the bossbabe podcast - 132. A Full Breakdown of My First 7 Figure Month in Business with Rachel Rodgers

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

Only 2% of women entrepreneurs hit 7 figures. Rachel Rodgers is on a mission to change that. In today’s episode, Natalie and Rachel discuss why making 6 figures realistically can’t sustain a business and a salary if you’re trying to scale, and how you can scale to 7.  Rachel breaks down how she started her business after law school, scaled to 7 figures, and even recently made her first million-dollar month. We talk all things hiring, including what roles to hire first and how it will help your business grow. Her tip: hiring ahead and betting on yourself ahead. You’ll see that growth faster and then be ready when it comes. As entrepreneurs, it’s not just about getting help, it’s about clearing your plate so you’re able to focus on your mental health and perform as a better leader for yourself, your team, and your business. We also share our opinions on membership options (love them!), why one offering instead of multiple will be better for you in the long run, and, most importantly, listening to your clients so you know when to pivot and what to improve to serve your customers better! Rachel pivoted her business this year after the pandemic and went from 0 to 1300 members in 30 days! It’s all about flexibility and giving yourself space to grow. Learn more about Rachel and how to hit that 7 figure mark at hello7.co and subscribe to her podcast, The Hello 7 Podcast.

Why are you doing this sabotaging your own success? That's why I think it's really important to like look at the data, pay attention to what your customers are asking for. A lot of times we have so many opportunities that are literally right in front of our eyeballs, but we can't see it because we're being precious. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance,

and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Boss Babe, and your host for today's episode. Listen, I'm gonna be real with you guys. The past week has been really tough. There's been so many things going on and I know a lot of you can relate to this. I've had a lot of DMs about it as well but 2020 has been a trip. There's been so much going on this year and I feel like now that we're near the end of the year, things are just piling up,

piling up. There's been so much just crazy energy. And for us at BossWave, we've definitely noticed it. And me and Danielle were just saying like, we're tired right now. There's been so much going on. We're really tired. And I just want to share this because I think, you know, it can be really easy to put on this persona and put like show something out on Instagram and the highlight reel. And really, that's not what's

going on I just want to be real with you guys that yeah today I'm feeling it I'm definitely feeling it in the past week I've been feeling it too and so no matter where you are on your journey no matter how much team support you've got all of that stuff there are going to be weeks where you just feel it and you're in it and it's absolutely fine the main thing is that you've got to make sure you've got support as an entrepreneur I've said for a really long time one of the most important things an entrepreneur can do for themselves is get a therapist and that rings so true because when I have weeks like this where as an entrepreneur and especially as a leader to employees or communities or clients, you

hold a lot. You hold a lot of space for a lot of people. And sometimes you need that to be flipped and you need someone to hold space for you so that you can vent or you can talk about what's going on for you. And definitely for me and Danielle over the past couple of weeks, we've been holding a lot of space for clients who are really pushing hard in the next couple of months to hit massive goals and supporting them through that team members who have been working so hard all year and are just really wanting to push towards those final goals or you know if anyone's got personal stuff going on the election was crazy and people were feeling

that heaviness so make sure as an entrepreneur or just as an ambitious woman you have support and you have someone that can really hold space for you and allow you to feel held and supported because it is really really important that you give yourself the chance to step back and actually feel how you're feeling and deal with that in a constructive way because a lot of people can't just bury those feelings down and that's not really serving anyone and what's really powerful especially for those of you who create content or kind of share what you're going through all of this is just more content to share so what you're going through you're really going to grow from and

you can share that with other people so that they can see your processes so for me therapy always helps having baths on a night time like epsom salt baths and putting my phone away and maybe watching real housewives tea slow morning rituals whatever you can do to give your body and mind the chance just to relax is really important and two things that I do aside from the normal self-carey stuff like the therapy like baths like meditation two things that really are have changed the game for me one is acupuncture I love it not only just because it's so good for hormones and health generally but it's so relaxing when I do acupuncture I just completely drop into another world and I am out for a whole hour just in total bliss total relaxation I feel like a new woman afterwards and the second thing is rolfin so if you haven't heard of this you're probably like

what on earth is that so it's a form of body work and I'm probably gonna really demolish what it actually is if I try and explain it so I won won't bother. But you can always look it up. It's called Rolfin. And I really notice when I go and get this kind of body work, my nervous system relaxes so much. Sometimes with a massage, it can take me a good like 15, 20 minutes to fully relax into it. But with Rolfin, I just drop in so fast. I relax so much. And it's just a total game changer so I've been doing things

like that I do those two things on my non-negotiables every single week as well as everything else just really helps me get back into a place where I feel recharged and it's also okay to have weeks where you do feel tired and you just acknowledge that you just sit in that because 2020 has been really hard for everyone so that's just my rant so if anyone's feeling the same just know that you're not alone I think a lot of people right now are feeling it and switching gears to a little bit more motivating content we are nearing the end of the year so hopefully if you are entrepreneurs you're really thinking about what Black Friday Cyber Monday looks like for your business or the holidays. Like what are the plans that you have to close more clients or sell more product or hit your goals? And then also, what can you put in place or lineups that you're able to take some time off?

