Latest / Values-First Marketing / The 5 Money-Making Activities You Can’t Afford To Ignore with Frenchie Ferenczi

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The 5 Money-Making Activities You Can’t Afford To Ignore with Frenchie Ferenczi · Values-First Marketing

• 0:00
  Unknown: Welcome to the copywriting for coaches podcast.
• 0:02
  Unknown: My name is Megan catchin, and I am obsessed with having your brand actually sound like you on the internet. We help you write all the things that you've been trying to articulate about your business but have never been able to put into copy. We're going to go deep to uplevel your business without adding more to your already full plate. We'll keep it simple and sustainable.
• 0:22
  Unknown: Sound like a breath of relief.
• 0:22
  Unknown: Let's dive in. If you are not seeing results from your marketing, try these five money making activities that you cannot afford to ignore, so that you can simplify your focus in a way that actually pays off. What we are talking about today is honestly so simple and so smart, but most miss it for three, all too common reasons, which we're going to dive into in a minute.
• 0:45
  Unknown: Forget following the latest trend or getting bogged down with busy work. We are going to zero in on what truly drives your business forward, and that is staying close to the money.
• 0:56
  Unknown: That means prioritizing actions that directly contribute to your bottom line. It is so easy to get sidetracked by tasks that seem productive or could be helpful but don't actually boost your income. And we've got a couple examples for you coming up as well. By prioritizing money making activities, you can cut through the noise and boost your revenue with clarity and confidence. That is why I want to introduce you to my friend Frenchie frenzy. Her expertise is in helping business owners with their growth and breaking through those plateaus that you hit along the way from six to seven figures. Frenchy is a revenue strategist and fractional chief revenue officer. She helps founders, creatives and industry experts to optimize their path to revenue. Her mission is to build thriving business leaders who get meaningful results leave a mark on others and feel proud of their work daily. She brings her clients more than a decade of experience as a director at high profile startups, and she's been featured in Forbes Fast Company The Financial Times, and has been on pix, 11 News South Florida live and dozens of podcasts. So if you are ready to streamline your strategy and boost revenue quickly, let's dive in to our conversation.
• 2:15
  Unknown: Hello. I'm so excited to be here with Frenchie today. Welcome to the show.
• 2:20
  Unknown: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I'm so glad to be here.
• 2:24
  Unknown: I am so excited to dive into our conversation today, because you're saying your expertise is really in helping people with their growth and breaking through those plateaus that they hit along the way from six to seven figures. And I'm so excited to chat, because I feel like what you're known for, or what I hear so often from you, is like, stay close to the money. Stay close to the money.
• 2:43
  Unknown: And when I hear that, I'm just like, Duh. Like, that's so good.
• 2:46
  Unknown: And like, yes. But also, what exactly does that mean? Or, like, what does it look like to stay close to the money?
• 2:57
  Unknown: Yeah, oh my goodness. So first of all, I'm so glad I trademarked stay close to the money, because I just feel like it is such a good and feel like there's some excitement to that phrase, right? And I think I'm excited to kind of break it down for all of you. So all backstory, right? Like, when did I first say stay close to the money? I was actually working with a copywriting client, and she was telling me about all this, like, all the different work she wanted to do, and she's like, well, I need to, like, streamline my dubsado or my HoneyBook, or my this, or my, I don't even remember exactly what it was, but it was all this work that can feel really important and can really hook us in, but ultimately, was not driving revenue in her business. It was not tied to that revenue outcomes that she was looking to achieve. And I was like, I we were talking, and I was like, you know, you really need to think about is this close to the money. We need to stay close to the money. And really, what I meant by that is, how can we, in the most simple ways, calculate the number of steps between where you're spending your time and energy and the potential revenue attached to that time and energy. So to use like a back end admin tool example, I can't even count those steps, but let's just make a simpler example. You feel like you need to make a reel to go on. IG, okay, so you make a reel, you put it on. IG, maybe somebody engages. Maybe that person engages also goes to your website, and we start to get to like, 567, steps, where they get to your website. Maybe they book a call with you. Maybe they hire you, right? So there's that seven steps, or you join a community that has ideal clients in it, and you start to have calls with people, and those calls can turn into clients, and that's like, three steps. Now I don't want to sit here and be like, everybody go run out and join the community and book calls with people, because it can look different at different times, but that's really like, the initial idea behind staying close to the money is like, how do we shorten the number of steps between the work? Work that you're doing, and the potential for revenue on the back end of that work, it is so smart, and it sounds so obvious when you say it, and so simple, and yet it's still so easy to, like, get pulled away from those money making activities. Yeah. What do you see there? Like, why is it so easy to get pulled away and and, how do we get ourselves back on track? Yeah, okay.
