IAM1431 – Speaker and Client Generation Expert Helps Entrepreneurs Grow Their Businesses
Special Podcast Interview - Podcast Interview with Mary Cravets
Mary Cravets is a Client Generation Expert and International Speaker who helps entrepreneurs significantly grow their businesses without working nights and weekends. Using her methods, the majority of her clients quickly increase their income by 50-100%. Clients include the former CFO of Microsoft North America, thought leaders in the coaching industry, and rising stars in a variety of other professions, including doctors, lawyers, consultants, graphic designers, and CPAs. Mary is also an avid roller coaster enthusiast and a kayaking volunteer for a wildlife protection program in Morro Bay.
- CEO Story: Mary had a rough start in the early days of her business, learning the ropes and trying to do everything on her own. After learning the hard way, she started to delegate her work as she formed and discovered the right business model. Now, she has grown a team who are virtually independent.
- Business Service: Client generation. Creating a system that is unique to every client. Simple structure.
- Secret Sauce: Support people to find their way. Not a cookie-cutter. Simplifying the structure.
- CEO Hack: Making sure to rely on her team and look at what is the next level, keeping the next big goal in front of her
- CEO Nugget: You can't negotiate with time. You set yourself up for failure on a daily basis and expect to win long-term. Keep your to-do list realistic.
- CEO Defined: Freedom to not have to be the person who's always working.
Website: https://simplygetclients.com
Resources: Moreclientslessmarketing.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaryCravets/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-cravets-76ab106/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MaryCravets
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/cravets/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/marycravets
Previous Episode Link:
Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE
Transcription
The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!
Please Note: Our team is using the AI CEO Hacks: Exemplary AI and Otter.ai to support our podcast transcription. While we know it's improving there may be some inaccuracies, we are updating and improving them. Please contact us if you notice any issues, you can also test out Exemplary AI here.
00:02 – Mary Cravets
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
00:27 – Gresham Harkless
Hello, Hello, Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Mary Kravitz of Simply Get Clients. Mary, it is awesome to have you on the show.
00:37 – Mary Cravets
Thanks for having me, Gresh.
00:39 – Gresham Harkless
No problem, no problem. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Mary so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Mary Kravitz is a client generation expert, an international speaker who helps entrepreneurs significantly grow their businesses without working nights and weekends. Using her methods, the majority of her clients quickly increase their income 50 to 100%. Clients include the former CFO of Microsoft North America, thought leaders in the coaching industry, and rising stars in a variety of other professions, including doctors, lawyers, consultants, graphic designers, and CPAs. Mary is also an avid rollercoaster enthusiast and a kayaking volunteer for a wildlife protection program in Morro Bay. Mary, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
01:24 – Mary Cravets
I am so ready.
01:25 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome, Awesome. Well, the first question I had is if you can build a little bit more upon your CEO story or in your bio and tell us a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.
01:34 – Mary Cravets
Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. Well, it was not that smooth sailing, everything was the perfect type of story. I grew my CEO legs by discovering entrepreneurship, and then going, oh, I don't want to do this, I want to do that. You know, along the way, I finally landed on what I'm doing now. It just seems that my brain works this way to organize things and to understand how to speak to people, to draw them in to become clients. But it didn't start like that. It started when I was just making the mistake that a lot of people do. As I was CEO, I was the dishwasher. I was like everything in my business. And so I was running in every different direction. And I got quiet. Actually, I was diagnosed with adrenal exhaustion.
And it made me do something that probably a lot of people take some longer to do, which is really hone in on the easiest, fastest, simplest, cheapest way to grow their business. And I did it during a crisis I had about Four hours of energy a week. So I didn't really have a choice. I either lost my business or I figured it out. And so from there, that's where, I mean, from that experience, from the crisis, that's where everything else grew from. This is where the client generation system comes from.
From the very early days of my business, through the burnout and after the burnout, and up to now, my model has been to hire virtual teams. So I'm still the only employee of my company. But the way that I can stay in my brilliance, my genius, and really be the CEO is I've got a virtual social media team, I've got a virtual. I've got my admin team, I've got PR team, I've got these teams. They all work very independently. So we all maintain a high degree of independence and freedom, but we all get to work in what we're brilliant at.
03:27 – Gresham Harkless
I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more on like, how you help your clients. So I imagine that because you have gone through, you know, that period, you probably have really good insight into what a lot of the clients that you're working with have gone through and how to help them out.
