the bossbabe podcast - 422: Creating Business Revenue Predictability + Stability in Uncertain Economies (& Our Membership Sales Engine Details!) with Natalie + Lindsay [The Sales Engine Series]

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Grab your earbuds and join Natalie + Lindsay as they pull back the curtain on their most successful sales engine, our membership The Société! They share how to create predictability + stability in your business so you can keep it running no matter what life throws at you. Natalie also shares the importance of creating a business that’s fulfilling + the importance of managing the delivery side of your business! TIMESTAMPS 03:00-Natalie + Lindsay Banter + Catch Up 10:00-Use Case Of A Successful Sales Engine + Having Predictability In Your Business 13:20-Seasons Of Being An Entrepreneur 18:30-What Stability In A Business Looks Like 19:40-Creativity Comes From A Calm Nervous System 22:00-Pulling Back The Curtain On Our Membership Sales Engine 28:00-Predictability + Management On The Delivery Side Of Your Biz 35:40-Creating A Business That Feels Fulfilling To You RESOURCES + LINKS Join Freedom Fast Track: https://bossbabe.com/freedom Download your free workbook: The 4-Part Framework to Create An Irresistible Offer that Sells on Repeat: https://bossbabe.com/irresistible FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

Life is unpredictable, but your business shouldn't be. We saw something recently saying predictability is the killer of creativity. And I actually just couldn't disagree more. Predictability in someone's business is a sign to me that they have learned what their customer wants, because it means that they know how to make money in the most efficient way possible. Predictability sounds so unsexy, but like if you have a predictable business, even if it's 5K a month of predictable revenue, to me, that's like, oh, you figured something. You learned what your customer wants from you and you can bring that money in predictably every month.

That makes me want to know about you and help you. Creativity and all those other things, that stuff can come secondarily to knowing what your customer wants and proving that you can sell it to them. Wait, so in the U.S., do they not say chinwag chin wag no when you're having a chat a chin wag i mean i understand chin wag like your chin is wagging when you talk i get i get the meaning of it but no that's not something we say i don't think little chin wag i also it just is like a meta moment right now where i'm trying to like i I have to listen sometimes to the phrases you say, and then literally think in my English brain, like, what is that word? Like break a chin wag. Oh, okay. That's what it means. Cause I feel like a lot of like British idiot, idiom or idiot, whatever that those are called idioms are like literally just two words put together, like car

park. I'm like, Oh, it's where you park your car. It's not like a parking lot. It's a car park or kitchen roll. When you're talking about paper towel, I'm like, Oh, it's the you park your car it's not like a parking lot it's a car park or kitchen roll when you're talking about paper towel I'm like oh it's the roll in the kitchen okay that makes sense but if you just hear a British person be like kitchen roll I'm like kitchen roll what yeah you have to break the word apart it's like oh okay look at you mm-hmm that's how I decode all of our Brits on our team oh my god welcome to the bossy podcast by the way yeah um you guys before we started recording, we were just hitting on natural deodorants. I'm sorry to anyone out there

that owns a natural deodorant company, but they just don't work. I did it for so long. Like when I knew I was going to get pregnant with Noemi, I did it. I did it all the way through my pregnancy because I wanted to be chemical free. I did it all the way postpartum,

which by the way, why the did I do that? i smelled so bad and i don't i'm just not doing it anymore yeah i left it in 2023 i did not bring it into 2024 with me i will not be bringing it into 2025 with me i'm complete i'm so complete i oh my god but it doesn't work one postpartum body odor if you know you know sorry if you you haven't experienced it and you don't know and you're like, this is disgusting. No, but all the postpartum mamas will know. Like there's, it's on the next level. Yeah. And it doesn't, it doesn't work.

We were just talking about this because it's like 90 degrees in Austin. I'm wearing a sweater and I'm like dripping sweat down the inside of my sweater. And I put on seven layers of natural deodorant. And Natalie's like, why do you do that? You have to use the hardcore stuff. And I think that is the realization that you get to after some of the stuff you're like, actually I'm going to be 80% non-tox, but like I'm going to use natural deodorant. I also use real toothpaste because I'm sorry, but like the gritty natural toothpaste, I give my kids the natural stuff. But for me, I'm like, you know what? I've been using this stuff for 40 years. Like I'm going to keep up with my Sensodyne and my Crest because

it just, it gives me like the clean feeling. See, I don't do that. Yeah. So that's why, yeah, I think it's 80-20. I love a fluoride free toothpaste. It doesn't bother me. So I can get on board with that, but I just can't. I'll, I'm a Mitchum 48 hour girl now. What is Mitchum? I've never heard of it. Is this a British brand? No, it's you can get it in UK, but it's here as well. It's probably American because it's got so many chemicals. It's like the strongest deodorant ever. It's a 48 hour deodorant.

You put it on. I mean, there is nothing that is seeping through that. So you can just imagine what it's doing to your detox. Yeah, that worries me a little bit for you. But is there like a happy medium week? Like what's like, what's a dove or like a secret? I'm either all in or all out. Thing is, I don't really do anything else on the toxic scale.

