Afford Anything - Rachel Rodgers: The Million Dollar Mindset
Episode Date: June 28, 2024#518: If you want to learn about building wealth through entrepreneurship, you’ll enjoy this episode. When Rachel Rodgers graduated from law school, she didn’t take the conventional path to workin...g at a big law firm. Instead, she opened her own practice, specializing in intellectual property law. Many of her clients were entrepreneurs and small business owners. Rachel quickly realized that many of her clients faced significant challenges in trying to grow their business. This ignited a new vision in her: to not just provide legal services but to help entrepreneurs achieve financial success. She pivoted, shutting down her law practice to open Hello Seven, a company that offers comprehensive business strategies to help entrepreneurs reach seven-figure incomes. She joins us today to share actionable insights that can help any entrepreneur, side hustler or small business owner reach seven figures in revenue. Timestamps: [Note: Time codes will vary on individual listening devices based on advertising run times.] 1:10 - Rachel introduces herself and her background in intellectual property law. 3:45 - Decision to start her own law practice. 5:27 - Challenges faced as a new lawyer and entrepreneur. 7:15 - Importance of financial independence and wealth-building for marginalized communities. 10:05 - Inspiration behind founding Hello Seven. 12:30 - Vision for Hello Seven and its mission to help entrepreneurs reach seven-figure incomes. 15:20 - The need for scaling businesses and making strategic decisions. 18:45 - Transition from a legal practice to a broader business coaching platform. 22:10 - Impact of Hello Seven's programs on entrepreneurs' lives. 24:55 - Concept of the "Million Dollar Badass." 28:30 - Success stories of clients. 31:15 - Challenges of balancing business growth with personal life. 34:05 - Importance of mindset in achieving business success. 37:20 - Introduction of the Hello Seven Foundation and its focus on supporting black mothers and babies. 40:00 - Plans for the future of Hello Seven and commitment to social impact. 42:30 - Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to build successful businesses. 45:10 - Importance of mentorship and community support in entrepreneurship. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode518 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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We often hear myths, limiting beliefs, ideas about money that hold us back.
But what if we could bust through these and earn far more than we'd ever imagined?
This sounds a little bit like a pipe dream, but Rachel Rogers is here to tell us that it's not.
Rachel Rogers is a former intellectual property lawyer who is now the CEO of Hello 7, a company that helps entrepreneurs get to 7 figures in income.
Yes.
But seven figures, that doesn't happen without reframing your mentality and without learning how to develop systems and processes and without just battling through a lot of psychological hurdles, logistical hurdles.
So we're going to discuss all of that right now.
Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything.
Every choice that you make carries a tradeoff.
Yes.
So what matters?
most and how do you make decisions accordingly? Answering those two questions is what this show is all about.
I'm Paula Pant, your host. Welcome, Rachel. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here.
Rachel, what made you? Being a lawyer sounds so, first of all, it's a heck of a workload to get
there, right? I've never taken a bar exam, but I've been told it is not easy. So, and an IP lawyer,
that's technical, it's prestigious. What made you decide to leave you?
that. Yes. Well, I was bored. And yeah, I think when I get bored, I start sabotaging myself in some
ways. And I, I had my own law practice and I had a whole host of clientele and I was starting
to become more known. And it was very easy to get clients. And we were growing. But I hated the
work. I loved running the business. I loved having a team. I loved doing the marketing and the sales.
I liked having clients and serving them.
I hated being up all night, like, working on a contract, you know, or trademark registration.
I liked the strategy behind it, but I didn't want to actually do it.
My skill set is more of being face to face with people.
And so as an attorney, I spent a lot of time researching behind my desktop, right, like not interacting.
And I didn't love that part.
So, and I think honestly, sometimes what happens.
with us as humans is we get really good at something and then we're like, I'm bored now.
Like it's too easy.
Right.
And now I want to do something else.
So that's kind of what happened is, you know, and I did it for about seven years.
And then I was ready to move on.
And I felt really lit up and excited about business.
I loved managing a business.
I loved owning a business, growing a business, figuring out.
Because it is exactly how you described.
Like you're going from solving one problem to the next.
Like what's the problem of the week or the month?
And what's the complex issue we have to figure out a creative solution?
to I love that piece, but I was very bored with practicing law. So I let that go and just decided
to follow what I was lit up and excited about. Did you sell the company? Did you dissolve the
company? What did you do with it? I didn't sell it. I should have sold it. And actually, I did have
someone tell me, I was sort of already in the process of transitioning into coaching and like way into it.
And they were like, you should sell the law practice. And I just felt like it felt like going back.
And I was like, no, I just want to leave it behind. I just want to wrap up these last few cases and
move on to the next thing. And speaking of intellectual property that was in my law practice,
I carried it over into the business coaching that I was doing. So like in my programming,
we have contract templates and step-by-step instructions for doing all of the legal things.
And so all of that programming and content that I used to run my practice, I sort of built it
into my business coaching programs because entrepreneurs need all of that. So I sort of carried that
over, but I certainly had a roster of clients that I could have absolutely sold the assets of the
business to somebody else. Right. Now, with something like owning a law practice, there are high
barriers to entry to that. And so my assumption is any type of business that has high barriers to
entry would likely have a greater likelihood of being profitable than something like a coaching
business where there are, relatively speaking, lower barriers to entry. Right. Why would you switch from a high
barrier to entry business to a low barrier to entry business. Yeah, that's a great question. Well,
I think because it was less about what are the barriers and what would other people want or what is
the industry saying? And it was more about what did I want and what did I feel called to do?
So I felt like I felt constrained by talking about business law all the time because I was talking
about business law. I was educating people about IP, but I wanted to expand beyond that and talk about
business in general and talk about being a CEO and some of the challenges and what was fun about it.
And it just felt limiting. So I think I'm the type of person that I don't care what the industry is
doing and I don't care what you're supposed to do. I'm a naturally rebellious person. So I like
zig when everyone's zagging, you know? Or vice versa. So I think once I get to a place where I'm not
lit up about it, it's hard for me to power through. Like I just lose the motivation to keep going. So it's
of like the only option was to put it either put it down and find something else new or find
myself plateauing and then being on a downward trajectory because I just wasn't feeling it anymore,
you know?
That was a mental challenge that I had to overcome though because I was so used to saying,
I'm an attorney, right?
Or I'm an intellectual property lawyer.
That's something that a lot of people in society are impressed with.
You get praised for that.
Like people understand what that is.
When you say you're a coach, they're like, you're a what?
Yeah.
