Episode 119: Stop Reinventing the Wheel in Your Business

How much time are you wasting recreating things that already work? This week, we’re diving into the power of working smarter, not harder—because let’s be honest, constantly reinventing the wheel is exhausting and unnecessary.

We talk about why repurposing content, streamlining processes, and focusing on strategy can save you time, energy, and frustration. Plus, we challenge you to take a hard look at where you might be overcomplicating things in your business (hint: it’s probably happening more than you think).

In this episode, we cover:
✅ The difference between responding vs. reacting in business
✅ How top content creators repurpose their best-performing content
✅ Why you need to stop minding the same well and find fresh audiences
✅ The small, everyday tasks that might be draining your energy unnecessarily
✅ A simple challenge to help you audit your business and start working smarter today

If you’re tired of feeling like you’re always starting from scratch, this episode is for you. Listen in, take action, and let’s start making strategic, proactive moves in our businesses.

👉 Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it! And don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and follow us on YouTube for even more business insights.

Let’s get after it! 🎧🔥

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Read the full transcript of this episode below:

 

Lynn Howard

Hey, I’m Lynn.

Amanda Furgiuele

And I’m Amanda. Welcome to the Pursuit of Badasserie, the podcast. We have a question for you. Are you working smarter or harder?

How are you working these days? know this is a topic that many of us have heard about, but let’s talk about not reinventing the wheel.

Let’s work smarter, not harder today. Let’s get after it.

Lynn Howard

Yeah, I think we’re going to definitely, I’d love that you put through in the point about not reinventing the wheel because there are so many different ways in our life and in business that we can work smarter and not harder.

I think some of these will apply, but I know that really because this was a topic of discussion, isn’t it fascinating to me how we have different clients, we have the same clients together, right?

And that it seems very seasonal that our clients are going through the same time. Now this is a pretty good time of year and also with

Um, you know, some of the events that we have going on or coming up, it is kind of a topic that’s coming up anyway.

Um, but we really want to talk about like your business structure and what you’re doing in your business, not necessarily your referral network and different aspects, but kind of overall.

Um, and yeah, it’s always fascinating to me, but I had a, I actually had a great conversation with one of our, one of our clients, our together clients.

And we were looking at her year and, um, to see like, you know, she was so overwhelmed with all the things and she needed to increase profitability, but, um, really kind of figuring out where that could be without adding more time to her, without having to pay more expenses.

And it’s really, it’s one of my most favorite things to do with clients, um, to help them see like, hey, you already have X going on over here.

It actually won’t cost

Amanda Furgiuele

So I’m not making sense from everybody else, but I know I know you’re talking about, I know you’re talking about and you know, I was having a conversation with one of my clients this week about a lead magnet, we were talking lead magnets, she wanted to increase her, her following.

And she’s like, okay, what’s the best lead, what’s the lead magnet you have had the best results was like, oh, this one from three years ago, but I can’t use that because everybody’s already seen it I’m like, three years ago.

These are your ideal people, and it got you the most results and used it three years ago, why not reintroduce it to a whole new set of people who are now following you on Instagram, you can become your newsletter people and she’s like, oh, I didn’t even think that I could reuse.

And I know that seems very simplified. I’m not trying to like, but this is a simple version of what we’re talking about here that sometimes it is just as easy as repurposing things that worked before it’s rinse and repeat.

So if there are things that work in your business that have worked in the past, just because it worked before and you’re worried about it oversaturating that particular product or service.

You can reuse it in a different way. can remarket it in a different way. can market it to a different demographic.

are lots of ways that you can redo these things without having to create an entirely new product or an entirely new service or in this case like an entirely new e-book.

You don’t have to redo everything, particularly if there’s been this large period of time. goes so fast. It is already February.

Lynn Howard

When did that happen?

Amanda Furgiuele

I blinked. It’s February. people are doing their life is life and people are doing their own things. They’re not noticing everything you do.

So just because it seems fresh in your mind, it may not be fresh to your entire audience. And so there’s lots of ways that you can repurpose and you can continue to work on what you already have without creating all this extra work and energy and hiring somebody to do something.