Because like I said, this has been a year and if we're gonna have any chance of making 2021 better than 2020 which I don't think will be hard then you really need to give yourself the chance to just switch off relax recharge and get clear on what that big vision is for going into 2021 so have a think about that also we've got something really exciting launching on Black Friday so if any of you are interested keep an eye on our social media and we'll give you all the instructions on how to get in on that because it's going to be absolutely epic. And then another thing that we're doing in Boss Babe, maybe this inspires you for your own company, is we are going into light mode over the holidays. So what that means is we are doing two weeks where we're cancelling all meetings, all normal responsibilities and our team

are getting the chance to switch off and take a step back. So it doesn't mean that we're completely unavailable for two weeks. Obviously our team are still going to be in there answering emails, supporting clients, making sure that people are feeling held outside of the actual holiday days but it's something that we decided to do because our team have worked so hard this year with COVID and with everything that's happened, all of us have. And we really just wanted them to feel like they could have that time off without necessarily having to book it off. And I would love, you know, this to be a thing moving forward, maybe two weeks in the summer, two weeks over the holidays that are outside of our normal team's holidays, because it's really important that people can feel

comfortable showing up to work as their best self and comfortable taking time off and spending with their family without feeling guilty without feeling like they've got these massive goals that they still need to jump in and achieve so whether you're an entrepreneur solo or you have a team maybe it's something you can think about I know it's a luxury but we're starting now gearing up for what that looks like so that come those two weeks everything's already planned prepped and we're good to go so podcast will still be going out youtube goes out emails all that stuff so that's what we're really excited about and then with that I want to jump into this

episode because if any of you are in the place where you really need to up level your mindset to what else is possible and you're really looking to make more sales, scale your business, this episode is going to blow your mind. So I'm interviewing Rachel Rogers. She is an incredible founder and she runs a business called Hello7 whose mission it is to empower entrepreneurial women to build million-dollar mindsets. She actually recently just had her own seven figure month. And in this episode, we break down exactly what that looked like. And there are so many tips you'll be able to apply right away in your own business after listening. And just take a minute, think about that seven figures in one month. That is seriously incredible. That is such a massive celebration and

milestone. And to a lot of you listening, you're probably listening thinking, how on earth? That is not even possible for me. And I hope that this episode really shows you that it is. It's possible for you. It's possible no matter what stage you are at in your business. The way I've had Rachel break it down is really, it can be a formula that you follow from A to B.

And it might not happen overnight. It might take a long time in the works but if you really set your mind to a goal like that you can 100% achieve it so I know you're gonna love it and before we dive in just quickly I really want to ask if you'd be willing to leave a five-star review or just an honest review of the podcast on iTunes because one of our goals is to really grow the reach of our podcast and any review really really helps us so leave a review let us know what you loved or what you want to see more of and it would help us so so much and as always take a screenshot of you listen to this podcast share your biggest takeaways on insta stories tag me at I am Natalie and at bossbabe.inc and that, we'll just jump straight into the episode.

A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Rachel, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. I'm so excited to chat with you. I was just saying I love podcast conversations that feel like we are just sitting in the car with the person listening and she's just getting to be a fly on the wall on the conversation. So I'm really, really excited to drop in with you. And I want to start kind of at the beginning. You are the CEO of an incredibly successful company. And I just want to know what led you to want to be an entrepreneur?

Was it something you always knew you'd be from a young age? Or did it happen later in life? Did you fall into it? What was your journey to entrepreneurship? No, I had no intentions of being an entrepreneur. I always wanted to be a lawyer. That was my plan from eight years old. So I went to college and worked for a little while, then went to law school. And it was my third year in law school where I was like, oh, this ain't it. You know? So I was like, I do not necessarily want to be a lawyer, or at least not the way that it was shown to me, right? Working at a firm or there's just so much of the culture in practicing law that is, can be very toxic for women, very toxic for people of color, for parents, you know? And so I was

like, I don't know if I want to do that. So I started exploring in my third year of law school to see like, what else could I do? And I sort of fell into that, like looking into entrepreneurship because the four-hour workweek was popular at the time. Oh, we all loved a four-hour workweek back in the day. Yes, we did. We did. And it was like an introduction, right? For a lot of us, we didn't know that you could make money like running a business from your home. It didn't sound real. And so that made it real for me. And then I was like, hmm, what else could I do to make money? Because clearly I got to pay these law school loans.

So then what was it that you decided to go and do? Was it, okay, I know the law. What was that next step for you? Well, I actually tried to start a t-shirt business, which is absolutely hilarious because I know nothing about retail or clothing or anything. My idea was to provide t-shirts for study abroad students in other languages that would say things like, please speak more slowly. It was actually... I still to this day, I don't know if it was a great idea or a terrible idea, but I had a hard time getting it off the ground. I got the t-shirt designs,

but then I realized, oh, I actually need capital to buy inventory and I don't have any of that. And so after the sort of t-shirt debacle, which took up a couple of months, I was like, well, why not just sell what I have, right? I have a law degree and I'm licensed to practice law. Why not sell legal services? And so that's what I decided to do. And then I started researching solo practice and going solo right after law school, which was very unheard of and very not encouraged at the time. This was in 2009. But I was like, screw it, I'm going to do it. And I went for it. So I did a clerkship for a judge right after law school for a year. it. So I did a clerkship for a judge right

after law school for a year. And then the day after my clerkship ended, because you get a year and then they bring another clerk in who's a recent law grad. So you can't stay longer. And so after that, I was like, you know what, I'm not going to get a regular job like with a firm. I turned on lots of opportunities and I decided to start my own solo practice, much to my mother's chagrin, she was not happy. She's like, please get a job. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to

mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial.