Like you coach sports.
You know what I mean? And I'm like, no, what kind of coach are you? A business coach. What does that mean? You know what I mean? It's not quite as impressive as being a lawyer. And I had to overcome the mental hurdles of that, which were challenging. I mean, it took me a while to admit to even friends that I wanted to stop practicing law and be a business coach. So it was not an easy thing to do necessarily. It took me a little time to like accept it for myself. But I think honestly, and what
what I always recommend people do is live for you and not what other people think or what other people
want. And that transition, I mean, it's so funny because literally my business was about like 700 grand a
year my practice was making, my law practice. The following year when I finally transitioned out
and started focusing solely on business coaching was my first million dollar year. And even though I
had lost a bunch of clients, basically all this revenue that was coming from the law practice,
put it down and had to get all new revenue from coaching, immediately was making me a million
dollars. So it was just kind of like that was confirmation for me that this is where I'm supposed to
be. Wow. What year was that? That was I think 2017. Wow. 2016 or 2017. It's a blur at this point.
Right. All right. I want to go more into business coaching and all of that. But first, I want to
to lob at you some common objections that people have when we even broach the idea of making more money
or developing a side hustle, developing a business, focusing on the income side of the equation, right?
What if I were to say to you, you know what?
Making money is too hard and I don't want to work 80 hours a week.
Yeah.
And I would say, who lied to you and told you that making money requires 80 hours a week?
That's just a story.
And then I would say, what examples do you have in your life?
of people who are making good money and not working 80 hours a week, right? Let's look for some of those
examples, right? And so, yeah, I would ask them to reframe that and challenge that belief that
because we say things and we're like, this is true. Yeah. It's like, it's actually just a story
that you just made up. Right. You know what I mean? And even the story is about the future.
If I say, I'm going to build a hundred million dollar business, I'm just making it up, right? Like,
I believe it will happen, but it's just a story. It's all made up. So you might as well make up things
that are helpful.
All right.
What about making money is way too risky, you know?
Investing is risky.
Business is risky.
Yeah.
It's also risky to put all of your efforts into a job and potentially get laid off because
there's an economic downturn or because they don't need your department anymore.
That happened to family members of mine.
So you're taking risk when it comes to your income no matter what you do.
So to me, like the ultimate insurance is knowing I have a skill set that I can
always sell. Whether I have a full-time job or I'm a full-time entrepreneur, if I know I can go out there
and sell this skill, that means that I know how to make money no matter what. Money changes people and
rich people are jerks. Yes, this is something that is shared in society a lot. Like, we see movies and
rich people are all jerks. But I think money just makes you more of who you are. And if you're a good
person and you do good work in the world, you're going to do more. Money is going to allow you to do
more of that. And again, I think if we look around our lives, we can see examples of wealthy people who do
great things with their money and contribute to society at a high level. So I think it's just,
it's not real that all wealthy people are terrible. Some wealthy people are delightful.
Money is just going to complicate my life. Yeah. I mean, honestly, being broke will complicate
your life too. Trying to figure out like, hmm, how am I going to pay this bill and, you know,
cover rent and make it to my friend's wedding and get my kid into these extracurriculars, whatever
challenges you're experiencing, I've been poor. I grew up low income, very low income,
and I will tell you it was quite complicated to figure out how to make ends meet for my parents
and something that like I just saw it as a source of constant stress. So to me, money is a tool
to reduce stress to create more wellness, to create more peace and more clarity. So I actually
disagree completely with that statement. Okay, I don't need more money. I'm comfortable where I'm at.
Yeah, I hate that. People say that to me a lot. And I'm just like, I think for some,
maybe some people really don't care about money, but I think most people do. And I think a lot of times
we say that because we want to take the moral high ground. So we're like, oh, it's noble to be like,
I don't care about money. But I'm like, hell no. All right. Well, what if every time I get money,
I screw it up. Yes, that story. That's probably not true. And if you look at evidence of that,
it's always like, I'm a lawyer, right? So I like everything to be evidence based. So I'm like,
prove to yourself that that's not true. Let's look for examples in your life where you did actually
make a really great decision with money. And I'm sure all of us can find a place where we're like,
I made a smart decision. Like, it could be, I went to college and I invested that money in college
and I left college and got a really good job making great money. That was a smart investment. That
was me being good with money, willing to take financial aid or those loans or whatever that
allowed me to make a lot more money in my life. So I think that's a story we tell ourselves. And I think
it's reinforced in society. But I think that if we actually look at our lives, we can see a whole
bunch of examples where we made great decisions with money. So we, of course, we've all made
terrible decisions with money. I've made terrible decisions with money in the last two years, right?
And I study money. And I still sometimes don't get it right. But we all make good decisions
with money as well. I'm too far behind. I'm in too much debt. I'll never catch up. You talk about
seven figures, but I'm just trying to get to a net worth of zero rather than negative. I would say,
great. Let's work towards that as step one. What would it take, right? If you were able to make an extra
$5,000 a month and put that $5,000 a month for debt, great. Solve that problem and then let's go
beyond that. Debt is not the end-all be-all. America has debt. Most wealthy people use debt to buy assets
because it's smarter and strategic, right, than taking money out of your portfolio to buy things.
So debt, I think, just has this really bad rap in our society and people feel like, oh,
I'm a terrible person because I have debt.
And I'm like, please stop that.
Please don't believe that about yourself.
You're using debt and some of us get it wrong and use debt in ways that we have to learn these hard lessons.
I certainly did.
I got credit cards in college and bought stupid things with it, like cute coats,
dinners with friends and I had to learn the hard way and then I learned from it and then I got
smart about how I used debt and now I only used debt to really buy assets. So I think it's,
again, it's a story and we can overcome that. The real crux of all of this is that making
money is easy and I want to challenge people to change that thought process in their mind
that making money is hard. It's so hard. It requires so much labor and so much difficulty,
so much risk, right? Just challenge yourself to believe that actually,
making money is easy and then look for the evidence all around you that making money can be easy.
And then when you see that evidence, you're going to start to train your brain to believe that
and you'll start to see the opportunities in your own life that could be easy that you could make more
money. What's an example of some evidence that making money is easy? Yeah. So an example would be like,
okay, I put money in the stock market and I just wait. Look, I made money. Yeah, I was easy.