There are lots of ways that you can achieve great results by just reusing what you already have in a smart way.

Lynn Howard

Yes. in two points. First of all, if your brand hasn’t been upgraded in the past three years, then there’s something going on.

So just refreshing that document to look new again, shining it up to make it pretty. But also, you’ve heard about Colgo Mine, which we should probably have a podcast on itself around this.

I know we’ve spoken around it a lot, but she made a comment, or I’m assuming she’s she, I can’t remember when he said cheer, but your client made a comment about, they’ve already all seen it.

You should not be mining in the same well all the time, don’t you want new people? And that is like one of the biggest kind of pushbacks is like, oh, everybody’s seen that already, or everybody.

No, not first of all, Ideal client. I’m only talking about your ideal client here. so, So they need those points of contact, right?

They need to be reminded, oh, yeah, that’s right. I did get that, but I didn’t do anything with it, right?

But it’s not about continuing to dig. It’s like, you know, I had this conversation this week, and I think this is from the other hat that I aware.

But actually, I’ve had this conversation a couple of times about how when you keep planting the same seed in the same soil or same crop in the same soil over and over and over again, it depletes the soil of all of its nutrients.

You have to infuse it with new, it’s the same with your business. You have to infuse it with new people, new vibrancy, right?

it’s the same kind of concept. So I love that you brought that up.

Amanda Furgiuele

And I definitely feel like that’s a rival who we can go down in one of our podcasts. Oh, for sure, but it’s so relevant though, because you get so blind, like you could blinders on.

Like this is what I’m talking about, and I’m talking to these people, and then nobody else is listening. But really, and it doesn’t…

This is sample I gave is a three year time period, but it could be a six month time period.

are lead magnets that I see that I sign up for again, because I forgot that I signed up for it in the first place because I never opened the email.

So I’m just saying from perspective not to like show you guys how poorly I check emails, but to show you that it’s terrible really.

But even your ideal client could still need that information because there’s all sorts of things that happen that don’t revolve around your business and I know your business is tuned with it and it’s your baby and no one will know your business the way you do.

That doesn’t mean your ideal client is bored with it or is looking away or interested anymore. They might just have other things going on and they didn’t see it.

It’s really quite possible not to see things, even if you sent like seven emails. It’s really possible that they didn’t see it because things go so fast.

We’ve made this analogy before. Think about a time you saw a video. it on a Facebook feed, and then you go back to try to find it and you’re never going to find it again, even if you know the page that you saw it on, you’re like, oh, yeah, it was so and so as advertised, but you’re never going to see that advertisement again.

It’s never going to be there, because information is churning so fast. So why reinvent something constantly? 90% of your audience and potential new audience didn’t see it in the first place.

So there’s lots of ways that you can repurpose without seeming boring and dull. And it comes down to even your social media feed.

It’s okay use the same video twice, guys. It’s really okay to use the same picture or the same theme of I mean, in fact, we recommend that you focus on these same content pillars.

We don’t want to be having a new piece of content every day that doesn’t dilutes what you’re trying to talk about because yes, every business, there are more things than just one thing.

It’s not like you only sell gum. Okay, you might sell net gum and then bubble gum flavor gum. like, there’s more than one product, most almost every business, there’s more than one thing.

In some, like even a pizza parlor also sells pasta, also sells drinks, also sells. even if your main item, the point is like, you don’t want to talk about every single tiny little item on your menu, you want to talk about the things that’s going to pull people in, get them though your main content pillars, the main purpose of your business, the main core problems that you solve, and then introduce them to it later once they’re sort of hooked.

We want to bring people in to your main things, like what are you, what’s the problem you’re solving? What is it you’re doing?

Like I’ll sneeze down a little bit and get down to, and I know that’s such cliche thing, that’s a niche down, everybody’s sneezeing down.

But what is it that you’re solving? What’s the problem you’re solving? What is the product? How can we reinvent that rather than recreate it every single time?