That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. Yeah, you have a similar kind of journey to Danielle, my business partner, because she was a chiropractor. And when she came out of college, she was like, I'm just going to have my own clinic. And she was so young, but went into it. And from that kind of entrepreneurial beginning has led her to where my own clinic. And she was so young, but went into it. And from that kind of entrepreneurial beginning has led her to where she is now. So when you first started, did you know

what kind of clients you wanted to attract? Or were you just like, okay, I'm going to set up and we'll see what happens? Yeah. I mean, when I first started, I was kind of like, whoever is willing to give me money, I will take it. But what was happening is we were having a recession in the US at the time. And so I had a lot of friends who had been working and building their careers while I was in law school. And they were getting severance packages and getting laid off because of the recession. And so a lot of them were like, okay, I've got this severance package. I've got living expenses for the next 6 months, 12 months, whatever it was. Let me go start my own business.

And then they needed a lawyer to help them incorporate, to do contracts for them, to help protect their IP. And so I had a couple of people reach out to me just because I was like one of the few lawyers they knew. And I was like, wait till September 1st when my clerkship ended. And so I had like three clients lined up when, you know, when my clerkship ended and I just immediately started my practice. And because that's who was coming to me, I just decided to focus on entrepreneurs. I love that. And then when did your kind of what you were doing pivot to now you actually work with entrepreneurs and I know you have a real purpose behind helping women hit seven figures. When did that transition begin for you? That was several years later. And honestly, I guess it was all unfolding and I was doing it

through my law practice. So over time, my law practice became more focused on women entrepreneurs because that was who the majority of my clients were. And so I was mostly helping them build their businesses, helping them if clients stiff them, protecting their IP, doing a variety of things for women business owners of varying sizes. I had really large companies and then had a lot of smaller companies and was teaching them about intellectual property, teaching them to protect their IP, teaching them how to make money from their IP. And so it sort of slowly started to transition into me giving them lots of coaching for free and charging for the legal services. And then, you know, once I was several years in,

I decided that I wanted to transition into coaching full time because I enjoyed it so much more than practicing law, all of the deadlines, it was like not using my skill set. It was something that was like zone of excellence for me, but not zone of genius. And so that's how I started to transition because I really wanted to see women make more money. There were so many stats that I was seeing at the time about how women were starting businesses in droves, but they're making $50,000 in revenue total. So that means they have to pay themselves and business expenses out of 50K. And I'm like, that ain't enough, you know? So I really wanted to show other women like how to capitalize on their IP and make more

money. And then where did the seven figures come from? Why was it seven figures? Because I read a stat around the same time. This was earlier in my career that said only 2% of women entrepreneurs get to seven figures. And once I got to like a couple hundred thousand, which only took probably about two years in, maybe it was the third year, like halfway through the third year, sorry, halfway through the second year, when I hit

300,000 in my practice. And then once I hit 300K, I was like, okay, well, the next milestone is obviously seven figures. And so I spent several years chasing seven figures, and there was nothing about it. Everything was zero to 100K, how to get to six figures, make 100K, because that's such a respectable salary, $100,000. But it's actually a really small business. And if you live in a big city, I lived in New York at the time, so making $100,000 was not enough to pay my bills, take care of my kids, pay my business expenses. I couldn't hire anybody on that. And so I was like, I feel like we should start shooting for seven figures, not six. And that's what I did myself.

And I found that there was so little education about scaling from a couple hundred thousand to seven figures. And so once I did it, I wanted to help other women entrepreneurs do it as well and get them to start thinking about seven figures as like a realistic goal, not something that's far off and not possible. Yeah. And I love that you said that because there is a massive difference between 100K as a salary and 100K with your business revenue. And people often think, okay, if I quit my six-figure job, I can go and make the same amount of money in business, but it's different. You've got expenses. You really can't scale unless you've got team. If you're making 100K, you're not taking home 100K,

that's for sure. Exactly. And you're probably working more to hit that when you first get started. It's a lot. Yeah. And that's the thing people don't talk about. The 100K mark actually kind of sucks. No, it's hard. It's really hard. I think once you're at multiple six, you can really spot your opportunities of how to get to seven. It's like, that's the thing I'm going to go and scale. When you get to your first 100K, it's like, let me throw a ton of shit at the wall and see what sticks. Exactly. Let me hustle and everything. And then you realize when you get to multiple six and seven,

it's a lot easier. I mean, of course, there's a whole new set of struggles that come with it. And scaling beyond that is a whole thing. But I want to reassure any early stage entrepreneurs listening that like, does it ever get easier than this? And the answer is yes, in certain situations it does. But it's a lot. It is. It is a lot when you're doing it all yourself. And that six figure mark is like you're making enough to be like, this is really working, but also you're working so much and you don't have enough help and you have more opportunities than you can take advantage of by yourself. It's a really tough time. Yeah, it is. And are there certain things that you noticed for let's say someone's coming to you and they're at 250k a year and they're like, I just can't seem to push past this. Are there certain things you notice that really help people scale up to seven,

like across all businesses, you're seeing trends? Yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, women don't hire. We're very slow to hire employees. We'll hire part-time contractors or we'll hire someone to help us with a specific project, but we won't commit to hiring a full-time employee. Or at least, I won't say that we won't, but we're much slower to do it. And I think that that is one of the things that actually slows us down. And it's understandable, right? There's a lot of fear there. Women are sent a lot of messages around money that we're not responsible with money. We don't know what we're doing. There's a lot of imposter syndrome that goes on that prevents us from thinking that we can support a salaried employee. But I find that if you don't have a full-time employee assistant at 250k, that's your next move.