You know what I mean? Wasn't hard. Or it could be like when I was in law school and I needed to make some
extra money because I was just focused on studying. I wasn't working much. And so I rented out a room in
my apartment for the summer to his student. And he paid me like $800 a month. That was relatively
easy. Like he was pretty chill and stayed in his room for the most part. And so that wasn't that
difficult. We do this 10K and 10 days challenge in my membership community. And so some of them have
cleaned out their garage and sold all the stuff in their garage and made $5,000 from like old skis that
they're never going to use and other things like that. That can be easy or it could be easy to say,
hey, I know you ask me all the time about insert whatever area that you have some expertise on.
It could be like, you're really good at fashion and like finding really cute pieces and like
putting together great outfits and your friends say, oh, help me pick out an outfit for this event.
What if you said, okay, I can help you do that. It's $500. And you start charging for that.
And your friend's like, 500 bucks, done. And so that's relatively easy. One more example.
my niece in college, she wanted to make extra money.
So when her and her friends were going out, like they were going out for a night on the town,
she would do everybody's makeup.
And she would charge them like 30 bucks a face.
You know what I mean?
Yeah. That's a great deal.
Yeah.
Exactly.
First of all, it's too cheap.
Yeah.
She charges much more now.
I know because she's my makeup artist.
She had these students all around her.
They all wanted to look good when they went out.
She just took advantage of the marketplace opportunity that was right in front of her.
She knew how to do her own makeup.
So she just started learning how to do theirs.
So I think that this idea that it has to be hard or difficult or, you know, toil and trouble, right?
Let's just reframe that and start to believe something different because you can see that both are true.
Making money can be hard, but there are also easy ways to make money.
Right.
Okay.
So let's go then to, for the people who are listening, who want to start a side hustle or want to start a small business, but they don't have time.
They don't have a lot of money that they can sink into this.
they either don't have an idea or they have too many ideas.
Where do they begin?
Yes.
I think that we all have to become students of ourselves.
Just like you would study any subject, study yourself.
So I would go back and think about, okay, what did people always say about me as a child?
What things was I always drawn to as a kid, right?
What were some of my natural talents as a child?
And then I would also take a whole mess of personality assessments.
So Colby, Strength Finders, Disc, there's so many of them.
And when you take them, you'll start to see the, especially when you take multiple of them, you start to see the similarities across these different assessments.
And you're like, oh, I'm really good at this.
That's so true.
I feel like that really resonates with me.
I am good at that.
And so you start to discover what you're really good at, what your work style is.
And then you can look at your resume and look back on what kind of work have you done, what kind of projects have you taken on even as a volunteer or just to help out other people.
And then you can say, oh, I'm really great at party planning, right?
or I'm really great at accounting or building things, right?
It could be any number of things.
So it's almost like you're taking stock, right?
So if you don't have a whole bunch of assets yet, you are your first asset that you can,
you know, see increase in value, right?
Yeah.
In monetary value.
And so you can say, let me take stock of this asset.
What are the different options within it?
And then you can see like, oh, I'm good at this.
I'm good at that.
Let me put those two things together and I can start a little business doing that.
So I always encourage people, yes, I mean,
look at the marketplace, see a need in the marketplace, and match it with your natural skill sets,
what you're drawn to, what you're interested in. I think if we try to force ourselves to do things that
we hate, and you could start with something that you hate if you have to. But I think when you do
that, you actually require so much discipline. And that's when making money is hard. It's because I
hate this job. I hate doing this thing. But this is how I make money. So I have to force myself to do it,
and it feels like hell, right? Yeah. Versus if it's something that you love and you do it for free anyway,
You know what I mean? And you're lit up and excited to do it. Then that's a whole different thing.
Then you're when you get a job, you're like, yes, let's go. So you're doing it for money,
but you're also doing it because you love it. And then it doesn't require so much discipline.
You're going to get up and do it every day anyway because you just love it so much.
So I think that is a secret ingredient that people really underestimate. And I think people say,
what's hot in the industry? What kind of businesses should we start? And I'm just like,
I hate it. I hate it. Let's not look at the industry, right? For sure, we have to look at what is a
market need that's there. But we also have to look at what lights me up, what interests me,
what skills that do I possess, that can allow me to take advantage of that opportunity and build an
amazing business. So let's go back to your story. You shut down the law firm that you started
yourself. Yes. It takes a special courage to shut down something that you started and grew. Yes.
And then you switched over to a coaching business and you went from 700,000 in gross revenue to over a
million in gross revenue in the year that you made that change. How did that come about? I mean,
I've rarely heard of a business that has gone from zero to a million in its first year.
Yeah. Well, I mean, I had a lot of transferable skills. I also had an audience from my law
practice that I could sort of, they were all entrepreneurs. And I mean, it wasn't a huge audience.
I didn't need a ton of customers to make good money in the law practice, right? Because every
customer is paying thousands of dollars. Yeah. Let's say I had an audience of, I don't know,
couple thousand people. Five thousand would be a lot. It's probably more like 2000. And so I had
some things, some assets that I was bringing over to this new business. And then of course,
I had the skill set of having built this law practice. So I did understand like, okay,
I got to get out there and sell this stuff. That's what I did. I just said, okay,
what's a need in the marketplace? I actually started with one client, did just six months with her.
And she did really well as a result of our coaching. And so she started telling all her friends.
and then from that got a couple more clients.
And then I started to do webinars and do just all the ways that I was selling my law practice services.
I just started using those same marketing tools to sell coaching.
And I sold every kind of coaching.
I did one-on-one.
I did VIP days.
I did retreats.
I did eight-week programs.
I did a year-long program and absolutely exhausted myself and realized that's dumb.
Stop delivering 17 different things.
And so from doing all of that, I decided to narrow it down in two.
one main offer. So I did a mastermind that included three retreats and it included a little bit of
one-on-one coaching and a lot of group coaching. And so that was the structure. So I created kind of a
container and then they got access to all of my content and teaching. Once I figured out how to like
narrow it down into one main offer, it became so much simpler. And yeah, and then I just sold it.
Just went around selling it as much as I could. I have a trademark attorney and I'm thinking about what
would happen if he ever contacted me and said, hey, I know I've been doing your trademarks,
but also I have this coaching practice. Yes. I'd be like, you do what now? You what?
Yeah, it is different. But then you might say, like, why are you doing this? And he might say,
well, I've built this very successful law practice. That's highly profitable and has a team. And I know
other people want to learn how to do the same thing. So I'm going to be teaching my services. And then it makes a
little bit more sense. Not everything is for everybody, right? Some people might say, no matter what you
sell, some people are going to say, what are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense.