03:40 – Mary Cravets
Yes, I know that when I actually have, in my story, I had an advantage, which was I didn't have a choice, I had to make money. And so I had the. I was crystal clear that the answer to surviving in the business was to get clients. And what I find is a lot of my clients, don't have that advantage. And so they're not as quickly able to focus in on the fact that what they need to do is generate clients. It doesn't matter if you're in the phase of, like, you just opened the doors to your business or you're looking to scale your business. The one system that absolutely has to be streamlined consistent and predictable is your client generation system. And the problem is people tend to do it piecemeal, like, oh, I'm going to learn how to speak to sell and I'm going to get an online marketing funnel and I'm going to do a little blogging. It's all like, blah.
It's all messy. The only way for a system to work is for each piece to fit into the next and they all work together. So if you work in one area, all the other ones are benefiting. So it's like you're getting compounding results. And the good news is that it's not like a one-size-fits-all-all. I don't like, say, oh, you have to do speaking or you have to do referrals, or you have to do anything. It's really providing the structure to bring your brilliance, your understanding of your ideal client, how you like to work your strengths, and creating a system that is unique to you and still consistent.
So it's not about cookie cutter. You just, God, the people who drive me crazy or the online marketers are like, everybody's doing this, and this works for everybody. I'm like, no, it doesn't. You're literally lying. It's just a matter of simplifying it, giving people a simple structure instead of driving people in 20 different directions, and simplifying it down to the essentials. What I think of as six essential elements of client generation, and then bringing your brilliance, applying it to the system, and then implementing it.
05:37 – Gresham Harkless
Okay, perfect. Perfect. I've been listening very well, so I truly appreciate that. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is something that you feel like, kind of distinguishes you. Some people even call it their superpower. But it's something that you feel about you or your business that makes you unique and kind of sets you apart from that.
05:54 – Mary Cravets
I think I've already kind of alluded to it, and that is that there's not a cookie-cutter system really being able to support people, to find their way. Actually, a client hired me recently. She heard me speak a couple of years ago for a group. And the thing that stayed with her for those two years, while she was getting positioned to be ready to hire me, I guess, was she said, you gave me permission to not do things that felt wrong. I didn't feel like it. I like all these experts and gurus out there saying, you gotta do this and you gotta do this. And Mary, you allowed me to trust my gut and still have to apply a system but bring forward the things that I am most. I have the most talent. I have the most interest in the things I frankly enjoy doing.
And I don't hear a lot of that. But that's really. If you want to look at what successful people do, that's what it is. They play to their strengths. They focus on the areas of least resistance and most opportunity. So there are two pieces. One is that, you know, it's not a cookie-cutter. I give a structure, but not a tactical system that you have to plug in and try to fit into. Square peg, into a round hole, maybe. But the other piece is, like, when I work with my clients and they're throwing 17 different things at Me, I can very clearly say, see the three things that are going to move you forward the fastest and say, okay, let's take away those other 14. We're going to put them on a shelf. They're lovely and I'm sure they're precious, but they're not going to get done and nothing's going to get done. And I can see the top three things that are getting them to their goal fastest.
And when I see a lot of coaches, and I'm not technically a coach, but what I see a lot of coaches do, is they teach people how to move forward from the inside out. Like, you do all this personal work, you dig into your childhood relationship with money, and then you start to see different results. Well, I have an outside-in approach and that is we take your top, most effective, exciting, fun ways of growing your business, and then we break it down into the actions that are so simple, so suited to who you are, so accurately speaking, to drawing into your ideal client. They're so simple and clear that you can't help but move forward. And then you'll start to see outward results that are different and then you start inwardly to believe them because you see your outside world changing.
08:14 – Gresham Harkless
Exactly, exactly. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app or a book or a habit that you have, or it might be something you already alluded to, but something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.
08:27 – Mary Cravets
Well, the first thing, of course, is my team just making sure to rely on my team. For me, the thing is it's always looking at what's that next level. No one else is going to do that. So this isn't so much of a hack, but it's more of like the mindset. What is the thing that to move forward, I always have to be the person seeing the bigger vision? Okay, so this is a little thing, but I keep my goal in front of me all the time. It's right. I'm looking at it literally right now, but it's not this year's goal. It's like the next big goal. So nothing else. The increments don't really exist for me. I mean, I know what they are, I know what my income increments are, but only having that number in mind because.
