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EP.95: My Most Raw Business Mistakes & The Lessons That Changed Everything | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

• 0:00
  I generated 7 figures in 18 months after starting my
• 0:03
  business. I wasn't on my A game and I fell
• 0:06
  into comfort. I will tell you it was crickets.
• 0:11
  Those crickets. Cue the imposter syndrome.
• 0:13
  Cue this, the mental spiral. You cannot assume that the way
• 0:16
  things have always been is how they will always be moving
• 0:19
  forward. You cannot get comfortable.
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  I'm a teensy but embarrassed because I really saw the vision
• 0:26
  of it. I was sold on the garden, but I
• 0:28
  wasn't sold on the gardening. Are you bought into the process
• 0:32
  as much as you are for vision? I am notorious for biting off
• 0:36
  more than I can chew. OK, I am notorious for it.
• 0:41
  Hello and welcome back to Ambitious Today.
• 0:44
  I'm excited to have you here because we are going to be
• 0:46
  diving into something that I don't share a lot, but I
• 0:51
  definitely wanted to dedicate an entire episode to because
• 0:54
  there's a lot that we're going to be diving into today.
• 0:57
  And that is the mistakes that I have made in the journey and the
• 1:01
  growth of my business. I feel like when we consume
• 1:05
  online, all we are seeing is highlight reels.
• 1:08
  We are seeing the best month I ever had.
• 1:10
  We're seeing the best marketing campaign I ever did.
• 1:13
  We're seeing the launch that crushed.
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  But I feel like very rarely are we seeing equal parts of
• 1:19
  marketing or equal parts of storytelling around what went
• 1:25
  wrong. What were the things that we did
• 1:27
  that did not work out? What are the things that we did
• 1:29
  that we learned some serious lessons from?
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  And I personally believe some of the biggest insights, some of
• 1:35
  the most profound, I guess I would say, awarenesses that I've
• 1:40
  ever developed have come from my mistakes.
• 1:42
  Very few of us are going to remember how those wins, the
• 1:46
  things that came to a super easy that never had any resistance.
• 1:50
  Those were never the things that shaped us.
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  Few of us are going to remember what those memories are.
• 1:55
  But instead, when you think back to memories of things that maybe
• 1:57
  even you yourself have overcome, the mistakes that you've made,
• 2:01
  the resistance you've experienced in your life or in
• 2:03
  your business, those are really the the basis of the things that
• 2:06
  shape you and that have helped you to be able to grow.
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  And so I would argue that these are probably the more important
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  things for us to remember, the more important things for us to
• 2:17
  to talk about and to discuss together, because this really is
• 2:21
  the basis of where we learn who we need to be as business owners
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  and also what really is going to work in helping us to scale our
• 2:28
  business. So for the purpose of today's
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  conversation to keep them organized for you, I've broken
• 2:33
  them into a couple core buckets. The first one is going to be all
• 2:36
  about money and investments. So talking a little bit about
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  the financial side of the mistakes that I've made.
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  The second we're going to be talking about is a little bit in
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  the team and operations bucket. 3rd, we're going to go into some
• 2:46
  mistakes that I have myself have made in marketing and messaging.
• 2:49
  And we are also going to dive into as well offers and sales,
• 2:53
  leadership and vision. So as I said, we're getting all
• 2:56
  into it today. So without further ado, let's
• 2:58
  just get right into it. To start us off, let's talk
• 3:09
  money and investments because I feel like as business owners,
• 3:11
  the things that all of us want to know somehow like everyone
• 3:15
  wants to know about money. How much money are you making?
• 3:17
  How much money are you profiting?
• 3:18
  How much money are you spending? And when it comes to money, I
• 3:23
  learned a very hard lesson very quickly in my business.
• 3:26
  When I first started my business, I, like many
• 3:29
  entrepreneurs, was very scrappy. And so by being scrappy, that
• 3:34
  meant that I wasn't looking for perfection.
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  I wasn't looking for, you know, structure systems.
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  I was just like 1 foot in front of the other and trying to move
• 3:42
  as fast as I could because I knew that success and scaling
• 3:46
  frankly loves speed. So in knowing that I was OK,
• 3:50
  great, full throttle, let's go. And I was moving so fast that I
• 3:54
  really didn't get all my ducks lined up in a row before making
• 3:59
  money. And so Fast forward, I generated
• 4:01
  7 figures in 18 months after starting my business.
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  So think about that level of revenue being generated with no
• 4:09
  financial systems to back it. And very quickly what happened
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  is I remember that I was just kind of like go, go, go, scale,
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  scale, scale. And I didn't really have any of
• 4:20
  these structures set up. So I got this very, very big tax
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  bill and I did not have those taxes put away.
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  And so I was just like head down, sell, sell, sell, sell,
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  sell. But I hadn't really been saving
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  along the way. I hadn't really been like
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  putting this into a separate account.
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  Like at that moment, I was just focused on more is more.