Like none of my skincare. Well, a little bit of my makeup, depending on the day. I don't wear makeup most days, but on the days where I actually wear makeup, it's a blend. And then I do the Mitchum deodorant you know I don't cook with with toxic stuff I don't eat toxic stuff you gotta live a little yeah it's an 80 20 I feel like I I'm dying because at lunch here we had we took a lunch break and I went in and I was like how am I gonna heat up my lunch you guys don't have a microwave because in my mind I have associated Natalie with everything natural. And of course she would

just wouldn't have a microwave. And she was like, what are you talking about? There's a microwave right here. And so, yeah, I, I, in my mind, I think of you as like, holy natural, no toxins on anything. And you gave me such crap for my Starbucks the other day that, but yeah, I get it. A natural deodorant is not going to get it done especially when you live in Texas and like you sweat you're around here I probably wouldn't ever use the microwave like every now and then I'll use it but it's not a frequent thing but it came with the house well yeah I had very much associated with you not with non-use of a microwave also so that everyone knows she doesn't have a toaster oven which I think is a very American home appliance. No, it's British too. And honestly, it is an ongoing debate in my house,

you know, getting to the root of marital problems. You know, Stephen and I are disagreeing on having a toaster. Why? What's the disagreement? It's tiny. I can see his point because he's like, listen, we don't need more appliances. It's just more clutter. He's a Virgo. He likes things light and tight in all the ways

he likes things around the house light he doesn't like clutter he doesn't like stuff he doesn't like stuff so he doesn't want that okay um i personally have found this one where it's so it's a smart toaster it's on amazon it's like a hundred it was a hundred dollars so you know not like at this huge appliance purchase but in inside the toaster you can actually get a toasty maker so it puts like if you make a sandwich put it in there and you put it down and i was finally about to pull the trigger and then i researched it and the actual toasty it was made from the non-stick teflon stuff so I didn't want to get it I didn't want to I just feel like when I when I can avoid

that stuff I'll avoid it that makes sense so I just put it it's I mean it's a slight inconvenience putting it under the grill or you guys call it the broiler or whatever I don't know but put it under there and then I'll have to deal with a non-stick okay I'm not convinced but I see your point they I feel like you could just get the cheap like you know the slices of toast go down into the thing you push the button down I think they make those in like stainless steel no that you can get in stainless steel but here's the thing I mainly always make toasties so I put like I grill one side of the bread toast one side of the bread then i flip it over and i put all the cheese on and then i grill the cheese oh so we don't really have just bare toast in our house right okay we have toasties toasties so toasties and roasties that's the

we do love our roasty the roasty that's a potato so yeah okay well anyway that's our rant today on natural things and non-toxic 80 20 maybe like 90 10 95 5 ish I don't know but sometimes a girl just needs like a little chemicals sometimes also speaking of inappropriate thoughts I did think it was hilarious at like 7 a.m your husband this morning on the phone oh my god dying. Men are so hilarious. It's nonstop. We had this conversation the other day where I was like, men, like every guy that I know, and I don't talk about this with a lot of guys. I mean, that's going to sound bad, but I'm like, I'm like, how often do you think about sex out of day? And they're like, often, like a lot, like all the time. And I'm like, really? Because

I don't like, it's just like, I have so many other things I'm like really because I don't like it's it just like I have so many other things I'm thinking about it doesn't like randomly occur to me to think about sex in the middle of something else and they're like it doesn't and I'm like no and what if you took all that brain capacity that you like randomly apply to just thinking about sex and you did your job or you like parented or you worked on a relationship or like I don't know you read a book contributed to society in some way. And they're like, oh, well, no, I think I would still think about sex the whole time. And I'm just like, okay, I can't.

And I think it's biology. And like, there's whole reasons for this that we could dissect, but it never ceases to amaze me that like, yeah, no matter what time of the day he can make like an innuendo joke or like, yeah, it's, I'm waking up and the kids are facetiming me about going to school and making lunch and he's in the background being like hey like to I was put something in your lunchbox and I'm like oh god okay I was laughing so much you're like having a serious chat with him about intrusive thoughts that you're having and he's like I'm like oh they love them love them that at 7 a.m that's where their mind goes. Yeah. He's like, I'd like to intrude on your thoughts. Like, oh God, stop. Everything is that put something in

your lunchbox. I'll intrude on your thoughts. Pick you up in the pickup line. Oh God. Okay. Yeah. You're not alone ladies. It's everybody. I mean, it's cute. It's like healthy relationships. I'd rather it be that than like, we don't talk we fight but yeah the the mental capacity I'm like wow what must it be like like if I were inside your brain what would I hear I'm so curious I don't think I'd like to do a day in the life of being a man I just wouldn't like it there's so many I just wouldn't like it no No. It's not for me. Well, and we operate at such a level of like quickness and like decision making and like decisiveness and directness that I just, I think the men in our life would, it would be frustrating to be inside their brains and be like, we're still thinking about this. We still haven't made a decision.

