EP 200: Align Your True North: Align Life and Business

Are you ready to dive deep into the strategies and mindset to help you optimize your business, prioritize your family, and stay true to your vision? Get ready to transform your life and business one episode at a time. This is the Align youe True north podcast, and I'm your host, Brooke Elder. Hey. Hey, everyone. Brooke Elder here, and I am so excited to be back.

It has been a really long time since we've done podcasts together, and so I'm so excited that you are here and you're listening to this. There has been so many things that have happened over the last few years since we recorded the very last episode of the Authentic Influencer podcast. We have now changed the name of this podcast to Align your True North. And it's all from a lot of the things that I learned from living on a sailboat.

And that was the last thing that we had talked about on our last episode was that that we were selling our house, my family and I, and we were buying a sailboat and we were going to go sail for we didn't really know how long. We ended up sailing for a year. And so many things that I learned from that, so many great experiences, so many terrifying experiences.

And we're going to talk about some of those things on this podcast, but I wanted to just give you an update of what's going on and give you some ideas and some tools and tips and just what this podcast is going to be all about. So I'm excited to dive in. So, like I said, we, my family and I, we lived on a sailboat for about a year. We started in South Africa, sailed across the Atlantic, and my daughter ended up getting sick.

She was in Georgia with my sister while we were crossing the Atlantic because she didn't want to cross an ocean. Crazy. And so we had to go back to the United States for a while. We left our boat in Grenada, and then once she was better, we went back to Grenada and sailed the Caribbean and just had an amazing time with my kids and learned so many great lessons, great lessons as a mom and great lessons as a business owner. So those are the things that we're going to be sharing on this podcast.

And I'm so excited to bring you along with all of these things and hopefully you can learn some of the lessons that it took me a long time to learn. And that really is what fueled this whole idea of creating Align your True north. Because one of the things that I was struggling with when we were on the boat, like, I was still running my business Getting clients and everything all on, really, autopilot because of the social media stuff that I had. So that part was good.

But I didn't feel like everything that I was doing was fully aligned. And maybe you have felt that. You felt that, that pull that, like, something is just a little off. And I was really struggling. And I was struggling for a long time. Like, it wasn't just like, oh, a week. And I figured this out. Like, it took probably eight or nine months of going back and forth and trying different things on. And everything that I tried on just didn't quite fit. And it

wasn't until this idea of your true north really came into my realm. And this was from a coach that I follow. Her name's Katie Richardson, so she gets all the credit for this. She talks about creating your North Star and what is your North Star? And the more and more I thought about this, I was like, okay, I like this, this idea of aligning all the things that you have because you're more than just a business person. You're more than just a mom or dad.

You're more than just a spouse, you're more than just a friend. Like, there's so many different facets of yourself that a lot of the times when we're creating goals and we're creating, like, that big vision of where it is that we want to go, it's very focused in one aspect of our life. It doesn't take into account everything that it is that we're doing. And so that's where this idea of creating what is your true north, what does that really look like?

And this is where we get to align our business goals, we get to align our family goals, we get to align our friend goals, our social goals, our physical goals, our spiritual goals. Like, all the things get aligned and that becomes what your true north is. And I'm going to do lots more trainings on, like, your actual true north and how you put it all together. If this is something that you're like, oh, I totally want to know more about this.

Make sure you leave a comment or a review and let us know. And we can dive deeper into this topic as well. But when you really have that true north aligned, it makes it so much easier to make decisions. If you've ever been in a situation where you know you need to do something for your business, but maybe it means saying no to make family time to do something for your business or vice versa.

How do you make that decision when you have to choose choose between two good things when you have Your true north defined, it makes it much easier because you have a lens to look through. I kind of think of it as putting on, like, your true north glasses. And when you really have it defined, it makes it so much easier to make those decisions. And as soon as I figured that part out, that's when things started to really start snowballing. That's when I

really understood my messaging. It helped me understand who it is that I help, what it is that I'm even going to do to help people. All of those things all came from really aligning your true north. And some of those things were making sure that I had time for my kids. I still homeschool my four kids and having time for them and spending time with them.

And one of the things that I realized when I was building my last business was I would say that I was doing it all for my family of families first. And like, that was important to me. But that's what I was saying. My actions didn't always align with that. My actions. Sometimes it would be, I would say, I'm going to be done with work at 4:00. And so I was. I was done with work at 4:00.

And then I would come out of my office and I would go to do something with my kids and they were all doing something else and they didn't want to stop to, like, go and do something else with me. And so then I was like, well, instead of doing whatever it is with them, I was like, well, they're all busy. I'll just go back to work for an hour. And I did that a lot. And maybe that's something that you can relate to.

Hopefully I'm not the only one that does that, but I'm like, I can get one more hour worth of work done and then that will get me so much farther ahead. Or I would tell myself, like, okay, this is going to be a busy season. Which it's fine to have busy seasons. And you can tell your family, like, look, this is going to be our busy season. We're going to be like, really, I hate the word hustle, but, like, we're going to be working really hard to reach this goal.

