I run a business that does over a million dollars a year. I have 500 people in my world right now. I make sales every single day. I serve in a way that makes me so proud with my impact and legacy in the world, and I do the whole thing without a full-time team, but while having a flexible life filled with travel, freedom, fun, time for self-care, and no burnout.And I know a lot of the time in business, people really wonder how people are able to grow businesses without losing themselves or needing to hire, hire, hire. Because there are incredible people online who do incredible things, but also have big, incredible teams behind them. For me, that was never a goal, and it’s not a desire to have a team of other people that I am responsible for internally in my business.I wanted a business that maintained its flexibility and freedom, its emotional lightness on me, where I can self-lead myself, but I’m not responsible to lead others internally while still being able to do big things. I really feel like I have cracked the code on that, and if that is something you want too, for whatever your version of success is, this is the episode for you, as I’m going to share how I’ve structured my business, my back of house, and my mindset to have achieved this.So let’s dive in.As a female online business owner with dreams of more income, more impact, and more freedom, you know there’s more potential in your business waiting to be unlocked. But figuring out how to shape and transform your biz and get seen, loved, selling, and scaling can feel like, well, a mystery. So how do you cut through the noise, create offers that deeply resonate, sell and scale without you always being on, all while creating a life you love?That is exactly what this show is about. Welcome to Seen, Loved, Selling, Scale. I’m Carinda, your small biz marketing sidekick, digital offer strategist, and online biz bestie, with tens of thousands of digital offers sold, tens of thousands of people helped, and millions of dollars in revenue generated in my own business as a small business owner.And through this podcast, I am here to share it all. You’ll gain clear, actionable insights, strategies, and shortcuts to master your online marketing, build scalable online offers, and create a business model that works for you as much as it works for your people so you can grow your income, amplify your impact, and free up more of your time.Let’s get started. A massive welcome to you, and I am so excited to dive into today’s episode as I have been getting asked this question for so long. But recently, this has really ramped up more and more. You see, I think there is a real craving in the business world for us to be able to have amazing businesses, but in the lightest way possible, and it is absolutely possible and what I am all about.There is this incredible version of business that exists where you can do so many amazing things for the people you have chosen to serve, but without having to build this, quote-unquote, “big business” that feels heavy to run. One of the things I know feels heavy for a lot of people is hiring, firing, HR, managing people, leadership, and everything that comes along with that And that felt really heavy for me when I was building my version of success as well.So I decided that I wanted to build without having to hire. And today I’m going to unpack what I have done and still do to achieve that. But before we start, let me set some ground rules ’cause I do not want anyone walking away with the wrong message. This is not me telling you that teams are bad or that you have done something wrong if you have one or you want one.This is me showing you how I personally built a business that does big income and big impact without a big team behind it so that you can look at your own and actually decide what you want it to look like. I think there are people that absolutely thrive by having teams. And if that is you, you can tap out now, and I’ll see you next episode.But for the person who is sitting there wanting to do more as a solopreneur with just some support that doesn’t require HR, hiring, firing, and deep leadership, this is the person that I wanna share this with. You see, I know what it’s like to have both versions. I come from an agency leadership and corporate background where I have always had teams.I know what it feels like to lead, to manage, to hire, to fire, know the pros and cons that come with that. I also now have seen the pros and cons of what it is like to truly run a business as a solopreneur. And there are pros and cons of both, but I have really found that when I tested this model, there have been so many pros for me.This would never have worked if I hadn’t set the business up the way I had, and it absolutely would’ve led to burnout. So if this is a model that you’re wanting to build, hear that word very clearly. It’s all in the model and the light lift methods, and that’s what I’ll be sharing today. So let’s dive in and start with what is my actual support structure at the moment, first and foremost.Because as I built this business, my support structure for a while was absolutely nothing. It was me and Evie, the four-legged office assistant, working our magic behind the scenes. Then, as business grew, I started adding some select support because I want you to hear this. While I am running and growing a business that I don’t, at this very moment in time, want to add a full-time team or a full-time hire into, I also absolutely am not a martyr.And when I actually see a need for support, I will put that in. My entire focus is not defaulting, though, to need support. It’s building a business where support is optional. So here are some of the optional things I have added in over time. Just to really