Amanda McVicker 0:00
Hello and welcome to today's episode of The OBM Educator. I'm really excited to talk about today's topic, which is what does building an intentional OBM business look like? A little, I guess, definition time when you're looking at the word intentional, which I think does get thrown around a lot. The idea of it is to do something deliberately, which means that you're making choices and you're aware of those choices, usually something along the line that it aligns with your values or your goals.
And it's not something that is done by accident or on autopilot. And so talking about this now, I think in the beginning of the year is such a time when people are wanting to be more intentional in their business. A lot of people choose intentional as their word of the year.
I know I have. But what does it mean to actually build an intentional OBM business and how can you do that in a way that's not adding even more onto your plate, but instead in a way that feels aligned with you and what you are wanting to get out of your business? So let's get started. Welcome to The OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven-figure entrepreneurs, as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and competence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business.
So the first thing that really should come to mind when you're looking at building an intentional business is knowing your capacity. And so in this instance, I'm talking about capacity in what you are able to take on. And so that's going to look like an hour's standpoint, how much time you are able to devote to your business. And so this is really important to actually sit down and calculate.
Like this shouldn't be a wishy-washy number. This should be a concrete number that you know, and that you know where you're around. So when you have the possibility of getting a new client, and you're trying to think, do you have the capacity? Do you have space to take on this client? It is something that you just know.
You know that you have five extra hours a week to take on a new client, and that that is available to be taken. What happens when we don't know our capacity, or we are not firm on our capacity, is that we overcommit, right? We keep saying yes to clients, to new clients, to new projects, opportunities, things like that, because we don't have a concrete idea of what our capacity is. And if you are just allowing yourself to keep saying yes to opportunities, and keep putting more onto your plate, you're not being intentional with what you are wanting to get out of your business.
Which you know, for people it's all different, but I know a lot of us got into this business because we didn't want to be working 40 hours a week. And so if our business brings us back to that time working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, and we don't have a better grasp on what it is that we realistically can take on, we are building a business that is not going to sustain us or support us in the long run. And then the next thing of building an intentional business, and this kind of piggybacks off of that, is having boundaries, right? So you know your capacity.
You know how much time you can commit to your business. Now you need to have boundaries around it. So boundaries, it's going to be around all sorts of different things.
Time is a huge one, right? How many hours are you going to work? What is your availability? If you don't have an idea of those boundaries, or you don't have it you know explicitly stated out, clients are probably going to cross those boundaries. Not for anything negative, but just because they didn't know that they existed. You also need to have boundaries on the types of clients that you would take on.
If you know that a type of client is not going to be a good fit, you need to have those boundaries to say no so that your business can grow intentionally. And the same thing for the type of work that you do. If you know that you don't want to be doing social media, or copywriting, or graphic design, then you need to have those boundaries in place so that you don't fall into the trap of, okay well just this one time, or yeah I suppose I could do that.
Having boundaries in an intentional OBM business is really a key way to creating a business that is going to run the way that you want it to run. You know when we look back at that definition of intentional, it's not by accident, it's not on autopilot. A lot of the times we can be on autopilot and say yes to a bunch of things, be on autopilot and cross our boundaries.
But when we make the decision that the business that we want to have supports us and the life that we want to live, then boundaries are crucial to making that happen. And then the third thing is knowing when something isn't working and then fixing it. I think this is definitely the hardest one.
You know knowing your capacity and sticking to it, that's hard because you're saying no to things. Having boundaries and sticking to them is hard because you're you know standing up to people, right? But knowing when something isn't working and then having to fix it is really hard because you're going up against people, institutions, expectations, all of those different things. And it's really outside of a lot of people's comfort zone to do that.
But also it is the necessary result of knowing your capacity and having boundaries, right? If you are firm on those things, you know when something isn't working. If you know your capacity and you went over it intentionally, right? On purpose, you know that that's not going to work and you need to fix it. If you have boundaries that are being crossed, you know it.
And if you want to continue creating an intentional business, it needs to be fixed. An example, maybe a bit of a drastic one, but when I was first starting as an OBM, I booked out pretty quickly and I kept getting leads because as you get more clients and those clients are happy, they're talking to other people, and you're going to end up having an influx of leads that it's really hard to say no to, right? And so I had a time where I was getting new leads and taking them on, onboarding them, all of that stuff, even though I knew they weren't good fits. I knew that they were not the type of client that I really wanted to be working with, the work-wise and personality-wise, and all of it was making me want to just burn down my business.
And I mean, at that point, I was less than a year into being an OBM and I knew that something had to change. And so I let go of these clients that I had just onboarded. I think that there was one client, it was within the first month that I just was like, I can't continue with this.
And I ended that contract. That was really uncomfortable, right? To be talking to this new client that we had our strategy session, our 90-day plan, talking through all of that. And I had to be like, hey, I can't be a part of this.
Like, I'll help you find someone else, but I can't do it. That's really hard. And I remember feeling at the time that I was wrong for doing it, that even though I knew it was the right thing for my business, it was the wrong thing to do.
But ultimately, in the long run, making that decision allowed me to create a business that I can come to work each day and be excited for what I'm going to be doing. When I had clients like that, where they were over my capacity, they were crossing the boundaries. They were not the type of people that I wanted to work with.
It was hard to be excited to come to work each day. So all of these three things can help you in creating a more intentional OBM business. If it's your goal in 2026 to create a more intentional OBM business and you want support in doing that, I do have my OBM sprint, which is a 30-day container in Slack.
It's Slack coaching where we go back and forth on anything that is going on in your business, anything that you would like. But a lot of people use it to talk about how they can change their business from what they put together on autopilot with saying yes to everyone and everything, getting burnt out, maxed out on capacity, and how they can change it into a more intentional business that will have longevity that they can enjoy in the long run. So if you're interested in learning more about the sprint, I did put the link in the description.
You can also send me a message on Instagram @amandamcvicker_OBM and I can answer any questions that you would like. I hope this was helpful for you and I will talk with you all next week. Bye.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of The OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Want to be a guest on The OBM Educator? Fill out the form in the show notes and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on The OBM Educator.