We don’t have to make a new wheel every time. We can kind of polish off what we have, add some new to tread, and then move on instead of having to like chisel out a new wheel, caveman style, and make the wheel for the first

first time ever, and this is what we’re talking about here, businesses, there’s always something you can do to repurpose what you’ve done before, assuming it’s quality.

Lynn Howard

It’s actually almost never that you have to an established business. It’s completely pivoting. It’s almost never that you have to completely start from scratch.

You have something in your warehouse, something in your assets, be it content, be it processes, be it offers, be it lead magnets, whatever, that you can maybe even use as a template to create that or whatever.

So get out of the mind that you have to create something new every single time. That’s not the case.

And what we find too is when entrepreneurs are in that mode and they feel like they They’re all the workings of their business, it feels very disjointed, but a lot of times it is disjointed because they’re not looking at the full picture and seeing how everything leaves into one another, how it’s not an independent.

And we’re not talking about the sales cycle that something different, but this is like the way your business is running.

So I think everything that you and I just said, but also like looking ahead too. So not just assessing what you have and seeing what, but like looking ahead, even when you’re in creation mode, like how can the scale, Amanda and I, till we’re blue in the face when we’re walking potential clients, when we’re walking and do you have room to grow?

Do you have room to grow? Is there scalability in this particular process or structure content, whatever, so that way you can grow?

Because if you look at it that way, then you’re also looking at all the mechanisms that can grow with it, right?

So, and you’re also not pitching whole in yourself, but you have to start, stop, start, create, stop, right? So really thinking ahead, and are you able to look at this with scalability in mind?

Is it going to be able to hold capacity? Now, I’ll give you a great example. Mind you, man and I sometimes not as easily, but we try to practice what we preach as much as possible.

We find ourselves in these goals as well. So, we’re talking from experience, but we’ll give you an example. When we launched the BA, strategy was to go into a bigger platform, but I already had a platform

was paid for from previous and so we just integrated that platform and then when we got to a certain point we bought into a platform that was more robust, that gave us more growing and we invested into a certain platform that actually gave us the ability for the licensees that we’ll bring on, et cetera, et cetera.

So it gives us the ability to be even more robust. So you’re always wanting to look at the growth aspect or the scalability aspect of that particular.

Again, it could be a platform, could be a program, it could be your process, it could be everything in your business by looking at it.

Amanda Furgiuele

Absolutely. mean, you talked a little bit about the sales process and I don’t want make this about the sales process but it’s the same concept of looking ahead.

What’s the next step in the client journey? What’s the next thing they’re going to buy because most entrepreneurs or most business owners know that it is much cheaper to get an existing client.

It must easier to get an existing client to buy more from you than it is to bring in a whole new person.

So what’s the next thing that they’re going to buy? What’s the next thing they’re going to buy into? What’s the next thing that you’re going to be pitching?

What’s the next thing to help you scale and grow? And that can be from a sales process. It can be just from a structural process in your business.

And the programs that you make, because it’s funny that you talk about this. I mean, not funny, haha, but it’s funny, interesting.

Because again, our clients are having kind of the same conversations at the same time. One of my clients this week was talking about creating a new, she wants to start a new platform.

And that’s great. I’m not against this platform, but she never really finished the last thing she was working on.

And she thinks that that thing didn’t work out because this new problem, this new idea is going to be the thing that makes that thing go off.

Lynn Howard

like, they’re not even ready. That’s that mentality.

Amanda Furgiuele

They’re not even related. not even on the same content. It’s like adjacent. Ideal clients, like some of the clients will wait until we, but they’re, they’re not, they’re not the same.

How many businesses I started, I thought about starting in the last three weeks, I was like, I’m going to start a travel company, I’m going to start a moving business, I’m going start a clean up company.

