ADHD, Entrepreneurship, and Simplification Hacks to Transform Your Business with Steph Blake

Jennie Wright [00:00:05]:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Acquire podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Wright. I’m really excited today because I’ve spent the past half hour geeking out And now I’m going to bring you into my Geek Out session and I’m going to introduce you to our guest today. I’m adoring this person right now. Steph Blake, thanks. Thank you so much for being here.

Steph Blake [00:00:25]:
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to geek out with you as well. This is going to be great.

Jennie Wright [00:00:29]:
It will be. And you are doing some really cool stuff. This is why I had to have you on. So I was one of the guest contributors on a bundle that you just did. And when I was doing that, I was, you know, I like to get to know the people that I’m kind of working around with. And so I was starting to look in on what it is that you do. And then you and I did a live on Instagram and I was like, Okay, this is one of my people. And I have to talk to one of my people because you’re awesome.

Jennie Wright [00:00:58]:
So you are the founder and CEO of the Simple Business School, which is really neat. I’ve been on that website for like twenty minutes checking it out. You also have the Simple Business Suite, which is an incredibly cool software. I was grilling you about it when we got on. I was like, what did you do? This is amazing. So, it’s a really, really customized all in one software for online business owners. I think it is fabulous. And we’re going to drop some links in the show notes for that.

Jennie Wright [00:01:24]:
But I think it’s really amazing, sort of the business model that you’ve created. And today we’re going to talk about the simplicity that you’ve created out of necessity, not only in your own life, but also to help other people. So what was going on with you that you were like, okay, I’m just gonna make things better. And where’s your background knowledge coming from to be able to customize all this stuff?

Steph Blake [00:01:47]:
Absolutely. So I’ll try to keep this short and as concise as possible. But, you know, everybody’s background is wild. So just to really take it back to the beginning, I was in a very traditional trajectory growing up. So I went to high school, went to college, graduated with a degree in graphic design, got a job at a an engineering company. And this was I graduated in 2010. So this was kind of, like, right after the recession. Like, things were still not great.

Steph Blake [00:02:14]:
It was very hard to get a job. So I was like, you know what? I got this internship. It turned into a job. And I just I stayed there as long as I had to, frankly, but I was designing instruction manuals. So you can imagine how boring

Jennie Wright [00:02:27]:
it would be. Right? So

Steph Blake [00:02:30]:
it was about three or I would say four years into that job that I moved to the city of Chicago, got a job at a digital marketing agency, started at the bottom, worked my way up to, a c suite position in about three years. And that was when I decided, like, I don’t wanna do this for other people. I wanna do my own thing. But I didn’t have anybody in my life that was an entrepreneur. Nobody. My mom worked at the same company for forty plus years. She just retired last year. My dad worked in retail.

Steph Blake [00:02:58]:
But the one commonality that they both had is they worked all the time. It’s like if you do not work more than sixty hours a week, like, that was really, like, the baseline for both of them, like, you were not going to be successful. So that is what I grew up seeing in my personal life. And then that was just amplified by society. Right? Like you need to work hard. You need to hustle in order to be successful. So that’s just what I did. And that first year that I started my business, like I said, I’m just kind of fast forwarding a little bit.

Steph Blake [00:03:27]:
I actually started nine different businesses. Nine different businesses that first or I’m sorry, eight different businesses that first year because I had undiagnosed ADHD. I was also very excited about this new online world that I stumbled into from a Facebook ad. And I just saw all of these possibilities. And I I just went all in. And that time, I didn’t have kids. I was very newly married. My husband and I had been married for, like, two months at that point.

Steph Blake [00:03:56]:
And I was like, guess what? I’m starting a business. And he was like, okay. Like not thinking anything of it at the time. So I was still working in my job. It was seven to seven job, not even nine to five, seven to seven. And then I would work on this business on the side. So guess what I did? I was working eighty to a hundred hours a week because I was trying to juggle all of these things and also mirroring what I saw growing up. In order to be successful, you have to work a lot.