As soon as you hire that person, it's going to free up your time and you're just going to spend time thinking up more ways to make more money, you know, and you're going to be able to make so much more happen. And then you get to a place where you start to have to duplicate yourself, right? Like if you're a lawyer after that, you know, probably actually my first hires would be a full-time executive assistant. Then my next hire would probably be a marketing assistant full-time so that they can be doing social media and helping your marketing get out there while you're busy delivering the work. And then you want to really duplicate yourself. So if you're the one designing products, getting another product designer. If you're a lawyer delivering services, hiring another lawyer. And I think that's key. It's really building the team at that point.

The other thing I would say is streamlining. There are way too many entrepreneurs that just create new offers every six weeks. It keeps you so busy. You have to market all of those offers. You have to sell each of those offers. You have to deliver each of those offers. You ain't got time. So having one offer when you can start to streamline, like in my law practice, for example, one of the things that really helped me scale is instead of offering contracts and business formations and, you know, employee documents and trademarks and copyrights, I was like, forget it. I'm not doing any of that anymore. I'm only doing trademarks. And so when I focused on trademarks, I made a lot more money. I was able to systematize my business.

It was so much simpler. Everyone really knew what I did. So there was more brand awareness. So I think streamlining your offers and having one main offer, you actually will get to seven figures faster with one offer than you will with like 17. If I could scream that from the rooftops, I would. I hit seven figures with one product. And people seem to think like we had this many things going on. We had one product. I hit seven figures with one product and people seem to think like we had this many things going on. We had one product. I didn't have a podcast. I wasn't doing video. I picked one social media platform as my marketing platform and I had one product and I just went to town and I just kept going. When I look at a lot of my friends who are seven, multiple

seven, eight, they have the exact same advice. But in the beginning, when we talk about that zero to a hundred K, you're like, you're testing different offers because you don't really know which one has product market fit. You don't know what has legs. The minute you find it, it's like, okay, like you said, let me streamline and go all in. I love what you said about the first hire and it being an exec assistant. I read a book called The E-Myth and he was like, your first employee, they're kind of going to be a jack of all trades. There's like, there's no one job description. They need to come in and help you with almost anything you need help with until you're in a point to be able to step back and hire someone who can be more of a specialist. And I think that's also really key. Finding someone that is going to be really flexible,

has that entrepreneurial vibe and is willing to just roll their sleeves up and get done what needs done because businesses can be messy in the beginning. Absolutely. You want somebody who really believes in the mission of your company and they believe in you and they're like, yes, you know, let's do it. Right. And it's, you know, we have a saying in New York, it's me and you the hard way. Right. And that's what it is. It's like you and me, let's do it. We're committing. And I definitely had that as I was building my law practice, that one person who was so committed, and then she eventually became the operations manager for the business. I wasn't doing everything, right? And we hired someone else

to be an executive assistant at that point. But that's where you start, right? You're really just trying to extend yourself, right? Like how can you almost double your output? Hire an executive assistant first. That's step one. Yeah, And exactly. They probably do move to being your head of operations because they get what it's like to do all the jobs. And I think that's what makes you a good manager or a leader, right? Where you can ask for something to get done. You know how long it's going to take because you did it. You know what it takes. And so being able to then delegate it, it's such a great way to have people grow with you as a company. We've had that too. And we're so lucky that the people that we've brought in, they just continue to graduate to the next role that they create for

themselves. They come in and as the business scales because of the impact they're having, they create this brand new role for themselves. I think that's the special thing about startups and small businesses. Absolutely. I totally agree. And I am a really big fan of bringing people in at the bottom and letting them grow, right? Like bringing someone in as marketing assistant and letting them eventually become marketing director, right? I don't like when we are brand new businesses or newish businesses in the like low six figures and we're hiring like a chief marketing officer or we're trying to hire whatever, all of these fancy titles. And I'm like, you don't need any of that fanciness.

You need people who can roll up their sleeves and get crap done. I just need you to eliminate things off of this to-do list. And then you get to a point where they are making the decisions. So you're outsourcing the decision- making as well as the task. And then they're ready to like hire their replacement to do the task because now they're doing the thinking and the strategy, you know? And I think that's super important to point out to new entrepreneurs because otherwise they're like, let me bring in this like content director and then let me bring in this like chief whatever. And I'm like, no, there's chief nothing. Okay. There's no chiefs. The last thing you need is another chief. You be the chief, just get shit done.

Exactly. Oh my God. I can't agree with you more. Okay. So I want to celebrate you and Agnolology because you recently hit your first seven figure month, a million dollar month, which is a massive achievement as an entrepreneur. How did that feel? It was pretty epic. And it was such a... I was like, let's see if we can make it happen. And I really was prepared for it to not happen. But at the same time, I was like, if I just believe and do everything in my power to make it happen, I think I could make it happen. So I was like, ah, let's try it. And the thing about

it too was it felt like a win for everybody that was following along because it was a really public journey. And especially for black women following and seeing a role model who looks like them, like that representation really matters. So it just felt really good to get that win because it didn't feel like it was just for me. It felt like it was for like women entrepreneurs everywhere and especially black women entrepreneurs. I love that. And you must have had such strong foundations because you sometimes look at some businesses that are already wanting to scale and you're like, you cannot scale right now because you couldn't handle the influx of the customer service or the things that come your way. And so to hit such a milestone like that, it really shows the work that you've been putting in and the foundations you've been

laying to be able to handle that scale. So what are some of the things that you'd been doing to kind of prepare to gear up for that? Yeah. Well, to be honest, it's not like I started out 2020 thinking I was going to have a million dollar year. And then especially after the pandemic started, I'm like, I definitely didn't think I was going to have a million dollar year. And then especially after the pandemic started, I'm like, I definitely didn't think I was going to have a million dollar month. But what I have been doing is working towards building a $10 million business. As soon as I hit seven figures, of course, we're all goal-oriented, ambitious women. We hit one goal, we're ready to hit the next. And so I just started working towards who do I need to be to run a $10 million business? How does the CEO of a $10 million business conduct her day?

