the bossbabe podcast - 418: “Founder Mode”, Transparency About What’s Hard Right Now + Our Most Successful Funnel Strategy [The Sales Engine Series]

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

In the second episode in our Sales Engine Series, Natalie and Lindsay dive into the concept of “Founder mode” and why there actually is some truth to it – as long as it’s used as a way of collaboration versus micromanaging. They also get into why your offer might not be converting (hint: it’s probably your messaging) + how simple setting up a successful funnel can be. This episode is full of real + proven strategies and experiences from years of running a successful business – things you can start implementing right away. Grab your headphones, and dive into this tactical episode with Natalie and Lindsay!  TIMESTAMPS 00:01:45-Welcome To The New Podcasting Studio 00:02:50-Catching Up After Our Summer Of Excellence 00:11:25-Founder Mode 00:31:25-The Most Common Reason Your Funnel Isn’t Working 00:32:40-The Truth About Mastery 00:33:43-Why Having A Specific Niche + Owning It Is So Important 00:37:13-A Funnel DOES NOT Need To Be Complicated 00:42:45-Natalie’s Vision Of Building A Long Term Business 00:47:30-Getting Better At The Game RESOURCES + LINKS Click Here to Register for our Free Training to Create a Profitable, Predictable, and Repeatable Business – even if you’re unsure of your offer, have zero followers, and get a headache from the tech – this is for you! https://bossbabe.com/training  Download Your Free Workbook: The 4-Part Framework to Create An Irresistible Offer that Sells on Repeat: https://bossbabe.com/irresistible  Get on the Waitlist for Freedom Fast Track, Our 8-week Accelerator For Businesses That Want More Buyers to Be First To Hear When We Open Doors for Enrollment: https://bossbabe.com/fft-waitlist  Join The Société: Our Exclusive Membership To Help You Build A Freedom-Based Business: https://bossbabe.com/membership  Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More: https://programs.bossbabe.com/the-bossbabe-edit  Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997): https://bossbabe2.typeform.com/to/KFVPAiMy  FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

A funnel doesn't need to be complicated. I think that's a really huge myth. Some of the most successful funnels out there are the simplest. Where did you learn that a funnel had to be so complex? Like who's, where does this myth come from? When you've got a good product that you know solves a problem, what problem is it solving? And if you cannot sum that up, you're going to welcome back to the bossway podcast right i know we're gonna dive in with all the updates all the things but i have to tell you this that i have not told you today okay so i'm gonna pull up my phone okay so i've just been texting with one of my clients so for anyone listening um i do take on a couple of one-to-one clients per year i currently am at full capacity for 2024 uh but i do take on a couple of one-to-one clients per year I currently am at full capacity for 2024 but I do take on a couple of one-to-one clients and I work with them really closely over the whole year

so one of my clients the last time she did a webinar the very last time I don't really think I think it may be brought in one sale it just wasn't working at all and I've worked with her really closely on dialing things in and of course she's done so much work towards it anyway we were working last minute on slides and voice note back and forth first thing this morning that's right after our workout um she just texted me and she just finished the webinar so obviously this number is also going to increase and change she's just um brought in five hundred and ten thousand dollars wow from just today amazing this morning it's literally just happened so obviously we've got all the sequences all the things in place so what i was thinking for this episode is

let's just give an update a few things have been obviously going on so we can talk about that um and then let's also have this be part two of the sales engine so let's talk about funnels let's like get into detail on revenue stuff that i know people want to talk about, conversion rates, all the things. But before all that, welcome to the new podcast studio in Austin. Yeah, this has been a long time coming. I feel like since the very first time I was out here, what, two years ago almost, like the vision is to have it in the backyard so you can walk right outside and here we are. I know. It's beautiful. I'm really happy with it. Feels like there's some kinks to iron out, but. Yeah.

I mean, as always is the case when you're doing anything somewhat DIY, right? Is that you're always having to figure out a kink. And we have like great equipment. It's not as DIY as in the past, but I think it's normal to feel like there's going to be some hiccups. But I mean, like soundproofing lighting, this is great. I know now it's going to be, you got to get out here and use it for content. Natalie. I know. I mean, I feel like I am coming back into that like real sprint season for me. I'm very good at sprinting, but I have to take the break and then sprint again. I feel like I'm ramping back

up into a sprint season. But speaking of that, being totally real to you it's been fucking hard oh my god well yeah the sprint season so we're coming off of summer and I feel like we we somewhat intentionally and somewhat unintentionally or the intentional slowing down of summer created some like laxity in the business a little bit maybe. Like I said it yesterday on a meeting where I said we intentionally took Fridays off. We like didn't do any launches over the summer. We let everything kind of slow down, but we're now really intentionally pulling everything back in. And like that may feel like a lot of a tighter management for our team, but also I already feel momentum around things that were

starting to bother me as a manager. You know, it's not just one, like, it wasn't just one person or one thing, but that you can get in a rhythm in a business where it starts to feel like you're having to follow up with people more or details are getting missed. And that gets to a certain level of consistency of those things happening. You're like, Ooh, okay. We got it pattern interrupt and it happened to kind of coincide with the end of summer. So yeah, I think that we're both coming in with this energy of like, we're heading into Q4. We have a launch coming.

We're already starting to talk about black Friday, like in there. And then there's all these economic things happening too, that make me feel like we can't, now is not the time to take anything for granted in any business, but especially ours. So, yeah, coming in hot with this end of summer energy. And then my nanny quit with no warning. That's great. everything is kind of coming, meeting structure and a review almost of like, what are we doing? What, what is, what is it that we want? Me, I'm saying for myself, like at home, what do I want in my structure? At work with the team, what do we want in structure and management? Even myself,

like coming off of my Leo vibe summer and going into more of a season where I need to buckle down. I need to like really be in my routine at home. So I feel that energy strong. And for you, it's like coming off of a summer of travel, right? And coming back into Austin and like, how do you ground back into being here versus being traveling? Yeah. And do you know what? I actually feel really grounded being back here. I feel like I'm in a routine. I feel very supported. I would say what's been hard specifically today and probably this week, I was just saying this to Tessa, who works in our team. You weren't here, but when kind of one of the challenges of today popped up, I was saying to her what I really notice in this seat and I and I always like to share this with any team members who I can really see as like running multiple departments like I always want to share like the behind the scenes of what I see and so I thought I would bring it to this podcast too something I've learned running this company and running other companies is each department needs managed very very differently because some department like every department has different priorities And so they're going to focus on certain things

and we'll miss the details of other things. And it's not that anyone's doing a bad job. It's probably them doing a good job of what they're good at. But I think when you run multiple different departments, you have to know exactly, you have to know coming in what's going to be required and what details you need to look for, like what's likely to be missed.