Oh my God. This is still running through our thoughts. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. I'm so, I'm so forget, like, you'd be like, wow, did I really just forget what you told me five minutes ago okay i'm i'm so forget like you'd be like

wow did i really just forget what you told me five minutes ago oh i'm so yeah love that for us uh what were we we were going to talk about uh we're in a launch right now which is going really well so fun um oh we were going to talk all about sales engines so we've obviously covered straight from seconds and sales engines we do it all at the bossway podcast so we did we've covered offer funnel traffic all the three elements what i think would be really important to talk about is the use case of it because i think it's all well and good having a sales engine but if you're like okay but practically how do i use it whenever think about that, there's always one thing that comes to mind. And I shared this in

a keynote that I did a couple of months ago and it's life is unpredictable, but your business shouldn't be. And what I mean by that is as much as we like to, you know, be type A and control all the things in our lives, it's just impossible. and when I was thinking about you know predictability and why I care about it so much one thing came to mind you remember a few months ago um it was May was it May yeah May when my grandparents came out we flew to LA and they were watching the keynote for the first time it was like the most amazing thing and then um you know the day after I went to Disneyland that night my grandma had a horrific fall we rushed her to the hospital she's in emergency surgery like we very much didn't know

what was going to happen it was such a bad fall um obviously ended up fully delaying the flights and I remember just saying to the team like clear my whole calendar this week I'm not going to be able to do anything but be in and out of the hospital which was such a blessing to be able to do that and not have to worry about covering payroll because most entrepreneurs do not have that option and it's such a luxury if you have a normal job hopefully you have an employer that would be able to offer that to you I know for some startups they're not even able to do that but hopefully if you were an employee you would have that so that happened we delayed our flights we came home we hadn't had child care for months we were super excited to have a nanny our nanny started on day two we had a horrific freak

accident with noemi thank god she was okay but it was very much something that could have been avoided with a little bit of sensibility we had that situation went back to having no child care and i remember that week it felt like everything had just piled on top of me as like they say things come in threes and it just felt like the threes kept threeing and um there was just the threes kept threeing there was so much going on and I remember just feeling like oh my god everything in my life feels so unpredictable and I still get to be really grateful that my business is predictable and I still get to be really grateful that my business is predictable and I still get to be really grateful that I can say clear my calendar and I can push the priorities

off and when I think about a sales engine it's that level of peace of mind at the foundational level that I think is so important because to be able to still make payroll to pay your team to be able to still pay your own payroll and your own expenses to be able to still make payroll to pay your team, to be able to still pay your own payroll and your own expenses, to be able to still serve your clients because you've got systems in place, that comes from having a sales engine. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to me, and we talked a little bit about this and it came up in your keynote is around the seasonality of how you want to engage with your business. And I think it's not,

it's never all or nothing in a freedom-based business or any kind of business because there are seasons where you want to be all in, you want to work more, you're doing, you're excited about it. And whatever's happening in your life is supportive of you being really focused and really present and in the business. And maybe you are not feeling as free or you're not operating on freedom in your life because you're choosing to be really in the business. And then there's seasons in your life where you want like the summer, you know, you wanted to, you chose to be in the UK, more disengaged. We didn't do any launches. We didn't do a lot of content with you because you chose to be kind of more living in the freedom that the

business affords. So there's like the two, the business affords. So there's like the choice of it. Then there's like the real life that happens where you might want to be in the launch season, but something life happens and you can't be. And that's where the unpredictability piece, I think, becomes really important because that's when you don't want to be panicked over covering the essential needs of your life. And I think there's so many nuances we should talk around around predictability, because I've also seen so much people push back on things with us when we teach them methods. Everybody wants to kind of stand in their habits and patterns and kind of stand up for their

excuse ultimately of why it wouldn't work for them. And we hear a lot of that. And I think we can dispel some of those myths. But to me, it's like what we're really trying to build are our sales engines because we want you to have the choice of how you want to engage with your business. And hopefully you'll be lucky enough most of the time to be choosing how much energy you're putting into your business. And ultimately, there will be circumstances that occur in your life where it's not a choice that it's happening, but something is happening that's forcing you to have to be in your business or be out of your business. And in those times, you want to have a foundation of predictability so that you're not in a nervous system, burnout phase, trying to deal with whatever has just happened unpredictably in

your life. And now your business is cr because because you weren't anticipating this disengagement or whatever that's where I feel like life is unpredictable your business shouldn't be is such a core value of entrepreneurship that is under underrated or under taught I think out there yeah and also just speaking on that with like the pushbacks we've had around predictability you know we saw something recently saying um predictability is the killer of creativity and I actually just couldn't disagree more because I think it's really hard to create from a dysregulated nervous system and your nervous system is way likely more dysregulated when you don't have that feeling of security or safety which is going to come from a lack of

predictability you know what's interesting though i feel like i personally create the best content and i see this of a lot of content creators from when your nervous system is regulated but you have the idea when you're in dysregulation when something hard happens and you move through it you move to the other side it's often the best content that you have but living in dysregulation living in you know fear of are you going to be able to pay your bills next month what will your business look like three months from now could you really make that team higher you know will you have to go get another job? Like all that stuff. It's very hard to make your best content. And so, yes, we're going to move with the ebbs and flows.