I went down a rabbit hole mentally. I didn’t do it because I’m focusing on something else. But had I not had the direction and focus in another business venture, I absolutely would have gone and created like six more LLCs this week.

know I would have. I know I would have. So but that’s the idea here is that we don’t want to reinvent new businesses to start a new LLC when you’re trying to hyper focus and grow what you have in front of you because that’s whatever it is that whatever business you’re trying to grow, you’re going to repurpose, you’re going to reinvent things, you’re going to rebrand a little bit, you’re going to reuse what you have, grow upon a stronger foundation and then see that growth and that scaling go exponentially rather than start to stop, start a new business, grow it a little bit up, stop new business idea or new project idea.

or new product idea, you know who you are, folks, doesn’t always have to be reinvent everything. just because everybody talks about needing more content, oh, just get more content out there, get more creative.

I’m not saying don’t be creative and don’t put content, good content out in the world, good content out in the world.

But you don’t have to be constantly recreating to the point where you’re reinventing and working overdrive on everything hamster wheel, everything that you do.

Where is that going to get you? That’s just going to get you starting over again, over and over again in your hamster wheel, running manically, but you’re still in that same cage, not on the way it is all blocked.

Lynn Howard

So, and I don’t, I mean, I would have to, I would need to look into a little bit more, but I don’t know because things change so rapidly in the social media world is like six months ago, even the top content creators.

we’re telling you that they’re repurposing their their content every three to six months, they’ll turn around and repurpose it again.

They’ll look at their analytics and I don’t want to do this, I know you do this too, is that look at their analytics, see what that quarter, maybe two quarters ago perform the best and repurpose that particular thing, even sometimes like bringing back that exact same content, et cetera, but making it shiny again.

So being smart about it, and you kept the dialogue that you had actually, I want to bring home with, it is when you were looking ahead, when you’re doing everything the man who just said and I said earlier is you’re able to actually make proactive decisions and not reactive decisions, you’re able to make proactive steps and not reactive steps, you’re able to respond to things and not react to things.

And this gives you the ability to stand center. It’s funny. I actually had a conversation with one of my hats.

I’m a fractional CEO for companies, and I had a conversation with one of my partners, and there’s a little bit of a language barrier, although their English is great.

Their primary language is in English. So sometimes my, and also the way I use words is different than the way a man uses words and sometimes, etc.

So there was a word that I use, and it was like that I’m a bit worried. I don’t think that that’s exactly the word, but essentially he was like, don’t be worried.

You got to be grounded and respond. It’s just matter of fact. And that’s things that I say all the time.

wasn’t, I wasn’t meaning that I’m worried about it. It’s just that my spidey senses are telling, giving me some heads up of, I don’t trust a certain thing that’s happening.

so like my, but it was so true. He’s like, no, you’re grounded in it. So don’t respond. And essentially you were telling me, listen, be grounded, don’t respond or don’t react, respond, this is the response, this is the matter of fact response.

And it was just a reminder of so serendipitous that we’re doing this today, this recording when that happened. But when you are able to audit, understand what you have, look at all of the assets, when you’re able to like repurpose refresh, but also think ahead, it absolutely gives you the ability to be in the driver’s seat and be purposeful, proactive, and respond versus reactive in your business and in your decision-making, which allows you to be more grounded, have a more stable kind of mindset and movement, again, which means you’re working smarter.

Amanda Furgiuele

You know, I love that you said respond versus react. I’m actually writing it down because we should do a whole podcast on that because that’s it.

We say it all the time. We say it the time, and it’s so relevant. brought up a lot of things.

things that that Clyde’s had this week that I respond, not react. But again, from the perspective of working smarter, not harder, even that will help make you work harder because if you’re constantly reacting and you’re constantly, everything’s a reactive response to sales, a reactive response to, know, PR react, it’s exhausting.

And you’re working harder, not smarter, and you’re trying to reinvent your brand every single time something comes up because, oh, what this this came up.

And ultimately, what we’re trying to impart on you is that we know we speak a lot about strategy. We know we talk a lot about being proactive in your business.

That is part of our content pillars of what we try to impart onto other entrepreneurs and small business owners.

And that strategy comes from looking ahead and having a forethought to be like, if I do A in my business, then it should lead to B and then to C and then eventually to Z, if I do it in this order, if I do this kind of growth, the last thing you want is to be continually

starting back at pay, like 8.1, 8.2, 8.C. Like where you just make up these extra numbers and letters so that you can kind of feel like if you’re still on the same path that you’re recreating things that aren’t really working in your business.