• 5:31
  Unknown: Why is it so easy to get pulled away? I mean, I get pulled away all the time, right? So I don't want to, like, minimize the fact that it's, it's hard to do. I think we get pulled away because of a couple things. When I see most people who I've worked with, there's usually, like, three reasons that they're getting pulled away. One is client work, right? And I think this is true, especially for our done for you people, right? So our copywriters, our designers, our photographers, people who are really, you know, in that space. So client work can client work is revenue generating, but it can sometimes prevent us from doing the growth work, the future sales work, and that sort of thing. I think sometimes the stake list of money work feels out of our control, right? We can't control the outcome. We can only control the input. And I think sometimes when you are, let's say working on, like an administrative thing, like a dubsado versus a HoneyBook, or whatever that, whatever your version of that is, it's very attractive, because you have full control over the life cycle that you know exactly what needs to happen, and you feel productive. And I think that we're always in pursuit of that feeling of productivity, because we want to feel purposeful and impactful and good about the work that we do. So I think sometimes it's a client work, sometimes it's just feeling like you can have control. And then I think the third part is sometimes overwhelm, that there are so many different ways that you can theoretically stay close to the money. And who's to say that a real right to go back to that example is going to be less effective than focusing more on calls and connecting with people? That varies a little bit by the stage of your business.
• 7:01
  Unknown: And so I think sometimes it's like, it can feel like there's a whole suite of tools that will help you stay close to the money, and then you're like, Well, which one do I choose? So that's kind of the first thought there. And then in terms of, how do you get back on track? So the number one thing to really think about, I think the easiest way to get back on track is go back to your history and look at what has worked for you in the past, and how can you replicate that, right? Like, go look at your last 510, 20 clients, whatever that number is, and actually ask yourself, Where have those people come from? And how do I just duplicate that work over and over again, and let go a little bit of all these other things that feel loud, noisy, attractive, and all of that.
• 7:48
  Unknown: Yeah, yeah. Again, so smart and so simple. And I feel like, I don't know simplicity is a huge value of of mine. And again, when you say it's like, oh, well, duh, of course, that makes so much sense. And yet, I think the three reasons you listed absolutely nail. It is, we want to deliver, you know, on our client work and serve them well, but that takes time and energy and mental space controlling the outcome, I think, for sure, is is huge. And then the overwhelm of, like, doing it all and like, we're balancing life things happening too, all at the same time. So totally, yeah, yeah, that that is a lot. So what are I don't know. I'm a list person.
• 8:34
  Unknown: Is helpful for me to see it. Are there general money making activities that work for most of like these types of people, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 8:49
  Unknown: So whenever I think about staying close to money, I think about our larger marketing strategy.
• 8:54
  Unknown: And what I'm really thinking about with marketing is I think, marketing, and I'm sure you've seen this, it gets bucketed into this, like, big, overwhelming thing. But actually, like in general, what I've seen is marketing has five roles within our business, either we're generating leads, we're nurturing leads or converting those leads, we're delivering to those clients now, or we're upselling or driving more business through the people who've been in our world. And so if I think about staying close to the money I'm always taking my clients through the process of going through those five core functions of marketing and being like, which of these are we trying to move the needle on?
• 9:38
  Unknown: Rather than being like, I need to market. We're actually thinking about, Okay, right now, I need to I am two months out from a launch. I need to nurture the heck out of my existing audience so that I can gear up for my launch, or we see that people have a really good job.