Life is not always perfect. The goal is not to be regulated 24-7. But if you can control the controllables, one of them is predictability in your business. Everything else, I think you can output that at a higher level. Well, and as you're talking, I'm like, you know what predictability is an indicator of to me too, as a coach and as a mentor

and like at the level of leadership and experience that I have, predictability in someone's business is a sign to me that they have learned what their customer wants. Because it means that they know how to make money in the most efficient way possible. And that they aren't every month showing up into their business going, how am I going to make money this month?

Because I think sometimes people are, it's like the predictability thing is a problem because the business isn't, you know, sales engine isn't in place. The business requires dollar for hour work, all of that. But sometimes predictability is a problem because you're coming into your business and you're, you're trying to do too many things or your messaging isn't clear, or you are, um, you're so attached to this idea of freedom. You're not willing to work hard. And, and I think I'm like, predictability sounds so unsexy, but like, if you have a predictable business, even if it's 5k a month of predictable revenue or 50k a month of predictable revenue, to me, that's like, oh, you learned what your customer wants from you and you can bring that money in predictably every month.

Good on you. That's good discipline in a business. That's good application of knowledge in a business. That is good entrepreneurial grit in a business. That's sexy to me. That makes me want to know about you and help you. The creativity and all those other things, It's like that stuff can come secondarily to knowing what your customer wants and proving that you can sell it to them. That that's the real why, why we're all here,

right? We want to solve problems. We want to make money solving problems. That's it. Yeah. When you said that reminds me of when you talk about business being sturdy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A sturdy business. Yeah. We talked about it on another episode recently, but it, I keep coming back to that metaphor and you know, the debates were recently and the politics are heating up and all these things. And, and I look at economic factors and political factors and just all the inertia in our society around like fear. And if this happens, this is going to happen. We should be prepared and like so much scenarioizing, you know, and I'm like, so many scenarios are unpredictable. I mean, we don't know what's going to happen in the election,

right? It is still unpredictable. And you, you can sturdy your business. You can make your business sturdy now so that no matter what happens, you're in your own little ecosystem. And I think that's what a sales engine allows you to do. But again, it's like you can be the person who's kind of disengaged from it and wanting to look at all these external factors or you can kind of come back, turn back within and go, okay, even if I can just get $3,000 or $5,000 of predictable revenue established in this business, okay, even if I can just get 3000 or $5,000 of predictable revenue established in this business. Okay. From there, I learned something. Okay. Next step up, next step up. And it, that sturdiness is what gives you peace and calmness. And like, then we, then we can get into all the other things you and I talk about so much that like creativity comes from a calm nervous system. Being a great mom comes from a calm nervous system. Being a great mom comes from a calm nervous system, or at least being able to move through something and get back to calmness in a nervous system, handling whatever chaos is happening in our culture around

us and not being so reactive to it, calm nervous system and knowing how to get yourself back into that. And I think sometimes our businesses are some of the most dysregulating things in our lives because they are our support system. And if we are reliant on the business paying for our lifestyle, all of a sudden this thing that we love and that is our passion and that is our creative outlet also becomes the survival that isn't, isn't certain for us. And I think, of course, in that sense, creativity or being able to show up authentically starts to feel hard because you're tying your survival to it. And that's why I always come back to like, let's establish the foundation in the business so that it operates in a way that is sturdy, is predictable, at least covers your basic, basic needs. And then from there, we can start to say, okay, are you in a season of push? Cool. You can go in and build more revenue. You can pour more traffic in. We can go down that path. Are you in a season of life is lifing? Cool. Like minimum needs covered. What does it take to just

cover your minimum needs that you pull out? And then on the other, those are the two ends of the spectrum. Everything in the middle, you get to be in choice about. I totally agree. And needs and you pull out and then every on on the other those are the two ends of the spectrum everything in the middle you get to be in choice about I totally agree and on all of that and the predictability piece and the sales engine I would say you know when we when we think about Boss Babe and being able to really pull back this summer the sales engine that I am always most grateful for is the one that we've built with the membership you know the sales engine that we built last year for the membership is the most successful that we've ever had in terms of revenue conversion rates all the things and we've never brought in members as

consistently as we do now without any kind of front-end marketing um so right now so just for context for everyone listening so we have um a funnel running for our membership the society and it's paid ads to a webinar and then we sell people into the membership and generally we only sell the annual on the webinar that's how we're able to make it work on ads because memberships are really challenging um to make on ads so that's what we do and we have really unlocked that funnel so for us it very much is and I know we don't like to say this too often but I'm going to be honest it very much is a bit of a set it and forget it so realistically like I'm always happy to be super transparent here the time the place of which we spend time

right now so the funnel is completely built so people opt in for the webinar they attend the webinar then there's a sales sequence it's built it works it converts they then join the membership they're onboarded really effectively they are part of our ecosystem and so from a marketing perspective all we do each month is brainstorm new creative for the ads you know if things are working we'll spend more money on it if things aren't working we'll create some new stuff and we have the the creative going out we have an amazing person managing our ads she handles the creative she does all of that and so the marketing piece is handled it's predictable does that mean that we set it and forget it and there's

