Business Innovators Radio - Brittni Schroeder: How to Scale Your Business Systems to Six Figures and Beyond

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Brittni Schroeder is a Business Coach and Marketing Strategist. She helps coaches automate their business, create systems, convert funnels, and scale to six figures and beyond. Brittni worked as a High School Senior photographer for over 10 years. She also owned and operated Mozi Magazine up until 2017. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America and several publications. She has worked in the non-profit sector for over 15 years and recently founded her own non-profit called The Compassion Club.Learn more at: brittnischroeder.comRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/brittni-schroeder-how-to-scale-your-business-systems-to-six-figures-and-beyond

You're Bar-B-B-B-Hodding to the station of the planet Resistance is futile The Revolution has been done for listening to

Rebelpreneur Radio helping you break the rules and build the business you need for the life you want and now broadcasting his pirate signal from somewhere beyond the status quo here's your host

best-selling author Marketing and Media Strategist Ralph Brogden Hello and welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I am Ralph Brugnan. If you want to scale to six figures or beyond, especially seven figures, you're going to have to get automation and systems working in your business. It's amazing to me how many people are trying to do all the heavy leg work, all the heavy lifting in their business.

when we have this amazing technology, amazing tools at our disposal, and people who can teach you how to leverage those systems. Why would you ever go back and do a lot of manual labor when you don't have to? Especially if you are interested in scaling to six figures and beyond, you've got to master the automation of your business. And the challenge that we'll discuss today, I think one of the challenges of many is how you do this in a way that doesn't get in get that doesn't interfere with the human aspect of what you're, you're trying to do. So this will be an interesting discussion. We're bringing in an expert in this as we always do. Brittany Schroeder is a business coach and a marketing strategist, which is cool because in my, previous life, I was a marketing strategist.

Now I'm a communication strategist, who just happens to know something about marketing. But Brittany is someone who helps coaches automate their business, create systems, convert funnels, and scale to six figures and beyond. So her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal. Good Morning America, several publications. Brittany, welcome to Rapplepreneur radio. Thanks for having me, Ralph. Thanks for being on.

So tell us a little bit about your background. Business coach, marketing strategist. You also worked as a high school senior photographer for over 10 years. You owned an operated, is it Mozy magazine? Am I saying it correctly? Yep, yep. You've got nonprofit work. So you are very experienced and you've had a background.

in a lot of different areas. So tell us a little bit about yourself how you got interested. How did you come to the place of being a marketing strategist? Yeah. You know, I think it's interesting because I work a lot. Like I mentioned, I work with a lot of like nonprofit and I work with a lot of kids. And, you know, I have a son right now that's 18 and he's at that pivotal age where it's like, what are you going to do?

What are you going to do? And you really just like, you're still. trying to figure it out, you know. And so I went to school, studied something completely different than what I'm doing now. Exercise science and health, you know, like totally different. Wanted to do something in the medical field. And, you know, then I went straight into motherhood and I started having children. And so I wanted to stay at home with them. But I've always had this like entrepreneurial heart. Like, oh, I've always had some sort of side hustle or I'm always doing something. And kind of like where my journey began was about 18 years.

ago with my second son and this ages me. So, but it was right when blogging started to, blogging started to become a thing, you know, where it was, you know, kind of the thing. And I'm looking at all these people and they're taking these amazing, you know, images. And I am like, oh, like, I want to take, I want to take good pictures. I want to do photography. I, you know, I want to learn how to do this. And so I, like everything that I do, I'm going to go all out. You know, I want to learn everything. And so I'm taking classes. And, you know, I went to some workshops and I'm learning all things photography, right? And so I think for me, what it comes very natural, the business portion comes really natural to me. It was the artistic side that I really had and the creative

side that I really had to work at. I'm, you know, I always say my dad was an engineer. So I'm very left-brained and, you know, spreadsheets and organized and analytical. And the creative, the creative was something I had to really, you know, work on and get good at. So, but then, you know, I started to, you know, it was interesting marketing. And I think, you know, for me, I think I was really lucky because a lot of my marketing and networking was just very innate. I'm super extroverted. And so I didn't even really know marketing or networking was a thing.

I just am a talker and I'm a socializer. And so I just was, I was always networking, you know, you've got to meet people. I'm a natural. Yeah, it came pretty natural to me. And, you know, like a lot of creatives, you know, they struggle with the business part. And I could see that. I could see these amazing artists and creatives.

And they're creating beautiful art, but their businesses were struggling. And I was the opposite. You know, I was creating art. I was getting, you know, I had photography skills for sure. But my business was thriving. And I kept raising my prices and raising and raising, supply and demand, raising, raising, raising, before I knew I was one of the most highest price photographer in, in the area.