• 9:58
  Unknown: Job selling people into their program once, but then people don't continue on as clients.
• 10:04
  Unknown: Okay, maybe there's an opportunity to improve delivery, and that would actually be the closest thing to the money right then and there. Sometimes it's actually purely a lead generation issue, and we really need to figure out audience growth. And in that particular case, maybe the reels are actually a good first step to kind of give some examples. So when I'm thinking about staying close to the money, sometimes what we really have to kind of reverse engineer is, where are the leaks in your revenue journey, and then what tools or activities can we potentially implement in any of those five categories to plug the leak. So that's why it's a little bit tricky for me to be like, Okay, these are the five close the money things that are best that being said. In general, across the board, I'm always pushing my clients to focus more on relationship marketing, whether that is by, you know, collaborating with people, borrowing audiences, speaking in front of people's groups, being on podcasts like whatever that is, really focusing on the highest touch, highest return.
• 11:14
  Unknown: I've seen over and over again that when you're actually in partnership with people, in collaboration with people, or referred by people, that tends to be that's almost always going to drive results, whereas the other things are a little bit more of a crapshoot, so high level, that's what I think that you can always default to. But I want to make sure that no matter what, you're always tying that back to one of those five core functions.
• 11:38
  Unknown: Yeah, I think that specificity really helps, because it's kind of like, what is the saying?
• 11:43
  Unknown: Like, like, where you eat the frog? Like you, like, eat it one piece, or like, one part at a time. I forget who said that?
• 11:50
  Unknown: That's a logic. Pretty real quote, is it just me? I don't know. Like, you take it one piece at a time and like, breaking those like things that feel like a big mountain, like marketing, but like, what specifically, is it Legion? Is it nurturing? Is it conversion?
• 12:09
  Unknown: Is it the delivery? Is it the retention, referral or upsell?
• 12:12
  Unknown: Like you were saying, that helps us be more specific in, yeah, like you said, staying close to the money so that, like we can really serve our audience in the best way, too, exactly, so we can serve our audience, and we start to manage our overwhelm, because rather than trying to have all the results in every area of our business all at once, which is impossible, especially if you are more of solopreneur, then you just have that focus and that clarity of what you need to focus on right now. And I also think like as you grow and build your team, this becomes even more important because the way that I think about team building, and this is somewhat different, but I think it's relevant to those people who are getting to that like higher multi, six figure, seven figure point is actually that the people on your team typically need to influence one of those five core functions for their job to be valuable and measurable. And so you as a leader need to understand what impact they need to have, to measure their performance to make sure that you're making the right hires right and we see this a lot. I see a lot of people hiring like community managers in their programs.
• 13:23
  Unknown: That's a really good example of hiring someone to really support on the delivery side of those five core functions. So the people in your group have a great experience, even if you, as the business owner, can't always be the person in the group. So just this is not just about how you manage your own resources, but it also starts to be how you manage your resources across a larger team. Yes, ah, you are so smart. This is so good. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I love the specificity. And I think a lot of my people listening do have teams and yeah, to again, link them to one of those five core functions.
• 14:22
  Unknown: Because, again, no matter what marketing strategy you are employing, those five things are there or they should be, they need to be. And connecting everything back to that, I think, will really illuminate a lot like you're talking about before, of like, Are there leaks? Okay, now looking at those, what can I specifically do to plug those leaks? And I think from a copywriting perspective, like, like, don't hire a copywriter if you don't have all those things in place.