What is she doing? What is she not doing? How is her self-care? So that is one of the things that I looked at even on my own personal life. Because as a CEO, your mindset and your own well-being is absolutely affecting the growth of the business. So if you take excellent care of yourself, you're going to be able to show up and like really slay it in your business. So that was

probably like the number one thing that I had been doing is working on my own mental health and self-care and getting more help like in my household, you know, to support me because I have several children. How many children do you have? Four. And how was that been during quarantine? Oh, just hilarious. I feel like actually I was sitting at the breakfast table yesterday and I was like, I think we've hit our stride. Like we had some meltdown, like, like May was really hard. And then it was summertime. So we were like, at least we don't have to do school. Then July hit and And that was kind of a bummer. And then I feel like we've gotten to a groove now,

now that it's almost time for school again. So I feel like we've learned how to be happy together. I think you've just raised the bar for everyone in the world. Like we just made a million dollars in revenue in a month whilst we have four kids at home and we're in the middle of a pandemic. I could barely get myself dressed during this pandemic. So to imagine, like I have a puppy that's a husband, but that's it. I don't know how you are doing this. I don't know either sometimes, but honestly, I think a big part of it is help, right? And that's

the same thing to answer your earlier question about what did I do to prepare for seven figures? That's what I did. Having help at home, having help in my business, continuing to hire for new roles. I was the CEO of a seven-figure business still going into Help Scout, which is our software we use for all of the customer service emails that come into the business. And I'm still in there answering emails. And I was like, this is dumb. We need a customer service person. And so we hired for that. And so I was hiring, not thinking about, okay, I just need to get someone super part-time for the stuff I need to get off my plate today. No. If I need that person, I hire them as a full-time employee because I know where I want to go. And I know that I want to hit 10 million and I'm not

going to hit 10 million without a customer service rep, right? Or two or three. So let me just hire them full time. And so I'm always almost like hiring ahead and betting on myself ahead. So I had a $2 million business with 10 employees. And my friends thought I was insane because they were like, with that size business, I have like three people on my team. And I'm like, cool, but I have a million children, first of all. And second of all, I'm trying to create the foundation of a business that can make a million dollars in a month. And so I know I can't do that by myself. I know I can't scale this by myself. And so I think that's part of the strategy is like, you can't just do what you're comfortable doing today. You have to be a little bit crazy

and willing to bet on your future and willing to trust yourself that you can't just do what you're comfortable doing today. You have to be a little bit crazy and willing to bet on your future and willing to trust yourself that like you can make it happen, you know? Yeah, exactly. And I love what you said about asking yourself the question, okay, what does a $10 million business owner look like? What do I look like at $10 million? What kind of things were you thinking about?

Okay, this is something I would need to change or pivot or this is where I would be spending my time. What was coming up for that? So like in 2019, one of the things that was like a constant source of stress, and I know any parents and you might relate to this too, Natalie, but cooking and eating was such a source of stress. It's like, what the fuck's for dinner? Every night we're just cranky and arguing about who's going to cook.

And me and my husband looking at each other like, I don't want to cook. Do you want to cook? No, I don't want to cook either. And then whoever has to cook is like passively, aggressively banging the pots and spoons and everything as they cook because they're mad. And so I was like, this sucks. And so I decided I'm like, screw it. I'm hiring a chef. And so I put a job description together, put it out there. And I found. And so I put a job description together, put it out there, and I found an amazing chef who has absolutely changed our life. Even my team was like, that was a pivotal moment for you. My business team was like, you became a different person. Because it's just getting that off of my

plate and knowing that it's handled. And I don't have to use so much mental space to think about how I'm going to feed my kids and myself or how am I going to argue with my husband or get out of cooking dinner tonight. Now that that's over, it's like, great. Now that mental space is available to solve other problems. So that's one of the things that I did to mega up-level my life. And it's so funny. I could tell people I have a nanny. You could have cleaners. You could have anybody on your team. No one cares. But when you say chef, everyone like loses their mind and they're like, tell me everything. Yeah, that's so true. Actually, I haven't done the chef route. I like cleaning. But my kind of a game changer for me was when I got a housekeeper who would also do my laundry. Like, wait, this is saving me so many hours. It's worth what I'm paying

because I met when you're an entrepreneur, you can generate more money by not spending time doing those things so it just made total sense to do it I love that and I'm really curious when you were scaling from kind of low seven figures to multiple seven figures did you make any drastic changes in your marketing was there anything you started doing or anything you stopped doing? No, actually. I mean, I think probably what I stopped doing is mega launches. So I wasn't doing like the two or three enormous launches a year where you spend like six months prepping for it. And then like you need two months to recover because you're exhausted. I just stopped doing that. It just takes so much resources.