help me build my version of success, and that has mostly looked like outsourcing a few certain elements when I knew they were best placed with other people, and then eventually getting some consistent part-time support in the business for certain things.So when I say I have no full-time team, that is absolutely the truth. However, I do also believe that there is a place for some support that is right for you, and you get to choose that. For me, that looked like adding in a bookkeeper and an accountant as some of the first things I made, mostly because I’m terrible with numbers and didn’t want to end up in jail because of taxes, so I felt that was a very smart move to make, right?Then I would occasionally outsource projects to particular specialists or generalists when I needed a little bit of extra help. That has looked like occasionally working with, say, a VA here or there for certain things, or a specialist for a task, like a technical part of my business. And that alone, plus my business model, got me to multiple, multiple, multiple six figures a year.That’s something not many people can say, that by having an accountant, a bookkeeper, and a VA doing a handful of admin hours, that they’re able to achieve that. And this is why. It all comes down to my business model, my marketing model, and my approach, all things which I am going to share today. And then by having that model, it helped me gain the income and cash flow confidence that then allowed me to hire my consistent part-timer.And that incredible human, who I call my right-hand wing woman, helps me with back-of-house stuff. So, for example, in my business, I have the Content Mastery Club, and in there is a deliverable each month that involves graphic design and content creation. This incredible right-hand woman is a professional graphic designer, so she is able to, for example, design up those templates each month For the beautiful humans inside.And the way we structure our working relationship is that I am not managing her to do that. She works virtual remote, and she has complete autonomy to use her skills to design whatever is needed for that month. She also will help me manage the inbox and the community management in terms of people onboarding or offboarding from my memberships.And when I have particular projects on, for example, when I created this podcast, she will help me with things around the outside of that, like designing the cover art, designing the tiles that can be used for the blog each month. And more recently, I have had her helping me design some things like ads in my business as I aim to increase volume there.Things that nobody touches in my business is my marketing, my community support, the actual strategy and deliverables inside my program, the decision-making, the strategy, the launching, really the large majority. And the reason I can do all that and build this seven-figure business while also truly having the most fantastic balance and flexibility in my life and business is because of some key things that I am going to now spill.And honestly, the biggest one, the first thing that carries everything, my offer suite. I would not be able to earn what I do, have the flexibility I have, or have so little requirement to hire a team if I hadn’t designed my business offerings the way that I have. My offers are not scattered all over the place, a bit of this, a bit of that, a new shiny thing every time I get bored.They are a customer-driven journey. They are built on purpose. You see, I know, like every business should know, exactly how I can help people get from A to Z with my knowledge, and I simply wrote out that pathway and split that pathway up into a few different key offers. What this means is that I am able to lead people from one to the next A lower ticket offer that leads into my core offer, that leads into a higher ticket offer, and that creates natural momentum in my business.I get sales simply because people are ready for their next step, and they can very clearly see that next step spelled out, set out, connected from one offer to the next. One of the biggest areas that we can benefit from in business is to not always be only acquiring new customers, but also retaining the customers that we have, and even more so in that retention, having natural behind-the-scenes momentum in that.That is exactly what my offer suite does. This means my launches get easier, my sales process gets easier. I do absolutely zero sales calls, and I never have. Zero, ’cause by the time someone is looking at one of my higher level programs, they have very often already had something smaller from me first.They already know me. They already trust me. The product already did the convincing, so the edge, the risk, that scary leap of buying from a stranger, it is already gone. Let me give you the most concrete version of this I can. People come into my world through something small, fall in love with how I do things, and walk themselves toward the bigger thing.I am not chasing them. I am not on the phone closing them. The pathway does that work while I am asleep. So let me say this plainly, because it is the bit people need to hear the most. The offers you create directly decide your days, your weeks, your lifestyle, your whole life, honestly. You need to take the time to break down your customer journey and build your offers in line with that So one connects to the next and you have pathways between them.This is the best thing you could ever do for your business in the online space. And now that you know the offers being a journey is one thing, I want to share with you the second thing that makes my business run and scale the way it does, and that is the offers being light lift. What I mean by light lift is that