nothing to focus on the business no because we still focus week in week out on making the membership experience as amazing as it can be so instead of focused on how do we get customers really we're focused on how do we how do we serve the customers that we have which I think for us it just works so well because we love doing that. We love doing the coaching calls. We love creating templates. We love creating resources. Like we truly believe this is the best membership out there. So that's how ours looks. And that's what a sales engine can do, because I do think it can be really exhausting to be focused on, on the marketing while also focused on the delivery. And I don't think our product in the, in the membership would be as good as it is if we didn't have the marketing completely handled and it was it's

handled by one person who's handling the ads and I do think it's really appropriate to say I do not think that a membership model is right for everybody I always want to caveat yes we have a wildly successful membership and I built the audience first yeah and it really is disheartening when people think the only way to create predictability in their business is through a membership and so they launch something that is low ticket they don't have any audience and they are just on this hamster wheel of marketing versus what might have been a better predictable thing for them. If they have a smaller audience would be selling something that's more expensive and having it on a payment plan that's bringing in the predictability. Yeah.

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, I mean, I think membership is so interesting to me because it's talked about so much. And for us, we've spent seven years now, or eight years with the membership, figuring out what works. And it started at, what, $9? Then it was $29.

Now it's $97 a month. It's gotten more expensive as it's gotten bigger and more in it. And Natalie and I are always saying this in the business, that if all else hit the fan, if everything else, if, if, if we only could pick one thing to do, we would keep the membership, you know, and, and that alone could support our team. And so that's our primary focus, but yeah, it's not, um, in terms of a sales engine, it took us years to figure out

diet to dial it in. And so starting that way, yeah. I mean, we see a lot of people starting with memberships or coming through FFT with membership as the thing they want to sell. And we can always help you, but it is much, the cautionary tale of a membership is, unless it's super high ticket, which there's a few examples of that, but a low ticket membership, you're going to need to drive a lot of traffic through. You're going to need a lot of members to make the money that you want to make from it. And you have to deliver it well. The other thing that I wanted that you said that I think is important to talk about is, you know, in our business, we have, we have a big enough team now where we have a growth team, like a marketing team and a delivery team. So we have

teams that handle selling everything and the people that sell it don't have to deliver it. And the people who deliver it are like, yeah, whatever you guys sell, we'll deliver. Like they aren't necessarily, everyone knows what everyone's doing, but they're not doing it all. And I think in smaller businesses or even in solo businesses or people like me a couple of years ago, or where you have one or two people helping, it's like the sales engine also, I think helps solve this problem of, well, I spent all this effort and time selling it. And then I did what I had to do to sell it. Oh shit. Now I have to deliver it. And I kind of don't want to, or like, actually I sold a bunch of stuff I don't actually want to do or like, oh man, I got so focused on sales and I promised a bunch of stuff that I actually don't know how I'm going to deliver. Like I oversold or, um, I, I flew the plane in the, like I was building the plane in the

air and now I've built this plane that can't land, you know, literally. Um, so what are your, I've heard you talk about this, but I think it's an important part of predictability and it's like the internal operation side of predictability because there's predictably selling but part of predict like part of having a predictable sales engine and a predictable business is that you also have a delivery predictability that if something like life happens in your life you understand and you have planned for delivery and you can manage delivery if you need to step out or if something happens. And, and I think we see these stories a lot, or we, we help people in our mastermind or our

programs with this, where it's like, I sold something and now I'm like, I don't, I can't deliver it in the way I thought, or like I have too many people and I can't, I can't do all the one-on-ones or they want a lot more from me than I'm willing to give and I'm working 60-hour weeks to get it all, everything I promised delivered on the timeline. We've been there, you know? And so how do you, when you think about predictability or you're talking about the sales side of a sales engine and building a business with a sales engine,

how do you think about predictability and management on the delivery side? Well, yeah, I mean mean thinking back to the earlier stages of boss babe when it was really just me full-time because I had a co-founder but she had a full-time job and she was on a completely different time zone so we really had to check in morning and night but I was essentially doing all the things I was doing the selling and I was doing the delivery and I remember in that phase you know I, I was in my mid twenties and I had the energy, but I constantly found myself burned out. And I got myself to a point where over those years, I started to really resent selling.

And I started to pull back from it because I felt like I was burned out, had no energy, wasn't enjoying it and when I restructured the business I think I just had to have a really hard conversation with myself of what is it that you want to spend your time doing in the business and what is it that you would feel really good selling that you will want to deliver consistently that's always been really important when we were in the earlier days in our membership we always brought in guest experts so it was a little easier on that delivery side but we were also in a phase of selling a lot of different things to figure out what our thing was going to be and that just constantly led me to feeling to be feeling exhausted because I was running the

business I was like doing the marketing the delivery and also like trying to like be the face the content creator like it was just too much and I see a lot of people get into that and if I could go back and give myself any advice it would really just be to slow down and to focus on one or two things like yes and in the beginning of your business sometimes you do need to test and iterate because you don't exactly know what's going to land but I just did way too many things and I got a little bit too excited about what was possible whereas now I think I do a really good job of harnessing my excitement and knowing like yeah we could do that and I always have to ask my question myself the question like will I enjoy delivering this one thing that I have a rule of now is I will not sell something thing that I have a rule of now is

I will not sell something now that I don't want to deliver on in three months. I won't say yes to a calendar invite now that I won't want to attend in three months. I won't say yes to keynote now for an event I won't want to go to in three months. I won't say yes to a podcast guest now that I won't want to interview in three months.