Steph Blake [00:04:21]:
Yeah. So that eventually came to a head about three years later when I got pregnant with my first son. And I very quickly realized if I did not slow down, if I did not figure out a way to change my life, I was gonna end up in the hospital. Because it was truthfully, my son saved my life, which does probably gonna make me cry as I say that. But, like, that that was the truth because I knew that if I would have kept going, going, going at the right I was at, I would probably have had a heart attack by the time I was 40. You know? Like, unfortunately, we see a lot of people do it or that’s happening to a lot of people. Right? Yeah. So that, again, was what really forced me to slow down, reassess everything in my life and my business and say, I cannot work more than twenty hours a week.

Steph Blake [00:05:05]:
That was my absolute maximum. So I reconfigured everything in my business really simplified it so that I didn’t have to work more than twenty hours a week. And then two weeks before he was born, I left my nine to five job and went full time in my business. And then, obviously, there’s a lot that’s happened in the past five years that since he’s been born, but that’s really what I’ve been focusing on for the past four and a half years. Five years is helping people simplify their own businesses so that they can reach their goals without hustling, without working that eighty to a hundred hours a week like I was.

Jennie Wright [00:05:38]:
Wow. Okay. That’s a story. And, don’t you find that we all have one of those moments that is really defining and kind of just changes the trajectory?

Steph Blake [00:05:50]:
Absolutely.

Jennie Wright [00:05:51]:
And for you, it was your Sun. And I mean, that’s beautiful and powerful and very impactful, because, I mean, I grew up very similar to you where it was both my parents, by the way, they worked in their own business. I grew up with a family business. I started working for the family business when I was 11. Right. And I worked every Saturday, I worked after school, before school for my parents. And that was the norm, like, work, you know, work an hour before school, go to school, work two or three hours after school, and then work on the weekends. So there was no downtime.

Jennie Wright [00:06:28]:
And so I understand that, you know, if you’re sitting down and doing nothing, you’re being unproductive or you’re being lazy. And the want or the need to feel productive is very overwhelming. And you’re right, you were probably heading towards some cataclysmic event that would have been really bad had you not figured out this system.

Steph Blake [00:06:51]:
Yeah. Absolutely. No. And I I got my first job when I was 14 as I worked at a concession stand. Cause I played softball growing up, so I got a job at a concession stand. So, yeah, I have been working for as long as I can remember too. And it’s this has been, I will say, the hardest part of transitioning into working less is reprogramming my mind and my nervous system to be okay with working less.

Jennie Wright [00:07:16]:
Right. And don’t you find that when you first tried to figure it out, you had this nervous like, oh my God, I should be doing something right now. I shouldn’t be sitting here.

Steph Blake [00:07:23]:
And frankly, I still get that today because it is so deeply ingrained

Jennie Wright [00:07:28]:
Yeah.

Steph Blake [00:07:28]:
In my body. And I don’t know if you wanna get into a conversation about epigenetics, but it has been ingrained in my family for as long as I can remember.

Jennie Wright [00:07:35]:
Mhmm.

Steph Blake [00:07:36]:
Because both of my my grandmas were both single moms, and my mom was also a single mom. Mhmm. So the women in my family have always had to work very, very hard, like, to to make ends meet. Right? To to provide for their families.

Jennie Wright [00:07:52]:
Yeah.

Steph Blake [00:07:52]:
So it it just it’s so wild once you start to learn more about this and understand how it all works and how all of the pieces come together. We were like, oh, my gosh, no wonder. No wonder I’ve been operating this way for such a long time. And I’m sure there’s probably stories of that in your life as well.

Jennie Wright [00:08:09]:
Absolutely. Just off the top of my head, I can think of half a dozen. But, I mean, wow. Okay. So you’re kind of blowing my mind a little bit. There’s a couple things I want to talk about. And you mentioned the undiagnosed ADHD, And I am not diagnosed ADHD, I think I’m neurotypical. But like I said before we started, I said I have a little bit of a shine somewhere on something.

Jennie Wright [00:08:31]:
I think everybody does. And what boggles my mind is, you know, having worked with people with ADHD diagnosed or undiagnosed, there’s a lot of the shiny object syndrome, right?

Steph Blake [00:08:42]:
Oh, yeah.