And that's what I was sharing today. Like say a growth team, they are going to focus on details that a delivery team will not focus on and vice versa. And someone that's managing departments, you have to be able to look at that and kind of anticipate that and know, oh, they're generally going to be much better at this,

but not as strong here. And kind of work with those details. So that's always been, it's so interesting to me like just over my career learning to manage different personalities like managing a creative person is so fundamentally different to managing someone who used to be an entrepreneur and is now working within a company to managing someone who actually has always worked in a business and in a company and thrives off of structure and things that are routine. So it's, it's very, very fascinating. And I feel like today example was that coming at me of, oh, we didn't have cross department communication. And that was the number one reason that we had like just something, a project basically wasn't delivered

the way we wanted it. And it was just a wasted a lot of people's time. And it wasn't a case of like, oh, that person's wrong. It was, oh, wait, no. As those who are running the company, now we know we should have just had a cross department because everyone's going to catch something else and think through the process in different ways. So it's just, it's fascinating. Yeah. Well, and I, like I'm learning in how, cause we, we spent a lot of time, which we've talked about, like we spent a lot of time getting the structure of the team, right. And looking at simplifying things, I think from even a year ago where, when I started a COO and you had just kind of taken back the business, cleaned house, we were rebuilding. Now we're a year out from that. And I think we have a really good structure and there's still these, these days that come up

where you're like, oh, okay. There's, you can't take anything for granted. And yeah, like, you know, we're still kind of coming back into momentum and that's where I'm feeling like I need to drive it a little bit more. And, um, you know, we have all, we have a mix of people in terms of backgrounds, whether they've been entrepreneurs or not. But we have a lot of high performers that we also talked about this and with management and just in general with team around like ideas versus being an individual individual contributor. And we've been talking a lot about founder mode, which I think is so it's so interesting because I think we hear these things like founder mode and it's very tech bro in a lot of ways, a very startup. And it's coming from bros in the tech industry. what you're going to see in terms of detail and of how you execute at an individual contributor level versus like thinking your job is about management and managing other people's contribution. And I'm still learning that too because I kind of sit in the middle of those two seats in my role

and I'm like, oh yeah, okay, I can see the founder. I see how you think as like founder and how you drop into the multiple layers and details and how I'm like, oh, I didn't think of it like that. And I can see managing people. I'm like, okay, I need to work with this person's personality to get the best out of them and understand what's going on in their life. And there's so much of that that has nothing to do with their ability to execute the idea. And it's this constant balance. But I think when we look at our team structurally, there's always opportunity to do both things better, to be in founder mode better and look at details and have everybody pay attention there and also

be in individual contributor mode to be like, look, the only thing that really matters is your individual ability to move your KPIs forward, no matter what level you're at in a business. So I've been in that work a lot, too, in this work as a season's change of like getting momentum back and moving into a busier season. And I think that's really relevant for everyone to pay attention to right now. I keep coming back to it with the economy. And I'm not an expert at this, but I just have this feeling. I mean, it's not just a feeling. We're heading

into an election. There's all these economic indicators, quote unquote, that you don't have to be an expert to feel the cost of living is going up and that dynamics are shifting online. And we're seeing a lot of people question whether they want to be entrepreneurs anymore. And our business is very sturdy and healthy and established. And we also want to be ready and we also want our customer to be ready. And so I'm, I'm really paying attention to pulling momentum back in, holding momentum in our business, as well as understanding, okay, what's working for us and what will our customer need to know about what's coming and really being able to live that over the next several months with everyone. Because I think no matter what happens with the election, it's going to be turbulent for a while here.

I think that's one of your superpowers really is is like what I describe it as cultural listening like I feel like you generally always have a finger on the pulse across the board of what's going on I think that's why you're so good at your job is you can bring in a lot of that context yeah so definitely we'll be interviewing a few times on the podcast about things that are coming up so a couple things I wanted to just go into more detail and you mentioned founder mode so for anyone listening who isn't sure what we're talking about i think the context was paul graham he's the ceo of y combinator is that right so he wrote a blog post on brian chesky the founder of airbnb came into y combinator and did a talk about something

called founder mode and apparently it like blew everyone's socks off and he wrote a blog post about it and it went viral for some of the right reasons some of the wrong reasons for some of the right reasons people were like mind blown of founder mode running a business versus manager mode so manager mode is generally you start a business you hire really smart competent people they're the ones that build it and drive it forward founder mode essentially is actually the founders involved in so many of the details and they don't buy into the concept

that like micromanagement is bad. No, they're going to jump into the details to help it get it right. And so it went viral for a bunch of people saying like, oh my God, this is mind blowing. And then also a bunch of people saying, no shit, Sherlock. This is how we run companies,

which I'm going to be honest. I was in the no shit, Sherlock. This is how we run companies, which I'm going to be honest. I was in the no shit Sherlock camp. As someone who has ran a company or ran companies for 12 years with no external investment, I would just like to say, you don't have the money in the beginning of a startup to bring in the smartest people in the world and have them drive your business forward. Not to mention, they're not going to care as much as you are. They don't necessarily know, like they can't decide your vision for you. I'm sure this is a big debate. To me, it's just kind of makes sense. It's common sense. And like, even with our business, with social media, I am always involved in the details of social media. And to call that micromanaging, I think would just be ridiculous. Like I care about what goes out. I am always involved in the details of social media. And to call that micromanaging, I think would just be ridiculous.