And so we do still launch. Obviously, we have to launch if we have a new product. And we do promotions from time to time. But it became a thing where we're going to sell every day. We're not just going to sell once or twice a year. We're selling all year long. And I know that that's something that's heavily debated among entrepreneurs. Should I be doing big doing huge marketing pushes? And I just think it takes so much resources and is so taxing when you have

a small business. So I just stopped doing that and instead focused my energy, kind of like what you're saying. You focused on one social media platform to connect with potential clients. We did the same thing. We focused on one specific type of client and we really focused on organic. So we use ads to get new people into our world and have them opting in for our downloads and just getting them to get to know us and check out our newsletter and all of the content we do for free. And then all of our selling was really organic to our list. So we just focused on growing our list. And then when it came to selling, we didn't spend a ton of money on Facebook ads. Instead, we just emailed our list and said, hey, are you ready yet to join us for this thing? And that really worked. It really worked to just

bring in the clients that we needed to get to that next level. So we went from 1 million to 2 million in 12 months. Yeah. I love that you said that. And that was similar for us too. We'd done the kind of big launches and we got to see what worked so that we could scale it up on an evergreen basis because it's the same for us. We want to be making money every single day. I want to be making money while I'm sleeping, while I'm traveling. And you have to be at a certain business level to get there, to be in a place where you know how to do that. But once you're there, scale becomes really easy because you can see, okay, if I put extra energy into that,

it's gonna go up. All right, I hope you enjoyed the episode so far. Stay tuned as we share a bit of info about who supported this episode. Now, I just wanna interrupt this episode really quickly because holiday season is here and holiday shoppers are buying more stuff online than ever before. And if you're an online seller, you need to hear about this. And I want to tell you about a really special company called ShipStation.

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completely free because ShipStation, we do make ship happen. And we're back. Let's jump straight into today's episode. So is your email list kind of your biggest source? I talk about this all the time. I think email list is so important when you're on social. I'm a big fan of Instagram, but it's also building an audience on borrowed ground. And I think having an email list is really important. Exactly. Especially with like all the news about Facebook these days, you know, anything could happen, right? Like where that company could implode for any reason, or they could just change the rules one day and close your account. I've heard those stories from

entrepreneurs where they're like, oh, you violated the rules. We're shutting you down. And then you lose that whole community. And of course, me being a lawyer, I'm very risk averse. And so I'm always looking at like, I need to own my assets in my business. And so I am big on the list. I had a much bigger email list than I had social media following. Now they're starting to match up as our Instagram grows, but we really were always focused on building the mailing list. And that is where our clients come from. And I do Facebook Lives. I do try to connect with people. And I really just... It's like if I have, I don't know, 50,000, 60,000 people on my list, I'm focused on connecting with them every week. So I'm not just showing up when I have something to sell, but I'm sharing excellent content every week, newsletters that are helping them,

podcast episodes that are helping them reach their goals, doing special webinars or events for them. And just always like, how can I help them reach their goals, staying connected, listening to what they say they need, and then providing it through our marketing. So our marketing is very varied, but the way that what we're delivering isn't. We're delivering one main offer and honestly, one offer period. There's nothing else. So one offer, but we're connecting with people in different ways and really showing the value and really showing them our brand personality, who we are, what we believe so that they wind up in the right place and know that they're with the right community. Yeah. So can you talk about what your one offer?

Because I know people listening are like, tell me the one offer I want to know. So our one offer is a membership community called We Should All Be Millionaires. It's kind of a play on the book, We Should All Be Feminists. And it's all about helping women go from zero to seven figures. And so that's what we do. And we do coaching in there. I have a content path that takes people from working on their money mindset to creating a scalable business, to handling the legal parts of their business, to creating a product if they want to. And so that is our offer. And so really how I came to that is... And this is one of the things that folks should listen because this might be something that they want to do is if you are one of those people that has 17 offers, how can you merge them? Instead of doing VIP days and coaching

and courses and physical products and all of those things, could you potentially merge it all into one offer where people purchase one thing and they get all of the value your business has? Because that's kind of how I felt. I'm like, it feels weird to give them this and then I realize they need this other thing, but I'm not giving it to them. It's like, I just want to give them everything I've got. And so the membership became a vehicle for that. I think you could do that with a mastermind as well. I think there's a million ways to do it. I did it in my law practice. When I had all these different services and I wanted to kind of streamline, I created an annual plan. And so people would come to me and they would need a trademark.

And I would say, we'll do your trademark. And I see you need to form an S-corp. And I see you need contracts and blah, blah, blah. We'll give you all of those things for $1,000 a month or $2,000 a month. It depended on which level they purchased. And then they would be on retainer and I would give them all of my services. So I really think this is applicable. I've done this with people who are chefs. I've done this in design industry. You could do this with physical products. Like really, regardless of your industry, you can really merge things and have one main thing that is your bread and butter. Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I'm a big fan of memberships and specifically monthly recurring revenue. I think that's how you can build a really, really scalable business. I'm

in that business. So is my husband. And we both have seen what it really is like to have, like, you never have to start your month at zero. You never have to worry about where your revenue is coming from. It's more continuing to grow something that's already got a really, really strong foundation. Yes, exactly. And it's great. And the one thing I love about the membership model too, is that people can leave any month. So it sounds like you wouldn't love that, but I do because then that means I'm not holding anybody hostage. I used to have a mastermind where people were on a 12-month contract, or some cases, 24-month contract. And sometimes things changed for them, or they had a hard time. And there was just constantly this sort of reinvigorating them about committing to the work. And I really like with the membership that it's like,

vote with your feet. If it's not blowing your mind and you don't love it, you get to leave. It's great. So I always feel like I'm talking to people who really want to be there and I'm never talking to people who don't want to be there. Yep. I'm exactly the same. The best thing about a membership is people are there because they want to be there. And I think that's what creates such a high value community. On top of all the content you give, they're actually there because they want to be there, which means they're engaged. They're wanting to help other people. So I would love to dive into memberships a little bit because it's something we love to talk about. What are kind of your membership tips? I think for me, the biggest thing that I've learned about memberships is constantly listening to feedback and looking at my chain, right? If it's going up,