Jennie Wright [00:08:43]:
And you said you started eight businesses. How did you simplify and how do you maintain the simplification when your natural disposition is going to be to start the new fun different thing all the time?

Steph Blake [00:09:01]:
And I’m going to be honest, this is still a struggle for me today. Mean, I think it’s going to always be a struggle just based on how my brain is wired, and that’s okay. But, I mean, now I have gotten to a point where I look at well, first of all, I have a a notepad in the shower. I actually have I’m just gonna show you what’s currently sitting on my desk right now for my shower this morning. I had all of these little notes that I took. Oh, wow. These these are all there’s so there’s four pieces of paper here for people who can’t see. And those are all of my shower notes.

Steph Blake [00:09:35]:
Because every every morning when I take a shower, I always get a million different ideas. And that’s what I hear a lot of people also saying that, like, I always have these new ideas. It always feels like I have to do this thing right now or else something bad is going to happen. Right? So there’s almost this this sense of this is going to sound very dramatic, but it’s like, if I don’t do this thing, the entire world is going to end and my business is going to crumble on top of me.

Jennie Wright [00:09:59]:
It’s dread.

Steph Blake [00:09:59]:
You get that it’s dread. That thank you. That’s the word I was looking for. Yeah. There’s this very deep sense of dread. So one thing that I have learned after many, many years is, first of all, writing the things down. So I always write the things down because I noticed that if if they’re in my head, it’s not a good place for them to be because there’s already too much happening in my head. So I have to write them down physically.

Steph Blake [00:10:20]:
And then from there, I put them in my project management tool, which is ClickUp. Doesn’t matter where you put them. You just wanna put them somewhere else where you can come back to them in the future. Mhmm. Okay? And then after that, I will go through and I will ask myself, okay, is this something I have to take a step back from it while I’m doing this. I I have to say, okay, Stephanie. If we are looking at this objectively, is this something that actually needs to get done right now? Or if I’m thinking about signing up for a program, I have to say, is this program something that I know will allow me to be successful? And then I actually I have to sit with it for I don’t know. It it varies on the amount of time.

Steph Blake [00:10:55]:
It could be anywhere from five minutes to five days sometimes. And just really check-in with myself. This is where that nervous system work, the nervous system regulation comes in. And just ask myself, is this something that I truly believe in my heart and soul will make a difference? Or is this just the shiny object coming in? Nine times out of 10, it’s the shiny object coming in. But before I created this little process for myself, I guess, I didn’t know how to differentiate between the two. And that’s just more of self awareness of me growing as as a human and just understanding more about myself and how I operate and how I make decisions. So that is personally what works for me. It’s not gonna work for everybody, but that’s a really easy place to start.

Steph Blake [00:11:40]:
Just write it down, get it out of your head, revisit it.

Jennie Wright [00:11:44]:
I think that’s I mean, I have a little bit of this shiny object thing. And if I showed you what was on my desk right now, I have this notebook people get for school. And I have a rule. I make precision notes on the right and I scribble on the left.

Steph Blake [00:12:00]:
I love that.

Jennie Wright [00:12:01]:
Yeah. So any precision note, so they scribble out my things whatever that is, and then what gets transferred onto the right side of the page is the precision side of it. So that was the idea, go check this, take a look at this, this is really cool. And then on the right hand side is if I’m going to move forward with further deeper research on it or an action that needs to be taken and so on. And that’s sort of where People are going to laugh. I’m going to announce this officially for the first time. So if anybody listens to this podcast and knows me, I do not like all in one solutions. I like my tech stack.

Jennie Wright [00:12:38]:
And you’re smiling because you know where this is going. And so I Because I do too. I believe in having a specialist software for each thing to this point. So I have used ClickFunnels for landing pages. I’ve used ActiveCampaign for my email marketing software. I’ve used Canva. I’ve used all these different things and, you know, better proposals for my proposals and so on and so forth. And then one of my clients said, Hey, can you build a landing page in this all in one software? And I’m like, Yeah, sure, I can.