Like I care about what goes out. I am one of the best on the team at doing it because I've done it for so long. It's my face on content. Like why would I not be involved in the details? Whereas there's this other thought, body of thought that's like, well, you know, you should just be able to train and empower

and then step back and move on to the next thing. And I think as founder mode, actually, what you have to do is think about why did my business and maybe this is something you can think about when you're listening, right? Is why did my business become so successful in the first place? Like, what is it that made my business successful? Oh, it was probably because I was good at this one thing and I was really passionate about this one thing. And I did this one thing and then look what has happened. And so I think about boss babe you know I've always been in the social media the

content the marketing the revenue seat to just completely step away from that I mean it would just focus on like the runnings of the business it would be ridiculous like I didn't I didn't do well in business because I was good at the runnings of the business right like I have I have a specialized skill set that I want to lean into. And of course I'm learning and growing on the other side, but the final mode argument was interesting. Yeah. Well, and I think, and it's interesting because like right before that essay came out, I had sent you, it was a couple of weekends ago or something, and I was out walking and I sent you this like five minute voice note when I got home and I was like, look, TLDR, it was basically like,

you're the magic, you know? And so anytime we can processize things, I can operate the business. I can run, I can manage the people, but I can never be you. I can't, I can't be the magic. Like, well, you can't necessarily be the face of the, of the brand when I've been in it, but then you were saying like, I'm noticing when you're lacking in the business. Yeah, and if you, so founder mode to me in our kinds of business, and I think this is where I really like got into the weeds because founder mode in a tech company like Facebook or Apple,

it's like Steve Jobs founder mode, like Elon Musk founder mode. It's like, yeah, you know, someone else can run the day-to-day of Tesla, but Tesla doesn't exist without Elon Musk. Whereas it's like in an industry like ours with personal brand mixed into everything and stuff, it's like, obviously, I can't pretend to be Natalie Ellis. But also, we're always looking for how do we keep your magic in it without you having to do every detail? And I think that's

something that's really relatable for a lot of our people is even as I start to delegate stuff, I, and I want freedom from my business or freedom in my business. It doesn't mean that it becomes fully passive and you can disengage and like go on to the next thing and your personal brand-based business will continue to just hum along without you, it may. And I think we know people where, you know, their business is their name and they're very passive in it. Like they don't actually do that much anymore or the appearance that they do, but they aren't really in it as we know. But I think as a really savvy consumer, you can kind of feel when a business doesn't have the founder's magic in it anymore.

And so that's what you and I were going back and forth on is like, for me, it's your magic that is, that's what we need to keep in the business and capture and package. And then all the operations around it, I got, you know? And so we had this long conversation of like, how do we, what is that? And like, how do we processize that? And how do we operate your schedule, my schedule? Because we want, like, you do have other things going on and, and we all value our freedom a lot. And you aren't trying to disengage from the details in the things that are the places you bring your magic. The other thing that you said is like the, the social media. And I think this is another lesson that I wish I had heard more when I was on the other side of all of this, when I was running my own business is the parts of your

business that you love to do and that you're really good at, even if they're the things people are telling you to delegate, don't listen. And I think that's also founder mode a little bit of like social media is one of those things. A lot of people are like, well, just hire someone to do your social media. And that drives me nuts and I'm like absolutely not Natalie like you're you're you know it better than anybody and yeah we have someone on our team who does a lot of our social media but she's very collaborative with you right and so I think that's something else that a lesson that's come out of it for me and watching how we're doing it and having like intentional conversations that the founder mode argument kind of triggered was that when you get

advice about delegation or about how to operate your business, if, if it's something that you love to do, I'm telling you, you've got to really have a conversation with yourself around how is, how are you going to pull the magic back in? or how is the magic going to be maintained if you're not doing it yourself? Maybe you still want to delegate it, but you have to be aware that you don't want a piece of the business to go flat because you've delegated it to somebody who's just getting the box checked, right? And that's a little bit also of where we're at just in our own management with our own business right now is like, we don't want flat energy. We don't want box checking energy. You don't go into a rough economy with I'm checking boxes.

And the other thing that I said was like, how much talent is out there right now of people who are questioning whether they want to be entrepreneurs. And I think I'm seeing it a lot of like- You're getting so many DMs. So many DMs and you know and people that are coming through all the channels to us saying like hey I've been an entrepreneur for a while I have incredible experience and like we've heard from people who work for really well-known people who are like oh I went out on my own for a couple years and now I'm like

really interested in coming back in and being part of a team again I'm like interesting to me it's really interesting around like, which you'd know more about, we should talk about is like this kind of downward, like normalization off of the COVID wave of people who started a business during that time. And perhaps it was easier then. And now it's gotten harder. And it's kind of washing out some people and economics kind of driving like a little bit more competition, a little more savvy on social media. It's not as easy to make a business work on social media anymore. And I think there's people that are hitting life stages where they're like, I just,

I really need consistent income. And I need to know that I have stability and security. And I mean, you're looking like I am in this boat too. You know, it's part of the reason I'm here is that was a decision I made and I had to confront in myself and I get that, you know, and so we're looking, we're looking at those kind of things going, isn't it so interesting what's happening in this entrepreneurial online business market right now? And I'm, I'm here for it. Like, I, I think it's great because I think it means that if you're running a business right now, you've got to have your sales engine dialed, your, your first principles, like I'm here for it. Like, I think it's great because I think it means that if you're running a business right

now, you've got to have your sales engine dialed, your first principles, like you've got to really be doing the basics well. No more like skirting by half-assing stuff and box checking. And two, if you are running a business and it's growing, you want to hire people, like never been a better time to find top tier talent. I know. I was just saying to Steven last night before he came picked up from the airport i was saying in my entire career i have never ever seen the job market like this i've never been so inundated with such high caliber potential employees just like reaching out cold reaching out saying here's what i've done i'm

looking for a position i haven't seen it like that before and i also 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. The thing too, I like it as an employer because there was also a period of time where there was so much change out there. Like everyone was negotiating salaries and like that was definitely quite challenging as an employer. It felt like you had to have every benefit under the sun which is a startup can be really challenging whereas I'm seeing the opposite