And so, you know, it just, it came really, like, natural to me. During the photography time, I started, like, you know, like I had some friends that were photographers. and one of my friends said, let's start a magazine, knowing nothing about anything, magazine, just like, oh, let's do it. And we started, we hired a graphic designer. He built a website. We did the social media.

And I was the editor-in-chief of that magazine, and we did that for a few years. And then my business partner's wife, who was actually, I was friends with the husband and wife, she came in and then we pushed him out. And then our businesses grew. and then we decided that we didn't have time and then we sold the magazine, you know, five or six years ago. So that's kind of how the business part, where I really got good at businessing, really got good at business, really got good at marketing.

I built a very, very solid brand. And I had a reputation. And, you know, I was getting just a lot of business, a lot of word of mouth business. And, you know, I was like, okay, I like this, the business part. I like numbers. I like doing this. And so then a few years passed and we sold the magazine and we were moving. My husband got a job in Houston.

We were El Paso. Then we moved to Houston. And I'm like, you know what? This is a good time to pivot. I want to do something online that is not location based. Right. Like I want to do something that I can live wherever I want and I don't need to be in a specific location.

And so at that time, I also, at 2017, I started, I'd worked in nonprofit for like 15 years and I had been going to Haiti and doing work with like schools and stuff. And then I started my own called the Compassion Club. And that could probably be a whole other like podcast. But I mean, interview. And so then that's like my passion project. And so I created a curriculum. And we, I speak at schools and we implement Compassion Clubs in schools. And then we give scholarships.

So since 2017, we've given over $50,000 in scholarships to just awesome kids that want to make the world a better place. So that's kind of me. So that puts me to now. And so I do, I'm business and marketing and I help online coaches with automation systems, funnels, all the things. So that brings us to here. And now. And here we are. Automations and systems.

I gave it a little bit of a plug, but from your perspective as a business coach and marketing strategist, focusing on this, why, in your words, why is this important? Why do coaches need to pay attention to this? Yeah, that's a great question. You kind of touched on it in your intro, but, you know, we live in such a fast-paced world. and, you know, we're constantly having information and everything like thrown at us. You know, they think there used to be, they used to say that you have to, I heard that I was reading this study the other day and it was saying, it used to be, you'd have to be exposed to something seven times before you paid attention. Right. And there was a study and it was coming out.

I said, now because of all the information overload that we're getting, it's now it's more like 40 times, 30 or 40 times you have to be, you know, you have to like be exposed. to something before you actually like convert or you get a sell. And so, you know, we live in such a fast pace. Yeah, it's crazy. And it's good and bad, you know, like I sometimes I'm like, I just wish I could just go off the grid and just live, you know, that way. But as a business owner, you know, you have to be able to like keep up. You have to keep up the pace. And automations is such an incredible thing because we have so much to do as an entrepreneur, especially if you're like, a solo entrepreneur. If you're just starting out, you wear so many different hats. And what happens is we get caught like working inside our business and we see a lot of burnout because they're,

you know, we're doing all those things and we're we aren't doing the things that we love and enjoy. Like if you're a coach or helping or creating whatever it is that you do in your business, you know, when you are doing all of those menial tasks over and over, then you get burnt out. That's the first thing. The second thing is. customer service. It's all about the experience. And if people do not feel like they are seen and heard, it's not going to be a good experience for them. Like, nobody likes to give their money to somebody and then feel like I'm just money to them. I'm just a number to them. So there's several different layers of automation, but those are two of the big ones that we've seen businesses.

You know, that's interesting because just today, as a matter of fact, now that you bring it up, I had signed up for someone's masterclass a month ago. I'm not going to say who. You would recognize the person if I said who it was. But I signed it for the master class and I paid extra for the VIP experience and everything that goes with that. The only part of their system that worked was the system that charged my American experience. Yeah. So I instantly got a receipt, instantly got an acknowledgement that I gave them money and nothing after that. I don't mean for a few days. I mean for weeks going on a month. Now I'm looking at my statement and I'm thinking, wait a minute, I don't even remember what this is now. So that's why I use American Express because it's easy to say, hey, I didn't get this and they give you instant credit and they figure it out with the merchant. That's a great example of. of you've got your sales funnel.

Okay. That worked. You got your checkout system. That worked. But then your customer service, your follow up, the onboarding, the delivery of the thing that you promised. That's where their system broke down. So that, that's really critical, especially as you point out so well if you are a solopreneur. And I know this person has a team.