Jennie Wright [00:13:11]:
I get in there and I’m like, Oh, it’s all in one. Ew, this sucks. And I’m like going in with bias. Right? And I’m like, Okay, can we just check the bias for a second? Let’s get in there. Let’s like, because I have to build the page. Client needs a page. I gotta build a page. And then I’m like, Oh, I gotta do this, this, this and this, but then this makes this easier.

Jennie Wright [00:13:29]:
So if you create this automation and then this pipeline and then this, like all these things, I’m like, Oh, this is actually kind of cool. That was a weekend gone, by the way. Like, it was a whole weekend. So I was in there and I’m, you know, checking the software out and everything. And now I’m really now looking at the simplification because not only is it a money saver, but this particular piece of software that we’re talking about, and if you know what you know, but it’s you know, high level or go high level depending on how you look at it. I think it’s progressed enough that it has the functionality that I need. I mean, a couple of years ago, I don’t think it did because I looked at it a couple of years ago, but I think it’s getting there now and they’re adding stuff all the time. And quite honestly, the landing pages in there function at the level I need them to because I’m all about conversion.

Jennie Wright [00:14:22]:
So there’s simplification now by looking at that. And that’s something that you talk about a lot, the simplification, trying to make things happen with ease and stuff like that. What has been your besides the papers and the journaling, writing things down in the shower, which by the way is cool how and what is your process to support other people to simplify? I’m sure they’re coming into your programs and they’re not simple. They don’t have it simplified. So they’re coming either into the Simple Business Suite or they’re coming into Simple Business School and their stuff is not simple. How are you getting these people to whittle down?

Steph Blake [00:15:04]:
Yeah. So I want to go back on what you’re talking about before with your notebook because that’s basically the same process I use. So, like, my my notes from the shower are my just my messy ideas, and then I’ll add it into my project management tool with the exact details of everything. So, yeah, we’re we’re totally on the same page there. And I’m gonna be honest with you. It’s different for every person. Mhmm. Because every person has a different business.

Steph Blake [00:15:26]:
Every person has different goals. And I realized that customization really is the key, whether you want to simplify your business, your business strategies, all of that, or you want to simplify your software. Because nobody has the same tech stack like you. I before I created Simple Business Suite, I had I was trying to piece together, like, 10 different pieces of software because I wanted the best of the best for each one. And eventually, it just got way too out of control, and I was paying way too much money for all of these different pieces. But truthfully, that’s that’s the answer. And that’s not the answer that a lot of people wanna hear, but that’s the case. Like, whether so whether you want to simplify your business strategy, let’s start there.

Steph Blake [00:16:08]:
The business that you have is not the same business that I have, even if we were to call ourselves the same thing. Right? Let’s use virtual assistants as an example. Right? So there are zillions of virtual assistants out there. Right? But the business that one VA has is not the same business that another VA has. Right? The problem that they’re solving is going to be different. The offer that they are selling is going to be different. The price point that they’re selling it at. All of those little nitty gritty pieces are completely different.

Steph Blake [00:16:39]:
Yeah. So what we have to do first is guess what? We have to keep it really, really simple, and we have to focus in on a couple of main things. Figuring out, one, what that problem is that somebody’s solving, how they’re going to solve that problem, that’s their offer, how they’re going to convey the value of that offer through the messaging, and that is and who they’re going to be selling this thing to. Right? So that is the really, the first first piece that people need to understand, whether they’re just getting started in business or they’ve been in business for a while, and they are just really overwhelmed. Because, I mean, there there’s really two different places here. If you’re just getting started in your business, you don’t know what you wanna do. You’re probably like me with the eight different ideas. Or if you’ve been in business for many years, you realize that you have tools all over the place.

Steph Blake [00:17:29]:
You are trying to sell all of these different offers, and they’re not resonating with the people that you need them to resonate with. You’re not probably making the money that you want, or you’re working way too much. So in that case, again, we have to revisit those pieces that I just shared. And then we have to cut down on a lot of stuff that you’re doing because the vast majority of the things that you’re doing right now are not even necessary to get you to the level that you wanna be at.