And moreover, if you find that something was working before and suddenly you’re not getting the movement that you want.

So let’s say you have a program in Lin’s example, you have a program that you’re working on and it’s a group a group program and it’s working but you want to start something else because you need the revenue, but you can’t necessarily add onto your plate.

Well, find new ways to rework what you already have and find a new audience. Find a new, you can’t be continually, as Lin said, minding in the same well.

You do need the refresh client acquisition. You do need that. You do need fresh eyes on your stuff. And that’s where you could repurpose a lot of things because those fresh eyes haven’t seen anything that you’re doing and you can just because, I mean, yes, your opinions can change over the years.

We all have. We all grow and develop and evolve and if you would ask me my leadership, my leadership advice 20 years ago would be very different than the leadership advice I would give now.

Very different.

Lynn Howard

But if you skip podcast, throwback, throwback podcast.

Amanda Furgiuele

If you’re really, if you still believe in that thing, if that’s still part of your company, then you need to be talking about it again.

know, we go back and listen to our podcast on talking about your business. But you need to be talking about those things.

need to be reinventing those things because if it’s still a core value and if it’s still a core belief and it’s still a core pillar that you have in your business, it’s worth talking about again.

And it’s worth bringing up again in a different way. And it’s worth reaching out to a whole different audience who haven’t seen it or who, even if they have seen it, but really never absorbed it and implemented it.

Lynn Howard

Yes. Yes. So challenge for you is, where can you, where, First of all, where are you recreating the wheel?

And this could be even in your mind because a lot of times it actually stops at the mind because we’re all in our like recreating, we have to do this and a lot of people will freeze or get overwhelmed, right?

So where are you constantly recreating the wheel? And where can you work smarter or not harder using some of the mechanisms or the points that we gave you today?

Because listening to the podcast is just one thing, but doing something with it is where you’re gonna see the movement, it’s where you’re gonna see you’re going to see different results.

So just stop the podcast, write down where you’re recreating the wheel, even if it’s just in your mind, and where are you working harder, not smarter?

And then look at what you got. Look at your assets, what can you refresh and repurpose? Where do you want it to go?

Do you have strategic growth? Do you have the ability to grow? Where or can you be proactive and responsive versus reactive?

Yeah. And how can you work more strategically?

Amanda Furgiuele

Absolutely. And remember, it doesn’t have to be a big scale item. A lot of the burnout that I’ve been seeing recently, and all you burnout loosely, because it’s not really burnout, it’s just mis-prioritization, overwhelm.

A lot of that comes from the small things you do every day that suddenly, like, I’ll give it a very simple, you have a fitness class.

And every single day, you feel like you have to research an entirely new playlist, an entirely new apps that you can’t teach the same exercise twice.

Yes, you can. No one’s. I mean, that’s why people have squats and pushups. Like, they can go in any workout.

It doesn’t have to be a completely new TikTok version of a pushup every single time. You don’t have to reinvent every single time.

I guess you can repurpose and reorder things and make it shinier and add to new fluff. But if you’re exhausting yourself with all these little tiny minutiae things, because you’re trying to recreate

eight or sorry, you’re trying to reinvent everything every time, that is exhausting. That is exhausting. So think about it.

What are the even the little things in your business that you are constantly redoing unnecessarily?

Lynn Howard

Absolutely. Share this podcast with somebody in your network who needs to stop recreating the wheel, who needs to start working smarter, not harder, who’s just at that like, I have to change something.

Go ahead and share this, hit subscribe, share in your social media. mean, we would love to be like a shout out on your social media.

Amanda Furgiuele

And of course, if you are listening to this on any platform, go ahead and head over to our YouTube and subscribe to that as well.

We want you to follow us because we want to impart our brilliant knowledge. And if you have questions, please ask them if you have comments that you want us to discuss, please reach out because we have a ridiculous bank of knowledge to come from.

and we want to help you in your business.

– Lynn Howard

Absolutely. Till next time.

Amanda Furgiuele

Get after it.