Maybe it is a big event that you're doing or you're creating a new product, or you have some really big clients that you're working on their work with. You have all these things. And so you say, all right, this is my busy season. And as soon as this is done, as soon as I hit this milestone, as soon as we hit this goal, then I won't have the busy season anymore and then I can go back to spending more time with you.

Xyz and I did that so many times that every time that I said, oh, well, this is a busy season and as soon as we hit this, then it's going to be different. I knew that I was lying to myself because over and over and over I had said that and I would hit that goal and then another one would come up and then be like, oh, well, it's still a busy season because now we have this goal. And I'd work towards that goal. And as soon as I'd hit it, it'd be like, okay, well now it's the time to rest.

Now it's the time to spend more time with my family and I would just have another goal and I would work and work and work and wasn't really spending time with my family. Now I thought that I was. And this was really the eye opener because when you live on a boat and you are in the middle of the ocean and you have limited Internet and you are with your kids in small spaces 24 7, like you really get to know people that way.

And that's when I really realized that all the times that I said that I was like doing this for my family, I was putting my family first. Like, I really wasn't. And I was able to do that when I lived on a boat. And that really changed the way that I interacted with my, with my family. I interacted with my business. I made those decisions. And from that shift, yes, things are different. My business is different. I don't hit goals maybe as fast as I used to.

But I also learned like, this isn't a race. Like if I hit a big goal that I'm really

working towards, if I hit it in May versus hit it in July, does that really matter in the grand scheme of things? It really doesn't. And so it's okay to take a little bit longer to get something done if you're so that way you're not sacrificing your family. And one of the things that I also learned through this whole process is the importance of systems and having systems in your business.

Now before we moved to aboat, I spent about a year and a half building out systems and automation inside my business so that way it could really run without me. And one of the mistakes that I made in doing that was I had built systems and like quote unquote automations with people instead of systems and softwares. And so I went and had a team of like, I grew pretty quickly.

We hired about 10, 15 people in a matter of probably nine months because I was really working towards scaling and also automating the business. And then by doing that, I kept seeing my profits go down more and more and more. And it wasn't until my husband told me, you're automating your business with people instead of systems. And that was when this light bulb moment came on and I was like, okay, I need to change things.

And that's when I really started diving into systems and automation in my business. That didn't matter if it was, if a person was there or not, that it could happen. These automations and these systems could all really be executed anytime and it didn't need a person behind it. And by systematizing my business, like I said, it took a year and a half, but I went from a team of 27 people down to a team of six.

Now just imagine what that did to my profit margins because our revenue stayed the same, but Now I had 20 less people that I had to pay for and the systems that replaced them were way cheaper than the people. Now I'm all for hiring people and for providing amazing jobs and an awesome company culture and everything for your business, but you want to make sure that you aren't putting in systems and automations with people when an actual software could do that.

And so through all of this experience, that's where as I had been contemplating and praying and trying to figure out like what is my next step, that that's really where align your true north and true north strategies really was born. And so this new business that we're doing is I have a couple of my old team members from the last business that are back and they're helping in building this business.

And we are helping business owners just like you to create these systems, automations processes, put them into your business so that way it can free up your time. But it's also going to create more profit and it's going to create more profit without adding any more marketing. Like you don't need new marketing strategies. Really there is hidden money inside your business right now that you are just really spending and not knowing that you're even spending it.

I mean, you know, you're spending it, but it's money that could actually be used as profit versus the way that you're spending it now. And I've been amazed as I've been working with clients and putting these systems and processes into place, how much one time that they get back. So usually it's about 30 to 50% of the time that they were spending. Now they have as free time, and then cutting their expenses sometimes is up to 70%,

because it could be not just people, but also maybe you have like 15 different softwares that you're using where you could actually combine them. And there's. There's so many softwares that are out there.

And if you are not a software geek like me, and you probably are like, hey, I got something that's working and it's fine, and I don't have time to sit and research everything, but what you can do is you can use someone like me that has the expertise in trying out all of them, because I just love trying out new softwares. And in doing that, then you are able to get rid of maybe five softwares because there's one that will replace that.

So that is really my jam is doing, like, software audits and seeing all the things that you're using and then creating the processes that will help you. I am so grateful for all the people that have followed my family along this journey and also to all of you for listening and sticking with this podcast for this long.

And I am way excited about the new changes that we have to the Align youe True north podcast and all the great guests that we have lined up that are really going to help you be able to see how you can make sure that you're aligned with your vision and with your purpose. And when those two things are aligned, really magic happens. And that's really what this podcast is all about. If we aren't friends on Facebook or on social media yet, make sure you go and find me on Facebook. I'm Brook Elder.

You can search facebook.com therealbrookelder I would love to reconnect with you. Maybe you're someone we haven't talked in a really long time, but I would love to reconnect with you. Please reach out and we'll see you all on the next episode.