Jennie Wright [00:17:54]:
I love that. I mean, I think we collect things as entrepreneurs. I’ve been doing this for twelve years and I’ve collected a lot of little software here and there. I mean, back in the day, remember when, AppSumo was having all the sales all the time and it was the biggest thing? I collected all of those. I still have a couple of those.

Steph Blake [00:18:15]:
It’s still a thing. I just bought something on there yesterday.

Jennie Wright [00:18:19]:
I’ve purposefully stayed away from that website. So that is one of my shiny objects. I could sit on there and just go through everything. So I stayed away from it. I want

Steph Blake [00:18:28]:
to say the caveat to that software. I’m the exact same. The thing that I purchased is actually really cool. It’s called Headway. And it actually gives you synopsis of books in fifteen minutes or summaries of a book in fifteen minutes. So you don’t have to go and read an entire book. It’ll tell you all of the key points

Jennie Wright [00:18:44]:
in fifteen minutes. Off of Kindle or something?

Steph Blake [00:18:47]:
It’s an app.

Jennie Wright [00:18:48]:
No. But, like, how does it summarize a book? Does it have all the books in its library?

Steph Blake [00:18:53]:
It’s people talking. It’s almost like you’re listening to an audiobook, but it’s a whole book condensed into fifteen minutes. It’s incredible.

Jennie Wright [00:19:00]:
Okay. All right. That is really, really cool. I haven’t had the time You know what? I have my Kindle subscription. I haven’t had the time to read a book in I don’t know how many months right now. And I have a plane ride coming up and I’m excited. I’m actually stoked to read and I’m a little ticked off that the plane rides only an hour and forty seven minutes. Right.

Jennie Wright [00:19:20]:
So I know what to read.

Steph Blake [00:19:22]:
If you got this app, you could listen, you can quote unquote read 10 books in that time.

Jennie Wright [00:19:26]:
There you go. Too much. Okay. So what you’re saying is I should go to AppSumo again, but

Steph Blake [00:19:32]:
Only for the right deals.

Jennie Wright [00:19:34]:
Only for the right ones. You know what, I go by recommendation. So instead of doing the hunting now, I will allow other people to tell me, like you told me today, that you used some widget to create something that I thought was really, really cool on your site. And so my next question would be like what widget? Because then I would want to know what that is because that would be something I would look into as opposed to searching. I think tried and true is good. Getting back over to the simplification and just before we kind of start wrapping up, how would somebody who is, I don’t know, who’s been in business for a couple of years, who’s probably had the little bit of collectionitis that we do and kind of adds things back on or starts to collect. What would you recommend the step be to creating more simplification? Because it feels overwhelming to look at simplification. It’s scary.

Jennie Wright [00:20:29]:
You and I were talking about working eighty hours a week and less than that feels icky because it’s epigenetics. How would you recommend that people start on that process?

Steph Blake [00:20:40]:
Simple business will. But no, truly, I mean, it’s really asking yourself, and this is gonna sound cheesy, but it’s asking yourself, what do you want? Do you want to keep going at the rate that you’re currently going? Do you is this what you want for your life? Or do you want it to be more simple because you’re the only person who can make that decision? I can’t make that decision for you. Nobody else can. And I know as entrepreneurs, we start these businesses because we want more freedom. And very quickly, we get sucked into working way more. And then our epigenetics come in and all all all of this other stuff kind of comes in and takes over. Right? So it’s really coming back to those foundational things of asking yourself, what do you want? Why are you doing this? Because and I again, I know that sounds cheesy and I know that sounds cliche, but you can stop this business whenever you want. Anybody can.

Steph Blake [00:21:33]:
You can go back and you can you can you can get a job. Right? Like, there there are a lot of different options available for all of us, and entrepreneurship is not easy. Simplifying your business, honestly, it’s not easy for for a lot of us either. So it’s really, again, checking in on yourself, asking yourself if that’s what you want. If it is, great. Let’s do it. But it’s going to be probably a difficult journey for a lot of people. You’re going to have to face a lot of different things, about yourself that you don’t want to.