So that's even worse. If you've got a team, you've got no excuse. But if you're a solopreneur, you can even do better. It's like the automation and the systems you create, they become like your virtual team. And you set them up, set them and forget them. And they run and do these things automatically. That's the ideal, right? Yeah, yeah.

Well, and I agree with you is, you know, we spend a lot of time on the marketing, the pre-cell, but it's the post-sell. You know, you have funnels. We have these sales funnels. but you need to have a post-sell funnel, and that is how you, like, on board and off-board, like your clients. And, you know, with me, it depends. Like, I have different programs in, in my business, different in my product suite. Some are high touch, high price. So if somebody's paying a high price, they're going to get a lot of interaction with me, like personal interaction. If it's low price, it's low touch, but I'm still making contact with them.

I've created a series of emails where I'm checking in and, hey, I just wanted to follow up. How are you doing? But I also think when you have a lot of these things automated, you still can do that personal touch. I have a program that I just finished up. It's called Email Funnel Builders. And, you know, they have access. It was like live coaching for three or four weeks.

And then they had a month longer access to the program. And today I took the time and I emailed, you know, several people in the program. Hey, I just want to follow up. Did you get this completed? Blah, blah, blah. And they responded and just said, I'm stuck here. And I'm saying, okay. And I also think that's market research.

And, hey, how can I improve this? And when you're not touching base with people, your business will burn out quick. I always say there's two reasons that businesses don't. The one is they don't grow fast enough. And the second one is they grow too fast and they lose the integrity in their business. So you have to make sure that you are paying attention to both of those things. Very interesting. So where do you begin? What are the critical infrastructure systems that you recommend someone starting from scratch? We named a few, but I might have overlooked some. What are some of the basics that you want to get in place with your clients when you're taking on someone brand new?

Yeah. Well, I think the first thing that you can do, and this is a practice that I do with a lot of my clients, is what is the client experience from, purchase to like offboarding, like make a list and write all those steps down. You know, do you send an intake to your clients? Do you send a welcome gift to your clients? Like, do you, you know, do you ask for a testimonial? Do you check in with your clients? Like, what is the entire process? Do you have to educate them on certain parts of you working together? Because what we'll see is a lot of times a lot of businesses or entrepreneurs are doing the same things over and over and over and again. and when we see that, we can automate that if it's the same. And so if you're starting out, I always say like, let's write out the client experience. What is the journey from, you know,

once you start working with them, what is it? I'm big into grow your email list and email marketing. That's my other soapbox that I'm always on. But we have so many great programs out there, email marketing, and you can create these workflows or, you know, these funnels, whatever you want to call them, these automations, where it can be triggered by a payment. So triggered by a payment, and then you can, you know, send an email. And then you can do a time, you know, a time delay, send another one. You know, a lot of times I am, like personally, I am checking in or I might have an assistant checking in. But just to be safe, I have these automations that are, hey, I'm just checking in. What are you working on? Or hey, I'm just checking in. How's X, Y,

and Z going. And those are just there. And it's almost like a safety net. It's almost like, okay, just in case life happens and I can't reach out for a week or two or I'm on vacation, I want them to be seen and heard. And most of all, like, know what's going on. So I always relayed this experience that during COVID, we put in a pool. And the, you know, we interviewed a bunch of different pool companies. You know, it was and, you know, because it was a big investment. We want to make sure that, you know, our investment was in good hands. And we chose this company and it was great. And the presentation was great.

And they came and they were in polos and branded and gave me this folder with like information. It's funny. You're as a marketing person. And I did the same thing. You're buying a pool. But you're looking at the branding. It's like, oh yeah, they got really great branding.

It's like, they're the pool guys for me. You literally have no idea. I'll be driving down the street and my kids will be. like, I bet you don't like that logo, huh? And I'm like, yeah, that Brett. You know, like, I'm totally like so observant of, oh, that's not good branding. That font does not work with those colors. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Or their messaging is not clear. That's really confusing. Yeah. So. It's very difficult to watch television with somebody like us because we're critiquing everything.

It's like, it's like going to another restaurant with a spouse who's a master chef. It's a constant. Yeah. Yeah. So. Oh, still like, yeah. But, you know, so I had this pool company come in and the presentation was great. And then, you know, and he, you know, I am a talker. And so I'm best friends with every contractor,

every cleaning person, every garbage man. I'm just like a talker and a networker. But we became really good friends. And he told me the business had been in his family for years. His grandfather had done it. His dad had done it. You know, they had all these connections. And so I really connected with him. And he was telling me during COVID, everybody was putting in pools. And so he had the, my business grew too fast, like issue. And, you know, it was then, you know, we started doing it. Then, you know, if you ever put a pool in, your yard is a mess. And, you know, they have workers come in.