now which listen I want the economy to be good on both sides but it does feel like we have the most amazing pool of talent coming to us and that is so interesting um but yeah I also one thing I loved about Natasha Oakley's book is the whole premise I would say of the book is, let me tell you what entrepreneurship really looks like and you can decide are you in or you out because it's not something you can like half-ass. And she was real about what it would take. And I do think that is really, really important

for entrepreneurs to hear. I personally would never trade this life for the world. Like am I feel like I'm a born entrepreneur I always knew I want to be an entrepreneur I will always be an entrepreneur and I think it's very easy to look at the business that I've built now and say I want that tomorrow that's not realistic yeah the found the foundations have to be laid the groundwork has to be laid it's going to take time and can I help you do a lot faster than I did course yes there are so many things I did wrong that I can totally support with and help you avoid that but I also see it in team members too who kind of want some of that

but don't necessarily want to take the risk of starting the business and I even touched about this on a newsletter that I wrote of like I normally will share the level of freedom that I do have. You know, I took a lot of time off this summer and I was really open about it. And in our mastermind, I get a lot of people saying, well, how do you do that and not feel guilty about it? And one thing I said was, what you are doing by asking that question is making the assumption that everyone wants what you've got. And everyone wants to have done what you have done not everyone wants to put in that amount of effort with no return to have the return that might be there on the other side some people like me do like I I love that I love the the risk of it I love the game of it I love it like I know I'm

meant to be in business for some people maybe they don't want that but also maybe their circumstances don't allow that and that's also something that's important to consider. So when we just assume that your team might want the same thing you have, it's like, well, actually, I don't know enough about that person to make that assumption. So that's been really interesting to see. Yeah. Well, and I feel like the other myth that I want to touch on with all of that is like knowing you so well and you are a consummate entrepreneur, you will always be an entrepreneur

and you're at an elite level of success. But the truth of that is even when you are living into your freedom that the success of the business has afforded both time and financially and all of that, you're not disconnected, right? Like you are not pieced out, unreachable, not thinking about the business at all. And I think like, that's the truth behind the curtain that so many people don't understand or don't, they think they can get to a certain level, then they can just disengage and the business will keep going. And I'm like, that's not- Thing is, I probably could. The business wouldn't be the, we wouldn't be having the biggest year in business we've ever had. But if we look at it realistically, I probably could walk away

and the business could still be generating multiple millions a year. Yeah. And it would be different because I wouldn't be delivering programs and stuff. But I think the business is built in that way, but wouldn't be growing. Right. And I think that's the thing is like, for me, I mean, I used to prescribe to this belief. It's like, oh, I just have to get it to a certain point and then it'll just run and it won't need me to continue to think about it or pour into it. Or it's like having a kid. I mean, we talked about this in an internal meeting this week, the analogy of like your kid doesn't ever get to an age where you're like, peace out. You don't need your parents anymore. I mean,

yes and no, right? Like ideally you don't house your children forever. But like I still see my parents all the time. I don't necessarily ask them for help anymore. They don't support me anymore, but like I, the analogy, they think about me all the time. They're always considering my wellbeing, even though I'm an adult and they're in, you know, in their sixties. And it's, I feel the same way about business. It's like, even if a business gets to maturity, like Boss Babe is, even if we didn't want it to grow anymore, you wouldn't expect that it would remain healthy if you just never think of it again. And I feel like sometimes when we, I know we're going to get into this with the sales engine and stuff, but when we dig into

teaching what we teach and I see some of the questions come through and I'm always kind of floored by this thing that I call like the easy button, you know, like, well, I'm just going to put this in place in my business and then it's just going to work. Set it and forget it. And it's like, yes. And I'm like, set it and forget it is not a mantra in Boss Babe, right? Like that's not, that's just not how an entrepreneur thinks. And I think that's partially founder mode. Like you love it so much. You want to think about it. Even, even though I'm not the founder of Boss Babe, like I've said this to you recently, I wake up every morning excited to work, you know? And I'm like, this is so interesting because I've not usually felt that way about my own stuff, not as consistently as I feel right now.

And so anyway, I think there's a lot of things to talk about, but it's, I think a rocky economy will wash out a lot of people who maybe have been able to play in that zone of like, oh, I can kind of just skate through with not being obsessed with my business and not really being in the details and really refining a sales engine because it's so easy to sell stuff online. And in a rockier economy and in a more crowded Instagram or online ecosystem, it's getting harder. And I think that's where I'm really in my role and in what we teach. I'm like, I want to make sure that one, like if you're here, you're here because you want to be here. Like you want to be an entrepreneur and you are freaking

committed because it is going to take commitment over the next couple of years with what is happening in our economy, in our country. And two, just philosophically and as a human, energetically, you want to be here. Because our team went to Tony Robbins recently and he came back and one of the things he said was a lot of entrepreneurs become obsessed with their product, but the most successful entrepreneurs are obsessed with their customer. And that's like a Tonyism. And I was like, oh, that's a good, yeah, like obvious statement, but also good reminder. If you're not here because you really care about your customer and what you are helping them achieve and how you're transforming their life, eventually you're

going to wash out and you and how we do it. Then I'm like, okay. And I know you do too, that, but I see a lot of people who don't, right. And, and who are in it because they thought they could just make a lot of money and have a lot of freedom. And those are the people where I'm like, Ooh, how, like, how are you, how are you right now? Like, how are you feeling? How's your business really doing? And what do you need from us to either get back engaged in it in a way that is predictable and sustainable? Or what, you know, what, what can we help you be with our transparency and our, in the nervous system work to help you discover, like, maybe I am somebody that needs to go back into a more stable career type job because right now this doesn't feel good to me and so anyway that's yeah I'm in like all of that I'm just watching a lot of stuff right now both

in our audience and then in yes my cultural observations of like the market is economics are shifting the job market is shifting. You know, we're doubling down on the sales engine and all of those pieces, both in like, we live our talk, right? We're doing it in our own business, cleaning up all of our backend to make our sales engine super, super dialed. We teach it in a way that's super dialed because I don't, I don't ever want to like encourage somebody to be an entrepreneur that's not wanting to be, isn't wanting to do this level of work, right? Yeah, I agree with all of that. And like, I think right now is a really exciting time to take the leap into entrepreneurship.

