to be architected, and we do all this envisioning first, and we do all the thinking first. And it was amazing how quickly we got to a prototype that was… I didn’t have it envisioned in my head. I knew all the pieces, but I couldn’t see it. And out comes this prototype that was exactly what I wanted. It’s shifting the way that we work with messaging and emails, and I’m just like, “Why has nobody built this yet?” Because we have this incredible technology available to us that people are only using in bits and pieces. I’m like, “I’m going to just change everything.” So it’s been really exciting for me to build and deploy these tools and there’s some future in this for me because this is where my brain works.

Barbara: That’s really exciting, honestly. I can’t wait to see that. Whatever it is you’re building with that email. Sounds really interesting. Just last couple of questions. What do you wish every small business owner would do differently starting today?

Stephanie Hayes: I wish that they would build their business around themselves first. You know the exercise that we would go through at the very beginning that everybody was like, “No, I just want things to do.” No, we’re going to dive into who you are first, and we’re going to figure out what your pillar is, right? Remember the exercise? When you figure it out, you start to understand yourself so much better, and then you start to build a business around that thing that has to be true for you. If everybody would go through that exercise, then they would see that they are likely building a business that they actually hate, and that is why they’re having trouble being successful.

Barbara: Yeah. I wish that… when I first started, I wasn’t even intending to build a business, right? I was just freelancing, right? And doing whatever came my way, and I wish I’d had the foresight to look at not only what is it that people need that I can do, but what is it that I actually want to do, right? Just because I have the capability to do all these things doesn’t mean I like all these things, right? And doesn’t mean I want lots of them to do. So yeah, if I could go back in time and have a little conversation with myself, I’d be like, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

Stephanie Hayes: You have a lot of unknown at that time though. You have to go through a couple of years of your stumbly bumbly just trying things out before you know enough to actually make those decisions when you’re presented with the opportunity to do it, right? I’m a big fan of just getting out there and making a mess to begin with, and then we can come back and say, “All right, let’s fine-tune this. Let’s figure out who you are as a business owner.” And everybody talks about, oh, separate out your business from yourself. And I’m like, actually, build the business to service you first, prior to servicing your clients. See how well it does.

Barbara: Yep. Yep. Okay the last piece is, where can… So if people want to find you to learn about your programs or get on board with some of your writing that you’re doing on Substack, where are they going to find you?

Stephanie Hayes: Yeah my website is stephaniehayes.biz. It desperately needs to be updated, but most of my writing and my work is on Substack. My Substack is called Fundamentally Interconnected. If you know the reference where that comes from, awesome. It’s from the writer of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You can find me on LinkedIn. I do cross-post all my stuff on LinkedIn as well.

Barbara: Okay, great. Thank you. Appreciate you being here with me today.

Stephanie Hayes: Congratulations on 13 years.

Barbara: Thank you. Thank you.