They're eating. Sometimes throwing trash. You know, it's kind of messy. But then it was like, okay, what's going on? So I don't hear from him and don't hear from him. The other thing, he didn't have any payments automated. I sent him a payment. I wrote him a check.

I had to dig out my checks because I didn't, even I don't even write checks. And so I'm constantly telling him, you need to hire me. You need to hire me. And then, anyways, very short, what happened is then at the end I was getting frustrated because we didn't really know what's going on. There was no communication, you know. And then what happens is we have our, if you're from Texas, you're familiar with this. We had our once and every two or three years freeze that people in Texas don't get. And our pool had literally, we hadn't even, I don't even know if we've been swam in it yet and a pipe breaks. And I still, we still owed him $10,000, right?

And so he calls like two weeks after the freeze and is like, knock, knock, knock, I need that payment, you know. And I wasn't, it wasn't his fault. And so our pool was broke for six months because, again, it was COVID. So we didn't have supplies. We couldn't get it fixed. And it was really frustrating. So I was frustrated with him. And not that I was blaming on him, it wasn't his fault.

but he could have prevented it. If he would have had people's email, he could have, you know, quickly sent out an email that said, how to prep your pool for cold weather or something like that. And again, not his fault, my responsibility,

but I, as a business owner, I'm constantly thinking, like, that I would have done that. Like, I, you know, like if you would have been organized in your business, you know, you would have had payment. The other thing is like,

If you don't automate, you're losing money in your business because you're chasing money. When you have to send invoices and you have to wait and chasing money down, like you are costing your business money. If you have automations, it's going to automatically take that money right out of an account or charge a credit card. So there's just so many benefits of automating your business. Wow. And we can all share these experiences.

that are less than ideal. And it's interesting because a lot of those experience, a lot of those experience are coming from manual labor-intensive offline businesses where it's a contractor who's not communicating or they don't show up when they say they're going to show up. But the same thing happens with coaches who are living mostly in a virtual world. and you would think it would be a little bit easier to automate. So we need to think about the client experience, not just the sales funnel to get them as a client, but then the client funnel or whatever the reverse is from start to finish on how we're going to now show up and deliver.

And that's what was missing in the after sale in your pool experience. he as a as a pool guy should have anticipated here's the 10 things that my customers are going to have problems with. Just by thinking about that and then providing that to you in advance, it could have avoided it. We can't expect customers and clients to know all that there is to know. So we've got to think about that, automate that for. the personal touch. Also, you mentioned the payment automations so that we're not trying to run down money. What are some other, are there a couple of other critical systems that you would recommend

for automation, especially for coaches? Yeah, I'm going to give you some props, Ralph, because you had some great automations. And I noticed them, but, you know, even you use a scheduling app to schedule your interviews. and, you know, then there is, I assumed it was an automation. It felt like an automation. But then, hey, this is how you market it. This is how you promote it. Hey, here's some questions that I might ask you.

So a lot of times, a lot of entrepreneurs, they have the programs already that they might be using. They just don't understand or recognize all the capabilities. You know, like we both use the same scheduling app, you know. and there are emails in there that you can send, you know, you can send forms, you can send questionnaires, you can send a follow up email,

you can send reminders, you can send text reminders, you know, there's all these different like things that are available. A lot of the programs that entrepreneurs are using have all these capabilities, but people just don't realize that they have all these capabilities and automations.

There are, you know, there's many, many, many different automations that you can use. I use another program that I use that's free is Airtable. And I use this for as a database. And I will put in if I record a podcast or if I write a blog post or whatever, I will put it in this database.

I change the status to, you know, it's posted or it's live. And it will automatically send an email to my virtual assistant that says, hey, this is ready to promote. This is ready to like, you know, repurpose and to blast it to different places. So there's just, there's, there's so many different elements and different automations in almost all of these programs. I mean, you know, there's, there's the possibilities for such a reasonable price. It's not like you have to spend, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars to automate your business. There's tools that are just so like reasonably priced that we can use in our business.

Some of them are free. Some of them are very low cost. But the cost of not doing this is what we need to look at. What's the opportunity cost? How much business are you losing or leaving on the table because you're not automating your process is? How much time and money and effort are you wasting with manual labor, with manual follow-up? And I hadn't even considered.

the automation that can take place between yourself and a virtual assistant. You can even automate that. That's a tremendous tip right there. Wonderful. Wonderful. How do you work with people? Tell us a little bit about your, you mentioned your product suite, which is very impressive, by the way.