what did I do wrong? Did the content this month not hit and starting to look at that data, which when I'd had courses in the past, it was something I never thought about. I totally agree. And for sure, I mean, if you have a membership or any kind of retainer, like ongoing month to month program, you are definitely always going to be looking at that turn rate and that cancellation rate. One of the things I love to do is I kind of approach it like a software as a service company. So I'm always looking at how can we improve the product? What are the metrics that we need to keep an eye on? And whenever there's 10 people emailing customer

service about one thing, I'm like, nope, build that into the product. How can we solve that for them so they never have to email again? So that is how we approach it. And we're constantly trying to improve. And one of the things that we're doing in our membership this week, actually, is on Friday, we're having a town hall for all of our founding members. So there was 350 people that joined when we first opened it up. And so we're going to have a town hall with them to ask them like, what's going amazing? What could improve? What would you love to see as we continue to grow this community? And I think that's really important is really paying attention to your clients and finding out what is it that they want? What problems are they having? How can you continue

to solve and evolve the community to serve them. So when did you start your membership? Actually, just a couple of months ago. We launched it in April 2020. So on the heels of this pandemic, because we had felt like there was a pivot coming on and we were ready to kind of make a shift. And one of the things that was happening is we had this huge community of people that loved us. And a lot of them couldn't afford our mastermind. We had two different mastermind programs. We had

a mastermind with two levels. And a lot of people couldn't afford that mastermind. And they really wanted to work with us though because they listened to our podcast. They were reading our newsletters every week. And they were like a part of our free community. And they really wanted to work with us and hire us as their business coach, but they couldn't afford the couple thousand dollars a month price tag. And so my salesperson came to me and she was like, we've got to figure something out to serve these women, especially now because of this pandemic. They're needing to pivot. They're looking for support. They don't trust everyone. And so I was like, you know what? We need to think about what we should offer. And so then I said to my community, if I was going to do

a lower priced course or program, what would you want to get out of it? And so I got hundreds of responses and everybody said different things. And I was like, I can't make a thousand different offers. And that's when I realized like, oh, I should just merge all of those things into one. And so we were like, okay, let's try it and see what happens. And it's so funny because I was really anti-memberships before this. Like I know members of my mastermind were cracking up because I was like, I hate memberships. I'll never do a membership. I'm always talking people out of memberships. And part of the reason was because I feel like for newer entrepreneurs that don't have an audience, and if they're charging a really low price point, it's a lot of work and you're not making enough

money yet. And so I'm like, I don't think a membership is necessarily right for every entrepreneur right out the gate. Yeah, I completely agree with you. We've had a membership for a few years now and my clients in our masterminds are, I'm going to start a membership. And I'm like, nope, you haven't got enough people in your business to make it worth your while because you'll launch, you'll get 20 people in and you're having to make the same amount of content as you would if you had 200 to 2000 people in. It's not worth it. Yes, I agree. You need scale. Yes. And I'm like, someone tell these people the truth. And I think sometimes people want to launch a membership because it's a lower price point and they feel like, well, it's easier to sell. And I'm like, let me tell you something. Whether your program

is 50 cents or 50,000, you're going to have to sell it. You're going to have to tell me why I should part with these two quarters and give you my money, no matter what the price point is. So you're not getting out of selling. You're still going to have to sell and convince people the value that you can provide and educate them on the problems that you can solve. And so I think it's like when you're looking for a pat solution to like, oh, let me just have something cheap. That's not necessarily solve your business problems. In fact, it will create more. So that's kind of what was my stance on memberships. And then I realized that's exactly what my clients wanted. So I was like, screw it, let's try it. And so we launched it thinking like, okay, we'll try it. We'll do this. We're not even

going to commit long term. We'll say that this will happen for like six months or a year and see what's up. And we had 350 people join right off the bat. And more were saying that they wanted to join. So we were like, oh, crap. I think this is it. And then the following month was when the Black Lives Matter movement was happening. And so many entrepreneurs were being called out. And there was just this huge discussion around anti-racism, which I was a part of. And that caused a lot of people to flock to us. And so people were messaging us and demanding that we reopen the club. They were like, open the doors. And so we did. And then we had another thousand people join. So we went from zero to 1300 members in less than 60 days.

And then after that, I know we were just like, just open the doors and leave them open because people want to be a part of it. And we want to help them, right? We want to have as much impact as possible. So we didn't want to say like, oh, you can only join at this time. We wanted really people to join this movement at any time. I love the story of how you pivoted, but how amazing that all of that just unfolded in that way when you made the decision, okay, we're going to pivot.

People are asking for something. Let's listen to our clients. And then to scale that quickly, that's when you know you really are onto something that you should be doing. I always say that like if something happens that easily and you get that instant feedback, that's when you know. When it's hard and it's not selling and you aren't fully into it, you don't know what it is yet. Yes, I agree. The market is really unforgiving. Again, people are not going to part with their money unless you can really provide value for them. So I think that that's a good thing. I think it can really bruise our egos

along the way. And that's okay. Like that is part of the journey. And that's one of the things you have to be willing to endure and like overcome, right? And just keep trying different things until you find that thing that people get really excited about. Then you know you're onto something. I actually see, I don't know if you've ever seen this, but I see artists sometimes on Instagram who like people are like, oh my God, I love this. Do you have any more? And they're like, sold out. It was a limited edition. We're never going to do it again. And I'm like, oh my God, please make the thing and make a bunch of money. What are you doing? It drives me nuts. My husband just like, he loves buying sneakers sneakers like he's a sneakerhead. So

he wanted these like custom sneakers and he follows these artists that make them. And there was like one particular pair that's super popular with this particular artist. And he's like, no, that's retired. And people message him literally every day wanting to give him money. And I'm like, what is do you hate money? Why are you doing this? Yep. You see that all the time, though. And you hate money? Why are you doing this? Yep. You see that all the time though. And you're like, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?