I will always be flying the flag for it. I think it's a really exciting time, like you say, if you're willing to work. And one thing that I really think people if you are sitting on that fence or you're wondering like am I all in do I want to be doing something else the way I would see it is whatever you do in your career it gets to be a vehicle for the life you want to live and so what's the life that you want to live what is that massive vision and what is that going to require from a fulfillment an energy energy, a time, a financial perspective, and how can you then use your business to be able to provide that? And I always knew I

wanted to create for myself something very different to what I experienced growing up. And I knew I wanted to build a wildly successful company. I just knew it. I didn't want to play small. I wanted to build a wildly successful company. The freedom element didn't really occur to me until I had Noemi. And then I realized, okay, success at all costs doesn't feel like success to me. I want to change. I want to change the purpose of this vehicle and you can change it and you can do it. But you know, that, that one year buying the company, resurrecting it, turning it around was not an easy year but to me the vehicle and the destination that vehicle was driving was so much more important than my discomfort in the moment yeah and i think that's the question we need to ask is is that vehicle is the destination that the vehicle is driving to more important than the discomfort and for some

people the answer is going to be yes and for some people the answer is going to be yes and for some people the answer is going to be no right now there's no right answer but like you say you have to be in it and obsessed with it and ready to go and I think it's exciting because there's a lot of really awesome people ready to work yeah and ready to jump into a business and roll their sleeves up and and so I love that and and as a mother having the level of freedom that I'm able to have now is it just fundamentally has changed my life to be an entrepreneur so I'll forever you know sing its praises and talk about it but like you say it's not for the faint of heart it is something that is going to require a level of commitment but then

you know going going back to that funnel stuff thinking about that one client this morning you know she just made half a million dollars yeah but she's worked like six months with you totally in in detail refining things you know and I and I and that's like those outsized results come from outsized work and you know what else on that that first time that it didn't work she didn't blame anyone around her. She didn't blame the economy. She didn't blame coaches. She didn't blame anything or anyone.

She said, I just mustn't have got it right. Yeah, why and why not? Got curious about it. What isn't working? What do I need to do better? Yeah. And the one thing that we both, we like got in there like surgeons were like dissecting.

I'm like, let's figure it out. It's almost always this one thing or almost always. Tell us. Messaging. Yeah. Almost always is messaging. When you've got a good product that you know solves a problem and you've got product market fit, if it is not selling, it's almost always messaging if the funnel works if the offer works if you've put traffic into it if it's just not working it's generally the messaging and the good news about the messaging is i call it like changing the wrapper yeah you can always change you can always change the wrapper you can always change the messaging and it's that idea of being obsessed with your customer because just because you have an amazing product you know this doesn't mean that your customer. Because just because you have an amazing product, you know this,

doesn't mean that your customer is going to understand what problem it solves for them. And our jobs as marketers is to be able to sum up so quickly, what pain does this solve for you? What is this going to help you do, achieve, move away from? What problem is this solving? And if you cannot sum that up you're

going to have a lot of problems and i have people come to me i mean we know even in fft i can't sum it up because it does so many things do you know what that's a symptom of not knowing your product inside out and you know what else being long-winded is a symptom of not having mastery around the thing that you're selling yeah and i hate to be that direct about it, but when we look at mastery, it's often being able to distill the most complex of subjects and hard to explain concepts into the simplest language. And the people who understand concepts the best can explain it in the most simple language. People that explain it with all the airy fairy language generally tells me you don't fully know what you're doing. I'm not, it's not trustworthy.

When someone can just sum it up right away, you're like, oh, wait, they know what they're doing. And so it doesn't mean to say they shouldn't be selling it. They shouldn't be doing it. All it means to say is let's dive in again. Let's dive in and just answer a few more questions. Let's get to the root of it because right now you're sitting on the surface. Let's get to the root of it because right now you're sitting on the surface. Let's get to the root of it. If you remove all this conditioning that something has to sound or look fancy to be perceived as valuable, you're going to present

this way. What if we remove all of that and your only goal is to be able to get across what the problem is so succinctly and how you solve it. Well, what's so interesting too, that I think we're really direct about and you saying it just made me think of this is it's what you just said, like you don't know it well enough. And so you're, you're adding all these things, but it's also, I think, cause I've been in this place, I'm afraid to attach my wagon to, to one thing. Right. And so I'm like, it does a little bit of all these things because if, Oh, if you want this from me, it does that. Oh, you want that? I can also help you with that. Like, I'm afraid to burn the boat, right? And so it, I say my messaging will touch on a little bit of everything because I think in my mind, well, I want to serve this huge, my people might have

all these problems. And if they have any one of them, I want them to know I can help with it. Whereas like what really works and you hear this in marketing messaging over and over and you hear us say it a lot of like, you should literally be able to say like, I do this for this person. And it's like five words, you know, it's like, I help moms have easy lunches for like easy school lunches. It's not like I help moms with food, like all kinds of meal prep for their kids that are aged six months to 14 years old. Like, because you think like, well, moms might have a six month old they need help with and a 14 year old.

Well, yeah, that's true. But I can't find myself in as a person. I can't find my identity in what you're saying. I help you make school lunches. Okay. That is literally my reality. I have two little kids in school making lunches every single day. It kind of sucks. Like you can solve that problem for me sign me up

Yeah, you know and like yes also the other person could have done it too, but I got lost in her messaging I think that's such an important thing and I think there's Industries where it's really clear and we can come in with that feedback and the person gets it immediately and then there's some other You know industries where it's a little harder to get that specifically clear. And I sympathize. You know, it's like I get that you think when people push back on us and they're like, I

don't know, I can't sum it up. I do so many things. Or like it's hard to quantify it in a really simple sentence. I think some of the inquiry is, yeah, do you know it? Are you curious enough about it? What problem are you solving? Do you know it well enough? And what are you afraid to attach yourself to? Like, what are you really

saying that maybe you're afraid to say? Like, I think I see this a lot with women, you know, and coaches, especially where it's like, they want to say the more controversial thing, but they're scared to say that because they're afraid it's going to alienate the anti-people. So they're like, I want to alienate the anti people. So they're like, I want to be a sex coach or I want to help with divorce or I want to like, they want to go at something that they've had life experience with that they actually know really well and can help with, but they're afraid to like become their identity, become attached to that for fear of getting negative feedback. So they stay higher level. And I'm like, no, go specific, like go

do the controversial thing. You're going to win way more being so specific on solving a really detailed pain point than being the high level. Like I'm an empowerment coach. Like I don't know what that means, but if you're empowering me to have better sex after divorce, sign me up, you know? So yeah, I can rant on this and I know you can too, but like that qualifier, that ideal client like qualifier with the messaging, such a huge, I mean, that's like one of the biggest things we see in our customers, right? Where especially in tweaking that and having it immediately result in a better launch or more sales without changing the offer at all. No, I completely agree. And just knowing that we're going to touch on funnels, we can go straight into it from that is like a funnel doesn't need to be complicated. I think that's a really huge myth. Some of the most successful funnels out there are the simplest.