the load does not all land back on me.I am ready and able to get people real outcomes, but I am not the product. Let me say that one again, because it changes everything. I am not the product in my business. My brain is the product. My knowledge, my methods, my approaches, my little personal protocols. The way I actually think about this stuff, that is the product, and I have bottled it all up in a really smart way.And I know that this might sound obvious if you’ve moved from one-to-one to online or scalable models already to say to yourself, “But I’m not the product.” Here’s the thing, because I did that same move, moving from one-to-one to online offers. Here’s the trap. Even if you call it a group program, even if you call it a scalable membership, if you have designed it in a way where the load actually still comes back on you, then you are still the product.That is a problem if that’s not your version of success. So whether you are moving from one-to-one into online products or you already have online products, I need you to hear this loud and clear. It’s not just the offers that you choose that will define your life, your scalability, the need for you to hire or not.It is actually the way you deliver those programs, and it’s why knowing how to teach changes the whole game. And this leads me perfectly into something I do not think I talk about enough, and it is genuinely one of my unfair advantages. Before all of this, I was trained as a high school teacher And then I trained again as an adult trainer.So I understand right down to the bones how people actually learn, how they get from confused to capable, what they genuinely need around them to feel supported enough to take action and to have that knowledge truly transfer from my head into their hands. And when you know how to teach, everything changes.Your programs start carrying people to outcomes without you needing to drag them there by hand. Your members get results, which means they stay, which means they rave, which means they tell people. It is the quiet engine underneath the whole thing, and it is exactly why I teach this inside my programs too, ’cause it matters that much.The other thing I do, and I want you to steal this one, is I go back and I amend. When I notice I am getting asked the same question over and over and over, I do not just keep answering it on repeat forever. I go back into the program and I build the answer in. A new resource, a new tool, a whole new lesson if it needs it.So in your own world, start watching for those patterns and then go and improve the actual product based on what you find. That is how a program quietly gets better while you do less. And this is the whole reason these offers become almost infinitely scalable. I have had up to 500 students inside the Content Mastery Club Right now, I have 500 people in my world, around 400 in the club and 100 in the scalable business school.And the club takes me roughly five hours a week to run. Five. And people inside get the most insane outcomes, change their life, and then come knocking to get into my next program. It’s all because I know how to teach, to create an experience, and to create a product that truly gets outcomes without making me the product.And you need to focus on this too. And then once you have that foundation in place that can deliver for you, that feels light lift to run those offers, it’s time to lighten up your marketing as well. And there’s two parts that really allow me to do marketing that I would call less but better in my world.That ability to do less but better and get amazing results at normal or lesser volume than other people might be sharing. Again, one of the keys to not only scaling to seven figures, but in doing that with no [00:15:00] full-time team. So what do I mean by less but better? When I am posting on social, when I am recording these podcasts, when I am writing my emails, every single thing is authentic.It is genuinely me, and it is also really intentional and strategic. I am always, always covering a customer journey underneath, which means I am not stuck on that horrible hamster wheel, just creating and creating and creating with nothing to show for it at the end of the week. It means I genuinely get to create less but better, ’cause I am only ever talking about the things my buyers actually need to hear to take their next step.So many people are out there creating so much marketing, spending time on this, needing to hire people, needing to do program after program. They just haven’t learned what an actual customer journey is to take somebody from, “I see you, but do I trust you and like you and feel activated by you?” And then, “Am I seeing what I actually need to convert to you?”And then also underneath that, how to show your true brand, so when people come into your world, they are truly aligned and want to stick around. This alone paired with a seamless offer suite is so damn powerful. And then only once I had really mastered that, once I knew my marketing converts and people reliably moved through the journey, that is when I plugged in ads.And this layer again just helps with that scalability while not putting the load on myself Ads are an absolute power move for any business, for any solopreneur, and I will scream this from the rooftops. Mastering ads is one of the most freeing things you can do. But unfortunately, it seems to be one of the things that people have understandably the most fear around, and I get that.I wasn’t not nervous to start ads when I did. I was nervous to do that. However, I could see the benefit of having this automation in my life, having this control in my business, having this tool in my toolkit to achieve my version of success. And this is the thing. There is