And other people are going to say, that's amazing and I want it. Give it to me now. Right. And so I think
we always have to make sure we're talking for whom is my service or product a miracle, right? And look for
those segments of the market and talk to them. Because I think sometimes we talk to like our friends and
family or whatever and they're like, I don't get it. But it's like they're not our target market.
Stop talking to them.
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In something like a coaching business, you are simultaneously working in the business, creating the content, as well as on the business.
Yes.
How do you balance the two?
Well, it was challenging for sure.
But because I had a team in my law practice, I always knew to hire.
So I hired help as soon as I could.
Pretty early on in my coaching business, I was hiring other coaches and training them to help me serve my customers.
And then I also did things that were like scalable.
Like I'd record the trainings once and then just have people, you know, every new cohort would watch these same trainings that were recorded one time.
So always trying to find ways to like work smarter, not harder.
and be strategic. And that's like a lot of the intellectual property, right? Like Beyonce,
she's going to sing a song and she's going to record it. And then you get to hear it a million
times a day, right? Like however many streams, right? But she's not singing it for us each time.
She's going to lay it down once and then we can listen to it on demand. And it's similar with
courses or other educational content. I think really, probably any service provider or even retail
stores could have some aspect of their business where if there's something that you're
constantly saying over and over again, just record it. Right? Like, okay.
You make it simpler for people to just receive that information at the right time and build a system or process.
So it's not always you.
So I think those are the things that help to make it easier.
But for sure, there were periods where I was like overworking and trying to do everything myself because I just was being a control freak.
And also just, you know, nervous, not having, haven't figured out the system yet.
Sometimes you just got to be in there to be like, oh, actually, if I did it this way, that would be less work.
So it takes time to figure that out. Now I do not work in my business that much. It's mostly my team who's
delivering all of our services. We have a team of 25 full-time employees. And my job is really to be a
brand ambassador and let the world know about what we do. And then what I'm doing is honing our
content and improving it and editing it, creating new books and new content. So that's kind of really
my role now. And then just creating the vision for the
future of the business at this point. So yeah, I don't, I don't actually have to work.
I just really like to.
On the subject of hiring, so that actually reminds me of something that you've written about,
which is the difference between and because we don't cuss on the show, I'm just going to say
broke, now we can say it, broke-ass decisions.
Broke-ass decisions versus million-dollar decisions.
Yeah.
So you lay down a distinction here.
It involves hiring, but it goes beyond that.
Yes.
So a broke-ass decision would be, one would be not hiring help in your business, but another
would be not hiring somebody to do your laundry.
Yes.
Tell us about that.
So broke-ass decisions are kind of the, I hear, the real reason why I created this is
because in order to become wealthy, to become more abundant, to become a millionaire,
you have to make million-dollar decisions.
So you have to be making decisions that lead you to that place.
If you are making decisions from a place of like restriction and holding onto every dollar and that kind of thing, it usually doesn't lead to a lot of abundance, right?
Massive abundance.
And so brok-ass decisions are ones that are very restrictive, that take away options that make you feel stuck.
And million-dollar decisions are things that make you feel more abundant that allow you to take advantage of your ideas and creativity that help to move you into the next direction.
And so an example would be like, oh, I want to, I need to buy a new couch. And so I could buy a cheap couch for 200 bucks and probably have to replace it in six months. Or I can buy a nice couch for $1,000. And I mean, these are fake numbers because you probably can't get a nice couch for it. Yeah. You know, and then it works for several years. So to me, that's the more abundant decision. You know, being like frugal is not always the most strategic option, you know. Right. So.
teaching people just how to take advantage of those opportunities to like choose the more abundant option.
And that is what usually leads to becoming a millionaire. One example, you might be someone who says,
okay, I'm going to spend a bunch of time trying to save money on some regular bills that I have.
And so you call your phone company, you call your electric company and you call your credit card.
And you call these different companies to renegotiate some things. And maybe you save like $78 a month going forward.
And let's say you spent five hours doing that.
Right. Or you could take that five hours and spend it learning a new skill or learning how to market the skills that you already have, learning how to make money. And then you make $785, right? Or $7,000 as a result of that. So it's like learning how to strategically spend your time on the things that are most profitable, right? Instead of the things that would save you a little bit of money, but it's diminishing returns. Right. How do you do that in cases where the value of a given hour that you spend in your business,
is not obvious. Yes. It's true. Yeah. It's not always obvious, but I think it does require faith and
some risk taking, right? It's kind of like, I'm going to value my time in this way. And if I'm going to do
that, instead of spending, you know, eight hours on the weekend doing my laundry, I'm going to rest on
the weekend. I'm going to use a drop-off service that's maybe cost me $100. But I get eight hours
back for $100. All day, I'd spend that. You know what I mean? Even if it was $200, take my money.
You get that time back. You're rested. Now Monday, you hit the ground running. You're energized and you're ready to tackle the problems that you have. You're ready to reach out to those clients, call them and say, hey, do you want to hire us again? Right. Like then you're doing the money generating activities because you're not showing up to work on Monday exhausted. So that would be an example where, you know, you have faith that your time is more valuable. And how can you make sure that you get the value from that time instead of spending it doing things that exhaust you? And, you know, that excuse of I don't have enough time to work.
on my business, that's how you make time. Right. How do you even recognize the imposter syndrome that follows?
Yes. Well, I think it really helps to have good friends. I think we all need a community of people around
us who are also ambitious, who are also working towards similar things, who are cheering us on.
And it could be like maybe they're not an entrepreneur, but maybe they're an aspiring artist or
author or whatever or climbing the corporate ladder in their careers. And so you want to have a squad of
people that are always cheering each other on as you move forward because that's how I know.
My squad will say to me, I feel like you are sabotaging yourself right now.
Or I feel like you are letting fear take over instead of doing what I know you said you wanted to do for
years. And so they encourage you in those right moments. They say the thing that's hard to say in those
moments when you need that. And then, of course, you are that for them as well. I think that makes a huge
difference. And there's all kinds of different studies that I looked at. But one of them was students,
there was two, there was one in Russia and there was one in the U.S. that looked at students, C students, who hung out with A students, wound up getting better grades over a short period of time.
Like their grades, all the C students, just from being friends with the A students, their grades went up, right?
And there was a similar study in the U.S.
And there's other examples of that, like when we are spending time with people who are motivated, who are positive, we're moving in the same direction that we want to.
it's like a rising tide lifts all boats.
Right.
This doesn't mean like your unambitious friends, you can't hang out with them.
I'm not saying that.
But maybe you want to intentionally spend time with your ambitious friends and your friends who are also working towards careers and who get you in what you're trying to create in the world, you know?