Sabotaging your own success. That's why I think it's really important to like, look at the data, pay attention to what your customers are asking for. A lot of times we have so many opportunities that are literally right in front of our eyeballs, but we can't see it because we're being precious. You know, like, oh, no, I can't reopen the cart because I just closed it and blah, blah, blah. Right. Like I could have been precious in June and been like, no, we said the next launch won't

be until September. So we're not going to do it. And that would have been dumb, you know, and it would have left a lot of people out who like really wanted to work with us. So, you know, it's a win-win for us and for them, right? We get to do the work that we love to do and we get to serve more people. And we get to learn how to scale our membership faster, right? It drives me nuts when I see that. I'm like, you know, this is another thing that I see all the time that I'm sure you do too. When people are like, oh, last month was amazing. I made so much money, but I don't know what I'm going to do this month. And I'm like, okay, well, what did you do last month to make money? And

they're like, oh, I did a webinar or I did this or do that. I'm like, okay, so why aren't we doing that again? I'm so confused. Yep. You see it a lot. I think that's the entrepreneurs that burn out because they don't have that recurring revenue. They don't know what levers to pull to generate consistently. And it's like, well, why are you not doing it again? Well, my audience is exhausted. I'm exhausted. I haven't got the systems. And I think that's a really important part of this. And that's why I love why we're talking about recurring revenue, because if you can find what it is that you can just repeat month on month and stay consistent with, that's when you're going to get scale. And that's when things get easier.

You're not waking up at the beginning of the month month like, oh my God, where is my money going to come from? How am I going to pay my employees? Absolutely. I totally agree. I'm all about that recurring revenue because you sell once, but then you're making money longer term. So you're not having to constantly sell something new. And like you said, starting the month from zero, figuring out how you're going to pay the bills, that's extremely stressful. And it is like the perfect storm for getting burnt out and then, you know, and quitting because if you don't have the energy, and that's why I said, I think about how does

the woman that I want to become like treat herself. It's such like talking about self-care is like, so it's almost like overused word, but it's so important. You know, it's so crucial to the growth of your business is being able to take care of yourself, being able to sleep and get rest and take time off from working, you know, like that seven day hustle. I'm not about that life. I can't do it. I'm totally in agreement with you. And one thing you also said as well, which is a really, really big advantage of having recurring revenue and a product is you get to focus on improving your product and making your clients really happy.

If you're constantly creating new offers, left, right, and center, you're missing things. You're not able to listen to feedback and improve. For us, we have someone whose sole job is product. They are designing the membership, making the membership better. That is their sole job. And that's really important for us because that's how you scale when you can really, really focus. And that's, you know, if you're making that recurring revenue, you're not having to worry about where your sales are coming from. You can actually just step back and focus on actually making your clients really happy with what you're doing. Yes. And when you make your clients really happy, guess what you get? You get product market fit, which means that you also have word of mouth.

So people are coming to you not because you spent money on ads, but because their friend told them that they have to get up in here, you know, and buy this thing, you know, and there's nothing better than that. I mean, I think that's a big part of how we scaled is like those first 350 people told all their friends and then they came, you know? Exactly. Well, I love that we pivoted this into a membership conversation because memberships are my favorite topic to talk about. So I really appreciate you being such an open book on this. And there's probably a lot of people listening that are like, you know what? I've got the audience. I've got the experience. I'm ready to do it. So we've probably just inspired a whole wave of memberships, I think. Yes. And I love it because you know what? Community is so crucial

to be able to scale a business, to be able to accomplish anything, whether it's you want to run a marathon or you want to be a better, or really any topic you can create a membership around. And when you have a community of people who are all working towards the same goal, you're more likely to reach the goal. So I actually think it's a beautiful thing to have more membership communities created. I think it's important. Yeah, me too. Well, Rachel, thank you so, so much for being on the podcast. I feel like I learned so much and I really appreciate you sharing all of Hello7 podcast. And check us out on Instagram. I'm RachRogersESQ and Rogers with a D. Love it. And what kind of things are you sharing on your podcast? So we talk about some of the issues that come up as you try to scale,

how to deal with haters, how to hire your first employee, how to fire people. We talk about... Well, actually, one of the things I do is interview other seven-figure entrepreneurs so we can unpack their journey and see what did they do? What was their formula for hitting the seven-figure mark? All women and diverse women. So those are some of the things that we talk about on the podcast. I love that. And that's Hello7 Podcast? Yes. Okay. Amazing. Everyone, jump over from the Bossy podcast and make sure you subscribe and download the latest episode. Rachel, thank you so, so much for being on here.

Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. If you love this episode, please subscribe, download a few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books and hacks. If you want a copy, just leave us a review, screenshot it and send to podcast at bossbabe.com. We will If you want a copy, just leave us a review, screenshot it, and send to podcast at bossbib.com. We will then email you a copy ASAP. And since we love Instagram,

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