I really have a lot more discernment now because I can play out what's going to be required and the thing is when you're a personal brand business I think it's really hard to completely pull out of the delivery like even in the membership we have an amazing amazing delivery team and I still I always create all my own keynotes and deliver them like I've created all the curriculum I love to be part of the templates and so it still is going to I want it to be infused with all of my experience and personality and those things which just means I need to say no to a lot more stuff and it can mean at times that I feel like we're not serving our clients in all the ways we could be but I just have to like

trust they'll find someone else that'll do it yeah i mean i think these nuances are important because the like the if your brand is at all personal brand based which the bulk of coaches consultants course seller like people who are selling knowledge for the most part it's your personal experience your personal stories your personal brand ultimately that is is what's selling it's really hard to outsource all the delivery like we we talk so much about the front end of all of it of like creating the content as yourself and doing all like all of that stuff obviously in a personal brand heavily relies on your face and your story i think what's less talked about but can be the source of burnout and and the resentment in the business that then has the kind of snowball effect

back into the sales side of things is when now you've sold all of this stuff and now you're the only one who can deliver it because you've sold your knowledge, your experience, your expertise, and that's what people want. And I think that's also part of figuring out the offer, which we talked about a couple episodes ago,

but really being discerning about the offer from the beginning and thinking through how you just said it. Is this something, yes, I need the money right now. I need revenue. I need this to be predictable on the front side of the business because I have bills to pay and, and I, you know, the revenue is important for whatever reason it's important to you. And am I three months from now, me going to feel so overwhelmed with having to deliver all of this that I won't be able to sell at the same time, because that's the other thing with predictability and the way that we teach it is by and large,

most of us aren't selling our whole years of revenue in one month and then just delivering it for the next 11 months. And then we sell again and then deliver it. Most of entrepreneurial businesses are a consistent balance of both. And I think a lot of the burnout or the lack of predictability is a symptom of delivery burnout to an extent, taking you out of the creative mindset or out of the energy on the front end of the business that's attracting people to you. And so I think it's important to talk about this because when we look at offer funnel traffic, we get this question a lot of like, well, gosh, it feels like I need to be spending time on all these things. Where do I spend my time on all these things? Oh, and I have all these clients that I have to also do all this work that I've sold to them. How am I supposed to do all of these things? And we aren't, we can't answer that question that's unique to every business. But it's very true, I think, that to come into a stable business, a sturdy business from the front side, the sales side, the content creation, you have to have thought ahead and be planning for you delivering that stuff too and creating that cyclical energy cycle in your business. And that the burnout of that, I mean, that's gotten me in the past for sure. And then you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. And, and then you have like, well, this business isn't

predictable. It's like, well, I didn't, I didn't build a life first calendar business, a revenue calendar, like you talk about, right. I didn't look at all 12 months and go, what I sell now, I'm going to have to deliver till June, you know? Yeah. One of the most viral reels we posted in the last year or so was a meme. And it was like some funny video. And then it was like, when you girl boss way too hard and have to deliver on everything you've sold. But that can be a thing.

That can totally be a thing. Whereas when you do build a sales engine and you build something very consistently, with the membership membership everything works on a rhythm we know how many calls we show up to how much content we create and we just know I mean very predictably now how much money it brings in every single week a month you could have the exact same level of predictability with a course with a mastermind with a physical. You could have all of that just by building the sales engine, going back to what kind of offer do you want? Okay, cool. How would you actually want to sell it? What's the conversion? What's the way you're going to convert them? Which we've

talked about. What's the main traffic source that you're going to use? How are you going to piece all those things together and make it predictable? And I also do think there is a way to make this work for any kind of business that you choose to build. Like I don't think there is a way to make this work for any kind of business that you choose to build. Like, I don't think it's only specific to certain types of businesses. I think you can build this kind of thing with online businesses, I would say specifically, like, you know, if you're doing snow plowing, like that's not going to be an all year round thing.