And I read all kinds of personal development books and one of the things it says is you can't focus a lot on the how. And this was something I was very resistant to by the way because I'm very like, here are the steps you have to know. But the thing is to get to things you haven't done before, you have to do things you don't even know to do yet. So by putting the goal honestly, I have no idea how I'm going to get there. I know how I get to the next increment, but to get to the big goal, I don't know how. I have to focus on the goal that I don't know how to get to yet so that my brain is working for me to pull me into those solutions that I don't know yet, otherwise, I will never find them.
09:46- Gresham Harkless
I love that CEO hack. And it's something that you kind of forget that when you have these really high goals and you're trying to figure out like, how the heck am I going to make that happen? But in reality, you start to become the person that you need to be and start to take the actions that you need to take in order to be that. So it may not be top of mind of exactly how you can do it, but once you start to be and set it out and put it in alignment with it, then you start to manifest and become that person that you need to be to do that.
10:13 – Mary Cravets
So I love, and I will tell you, and you probably know that it's not a linear process. I mean, I had a spectacular fail. It was like spending $10,000 and getting nothing to fail. But I don't have any doubt that it was exactly what I needed. I needed to know that that was the wrong path. And I kept thinking it was the right path. For five years I thought it was the right path and finally, I was able to invest in it and it was the wrong path. But I would not have believed it. I would not have taken my energy fully back from it. I would not have like sought out what's the better path had I not had that universal two-by-four, that $10,000 two-by-four across the back of the head to get me back on track.
10:53 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, it's unfortunate sometimes how life goes where you have to, you have to get the lesson first. And when you pick up the lesson that you get, you have to experience the feeling first, then you get the lesson. So sometimes you have to have that. It's like you have to understand in order to understand good, you have to experience bad. So you have to go through those difficult times in order to exactly where you want to go. So I think that's a great CEO hack and I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This might be something that you've already mentioned or that you tell the clients that you work with, but it's something that might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice you might have for entrepreneurs and business owners.
11:29 – Mary Cravets
This might sound very counterintuitive, but you can't negotiate with time. You just can't negotiate with time. The biggest mistake I see business owners make is they think that someday they will have a superpower to transcend time. And so they, their to-do lists are overloaded. Most of my clients, my higher level clients, who I work one-on-one with, the first thing I do is, well, I do an evaluation and assessment, of course, but I look at what they have on their plate, what they want to do, and the majority of the time I say the first thing we do is we have to reduce your workload because it's not possible.
You can't set yourself up for failure on a daily basis and expect to win long-term. It doesn't, it just doesn't work that way. So whether it's better planning, whether it's more delegation, whether it's overwhelming becomes a habit. And if you are constantly overwhelmed, if you get out of it, you will snap back to it. I watch it over and over and over again. So keeping your, I mean it's such a simple thing. Keep your to-do lists realistic.
12:35 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that's, that's huge. And I think especially for most entrepreneurs and business owners, definitely high achieving people that want to conquer the world and take over the world. And sometimes those to-do lists do get rather lengthy. So make sure that you make it, sure it's manageable. So again, like we talked about before, you have those wins that you can continue to build that momentum.
12:52 – Mary Cravets
Yes. You've got to feel a sense of accomplishment. You can't carry over lists day after day after day after day and feel like you're moving forward because those feelings, I mean, you have to align with the feeling of success. And by the way, I'm reminding myself of all of these things as I'm sitting here. So for people who take their eye off the ball and everything, it's, it's a constant reset. It's a constant coming back to it and coming back to it and coming back to it.
13:18 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, just like any muscle or any exercise, you have to keep doing it and doing it and then it starts to become a habit. So definitely. I love that. So Mary, I truly Appreciate your time. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this podcast. And I know you have a team that you're managing as well. So I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:40 – Mary Cravets
Being CEO means that I'm going to take October 24th off to go write roller coasters. It means the freedom to not have to be the person that's always, always working. Like the wheels don't fall off because I don't show up. Freedom.
13:56 – Gresham Harkless
I love it. And you kind of lose perspective of that when you, when you start to build the business and you start to work in the business that you're doing so much that you can't get away. But you need to make sure that your cup is filled. So we all have our thing, whatever we need to do to fill up our cup so that we can be even more present so that we can look for the vision, look and see like how we want the business to. Well, I truly appreciate your time again and what I wanted to do was pass you to the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best people can get ahold of you.