always going to be fear in different parts of our business.But our version of success and just really understanding that these are the mechanisms that can get us there need to be louder than that fear. As the saying goes, we need to feel the fear, but do it anyway. And then with this system in place, with my offer suite singing and my marketing doing less but better with an element of automation, I also layer additional automation on top of that.In the past, this has been finding shortcuts, finding efficiency, and finding, in inverted commas, old school automation such as email sequences and elements like that. But in this new world, we now have the biggest automation tool on our side, and that is AI, and AI has given me back even more time in my business than ever before, running more efficiently than ever before.And while I don’t have a full-time team in my business, what I do have is a full-time clone of me that can work around the clock acting as me. And every single week, I am building this out more and more and more. And so in order to continue to scale my business but to continue to maintain that lifestyle and not have that burnout, and also to achieve my version of success where I’m not leading a huge team, I have really been pouring into building out my AI team, as I like to call it, with one massive caveat, and I want you to hear this loud and clear.My AI team never does the soul. They are just responsible for the stuff. So let me explain what that means. When I know something is working, a task, a process, a workflow, a deliverable, a chore, I do not just keep doing it by hand forever. I automate it, I replicate it, and I have AI do it for me. So I really, really want you to hear this one.If you have got something working in your business, there is no reason on this earth you cannot have Claude think like you, act like you, and work like you. If I am doing a process even once a month at this stage, I am literally asking myself, “How can I automate this?” Because this compounds over time to where if there are 10 tasks I am doing once a month that take me half a Monday to do, and I can spend that half a Monday teaching Claude how to do it As I do it anyway and then have that automated, I am forever compounding that half a Monday back.If I can then find the thing that used to take my Tuesday afternoon or my Wednesday morning or my Thursday lunchtime and automate that with Claude, I am compounding that time back again. But, and this is non-negotiable for me, I will never not be the soul of my business, ever. So I run what I call a 10/80/10 model.I pinched the bones of this from Dan Martell, who I think pinched it from Apple or somewhere clever like that, and this is what the 10/80/10 model is. The first 10% of my work is always me So I will wake up and go, “Right, this week I want to talk about this. I want to create a lead magnet on this. I have this calling to change my sales page up to speak more about this.”That is the spark. That is the soul. Then the 80% in the middle, the customer journey I already know works. The way I write a post that I already know converts. The way I would write a sales page, go and design it, publish the updates in Kajabi. I have trained AI on all of it, and it does the heavy lifting in my voice.Then the whole thing comes back to me for the final 10%. I do the last edit, the soul sprinkle, as I call it, and out it goes. 10% my soul, 80% off my hands, 10% me again. And honestly, everything works like this now. When I make a lead magnet, same thing. Claude has all of my knowledge, all of my training, all of my methods, all of me.So I will say, “Hey, I want a lead magnet on this.” And it is not general Claude doing it. It is Claude looking through my actual files, my beliefs, my voice, and then it builds the opt-in page. It does the page design. It writes the emails. It sorts the keyword for the chat. And then it comes back to me for that final soul sprinkle.So anytime now that I catch myself doing a task, I ask one question, “How do I turn this into a skill in Claude?” And then straight after it, “How do I make that skill better over time?” Then the next question, “How do I automate this to run on a schedule, a routine, or as an agent?” And these are the exact questions I want you starting to ask yourself constantly in your own business, because I have sacked myself from so many jobs in my own company now, it is almost funny.And that freed up time, I get to choose what it becomes. Sometimes it is more lifestyle, and sometimes it is more of the deeply human stuff that only I can do. And then last piece of this is about being really honest with the time you have got. And I am saying this as someone who has fallen face first into this trap plenty of times myself.It is so easy to get sucked into busy work, work that feels productive, work that lets you feel like you are not being lazy, ’cause look at you, you are doing something. You are at your desk. You are busy. But it does not actually do a single thing for your income or your impact. It is what I call plan-crastinating, and we are all guilty of it.People laugh at me for this one, and I love telling it. My desktop is a feral, unhinged amount of screenshots, hundreds of them. I hide them so they are not a distraction, but I genuinely never go in and tidy them up. My Canva folders are not structured at all. I just find what I need with a keyword search, and I move on, ’cause I am doing the work that actually matters.And I get it, I do, ’cause it is so easy to spend a whole gorgeous day building a new system or color-coding something or making the file that holds the files that holds the files that hold the one file you are actually looking for. It feels amazing. It feels like progress But