We're not going to teach the snow plowers like that is a separate thing. This is online business. This is something you can create but another thing that I also want to mention was like how we say you know you're selling all the all the year round I also have this big belief that you get to make your business whatever you want it because I remember with um when I had decided I was going to step back from boss babe there was like a six months kind of process there where I'd stepped away I thought I was just complete and I had decided I was going to step back from Boss Babe, there was like a six months kind of process there where I'd stepped away. I thought I was just complete and I had the idea of seeing my mom. I was craving it. But at the time I definitely told myself the story that I was burned out from marketing. And I think digging into it, you know, we just hadn't had the sales

engines built in the company that we have now that really is contributing to our biggest year in business ever. It comes down to the sales engines. Like we know that we have now that really is contributing to our biggest year in business ever it comes down to the sales engines like we know that we can track that we didn't have that so it felt like every launch cycle I was getting into it was all new it was all new webinars all new content all new email sequences and so much of that was falling on me um or like new promotions like we need more of this like it just felt like I honestly felt like a dancing monkey I've shared that before and I just I told myself a story I'm done with marketing it's burned me out I'm exhausted and so when I had the idea for CEO Mama I had the idea that I just want to build something that I can sell once a year and then I can spend my whole year delivering it and actually

making it an amazing experience because I was thinking about what would make me feel the most fulfilled and that was creating amazing experiences being fully present with these women and and really leaning into this and so I had this idea do you know what I'm going to do one cohort a year I'm going to kick it off in January I'm going to like fill it every December and then I'm going to spend the whole year delivering it and I'm not going to do any marketing I'm not going to be thinking about that of course we do need to think about like how you're building your leads and lists throughout the year but I built that evidently stepping back into Boss Babe I realized it wasn't necessarily marketing that I was burned out on but it was really a great exercise to be able to say oh do you know what there is a business out

there that exists for the kind the way that I want to run it and i also really admire one of us the umama members we talk about her a lot um who decided you know what i love one-to-one coaching and at the same time i want to have a seven-figure business so how can i make this work and she decided that she would take revenue percentages from clients and work really closely with them she has a wildly successful seven-figure business she spends no time marketing because she has a long wait list and her clients are current like constantly retaining with her and so there's just like if you're hearing that just permission to really get intentional about what it is that you want to build like some of us do love marketing like i i now that i'm back now that i have a rhythm and I have sales engines and I've

like really feel like I've taken all my experience as an entrepreneur and and last year just get to implement it this year get to uh reap the benefits of it I I know where I want to spend my time but everyone's so different yeah well and and it's I like talking through all of these scenarios and and like looking at everything that we've tried. Because we have them all established across all the offers now in the business. And we still have a team of people that we work with closely on essentially perfecting or tinkering in the sales engine. And so it's iterative. And I think that's the other piece of the sales engine that isn't necessarily a myth, but it's like we talk about in Q&As all the time where it's not this easy button that you push where you're like, well, I came up with my offer and I got a Kajabi subscription and I built my funnel and I planned my webinar and people showed up. Where's my money? Easy button, easy button. Like it's not, it, it doesn't just because you did the work on that piece

doesn't mean the business is now predictable, right? It's like, that's the, that's the foundations of the house that you're building, but now you have to build, you have to maintain the house. Like you still have to keep it clean. You have to do the maintenance. You have to fix up stuff when leaks happen and all, you know, it's like home ownership isn't like, well, this is going to be perfect and brand new forever. And I think that that's the other like real talk piece of all of it is you've got to come into the business. And that's why seasonality, I think, is a piece like a sales engine allows for you to come in different seasons in your business because you have to still approach it with curiosity and with this consistent question of like, this piece worked really well, but this piece didn't. Or like this worked six months ago, but it's not working now. Interesting. Oh, I really like, I want to start talking to a new type of person or I'm in a new stage. What

do I need to do to change or to modify or up-level the sales engine? And what that curiosity does, at least in my mind, is it gets you out of this chaos approach to business where as soon as you have a new idea or as soon as the market shifts or you go through some type of change, you're starting from scratch again. And it's like, everything has to burn it all down, start over. I think it's discipline with a sales engine to go, okay, the foundation is here and you've done this. So this is like the story of Boss Babe. It's like the foundation was all here. We had the membership. The membership never went anywhere through all of this, but we paused everything. We looked at all the pieces and then we were like this piece, this piece and this piece work, this, this and this don't. So we're going to rebuild the things that aren't working. We're going to up-level the whole thing and start it all up again. You know? And it's like, I want to keep being like drilling down on people's,

the objections that they come up with in their mind of like why this won't work for them. And one of them is this whole like, well, I want the flexibility to change what I'm selling. Or I want the flexibility to talk about more things than just one thing. Or like, I'm about to be a mom and now I know that I'm going to want a different pace in my business like you still want a predictable business you still want a sales engine in there so that you have a foundation to your home if you want to redecorate great redecorate you want to add on cool but you're going to need a strong foundation no matter what in a business so well said and for us too just because I just think it's so important to share like what we have learned for us with the membership I would say one of the biggest

learnings that I had because we never were able to like fully get it off the ground with ads in terms of consistency and to a call that audience it just wasn't resonating and I realized when we rebuilt it when I took a pause and rebuilt it one of the things we were doing with the membership is we had put so many resources in there and there were so many things that the membership did for people that it became really challenging to sum up here's exactly what it does here's the problem that it solves and what I decided to do which felt like such a risk was more than double the price of the membership and actually niche in on what it helps you do so you know when we first started it was helping you to

build a six-figure business and we brought in wildly successful six and seven-figure business owners to share those frameworks and then at a certain point you know we started teaching the seven-figure stuff and the social media stuff and just all this content and then when I decided to pause it and really rework all of it one of the biggest shifts that we made in the membership was let's get really specific about what this helps you do and I came up with the phrase freedom-based business and I distilled exactly what a freedom-based business was and I said that's what the membership does and it was really scary because I felt like, oh, what if I alienate a lot of members that are in here and they're going to leave? Or what if I make it too expensive and people don't want to join?