• 14:55
  Unknown: Because I don't know, from my experience, it's like someone hire hires me to write like a sales page, but then they didn't have their lead gen in place, so there wasn't enough traffic to even get to the sales page. And so they didn't really see the ROI on their investment, because they didn't have enough traffic to, like, even if we had a 50% conversion rate, which would be insane. Um, like, they still wouldn't have met their revenue goals. So I as a copywriter, love hearing this, because it's going to make the copy more effective. Um, and I think why, as a copywriter, I personally love doing like, writing for the lead gen, writing for the nurture emails, writing the sales page, like doing all of it so we can keep it coherent throughout, like all the different things there, and make sure that you know it's not going to leak, so that you actually are going to see your ROI. Yep, Yep, absolutely. And I also, I think that as a copywriter, right? And as someone who's hired copywriters, I think it's really empowering when you can show up from a place of authority and understanding, like where the potential business gaps are for someone else. That doesn't mean you need to solve them. But I think sometimes people can default to the idea that the copy is a silver bullet, and we all know that it's not, it's part of a larger ecosystem. I mean, all of it is a larger ecosystem. And so think, as a copywriter, also being able to understand what which of these five areas Your copy is intended to influence most at this particular phase or stage is also really, really important. But I had a copywriter client who was mostly working on sales pages, and that was great. But as you know, and as a lot of you listening, know, sales page was like the last mile, but if you don't have the right leads in your funnel or in your world, if you don't have the right nurture strategy in place, that sales page is just not it's not the only tool that they need to kind of get them over the finish line. It is the thing that they it's like the last step. So I think knowing how it all plays into that ecosystem and kind of using this as a simple framework to also communicate to clients can be really valuable. Yeah, yeah, totally. I can definitely see that. Yeah, and I think that sales page is a great example, because you could hire the best copywriter in the world, and they could write the most amazing sales page for you, but if you don't have the right people, or enough of the right people seeing that sales page, then it's hard to like it almost doesn't matter. Okay, good.
• 17:45
  Unknown: That's a great example. And then, okay, so there is so much that is unpredictable. There's so much that I feel like is constantly changing, especially in the digital marketing landscape. I feel like we are in another like giant shift. So how can you build a revenue strategy when there is so much that is unpredictable and shifting and constantly changing?
• 18:13
  Unknown: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I really like to lead with when it comes to building the strategy right, and I always think about a strategy as the pathway to support the larger goal. And I think the thing that's really important to know is that goals, when the way I see it, we want to hit our goals, but goals are not necessarily meant to be achieved. They're meant to inform us what's working and what's not working in our business, and they are our benchmarks and our mirrors to be like, Hey, you're doing the right work at the right time, or, Hey, you are not doing the right work at the right time.
• 18:44
  Unknown: But both of those are valuable paths forward, because obviously doing the right work and getting the results is preferable right like we all like to win, but when we know we're off track, we're also getting the insights that we need. And so there is a lot that's unpredictable right now, and I think things are evolving, but we still need to lead with a hypothesis and a plan. And so a revenue strategy is that right? We're really mapping out, what are my revenue targets, how? What do I want them to look like? What are the monthly sales that I'm going for? And then from there, what activities am I going to employ to achieve those targets, and typically, those activities will be in one of those five areas.
• 19:29
  Unknown: If, after one month, you're realizing that those that you're kind of not moving the needle in the right direction, and you're starting to go in the like, not getting closer to hitting my goals, getting further away, that's when you can actually go back and be like, Okay, what I tried wasn't really working.
• 19:44
  Unknown: What if I try this other strategy or this other approach?
• 19:48
  Unknown: And so there's a lot that's unpredictable, but what is predictable is that we're always getting feedback and inputs back in to inform what's working and what's not working, and the more we can actually take in that feedback and then apply it to our own work and businesses, and apply it to our own decisions and choices about where we spend our time and energy, then we can actually kind of be in flow and in kind of conversation with the larger landscape and market.
• 20:14
  Unknown: What I do think right now is harder is the like long term plan. And strategy. And I think that we still need to, like lead with that same vision and that same hypothesis, but listen to some of those early indicators and think about where we can shift and pivot. I'm going to share a personal example on this one. I this year 2024 like what?
• 20:39
  Unknown: Here's it. 2024 had a launch. I had my seventh launch of a program that has always performed really well. Zero people signed up. And I was like, obviously disappointed and surprised, but then when I actually looked at it, I realized that I had been putting some early feelers out about that program, and I wasn't really getting anything back.
• 21:03
  Unknown: And if I had actually taken the time to listen to those early inputs, I probably would have pivoted. So this summer, I repackaged that program into a rather than being a six week program, a two day intensive at a much lower price point, and it performed really, really well.