Right.
And who can encourage you and also point out when you're limiting yourself.
In what ways does self-sabotage show up?
Yeah.
Well, an example would be I have this opportunity and I make up excuses as a,
of why I can't take advantage of it because I'm afraid. And I don't say I'm afraid. I might not even
admit to myself that I'm afraid. It's just that, you know, it's like I'll make up all of these
reasons. And we're really good because we're smart people. So we're really good. And I'm a lawyer.
So of course I'm great at making a case for why I shouldn't do the thing that scares me.
And that's why I need people around me, you know, because I will absolutely convince myself.
I think when you take risks on a regular basis and you challenge yourself to like,
go for the thing that you want, but you're a little bit afraid of, and it works out and you're
still here and you're not filing for bankruptcy. You know what I mean? Then it sort of encourages you
like, okay, I've done it before it's worked out. I'm going to do it again. Right. You know,
so you kind of hone that skill to be able to take risks and challenge yourself and go for it.
What are the things, so let's say someone starts, they've got a four-figure business.
Yes. They're regularly making $1,000 a month in this side hustle. Yes. And,
And they want to scale from four figures to five figures, four figures a month to five figures a month.
Yes.
What are the ways in which they should be thinking differently to make that transition?
Yes.
The next most important thing at that level would be, first of all, just get clients.
And so one of the things that I tell people to do is announce their business to everyone that they currently know.
Because people usually run to, I need to build an audience.
I'm going to start posting on social media.
I'm like, that's great, but that's a long game.
That's not going to start to give you results in five.
minutes. Like, that's going to be two years. So I'm like, how can we get there faster? And the way that
we can speed that up is let's look at the people in your circle. Who knows you, your professors,
your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends, your family, all of them. I would announce to everyone
that you've got this business that this is the problem you can solve. Could they send you a client,
or would they like to hire you? And just start to spread the word. And then, of course, if you've had a
couple clients from that $1,000 a month, I'd go to every single one of them and get a testimonial
and say, what about working with me has been valuable for you? And hear that and then use all of that
in your marketing, use those videos in your marketing, and just be intentional about getting more clients.
And I think once you get some more clients and you kind of pass that $25,000, so $2,000 a month,
then the next step is, okay, now I need to start to build a list and build an audience. So maybe I get a
mailing list going. Maybe I start doing a weekly content like a newsletter.
or a podcast or something where I can reach people and show them my expertise. So I'm getting in front of
more people. So that would be the next step that I would recommend. The other thing you could do is
raise your prices because if you're a new entrepreneur, you probably are charging too little because that's
just what we do in the beginning. And so like if you double your price, now you're making $2,000 a month.
So that's also an option. And that's another form of imposter syndrome is charging too little.
Exactly right. Exactly right. And it's so funny. I've been in so many rooms with
entrepreneurs, you know, that have $100 million businesses and just, you know, huge companies.
And it's so funny when they're interviewed or when they're talking and they're talking about like,
what was an inflection point for them? What was the thing that helped them get to the next level?
Half the time, maybe more than half, it's like we raised our prices. Literally, that's it.
So I'm always passing that advice on to women entrepreneurs to people of color entrepreneurs that I work with.
and they're like, I can't raise my prices.
People can't afford it.
No one's going to pay that.
It's all nonsense beliefs.
But once you do it and somebody says yes, then you're like, oh, why was I playing myself all this time?
You are right now, you're interested in buying a business.
That's a completely different skill set than starting something from scratch.
Can you tell us about that process?
Yes.
Well, now we're an eight-figure business.
And so, you know, when we look at what are our growth opportunities, I've built my team that I have now,
which is an amazing team over years, right?
Train them over years.
And so when I think about like, okay, there's some aspect of the business, like if we want to add
a department to our company, how could we buy maybe an agency that already has all that
skill set within that company, we buy it, those team members come, the systems and processes
that make it all run come into the business.
And now, you know, we spend some time integrating,
but it's not going to take five years to build that team
and to build those processes and systems, right?
And it accelerates the growth.
It's an aqua hire.
Exactly, right.
So that's one way to do it.
And it could be like if you look at your company
and there might be a weakness within your company,
like maybe lead gen is your problem.
And so then you buy a business that has maybe a huge social media following
of your ideal clients.
You buy that business, the asset is that audience.
and the community and all of that, and now you've got lead gen for your business.
Or it could be some aspect of our programming is weak and we need more, I don't know, coaches.
So maybe I'd buy a coaching business that has 25 amazing coaches on the team as well as a bunch
of intellectual property around training or something that maybe I'm weak at.
And that was strength in my business.
So it's kind of like looking at what are the things, the problems that we're solving for now
and how could buying another business and integrating it,
to our company solve that problem.
Another thing that we do too is it's not just that.
It's also we have a lot of expenses, right, as you grow a bigger business.
And so some of those line items could become profit centers instead.
So how could we take something that is an expense and make it something that makes us money,
right?
So it could be like, let's say I spend $50,000 a month on copyrighting, right?
So maybe I start a copywriting agency that is selling copyrighting services to our same
clientele who are all buying copyrighting services anyway.
They could get it from us and then we get the copywriting services for ourselves for free
because we own the agency.
Right, right.
So that would be another way to think about scaling at this level.
Right.
It almost goes back to when you were in college and you rented out a room in your home.
Yes.
Right.
And so you took something that was an expense, which was your home.
Right.
Rented out a room in it.
And so by virtue of doing that, you then got to live if not for free, then
at a reduced rate. Yes. Right. So the business analog to that would be the copywriting example. Yes. Exactly. It's
something that's an expense. But then if you turn it into a revenue center, then you get it for either free or a reduced rate.
Exactly right. And what you're pointing out is like these skills build on each other. Right.
Like building a business is actually not linear. It's like cyclical. And you keep revisiting the same lessons again, but just at a higher level, more refined. Right. And so it's like your ideal client, right? You have to choose your idle
client in the beginning and you choose that. And then as you grow, it'll expand and things morph. And then
you're like, wait, I feel like we've gotten away from our ideal client. Let's revisit this again. Or our
ideal client has shifted, you know, or maybe we need to go a little bit broader because we're
larger and we're serving a larger audience or we have capacity to serve a much larger audience, right?
Or we're in this vertical, but we could be hitting this other vertical. So it's so interesting to
see that in business, you're just having the same lessons over and over again, but at a higher level,
a little bit more complex, a little bit more challenging at each level as you grow.