14:22 – Mary Cravets
Yeah, absolutely. I have two resources for you that are really fantastic. One is my website. I have. So it needs a little facelift, but there's a ton of, there's a ton of resources there. There's my blog, there's's free and almost free page. It's got a lot of other things. It's got tools, curated tools so you can go there if you like to dig if you like. Kind of the straight shot, with little education on how to simplify your client generation. The best place to go is more clients, less marketing dot com. More clients, less marketing dot com that has a short video where I kind of introduce what you're going to get.
CC if you want it, if you want it, you just scoot over to the other page and there's a webinar about how to simplify and systematize your client generation. Just making it really simple, some education, a lot of value. It's not just fluffy, it's not theory. This stuff works for my clients and for me so you can get a good knowledge of what it is that we do. So more clients, less marketing. That's the real streamlined approach. You can go to simply getclients.com if you want to look at the expanded view of what we do.
15:22 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. And we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes. But Mary, I truly appreciate you for everything that you're doing. This was an awesome chat that we had and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
15:31 – Mary Cravets
Thanks Crash. I appreciate it. You too.
15:33 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
00:02 - Mary Cravets
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
00:27 - Gresham Harkless
Hello, Hello, Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Mary Kravitz of Simply Get Clients. Mary, it is awesome to have you on the show.
00:37 - Mary Cravets
Thanks for having me, Gresh.
00:39 - Gresham Harkless
No problem, no problem. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Mary so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Mary Kravitz is a client generation expert, an international speaker who helps entrepreneurs significantly grow their businesses without working nights and weekends. Using her methods, the majority of her clients quickly increase their income 50 to 100%. Clients include the former CFO of Microsoft North America, thought leaders in the coaching industry, and rising stars in a variety of other professions, including doctors, lawyers, consultants, graphic designers, and CPAs. Mary is also an avid rollercoaster enthusiast and a kayaking volunteer for a wildlife protection program in Morro Bay. Mary, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
01:24 - Mary Cravets
I am so ready.
01:25 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome, Awesome. Well, the first question I had is if you can build a little bit more upon your CEO story or in your bio and tell us a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.
01:34 - Mary Cravets
Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. Well, it was not that smooth sailing, everything was the perfect type of story. I grew my CEO legs by discovering entrepreneurship, and then going, oh, I don't want to do this, I want to do that. You know, along the way, I finally landed on what I'm doing now. It just seems that my brain works this way to organize things and to understand how to speak to people, to draw them in to become clients. But it didn't start like that. It started when I was just making the mistake that a lot of people do. As I was CEO, I was the dishwasher. I was like everything in my business. And so I was running in every different direction. And I got quiet. Actually, I was diagnosed with adrenal exhaustion.
And it made me do something that probably a lot of people take some longer to do, which is really hone in on the easiest, fastest, simplest, cheapest way to grow their business. And I did it during a crisis I had about Four hours of energy a week. So I didn't really have a choice. I either lost my business or I figured it out. And so from there, that's where, I mean, from that experience, from the crisis, that's where everything else grew from. This is where the client generation system comes from.
From the very early days of my business, through the burnout and after the burnout, and up to now, my model has been to hire virtual teams. So I'm still the only employee of my company. But the way that I can stay in my brilliance, my genius, and really be the CEO is I've got a virtual social media team, I've got a virtual. I've got my admin team, I've got PR team, I've got these teams. They all work very independently. So we all maintain a high degree of independence and freedom, but we all get to work in what we're brilliant at.
03:27 - Gresham Harkless
I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more on like, how you help your clients. So I imagine that because you have gone through, you know, that period, you probably have really good insight into what a lot of the clients that you're working with have gone through and how to help them out.
03:40 - Mary Cravets
Yes, I know that when I actually have, in my story, I had an advantage, which was I didn't have a choice, I had to make money. And so I had the. I was crystal clear that the answer to surviving in the business was to get clients. And what I find is a lot of my clients, don't have that advantage. And so they're not as quickly able to focus in on the fact that what they need to do is generate clients. It doesn't matter if you're in the phase of, like, you just opened the doors to your business or you're looking to scale your business. The one system that absolutely has to be streamlined consistent and predictable is your client generation system. And the problem is people tend to do it piecemeal, like, oh, I'm going to learn how to speak to sell and I'm going to get an online marketing funnel and I'm going to do a little blogging. It's all like, blah.
It's all messy. The only way for a system to work is for each piece to fit into the next and they all work together. So if you work in one area, all the other ones are benefiting. So it's like you're getting compounding results. And the good news is that it's not like a one-size-fits-all-all. I don't like, say, oh, you have to do speaking or you have to do referrals, or you have to do anything. It's really providing the structure to bring your brilliance, your understanding of your ideal client, how you like to work your strengths, and creating a system that is unique to you and still consistent.