you have to be willing to ask yourself honestly, “Is this making my business work better?”And look, if the real answer is yes, if you genuinely cannot create income or impact until this thing is done, then go for it. No judgment. But for so many of us, hand on heart, we are sitting there doing things that just feel like movement. And at the end of the day, if you have not posted, if you have not sent the email, if you do not have a low-ticket offer out there, if your ads are not on, if you have not moved one single person further through your pipeline, then that folder system was not the work that needed doing today.That is the nice-to-have. That is the stuff you get to do when your business is running so seamlessly that you are genuinely just looking for something to keep your hands busy, ’cause at that point, the business is carrying the load for you, which is the whole point of all of this. And then on top of that, while some of me might be type B, I am certainly type A in my planning.Every eight weeks, I have a plan to profit. I know every eight-week cycle, every week of that cycle, every day of that cycle exactly what I’m working on right now in my sales promotion, in my creation cycle, and how my marketing is aligning with that This is one of the things that has helped me truly to succeed the most in business, and that is always having clarity.I can say hand on heart the difference this makes because in May, for some unbeknownst reason to me, I decided to deviate from my plan and stop following it for a while. And guess what happened in my business? It went to absolute chaos for that period. It became so much harder. I became so much slower. I woke up each day not knowing what I was meant to be doing, and it was so hard to run.So I get it. While planning might not be the sexiest thing ever, what it is, is the part that makes your version of success truly come true with so much more ease. So if you’re not planning and you’re really not asking yourself, “Is what I’m doing actually productive in my business?” I really encourage you to add these two things in quick smart.And so while there is no big silver bullet, no one system, no magical app that I’ve run to build this business the way I have to my version of success, you can see here there are some key elements that really, when used right, make a business so powerful for me and the people on the outside without needing a whole pile of people in the business for me to manage or to run this.So let me bring this all home, ’cause I have given you a lot today, and I want it to land. Number one, and I will say it until I am blue in the face, your business structure matters most. The offers you create directly determine your days, your weeks, your lifestyle, your life. One of the single biggest reasons people end up needing a big team is the offers they have created or the way they are delivering them.When I built my value ladder and then made really sure every offer sitting inside it was light lift, that is when the actual magic happened. Programs that make tens of thousands of dollars a month serving hundreds of people in under five hours a week. Then your marketing gets lighter ’cause you have got the momentum of people already moving from one offer to the next.You have got smart organic that does less but better, and you have got automated ads that keep working while you are not. Then you have automation and AI doing as much as it possibly can without ever once losing the soul. The soul leads, the machine carries. And then there is you, the discerning CEO, asking every single day, “What can I actually focus on today that is going to make the real difference?”So if I had to bottle the whole thing into one breath, it would be this: smarter business structure first, light lift in delivery and marketing second, and then soul-led automation third. And as always, if you would like my support with every single part of this, from your customer journey A to Z, to the offers that go in it, to running those offers, to selling those offers, to scaling those offers, all light lift, all with smarter marketing and ads.That is exactly what the Scalable Business School is for. You can get the link to that in the show notes so you can see what that is all about and get your name on the wait list for next time I invite an intimate cohort into this space. But if you are looking to change from always on to build a business that doesn’t need a big team to achieve big things, if that’s not your thing, this space was absolutely made for you.Whatever you do, though, here is to chasing your own version of success. This was mine, and I’m so proud to have achieved it and now get to help others achieve this too. Your job is to take what lights you up from this podcast, from any podcast, from any mentor, from anyone else, and use it to craft your unique version of success.Because at the end of the day, that’s the only one that matters. So that is a wrap on this episode. Thanks so much for joining me today. I will see you next time. Same time, same place, same goal, to get you seen, loved, selling and scaling. See you then Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Seen Love Selling Scale podcast.I hope today’s episode left you feeling inspired, fired up, and empowered to make serious moves that align with your goals and version of success, both in life and business. If you loved what you heard, head over to www.thisisco.com.au to find all the links and resources mentioned in today’s episode. And if you aren’t already following the show, make sure you hit that follow button so you never miss a future episode when it drops.I’ll see you again next week, same time, same place, same goal to get you seen, loved, selling, and scaling. See you then