And, you know, summing it up, it's what's your product what's your offer cool can we just create a mini version of that like a 60 minute training or a pdf or like we can go into detail just some kind of mini free taster a sample of what your product or offer is so that whoever signs up for that step one is qualifying themselves as your ideal client and your job when they come in is to build that know like and trust factor that's going to come from telling a story ideally your story it might not be delivering some kind of value and showing them that you have expertise in that area your product does what it says it's going to do and then letting them know you've got an offer like it's actually really simple and in

FFT we go into a lot of detail we've also got for anyone that's listening that's like actually that's the thing I need help with I'm going to put a link in the show notes where we'll actually we're doing a free training you can sign up um come along we're going to go into a bit more detail on it and give you some checklists but that's as simple as it needs to be you know when I have an idea for a new product, the first thing that I do once I've built the products, I say, okay, what kind of webinar or masterclass would I put together? That's going to qualify my ideal client. That's going to allow me to drive a bunch of value. And then for anyone at the end who's still curious can buy. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. I mean,

it sounds so simple. And I'm like a couple couple years ago, Lindsay would have been like, yeah, yeah, that's simple. And still tripped over myself with all the things we've already talked about around. Well, I want to be for everyone. Like, and what is my person? You know, like, a lot of excuses. Yeah. excuses and excuses that come in the form of, um, they're, they're believed, like, they're not excuses. Like you're trying to get out of the work. They're excuses in the sense that, um, you're trying to be for everyone I think is, is what it ultimately is. And you're afraid to narrow your focus out of scarcity. And, and I think that's one of the biggest things I've learned being part of Boss Babe is like scarcity is actually created when you're trying to do everything because you're spread really thin. Nobody gets clarity on what you're selling. And ultimately, even if they want to buy from you, they don't understand what they're going to get.

And yeah, so I think what we're with the funnels, simplicity is the antidote to scarcity. And you've taught me that and you continue to teach me that in managing this business around like we can have a million ideas and we could probably make money on most of our ideas, but it makes complexity in the business and complexity over time will lead to scarcity because people don't know what they're going to get from you. The fewer things you do and the more clear you can be on the few things you do and exactly what they're going to get from you, whether it's courses or programs or services, that's what's going to win.

And then, yeah, the funnel structure, that's the other thing that I think I get wrapped around the axel on or I used that, that I see our people get wrapped around the axle on is like, okay, well then I need to have this step and then I'm going to put them through this and I'm going to have nine emails. And it's like, where did you learn that a funnel had to be so complex? Like who's, where does this myth come from in our industry that a funnel quote unquote is this requires eight different platforms and so many steps and all these things because then the other excuse that comes up is like I don't understand it well enough to do it and it's like it's literally this qualifier like you said the the pdf the mini

version that helps your customer understand what they're going to get and then the event that you put them through where they learn about it and they understand they can buy something from you and then what they're going to offer like what they're going to buy yeah and then you might put an email sequence on you might not in the beginning you know if that's over complicating things for you just get them just get a webinar out there or a challenge or a boot camp or some kind of live event like something yeah that people can come to get that out there first and when that's working we could add a pdf on the front end we could add some email sequences on the back end we can always make it better but the most important thing is getting started another thing that i want to touch on what you just said though

was around simplicity and how that can lead to complexity and i want to share what that can also lead to and i'm speaking from experience is when you make things very complex it's a breeding ground for resentment and as an entrepreneur when you start resenting your business you put your business in jeopardy you put your livelihood in jeopardy it's really not a good place to be and I've been there and I've seen what it's like and that's the thing when I come back to this vehicle what is this vehicle for you what is this business trying to help you create? Is it to grow personally, professionally? Is it to grow financially? Is it to grow in time freedom? Like what is it there to help you create? And if it is freedom, complexity is going to give you the

opposite of that, therefore breed resentment. And that's where we see people burning down their business or it's become so complex and they've become so tied to it. They can't pivot in a way that reflects who they are now because they started their business so many years ago. To unwind everything feels like so overwhelming that they just no longer associate themselves with the business. They feel disconnected and they want to burn it down. And I just think, you know, all of, I said this to the team yesterday

and they were like, you should say this on the podcast. So one thing I shared with them was I'm not in this business to exit, right? We're not building this business to exit. Therefore I am not making short-term decisions. If I wanted to exit the company will be a lot of short-term, a lot of short-term decisions. We blowing up the P&L will be adding a a lot of structure a lot of team a lot of things it will be run in a fundamentally different way i am building a lifestyle business it is a vehicle and therefore i run it very very differently i run it from a long term lens and so i don't like to make short-term decisions that impact the long term like simon sinek talks about it with the infinite game i'm playing an infinite game i'm not there's no finish line for me I just one of my mantras with this business is

how good can I let things get like yeah today was a challenging day but you know what it's one challenging day out of a hundred fucking amazing days how good am I willing to let this get? Because business can get so good if you let it. And I think when we talk about the opposite to scarcity too, like I just don't buy into it. I just feel like there is more than enough to go around. You'll know when we have a hard client in a mastermind or a program, I let them go.