Steph Blake [00:22:01]:
You’re going to have to make a lot of hard decisions, especially when it comes to reducing, the offers because I work with so many people who are selling so many different things, and they have to eliminate a lot of those different offers. They have to also get into a state where they’re comfortable with not adding other offers on. And again, that’s where the nervous system work comes in. So there there’s so many different layers to this. But really, the first piece is asking yourself, do you wanna keep doing this at the rate that you’re doing this at now? If no, okay, then it’s time to simplify. Or else you’re going to be just like me and headed to the hospital, frankly. That’s just the truth of the situation.

Jennie Wright [00:22:44]:
Absolutely. And for those of us who’ve been in business for, this length of time, I’m getting tired. I love what I do, but I can’t go with the level that I did twelve years ago and have 18 clients going all at once where I’m working on 18 summits. I was working like, what, 13 a day easily on that. Crazy, crazy stuff. This is why when we’re younger, we can do all this, but as we get a bit older, it really makes sense for the simplification. Also, I want to spend more time. The reason I have this business and you do too is you want to spend more time with your family.

Jennie Wright [00:23:24]:
I retired my partner, you retired your husband. I want more of that lifestyle and I want to be able to And everybody listening probably wants to be able to say, I’m taking tomorrow off so that I can do XYZ. Or, you know what, I need today’s a mental health day. I’m gonna indulge in taking care of myself or something like that. And I definitely do that. And you have to have the setup to make that happen.

Steph Blake [00:23:50]:
Absolutely. It doesn’t happen overnight at all. And again, we can continue on with this conversation for hours and hours and hours. Right? But I actually I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this or not, but I actually am launching a mastermind in October for higher level entrepreneurs who have been doing this for a while. And like you said, like, you’re just tired. You’re just tired. Tired. You you wanna see results, like, really quickly and you wanna be in a small group where with other people who get it.

Steph Blake [00:24:21]:
Because, frankly, it’s it’s so different at the different stages of business or the beginning is so different from whether you’re from, like, five years in and then from ten years in. Right? You’re you’re just you’re just at a different level. Yep. So there’s different problems at

Jennie Wright [00:24:34]:
like 6 plus figures. There’s different problems. You know, as you as you grow, there’s different problems that all these different sort of steps that you have to go through. And at this level, it’s a different conversation than when I started or when anybody is listening and starting. That’s cool. You should make sure that that Mastermind link ends up in our show notes, so

Steph Blake [00:24:53]:
that would be cool. I will. I’ll make sure that you get it.

Jennie Wright [00:24:55]:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Steph. This has been so much fun. I knew the moment that we got on that Instagram live, we were going to be besties. We were just going to have a good time, geek out, and talk about all the things. So I really appreciate it. Let everybody know where they can find you, get in touch with you, and learn more about what you do.

Steph Blake [00:25:11]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So my website is theblakecollective.com and you can find everything you need to find there. Guess what? It’s really simple. It just says one, two, three. You click on the thing that you want. And my Instagram handle is also the blake collective. You can hang out with me there.

Steph Blake [00:25:28]:
Send me a DM. Let me know you listened to this episode. And I know you’re also gonna add the the links to the show notes for the Simple Business School, Simple Business Suite, all of that as well.

Jennie Wright [00:25:37]:
Absolutely. And, yeah. I mean, as somebody who loves pages and the way pages are built, I will tell everybody that in the if you go to the simple business suite and that’s simplebizsuite.com and you click on the calculator to figure out whether or not it makes sense, the calculator is divine. It’s amazing and it makes the decision. I always say this stupid simple, right? So if you can make somebody’s decision stupid simple and have them think less and make more action, it’s going to be a good day. So I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Steph. Thank you.

Steph Blake [00:26:12]:
Thank you for having me. This is great.

Jennie Wright [00:26:14]:
Absolutely. And as always, if you’re interested in hearing more about the acquire podcast, head on over to wherever it is that you’ve been listening and hit that subscribe button. There are so many good episodes coming up. I have got a lot of them already recorded for the rest of this year, which is really cool. And then we’ve got the solo episodes, which is just me kind of having a good rant. And, those are fun too. So make sure you check those out again from the odd phonics podcast network. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you all soon.

Steph Blake [00:26:49]:
Soon.