I went to your website and checked it out. But tell us your ways of working with people. How can people get in touch with you and work with you? you in different ways. Yeah. So I have a few different, you know, programs. You know, I have some, you know, social media programs, how to grow your Instagram, how to grow your group, email funnel builders, how to build that. So there's those different ones that are more self-paced. You can buy, go at your own pace. I also have a business membership. And it is like a head to toe, go through different systems and set up. So, you know, one month we can be discussing how to automate

all the things in your podcast. You know, there's, there's so many different features you can automate in your podcast and communication. And we just break down different systems. If I work with somebody one-on-one, I'm a lot more hands-on. And, you know, I'm a big believer in learning how to do everything. And the reason why is, I feel like you should learn enough that you can manage somebody. And then you can delegate because I see too many times where people are.

getting taken advantage of by people who claim, you know, to know what they're doing, but then in all reality, they really don't. Another issue that I see, and this is something that I work on, is entrepreneurs, if they're successful, they have an idea or they're doing something that works, whether it's, you know, a brick and mortar or an online, they get overwhelmed. And so they think, I need to hire an assistant. I need to hire somebody because I need help. And what happens is they hire an assistant that is making $15, $20 an hour, and they

expect that person to grow their business and to market their business because either they're overwhelmed and they want to do other stuff or they don't really know what they're doing. And what ends up happening is then they're managing their virtual assistant. And so it's just giving them, yeah, does it take some things off their plate? Yes. But it doesn't give them more time because they have to manage that person. And so one of the things that I am super adamant about is let's set up SOPs, standard

operating procedures. What are the different procedures in your business from, you know, like, even your social media. I, like I mentioned, I have a nonprofit and I have an assistant for my nonprofit. And she has a list, like, post, you know, here's, here's all these posts. Here's the caption. Go engage with 10 people. Go engage with 10 hashtags. You know, reach out. You know, I'm looking for people to contribute to my blog. Here's the script. So I've written out step by step by step, all these different processes in my business. So I don't have to manage them. They can go and watch a tutorial or here's the checklist. And so those are other things that I work with. I'm big into automating, but hey, I'm going to show you how I did this because you do not want to be dependent on

people all the time. And so I am a lot of hands on. I get things done. And it's a lot of like building systems, systems creating databases so that you can repurpose content, you know, how to organize and be intentional with your time. I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs spend a lot of time scrolling on social media or doing things that they're not getting an ROI on and, you know, have a process is, learn how to do stuff, have systems, automations, delegate if you're in a position to focus on the things that you're good at and the things that you enjoy. and nobody can replicate you if you are a solo brand. So you can hire somebody to post on your social media,

but at the end of the day, you're still your brand. You still need to show up and position yourself as an expert and be the face of your brand. So those are just a few of the different things we do. We automate it. I always say one of my favorite things is minutes add up to hours. And so we can look at our business and we can say, oh, I don't spend that much time doing this. But it adds up. But if you can systemize stuff, yeah, if you can systemize stuff, then it's going to free up your time.

And that's how you scale, honestly, because it, you know, I look at a lot of business owners and I'm looking at what they're doing. And as a photographer, you know, I was a one-man show. I was the only one taking pictures. I could keep raising my prices. But then I would, I would get to my ceiling. I couldn't get through because I was only one person. And so that's when I need, you know, then I was like, I need some passive income. I need to do things in different ways.

Magazine. I'm going to do a magazine too. You know, and so you have to, like, you have to automate and have systems so you can free up your time to think big and go big. You know, you have to have time as money. We get to a point where our time is as valuable as our money. So. Yes. Yes.

Wow. Words. I usually ask people to give words of wisdom at the end of the. of the interview, but you've just been dropping so many wisdom bombs. I don't know that I could even ask you for more wisdom. The best way to reach you is at brittanyshroeder.com, and we will have that link on the Rebelpreneur website as well. Brittany, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your expertise with us.

Brittany Schroeder is a business coach and a marketing strategist. She helps coaches automate their business, create systems. convert funnels and scale to six figures and beyond. So if you take nothing else away from this conversation, automating and systematizing your business at every level is not just important. It's absolutely necessary if you want to scale to at least six figures. And what I say is if you master your message, you'll do at least six figures and beyond. If not, you need to work on your message.

But that's just the first step. Then it's systematizing all of those things, automating the processes whenever you can and however you can. And so check out Brittany Schroeder because she can help you get leverage on yourself, stop trading time for dollars, and really make the influence impact and income that you want to make in the world. Brittany Schroeder, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today on Rebelpreneur Radio. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelpreneur.com.