And that's literally, we have something called the grow scale in my business, which is,
our coaching is custom to your revenue level in your business for this reason.
And it's the same set of lessons, but it's like the version for the beginner.
And then there's the version for like, I've just hit six figures.
And then the version for, okay, I'm hiring my first employee.
And then the version for, okay, now I need to build more systems and process.
And now I can't deliver the services anymore.
I got to have somebody else deliver it.
And now I need to hire a leadership team, right?
It's like it's the same set of lessons, but it's a different version at each level.
It's fascinating to me.
It's so fun.
It's like a science.
It really is.
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We talked about going from four figures a month to five figures a month in terms of annual revenue.
How is going from seven figures to eight figures?
How is that different?
Yes, it's fascinating.
Because you have a lot more money, but you also have more expenses.
And I feel like I've done it and then I have.
of clients that have done it as well, I almost feel like you have new money problems.
Right? Like, you're like, okay, how can we solve this problem for less expense so that we can
maintain our healthy profit margins, right? Or we have a pipeline problem. Like, we need more team
to serve the amount of customers that are coming to us, but those team members are not readily
available. So now we need an internal training program to create the employees that we need, right?
Right. So, yeah, it just gets a little bit more complicated. And for other,
it was fascinating. Like, we got to eight figures in 2021 for the first time. And I feel like in
2023 is when we actually started to build systems and a team that was really an eight figure team.
It was like we had to grow up and grow into these new boots. You know what I mean? It's like you've
got these boots on and they don't quite fit and you're flopping around. And things are messy. And
what happens is you outgrow everything. You outgrow some of the contractors and agencies that
have you've been working with for five, 10 years.
You might outgrow systems that used to work for you, but now they don't work at scale.
Like your team's gotten too big or your clientele.
There's too many of them.
So it's just like so many things need fixing and need to be like almost expanded to serve this.
It's like you need an expanded foundation to serve this larger company.
Right.
So and you don't think that in the beginning.
You're just like, oh, we're eight figures now.
Great.
You know.
And then you learn a lot of messy lessons for like a year or two.
And then you're like, no, actually now we were making the revenue of an eight figure company,
but we really weren't an eight figure company yet internally.
Right.
And I think it took us about two years.
And now I feel like, okay, now we've got the systems in the team.
Now we can feel the momentum of spending that year or two, like sort of toiling and fixing things and expanding.
Right.
And replacing some contractors or agencies with contractors or agencies that can serve a business of our size.
It's messy, but it's also fun.
Right.
Right. Yeah. When the internal structure has to keep up with the growth that you've had.
Exactly. When something like that happens, how do you know whether you should turn your attention towards just continuing to grow more? Like get more revenue and have faith that the internal structure will fix itself over time.
Yes. Versus like, way, wait, wait, wait, wait. We are bigger than we are ready to be. Yes. We need to just kind of pause on what we're doing and fix ourselves internally.
Yeah.
I think it's always, all of these things are always happening at once.
And we have different departments, right?
So like one department is working on shoring up internal functions.
And another department is working on getting new clients, right?
So it's kind of like you need to make money the whole time and make enough money to keep paying for all of these new systems that you have to build because the systems aren't free necessarily.
Or the labor involved in creating those systems isn't free.
So it's like you got to make the money to keep paying for.
it. And then you also have to be doing the work of building it. So it's almost like, you know,
building a plane while you're flying it. It's really fun. And sometimes you're like,
this is scary, you know? Yeah. Sometimes the bolts come off. And yeah. And you're like,
somebody get out there with a drill real quick. Yeah. So yes. But, but the beautiful thing is like when
we have a larger team and we have a leadership team, everybody's got their areas of expertise.
Like we have a systems director who's in charge of all the tech and the company.
And so like we actually have just moved over.
We spent the last six months moving over from a membership site system and all of that.
That was just not, it was like not handling the thousands of customers we had very well.
But it was a mess.
And we knew it was a mess.
But we couldn't fix it right away because we had to build a whole new thing in order to fix it.
And that took six months.
Right.
So it's like customers are complaining and like fix it now.
You know, we hate this.
Or some people even canceling because they don't have some of the functions that they want.
And you're like, well, we really can't solve that problem.
today, but we can move towards it and in six months it'll be solved. So one of the biggest things is
like having entrepreneurial patience. You know, like you have to grow in your entrepreneurial maturity
and your willingness to wait for solutions and your willingness to just just deal with what you got
to deal with while you wait for, you know, the real foundation. So, you know, that's something that like
everybody on my team has been like, oh my God, I mean, I have shame about our membership site. Yeah.
And now finally, literally next week, we're launching the new version of our membership site.
We have built a new app that is super slick and amazing.
And so it's like we wouldn't be able to provide that solution if it had to be fast.
Right.
So you've got to take your time to build overtime.
And yeah, you just don't get quick solutions like you used to.
Right, right.
Yeah, no, I know that I've shame about my newsletter.
Like, there's so much I have to fix there.
There's just, there's so much.
There's always something like, it's like a.
it's like a house. It's like buying a old house and, you know, it's like the bathroom needs a little
update or like the cabinets are a little janky. You need to replace. The door doesn't close quite
right and you've got to fight with it. There's always a project and a business is similar.
Right, right. Okay, this might be a very granular question, but as the team grows, how do you,
like on one hand, you've got to keep everybody in the loop on what's going on, but you don't
want to drown them in emails and slack messages. How do you hit that balance? Oh my gosh.
team communication is huge and this is a huge part of what helps you to scale from seven to eight figures.
And I mean, we had team communication systems built for seven figures because once you have more than, let's say, I had someone tell me the analogy is once you have more people that can fit in a car, like, so like more than four or five people.
Yeah.
It's like you told one person, but you forgot to tell the other person.
Yeah.
And then like the other person still thinks we're doing the old plan and the new person knows we're doing the new plan and we're going like this and we're supposed to be going like this.
Yeah.
So you have to build system.
for that. And so the team communication, that's why we have an HR department, literally. That's part of
their job. So we have like a team newsletter. We have a team meeting every week where like these
kinds of announcements are shared. There's departmental meetings every week. We have every single
employee gets a one-on-one with their supervisor every other week. And then we everybody does a weekly
report at the end of the week. They'll say like, here's what I worked on. Here's how I'm feeling,
because we want to check in, how are you feeling about your work? And then also here's what I'm going to
work on next week. And so that's like the supervisor can read that for their whole department and get a
sense of what is everybody doing. And then the president of the company, and it used to be me,
but now it's my president, she reads it for all of our leaders. So that's how you are able to like really
quickly get a pulse of what's going on across the business without talking to all 25 people.