I'm like, okay, goodbye. We are not a right we're not fit to work together it is and I it's not to me I don't want to put my energy in that situation and I don't want to work alongside someone that is challenging to work with and perhaps isn't a pleasure to be around or is impacting the experience of other members, I will say, here's your money back, see you later. And that I think is a mindset of like, I just don't believe in scarcity. I believe for every client that I let go, another client's going to come forward and you just make better decisions. You don't, I don't think you rush to make these short-term decisions. You actually are like, oh,

I'm seeing this for the long-term. So I'm going to make a long-term decision. We just give a six-figure refund for a contract that was signed when I wasn't here. Let's just get fucking transparent. Yeah. There was a contract signed when I wasn't in the business. And it's not something that I would have personally wanted to do. And we sat with trying to make it work. And we really sat with like like this is a lot of money

right but would we enjoy it and would it be you know the best thing that we could be doing with our time and are we the best fit for them really we asked all the questions yeah the answer was no across the board and some checks are just hard to cut and that's all it is yeah and that for me it was like oh this is a six-figure decision I'm literally undoing a decision someone else made I'm giving six figures back even though that revenue left the business a long time ago we're giving all of that money back because that does not align with what I'm trying to build and how I want my business to be for me and I'm more than happy to sign my name on the dotted line. And do you know what's funny? We just had another six figure

day and it feels like the minute you say goodbye to something that's not aligned, something more aligned comes in. Yeah. I literally logged into the bank account and the balance hadn't changed because the wire went out and the deposit came in. I was like, oh, perfect. Beautiful. Love the universe. It's funny how it happened the same time. Yeah. It was the same over the weekend. You know, it came in on a Monday and I was like, oh, the balance is the same. And, and like we, but that's how we, that's just how we operate. Like we aren't, we aren't also as a whole aside, we can do a whole other episode, which we've also talked to our team about. And I think is something we could be transparent about

is we run a very like we hold a lot of cash because we don't want to ever be in a position where we we don't have the money to give a refund and I like I know people and we all know people that they every dollar that comes in the business is gone and is paid out either to overhead or it's taken out by the owner to support their lifestyle or whatever it is and there isn't really cash sitting in the business. And we like, we have a minimum that we will always hold in the business and it is six months of payroll. And like, that is a SOP in our business. And I think that's something that, you know, it takes a while to build up to for sure. And if you're a solopreneur, you're, you're, you're still building your company. You may not be able to hold that

much cash because you need to pull money out to support your lifestyle. And that's fine. I've been there. And it's very liberating to get to a point in a company where you're like, okay, I don't have to let money make this decision for me. I'm going to let this customer go because I can cover the bills and I know I need this energetically out. So that's a whole – we can talk sometime about some fundamental principles in financial management of a business. But the thing you said about the infinite game, and I heard Hermosi say this around like there's people who play the game to win and there's people who play the game because they like to get better at the game.

And I think a lot of entrepreneurs want to win. I'm an Enneagram three. I love to fucking win. And always being in pursuit of winning makes you make decisions that you wouldn't otherwise make if you did it for the love of the game. And I think you're a love of the game person. Oh, I fucking love the game. I mean, you love to win too, but you like, you will prolong winning to get better at the game. And I think that is such a mastery thing in entrepreneurship of like, are you here to win and have a short-term win just for the sake of the win? Or are you here to get better at the game? And I think when you, something you've said to me a lot around like how to run the business is like, we could go win at something new. And there's so many trends that we see and so many new things that we could go do. And you like we could go win at something new. And there's so many trends that

we see and so many new things that we could go do. And you and I could go, we know how to manage the business. We could go make money on it. Or we could get better at what we already do. And we could spend that time deepening our relationship to our current customers or doing one of our current offers better and make way more money long termterm. And, and it's so alluring to be like, oh, we could go make 500K by launching this thing. Or we could, we could take, you and I could take on more one-on-one clients and make another 500K, but we would have five calls a week, you know, and like, or we could just get better at, we could, we could improve this process or we could dial this funnel, or we could add a little

bit more to this curriculum that we already have and get more people into our membership or more people into our course and make way more than that. And I think that is discipline that's also not talked about very much around simplicity in a business and funnels in a business where we can teach you how to build a funnel, a really simple funnel. You have to have the discipline to stick with the funnel and work on the funnel for six months to have results like she had this morning where it's the same funnel. She's just been dialing and dialing and dialing and winning, like getting better at the game, getting better at the game, not being like, well, it didn't work. So I'm going to go start a new

game. I'm going to go win at this and go in at that and go in at that to make 500k which would have spread her way more thin right so I think that's such a huge piece of simplicity too is the self-inquiry around am I am I here to win or am I here to get better at the game I completely agree and I think when you're here to win you can end up getting competitive in the wrong ways versus when you're here to win you can end up getting competitive in the wrong ways versus when you're here to get better at the game I notice I compete a lot with myself yeah and what's really interesting is I've seen I've seen a quote this morning of I I've been in situations where there's always a part of me, of course, I'm competitive that wants to win. But the best outcomes in really tough situations

have been when I've gotten myself to a place of, what do I want long-term? What do I really want? Cool. Do I trust myself enough to create that? Yes, I do. Because I have the discipline that I've proven to myself. Okay, cool. Therefore, do you need to win this outcome? No. Guess what? I'm fucking free.

I don't need to win this negotiation. I don't need to win this argument. I don't need to, I don't need to win because guess what? I'm winning because I know exactly where I'm going. I know what my destination is and I trust myself enough to get there. Um, we've talked a bit, a little bit about, but the concept of the winner always wants the ball. Yeah. Winners always want the ball, pass the ball to me, pass the ball to me. Not because they think they're better at it than anybody else. I don't think that I'm better at a lot of things than a lot of other people. Where I trust myself the most is that I will have the discipline to see something through. If something needs to be done, I know I can trust myself to get it done because I've proven to myself time and time and time again that I that I get the push the ball forward and I think that's

such a big distinction is like okay we'll pass you the ball but what are you going to do with it once it's in your court like we'll pass you a perfectly built beautiful ball but when it's in your court what are you going to do with it yeah yeah so I I just I feel like these these little nuances are the myths that get perpetuated. And because we're in this season, like where we started, I just feel so much momentum. But it's not like hot, fiery momentum. It's like it's time to to really look at the foundations and the your why and like the principles and and get really curious about what isn't working in your business. What is working in your business? What can you, instead of like these quick wins, which