• 21:17
  Unknown: Now I don't want to just say, lower your prices or and that's the solution, because I don't always think that's it. I think it was a couple things. I think that what I noticed was the messaging wasn't really landing anymore. A six week time commitment feels like a lot to people sometimes, right? I think we've are all kind of burnt out on like the longer programs and the courses. And then I think a lower time commitment on lower price point combined is always kind of attractive. So then I kind of took those insights and that information and then had a really successful launch for a program that I was kind of a surprise, but was really fueled by what I saw. And so now I have new information about a different way to position my programs that I can then go back and launch again. So it's iterative, and I think it's tiring, because I think we just want to be able to kind of like set it and forget it. I know I do, but I do think especially when things feel unstable, the more we can respond to what we're not react but respond to what we're seeing. It can help us stay close to the money.
• 22:20
  Unknown: Yes, yes. And can I just say it's actually very refreshing that you take your own advice and that you do what you preach, which should go without saying, Thank you. I try, like in this day and age of I don't know, the coaching world has just gotten a little wild. Um, so Fair enough.
• 22:39
  Unknown: Fair enough? Um, yeah, so oh my gosh, I really appreciate a good strategy. And what you said about like, goals are not necessarily meant to be achieved, was like, so eye opening for me, because I'm like, I love my new year's resolutions. I usually, like, hit like, 80 to 90% of them, like, keep them throughout the year. And it's also good to listen to like, when does it need to pivot? What is this early feedback telling me and to like, actually slow down long enough to listen to it. You know? Because I think so many people can be like, go, go, go, moving forward. Or maybe they outsource a piece of that to their team, when really they need to be looking at those numbers or the data to be making the profitable decisions, and then maybe having the team implement those decisions, and maybe having the team bring those members to you so you're not like going in the back end of your funnel or website or email service provider, like keeping your CEO hat on. But yeah, I think that is a really refreshing approach, and it feels, it feels very doable, honestly, like is doable. It is doable.
• 24:04
  Unknown: You know, I was having this moment with a little bit of an unformed thought where I think that automation is kind of the goal to some degree, right? We want to set it and forget it, but sometimes that automation can get in the way of innovation, and I think we need to find the balance between the two and so as a business owner and as a CEO, I'm always going to encourage you to find those processes that are going to streamline your ability to thrive and to succeed, and also to make sure that you are kind of keeping your ear to the ground of like, what's actually happening, and are we just going through The motions and doing the work, or are we still making sure that we're doing the right work at the right time?
• 24:49
  Unknown: Yeah, oh, that is so brilliant, and it's gonna keep us I think so many entrepreneurs are like chickens running around with their head cut off, trying to do all the things and to really stay this is such a great way to just stay focused. Stay largely in your zone of genius. Stay with your CEO hat on to Yeah, yeah. Keep your ear to the ground what's happening. I also love what you said about automation. Is the goal kind of but like not to let it get in the way of innovation and. And to really balance both of those things to keep everyone thriving and happy. So oh my gosh, what a good conversation. I know my listeners are going to want to stay in touch with you and get more of you. So please tell us how we can stay connected. Yeah, absolutely.
• 25:40
  Unknown: So I there's a couple different ways we can stay connected. I have a guide called stay close to the money, so definitely get that. I also do free weekly accountability check ins for business owners who just need a thought partner in their inbox.
• 25:53
  Unknown: So every Sunday, I send an email asking you a few questions to gear up for the week ahead and to help you stay on track do the right work at the right time and get results. So find me there, and I'm also hanging out on Instagram. If you're into if you're into that perfect love it, I will link those in the show notes as well, so it's easy to click and find you. And thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Thank you.
• 26:16
  Unknown: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for tuning in to the copywriting for coaches podcast. If you've been enjoying these episodes, let me know that you're listening and what you love about it by clicking on the copywriting for coaches show in Apple podcasts and leaving me a review. Be sure to subscribe while you're there. So it's easy to catch new episodes every week if you want digital resources to finish that copy project you've been working on, the links are all waiting for you at copywriting for coaches podcast.com you.