So you have to build those systems and that architecture. It's annoying at first because people are like,
why do I have to fill out a weekly report? I'm done for the day. On Friday, the last thing I want to do is
fill out another thing. I want to be done and go enjoy my weekend. But we had to help them to
understand why this is important, how this helps us to all stay on the same page. We are Notion people.
So we have a whole intranet, right, for our team where every HR policy is in there. All of our
systems for marketing are in there. All of our processes for operations are in there. And so that's where
everything, it's like the source of truth for how Hello 7 runs, you know? Yeah. And so that's where
people have their slack open, which is how we do team communication. And then they've got
notion open, which has all of the templates and step-by-step processes for everything they need to do
in their job. And that's how we get things done. It's a beast. And there are things that sometimes
people are like, wait, I thought we were going, sometimes we're moving quickly. And it's like,
I thought we were doing this. Why are we doing this thing now? So we do still drop things from time to
time. But we try to keep us all on the same page with all of these systems of communication.
Wow. Wow. Yeah. It's.
It's a whole thing.
How did you figure out, you decided to consciously, intentionally, drop a few things.
And simultaneously, you're also interested in adding on a few things.
You're interested in some investments.
Yes.
How do you make those decisions around what to intentionally drop and what to invest in?
Yes.
At a certain point, you have more opportunity than you can actually take advantage of and be happy.
You can take advantage of all of it and be miserable because you're tired and not having enough time with family or enough downtime.
enough time to take care of yourself. And so sleep is very important to me. Movement is very
important to me, you know, just mental rest. And of course, time with my family because I got
a mess of kids. You're four kids, right? Yes. Yes. And I like spending time with them. So really it's like,
okay, I've got this kind of time. I have certain boundaries in place naturally. So like Wednesdays,
I don't work. That's where I have a therapy appointment and there's literally nothing else on my
calendar on Wednesdays. And let's as a special event every now and then. But for the most part,
on Wednesdays, it's blocked. And it's because I need to think, I'm working on myself in therapy,
you know, and I have to tell you, as a CEO, you're working on yourself. It has so much impact on the
business. So that's really important, right? That's part of my job is to work on myself so that I can
make sure my limiting beliefs limits everybody on my team, right? Limits are even our customers,
right? It trickles down so much. And so working on my self-development is really important.
So Wednesdays is for that. Fridays I also take off just for like space and I'll go on like daytime dates with my husband and that kind of thing. So I have some blocks in there. And when I find that those are being violated regularly, then I'm like, I need to cut something. You know, so it's like I have my parameters for when I work. I don't work on weekends. I don't work at night. And so it's like, what can I get done with these specific hours? And if it's if it has to go beyond that, then something's got to get dropped. And it also has.
happens like I go on retreats or I have like time where I'll just have a couple days off to myself or I'll go on
retreats with some friends or go to a spa for a day. And with that thinking time, I can kind of check in with
myself and see where I'm unbalanced. And sometimes it's amazing projects that I have to say no to.
And it's hard. I used to not say no, but I know what that looks like. It looks like burnout and being
miserable. So I'm like not willing to do that again. So even if it's the most amazing thing ever,
I'm probably going to say no. If like Oprah calls me and wants to do a project,
then I will drop something else so I can do my Oprah project, but I'm not going to try to do that and everything else.
But it was honed over time. I definitely had to get out of balance, you know, a few times to realize like, oh, no, it's not worth it.
It doesn't matter how fantastic it is, you know, to burn yourself out. Right. How do you know when you're burned out versus when you're just kind of tired?
Yeah, there's a difference. There's a big difference because I think tired is like I'm tired in the moment and rest will solve it.
going to sleep is not going to solve burnout because burnout is deep. It's actually quite scary. I've had that
experience and it was years ago, but I literally couldn't get off the couch. I couldn't make a decision.
It was like my brain function just was not able to function at a high level like I normally can.
So that's how I knew because I was like supposed to show up to work and I was like, I can't even have this
conversation with this client. And I just was sobbing and I called my assistant and I'm like, I think I need you to cancel everything.
And I had to get another attorney to one of my friends from law school to like cover for me for a month.
And I just took a month off of work and laid on the couch for a month.
This is when you had the law practice.
Yes.
Yes.
Because I had just pushed myself so much because I thought I believed these old stories.
Right.
That making money is hard that I have to work 80 hours a week.
Like I believed all of that.
And that's what it led to.
And laying on that couch, I realized, oh, I need to spend some of the money that I have on hiring another lawyer.
Because we have so much business.
And if I'm not going to turn away this business, I need somebody else to help me do it.
I hired another attorney. I made my part-time assistant full-time. And then we grew from there.
That's why I teach these things because I don't want people to do what I did. And it's just like, some people live that way long term.
Right.
I can't imagine it. I felt that way for a summer. And I was like, never again, you know.
Right.
So learn those lessons and know that there's another way, you know. And I have to say, like, I've got more money than I've ever had in my life.
and I work less than I ever have in my life.
So there's a different correlation that happens as you keep growing.
And that's scalability.
Yes, exactly, exactly.
Yeah, and that allows me to look at what are the other opportunities for Hellas 7?
What are the other opportunities that are out there?
What are the other projects that I could do and other ways that I can contribute to the world?
So it's cool.
What are some of the things that you're most proud of?
I'm really proud of creating the Hellas 7 Foundation,
which is our nonprofit.
And one of the things that we do is serve black mothers and babies because the infant mortality
rate and the maternal mortality rate here in the U.S. is pretty terrible for black women.
And it's something that really bothered me.
I've birthed quite a few times and had my own traumatic experience and then also amazing experiences.
And so I wanted more women to have access to that.
And so we've raised a lot of money for that.
We've been able to provide doulas.
for black women when they're giving birth and night nurses for them when they bring their babies home.
And recently, we had our event in Puerto Rico.
And so we partnered with a nonprofit there.
And we gave them a $50,000 check, right?
It was supposed to be 25.
And I said at the last minute, let's double it.
So we made it $50,000.
They contacted me a few months later and let me know that they built the first birthing center in Puerto Rico with that $50,000.
It was like a dream that she always wanted, but she just didn't have the resource.
sources. And I didn't know that was her dream. I just wanted to fund her work because she was doing
incredible work there, you know, taking care of mothers. And I mean, same stats, same troubles in
Puerto Rico. And they built the first birthing center so you could have like an assisted birth.