So it's not about cookie cutter. You just, God, the people who drive me crazy or the online marketers are like, everybody's doing this, and this works for everybody. I'm like, no, it doesn't. You're literally lying. It's just a matter of simplifying it, giving people a simple structure instead of driving people in 20 different directions, and simplifying it down to the essentials. What I think of as six essential elements of client generation, and then bringing your brilliance, applying it to the system, and then implementing it.
05:37 - Gresham Harkless
Okay, perfect. Perfect. I've been listening very well, so I truly appreciate that. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is something that you feel like, kind of distinguishes you. Some people even call it their superpower. But it's something that you feel about you or your business that makes you unique and kind of sets you apart from that.
05:54 - Mary Cravets
I think I've already kind of alluded to it, and that is that there's not a cookie-cutter system really being able to support people, to find their way. Actually, a client hired me recently. She heard me speak a couple of years ago for a group. And the thing that stayed with her for those two years, while she was getting positioned to be ready to hire me, I guess, was she said, you gave me permission to not do things that felt wrong. I didn't feel like it. I like all these experts and gurus out there saying, you gotta do this and you gotta do this. And Mary, you allowed me to trust my gut and still have to apply a system but bring forward the things that I am most. I have the most talent. I have the most interest in the things I frankly enjoy doing.
And I don't hear a lot of that. But that's really. If you want to look at what successful people do, that's what it is. They play to their strengths. They focus on the areas of least resistance and most opportunity. So there are two pieces. One is that, you know, it's not a cookie-cutter. I give a structure, but not a tactical system that you have to plug in and try to fit into. Square peg, into a round hole, maybe. But the other piece is, like, when I work with my clients and they're throwing 17 different things at Me, I can very clearly say, see the three things that are going to move you forward the fastest and say, okay, let's take away those other 14. We're going to put them on a shelf. They're lovely and I'm sure they're precious, but they're not going to get done and nothing's going to get done. And I can see the top three things that are getting them to their goal fastest.
And when I see a lot of coaches, and I'm not technically a coach, but what I see a lot of coaches do, is they teach people how to move forward from the inside out. Like, you do all this personal work, you dig into your childhood relationship with money, and then you start to see different results. Well, I have an outside-in approach and that is we take your top, most effective, exciting, fun ways of growing your business, and then we break it down into the actions that are so simple, so suited to who you are, so accurately speaking, to drawing into your ideal client. They're so simple and clear that you can't help but move forward. And then you'll start to see outward results that are different and then you start inwardly to believe them because you see your outside world changing.
08:14 - Gresham Harkless
Exactly, exactly. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app or a book or a habit that you have, or it might be something you already alluded to, but something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.
08:27 - Mary Cravets
Well, the first thing, of course, is my team just making sure to rely on my team. For me, the thing is it's always looking at what's that next level. No one else is going to do that. So this isn't so much of a hack, but it's more of like the mindset. What is the thing that to move forward, I always have to be the person seeing the bigger vision? Okay, so this is a little thing, but I keep my goal in front of me all the time. It's right. I'm looking at it literally right now, but it's not this year's goal. It's like the next big goal. So nothing else. The increments don't really exist for me. I mean, I know what they are, I know what my income increments are, but only having that number in mind because.
And I read all kinds of personal development books and one of the things it says is you can't focus a lot on the how. And this was something I was very resistant to by the way because I'm very like, here are the steps you have to know. But the thing is to get to things you haven't done before, you have to do things you don't even know to do yet. So by putting the goal honestly, I have no idea how I'm going to get there. I know how I get to the next increment, but to get to the big goal, I don't know how. I have to focus on the goal that I don't know how to get to yet so that my brain is working for me to pull me into those solutions that I don't know yet, otherwise, I will never find them.
09:46- Gresham Harkless
I love that CEO hack. And it's something that you kind of forget that when you have these really high goals and you're trying to figure out like, how the heck am I going to make that happen? But in reality, you start to become the person that you need to be and start to take the actions that you need to take in order to be that. So it may not be top of mind of exactly how you can do it, but once you start to be and set it out and put it in alignment with it, then you start to manifest and become that person that you need to be to do that.