I think maybe we've been conditioned over the last few years of like, there's so much opportunity to just go get like, win, win, go add this, add that, go get this coach, do this tactic, do, you know, use these keywords or whatever. And now it's like, one, that doesn't breed freedom. It breeds like a lot of work. And two, that's really not ultimately the long game in a business. And the long game in a business is like, how do you get it down to the most simple frameworks that will create predictability and stability? And like the word I've been using recently for our business is like sturdiness. Do you follow Dr. Becky for parenting? She's like, you need like how to be a sturdy parent. And I just love that word because it's like a sturdy business or a sturdy parent doesn't mean

like you always do the right thing. It doesn't mean you don't go through hard seasons. It doesn't mean that like you know the answer to everything and you're a master at all of it. It just means that like in the moment, you're not going to fall over. You're not going to lose yourself to whatever is being thrown at you. You're sturdy. You're like a tree, you know? And so how do you build a sturdy business right now? It's by doing all these fundamental things we talk about with the funnel. And that means in a shaky economy, you're sturdy. It means when you go through personal seasons of ebbing and flowing in terms of how much you want to be working and how excited you are and how energetically present you can be in your business, the business is sturdy. It's okay. And I think that's ultimately what we all want is like, we talked about it a lot, like the choice of how to engage with our

business, the choice with how much we want to pour into it. You only can have choice in a business if you've built a really sturdy business. And I think a lot of what I see out there right now are people who are like, oh, my business isn't very sturdy. And if I start to disengage with it, it starts to fall over. And so I have to jump back in that's gotten a little lax and like rebuild fences that have blown over in the wind, you know, like we have to kind of, it's constant even in a business our size. Right. And so it's not like we have all the answers and we do it perfectly. Not, not that at all. And like, yeah, what we went through this morning, it's example of like, oh, okay, whoops. And I mean, ultimately, it's my fault, you know? And so it's not that even our teams misfired on each other. It's like, it's me as at the operations level, like I should have caught

it, you know? And so anyway, I always want to show up here super transparent of like, we apply our own advice and we use our own frameworks and systems in how we run our business. And you're obsessed with getting better at the game. I like to win, but I'm learning to get good at the game. And I love to take what you teach and like what you embody in the founder like magic and go, okay, how do I operationalize this into the business? And how do I get down into the weeds managing people and applying this vision and these frameworks and pulling the best out of them? Because ultimately, if you have employees, they don't necessarily need to feel the

vision at the level you feel the vision, right? But they need to know, you need to know how to get their best out of them in service of the vision. And it is back to like obsessed with the product versus obsessed with the customer. I would so much rather have someone who's obsessed with the customer and we teach them about the product. And I feel like we have a team of those people. So I'll kind of all over the place, but ultimately it's like the simplicity thing I think is really calling to me right now and simplicity and service to like sturdiness and predictability in a, in a business that that's what feels like freedom. That's choice. Like that's what I would want as a mother, as a entrepreneur in these current turbulent times. So like, so to speak. I agree.

I agree with all of it. And like, just as we're ending this with all the transparency we've been sharing, you know, we are having our most successful year in business in Boss Babe history. Yeah, by a lot. History, by a lot, which is insane. I'm like, oh my God like pinch me pinch me pinch me

this is wild um holy shit and it's because we dialed the sales engines in yeah it's because we took our own advice it's because we made things simple we have dialed our sales engines so tight it's so and it's working yeah so so freaking excited you guys truly if you want to build a profitable predictable repeatable business you need a sales engine in your business it's as simple as that and without it the business is built on rocky foundations been there done it do not want to wear that t-shirt ever again thank you very much learned my lesson no thank you um so anyway we'll do another episode on the third part of sales engine obviously as you guys know this offer funnel and traffic we'll do another episode on traffic and we'll talk all about that um maybe we can even do it

together yeah we should i mean yeah we should because i think traffic is one of these things too where you're such an expert and i have questions. Oh, let's do it then. Yeah. Because I've never been an Instagram, like my Instagram, I don't put any work into, but I, I'm so curious about it. And then I see your magic come on and I'm like, damn, like, tell me, like, help me understand this because I see it from a tactical and strategic the way you teach it, but applying it requires like you taking the framework and going into your own life. I'm talking to you, the listener. It's like, we have to listen and go, okay, I can't just do what Natalie does because I'm not Natalie, but I can take this and think about my

own life and storytelling and trends. And it's this formula, but it also has to have your personal lens on it. And, and I see it click when you teach it, like with CEO mama women who are like, I've had seven viral reels in a row. And I'm like, they figured it like, okay, it clicks. Oh my God. So yeah. So we should like, we should use me as a case study or something. Cause it, I traffic is so, and it's this number one reason people make excuses. I think around like, it doesn't work for me. Well, it, it, how would you know you haven't sent any traffic through your funnel? Sorry, but like, that's the truth. So how do we, we can help you with traffic. We have so many tools. You're such an expert at it. So yeah, let's definitely. Okay. We'll do it. I'm excited. Maybe we can do another one in person.

Well, this has been fun as always podding with you in the new studio. I love it. Here for it. I love it. Okay. You guys, thank you so much for listening as always, by the way, we are going to be starting to put our episodes on YouTube, which is super exciting because we're going to have video. Listen, we're getting high tech over at Boss Babe. We're just like fancying ourselves as influencers all of a sudden.

I'm here for it. So if you do want to subscribe and all the things, I'll put the links below of the channel and you can subscribe and there's going to be episodes on there. We're also trying to figure out how to get the video on Spotify. Like you guys were pulling out all the stops.

Don't know how any of this stuff works. Not the most techie person out there, but I'm going to be trying to figure it out. So yeah, we'll put the links. Also come sign up for the free training. It's going to be so good. I'm so excited. Lindsay, thank you for being here.

Loved it. Have me again. Will do. Wait, wait, wait, before you go, I would love to send you my seven figure CEO operating system completely free as a gift. All you've got to do is leave us a review on this podcast because it really supports the growth of this show.

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