You know, what if I completely run this membership into the ground? But I felt in my gut that actually getting more specific was the right thing to do and would actually help me serve people on a deeper level. And, you know, ultimately it paid off in in bounds yeah but it was a risk and i think with your offer too like if you have a personal brand business or it's something like that like for me i want my business to continuously evolve and reflect the life stage that i'm at and for me the more experience that i get in business the more that i want to be able to share it. So it does feel important that the offers can pivot. And so it looked like, yeah, I revamped, I refilmed every single piece of content in there. I built it on a completely different platform. Shout out Kajabi. We love you guys. I did all of that and it was a risk, but it felt in alignment. And now

we're seeing the success of that in ads and with that sales engine. And so sometimes it's not the funnel. Sometimes it's not the traffic. Sometimes it's the offer. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the, the, this idea of wanting to be able to have the freedom to sell more than one thing, but the sales engine really being built to sell one thing. I mean, I've heard you say this to our team. It's like, I'm not, we don't have to, it doesn't have to be lightweight. Like what we sell doesn't have to be simple or cheap or like, when I say one offer, one funnel, it's not like, okay, start with one little thing. It can be a big heavy duty product. It can be deep knowledge. It can be a big course. It can

be a high ticket offer. It's, it's the way that you approach it has to be so dialed on the problem you're solving for the customer and that they understand from the minute that they become traffic in your audience through going through your offer and the qualifier and into the conversion event that like the whole time you've dripped them through this, oh, she gets me. Oh, I resonate with her. Oh, seems like she might have something that I need to learn. Like, Oh, there's options I have to buy from her. Okay. Maybe now is not the time, but here's other things I can get from her. Like it, it doesn't have to be that you're only talking about one specific thing and you want to start

lightweight. It's, it's that you need to pull that same string all the way through the process. And that's another thing I hear people say is like, well, I don't want to like niche down into one thing. Cause my person, I sell all these things and I need to be able to sell all these things. Cause I need revenue from all these things. Like, okay, just make sure that you can pull that same thread through everything that you talk about. Um, and that the funnel that that your customer no matter where they meet you through the sales engine gets that story oh i love that yeah i didn't even think about that but that's so true yes i love it well that was good no yeah i'm like wrap it on no i think that sums it up really really well i'm just thinking through all

the questions we've had and you know we're um we've done all these episodes it's good. I think it's good for us to go through this too, because we really think through like, one, are there gaps in our curriculum? And two, are we applying it? Like, like we teach it, which we are like, we really live this. We walk the talk. Yeah, we do. We've got no choice. Yeah. Um, and three, like, how do we communicate when we, when we realize something or we hear consistently questions or objections to this methodology, it's like objections are valid. Like those, that's your reality. Like, I want to hear feedback from people when they say that they don't think it'll

work for them. I'm like, okay, let's talk about it. Maybe there's people that doesn't work for, but I don't think we've found anybody yet where if we dug into your business, we couldn't, it couldn't benefit from a sales engine, you know, even the product-based stuff. Like I have a long product-based background too. And the vocabulary is a little different and the tools are a little different, but ultimately you still need to have the same conversation, marketing and delivery conversation with your customer of like, Hey, you have a problem and our product fixes that problem. And here's how

many convince you to buy it. Yeah. Well, I love that. And so, you know, problem and our product fixes that problem. And here's how I'm going to convince you to buy it. Yeah. Well, I love that. And so, you know, if you're listening to this and you do want to work with us specifically on building your sales engine, we have open Freedom Fast Track. We're going to be open likely two weeks. Last time we actually closed the doors after a week.

That is a very strong potential. So if you are thinking about it, my advice would be jump on it the reason that we might close it early is we do personalized funnel reviews for every single person in the program and we can only do so many so depending on the success of the launch we may be closing doors earlier we can take on more reviews than we did last time which is super exciting um but you know i like to make sure I am looking at every single person's funnel individually and I just don't have all the time in the world um so if you are

thinking about I'm going to put all the links below you can jump in and join us it's a phenomenal program it's incredibly robust very very detailed and the whole goal of it is that you work with us step by step to build a sales engine in your business i believe i've said it so many times i'll continue to say it the only way to build a profitable predictable and repeatable business is to build a sales engine and that's exactly what we want to help you do so i'll put all the links below it's going to be amazing um but again if you're sitting on the fence i would say take the leap sooner rather than later um depending on when you listen to

this episode we may be closed if we are you can join us on the wait list yeah thanks for listening okay see you guys next week 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. This is my digital masterclass where I'll show you what my freedom-based daily, weekly, and monthly schedule looks like as an eight-figure CEO, mama, and high performer, and I'll walk you through step-by-step how to create this for yourself. It includes a full video training from me and a plug

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