10:13 - Mary Cravets
So I love, and I will tell you, and you probably know that it's not a linear process. I mean, I had a spectacular fail. It was like spending $10,000 and getting nothing to fail. But I don't have any doubt that it was exactly what I needed. I needed to know that that was the wrong path. And I kept thinking it was the right path. For five years I thought it was the right path and finally, I was able to invest in it and it was the wrong path. But I would not have believed it. I would not have taken my energy fully back from it. I would not have like sought out what's the better path had I not had that universal two-by-four, that $10,000 two-by-four across the back of the head to get me back on track.
10:53 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, it's unfortunate sometimes how life goes where you have to, you have to get the lesson first. And when you pick up the lesson that you get, you have to experience the feeling first, then you get the lesson. So sometimes you have to have that. It's like you have to understand in order to understand good, you have to experience bad. So you have to go through those difficult times in order to exactly where you want to go. So I think that's a great CEO hack and I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This might be something that you've already mentioned or that you tell the clients that you work with, but it's something that might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice you might have for entrepreneurs and business owners.
11:29 - Mary Cravets
This might sound very counterintuitive, but you can't negotiate with time. You just can't negotiate with time. The biggest mistake I see business owners make is they think that someday they will have a superpower to transcend time. And so they, their to-do lists are overloaded. Most of my clients, my higher level clients, who I work one-on-one with, the first thing I do is, well, I do an evaluation and assessment, of course, but I look at what they have on their plate, what they want to do, and the majority of the time I say the first thing we do is we have to reduce your workload because it's not possible.
You can't set yourself up for failure on a daily basis and expect to win long-term. It doesn't, it just doesn't work that way. So whether it's better planning, whether it's more delegation, whether it's overwhelming becomes a habit. And if you are constantly overwhelmed, if you get out of it, you will snap back to it. I watch it over and over and over again. So keeping your, I mean it's such a simple thing. Keep your to-do lists realistic.
12:35 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that's, that's huge. And I think especially for most entrepreneurs and business owners, definitely high achieving people that want to conquer the world and take over the world. And sometimes those to-do lists do get rather lengthy. So make sure that you make it, sure it's manageable. So again, like we talked about before, you have those wins that you can continue to build that momentum.
12:52 - Mary Cravets
Yes. You've got to feel a sense of accomplishment. You can't carry over lists day after day after day after day and feel like you're moving forward because those feelings, I mean, you have to align with the feeling of success. And by the way, I'm reminding myself of all of these things as I'm sitting here. So for people who take their eye off the ball and everything, it's, it's a constant reset. It's a constant coming back to it and coming back to it and coming back to it.
13:18 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, just like any muscle or any exercise, you have to keep doing it and doing it and then it starts to become a habit. So definitely. I love that. So Mary, I truly Appreciate your time. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this podcast. And I know you have a team that you're managing as well. So I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:40 - Mary Cravets
Being CEO means that I'm going to take October 24th off to go write roller coasters. It means the freedom to not have to be the person that's always, always working. Like the wheels don't fall off because I don't show up. Freedom.
13:56 - Gresham Harkless
I love it. And you kind of lose perspective of that when you, when you start to build the business and you start to work in the business that you're doing so much that you can't get away. But you need to make sure that your cup is filled. So we all have our thing, whatever we need to do to fill up our cup so that we can be even more present so that we can look for the vision, look and see like how we want the business to. Well, I truly appreciate your time again and what I wanted to do was pass you to the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best people can get ahold of you.
14:22 - Mary Cravets
Yeah, absolutely. I have two resources for you that are really fantastic. One is my website. I have. So it needs a little facelift, but there's a ton of, there's a ton of resources there. There's my blog, there's's free and almost free page. It's got a lot of other things. It's got tools, curated tools so you can go there if you like to dig if you like. Kind of the straight shot, with little education on how to simplify your client generation. The best place to go is more clients, less marketing dot com. More clients, less marketing dot com that has a short video where I kind of introduce what you're going to get.
CC if you want it, if you want it, you just scoot over to the other page and there's a webinar about how to simplify and systematize your client generation. Just making it really simple, some education, a lot of value. It's not just fluffy, it's not theory. This stuff works for my clients and for me so you can get a good knowledge of what it is that we do. So more clients, less marketing. That's the real streamlined approach. You can go to simply getclients.com if you want to look at the expanded view of what we do.
15:22 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. And we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes. But Mary, I truly appreciate you for everything that you're doing. This was an awesome chat that we had and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
15:31 - Mary Cravets
Thanks Crash. I appreciate it. You too.
15:33 - Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
Sign up to receive email updates
Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast.
[/restrict]