You know, it's like you could have home birth or you could have hospital. There was no in between.
And in hospitals, like 70% of women were having C-sections because it's what's convenient for the doctors.
They're not listening to the women. And so now women have an alternative.
choice, which is to have a midwife assisting them during birth in a beautiful, beautiful
birthing center with like, they can do it in the tub. They have beds. It's a dignified way to give birth
and honors women. And it's just like that was amazing that that I was just able to write a check
that created something like that. Wow. So it just motivates me to go make more money. So I can
do more dope like that.
Wow. Wow. That's amazing. Well, we're coming to the end of our time. Is there anything that I haven't asked about that you'd like to emphasize?
Well, the one thing that I will share is for those who want to create a side hustle, I have a new audible book. It's an audible original called six-figure side hustle. And they can listen to it as about like three to four hours. And it will teach you the step-by-step process for building your first six-figure side hustle.
and the goal is to make six figures in 90 days.
So we walk you through the process and there's so many examples from my clients in there too.
So lots of motivation and inspiration and strategy for how to do that.
Perfect.
And you have other audible originals as well.
Yes.
I have another one called Plan Your Year like a millionaire.
And then another one that's coming out soon called Million Dollar Habits.
So all designed around what are the things that we need to do?
How do we need to change our planning process?
Our thinking process are daily habits to move us towards the money we want to make.
That's amazing. All right. And we will link to all of that in the show notes. Awesome.
So thank you so much for spending this time with us. Thank you. What a great conversation.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Rachel. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation?
Key takeaway number one. If you apply your brain towards the question of how do I make more money and if you choose an ambitious but achievable amount, you will be surprised at what you come up with.
So Rachel talked about her 10K in 10 days challenge.
Let's say that you needed to make $10,000 in the next 10 days.
What would you do?
How would you do it?
10K in 10 days, it's an interesting challenge because when you apply your brain towards that question,
hey, I got to make 10 grand in the next 10 days.
Go.
You'd be surprised at what you can come up with.
We do this 10K and 10 days challenge in my membership community.
And so some of them have like cleaned out their garage and sold all the stuff in their garage.
and made $5,000 from like old skis that they're never going to use and other things like that.
That could be easy or it could be easy to say, hey, I know you ask me all the time about
insert whatever area that you have some expertise on.
Like it could be like you're really good at fashion and like finding really cute pieces
and like putting together great outfits and your friends say, oh, help me pick out an outfit for
this event.
What if you said, okay, I can help you do that?
It's $500, right?
And you start charging for that.
Now, in this example, Rachel talks about somebody who made $5,000 just selling stuff that was laying around in their garage, you know, but that's one example. That's an example of monetizing your assets, right? When you're monetizing your assets, you could either be monetizing something that you own or you could be monetizing your capital, right? You're putting your money to use so that your money makes more money. Like monetizing your assets is one way to make additional income. Another way to make additional income is to monetize.
your time, that time for money exchange, and another way to do so is by monetizing your skills,
which is similar to monetizing your time, but more lucrative and also more fun. Now, Rachel
makes a distinction between something like the 10K in 10 days challenge, right? That's a challenge
that is aimed at getting you that initial win, right? 10K in the next 10 days. But there's a
distinction between that initial win versus picking a way that you can make money in a manner that's
ongoing, you know, something that you can sustain for years to come. And for something to be
sustainable, it has to be at that intersection of what you're good at, what you enjoy, and what
other people will pay you for. So I always encourage people, yes, I mean, look at the marketplace,
see a need in the marketplace and match it with your natural skill sets, what you're drawn to
what you're interested in. I think if we try to force ourselves to do things that we hate,
and you could start with something that you hate if you have to. But I think when you do that,
you actually require so much discipline. And that's when making money is hard. It's because I hate this
job. I hate doing this thing. But this is how I make money. So I have to force myself to do it.
And it feels like hell, right? Yeah. Versus if it's something that you love and you do it for free
anyway, you know what I mean? And you're lit up and excited to do it. Then that's a whole different thing.
Then you're, when you get a job, you're like, yes, let's go.
So you're doing it for money, but you're also doing it because you love it.
And then it doesn't require so much discipline.
You're going to get up and do it every day anyway because you just love it so much.
Challenge yourself to make more money and do so in two ways.
Number one, figure out how you can make more right away so that you get that small win.
But number two, also think about what it is that you would do if you wanted to make more money in an ongoing sustainable manner.
That is the first key takeaway.
Key takeaway number two.
Don't talk yourself out of it.
So many people assume that something is out of reach.
They assume the two worst words in the English language, I can't.
Right?
People assume I can't.
And talk themselves out of a victory.
And it turns out you're just getting in your own way.
And they're like, I can't raise my prices.
People can't afford it.
No one's going to pay that.
It's all nonsense beliefs.
But once you do it and somebody says yes, then you're like, oh, why was
I'm playing myself all this time.
Beware of nonsense beliefs, because those nonsense beliefs are how you hold yourself back.
That is key takeaway number two.
Finally, key takeaway number three, it's tempting to think that the process of running a
business is linear.
You make a mistake, you learn from it, you move on.
You know, it's nice to think that it happens in this neat, orderly format.
In fact, life hands you the same lessons over and over.
over again, sometimes with more and more zeros at the end, right, with bigger orders of magnitude.
That happens. That's life. That's okay. Building a business is actually not linear. It's like cyclical.
And you keep revisiting the same lessons again, but just at a higher level, more refined. Right.
And so it's like your ideal client, right? You have to choose your idol client in the beginning and you choose that.
And then as you grow, it'll expand and things morph. And then you're like, wait, I feel like we've gotten away from
our ideal client, let's revisit this again, or our ideal client has shifted, you know,
or maybe we need to go a little bit broader because we're larger and we're serving a larger
audience or we have capacity to serve a much larger audience, right? Or we're in this vertical,
but we could be hitting this other vertical. So it's so interesting to see that in business,
you're just having the same lessons over and over again, but at a higher level, a little bit more
complex, a little bit more challenging at each level as you grow. So it isn't as though you're
getting new lessons, but what's actually happening is you're getting the same lessons over and
over and over, but you are getting more complex iterations of those problems. In the beginning,
you get simplified versions, and as you progress, you get more complex, more detailed, more nuanced
versions of these problems. Problems all the same, but you grow in sophistication over time. And that
means your problem-solving abilities also grow in sophistication over time. And that is the third
key takeaway from this conversation with Rachel Rogers. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is the
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My name is Paula Pant.
This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I will meet you in the next episode.