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  I have a very different philosophy on that today.
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  But at that time, it was the the most that I had known, which was
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  really just like, I'll figure it out later if I have money.
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  Money solves all problems. And in fact it does.
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  But the thing with money is that as many of you, if you've gone
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  through this as well, you do not have the money structure set up
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  along the way. You're going to have that aha
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  moment at some point or another. So it's like if you haven't, for
• 5:10
  example, been planning for your retirement and now you're ready
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  to retire, you're going to have a shock to the system when you
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  realize I have not been planning for this.
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  That same shock and awe is how I felt when I got this tax bill,
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  because I remember getting this notification of how much I
• 5:26
  needed to transfer. And it was like to the tune of
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  multiple 6 figures. And this was obviously between
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  both business taxes as well as my personal.
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  And so I'm sitting there and I go, Oh my goodness.
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  And it was at that moment I was like, I need to hire somebody
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  for finance. Because I knew that it was #1
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  not an area that I personally loved.
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  And #2 I knew that oversight in that was going to be massively
• 5:51
  damaging for me and for my business.
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  And so it also taught me a really important lesson though
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  too, which again, at the time I had not really anchored into,
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  which is that when you're scaling, your business's income
• 6:02
  is not your income. So I think a lot of people think
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  if I just make more, make more, make more, I'm going to pay
• 6:07
  myself more. And I would say people who are
• 6:11
  smart about their finances are not only looking at how their
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  business can pay them, but also how their business can create
• 6:19
  compound financial wealth for them long term.
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  And so I think there's so many lessons that even just this,
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  this one thing taught me, which was, again, revenue is not your
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  personal income. And also with this, just because
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  you've been able to get away with something for so long or
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  you've been able to kind of ignore something in your
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  business for a long time and that it hasn't caught up to you
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  just yet, doesn't mean that it's not going to catch up to you.
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  And also, truthfully, the biggest take away that that
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  experience gave me was that I need to remember that the money
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  coming into the business is not my money.
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  And it's not even necessarily to say my personal money, but it's
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  not my money. As in, there's probably team to
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  pay, there's expenses to pay, there's taxes to pay, like
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  there's savings to allocate. Like there are other things
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  where your money is going to be dedicated and different places
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  where it's going to go. So if you're bringing it in, you
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  have to ask yourself, do I really look at that money as,
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  OK, great, IF20K is coming in, I'm making A20K month.
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  Or is it like, hey, there's 20K coming in, But at the end of
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  that, let's just say like I'm going to keep, you know, 15 out
• 7:26
  of the 20 into the business. So it really changed my
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  perspective as well on revenue because it helped me to really
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  realize that the number I'm seeing come in is definitely not
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  the number that at the end of that spreadsheet is truly within
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  the business at the end of the day.
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  The other thing that I also found was an investment that we
• 7:43
  made. So I remember there was a a
• 7:47
  moment in our business where we had a a lot of website traffic.
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  We had a lot of people by website, sorry, I should
• 7:54
  clarify. We had a lot of funnel traffic.
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  So what that meant is that we had like an application funnel
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  for people to book a call with us for coaching.
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  And I remember at that time we had a lot of numbers on that.
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  So when I saw there was tons of numbers on it, I had this kind
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  of inclination, which is that I thought, OK, well, based off of
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  what I'm seeing, it looks like the thing that people are
• 8:18
  desiring is kind of a place to learn more about our offers.
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  Because truthfully, there was a good point in our business where
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  you could not find out anything about our offers unless you
• 8:26
  messaged me. I didn't have sales pages, I
• 8:28
  didn't have a website, I didn't have any of that.
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  And truthfully, for a couple years, like, it did US perfectly
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  well because people weren't needing that in order to invest
• 8:38
  with us necessarily. But then I started to see that
• 8:42
  there were more curiosities about our offerings.
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  There was more, you know, curiosities about what support
• 8:47
  they get, what kind of things are covered.
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  And so that kind of helped me to know, OK, great.
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  Maybe we do need some sales pages here.
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  Maybe we do need a website. And there was also these other
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  cues happening in the business. Like for example, I was getting
• 9:00
  a little bit more into doing speaking and more into like
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  wanting to expand the press side of my business.
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  So with all of those things being said, I thought a website
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  will probably help a lot with that.
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  Here's the thing that I went to fix, but the lesson I learned is
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  that I created, technically speaking, a problem elsewhere.
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  I went in by creating this website to fix what was the fact
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  that people were looking or information around investing
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  with us and they didn't really have a streamlined place to get
• 9:28
  that information. So I'm like, great check, we're
• 9:29
  going to solve that problem. But what I didn't think of is
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  how the branding could create a problem.
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  So up until that point, I feel like Long story short, as a
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  brand, I've always struggled with this duality of how
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  professional I want to be. I would say to an extent, I love
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  neutrals. I love branding.
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  I love the power branding and marketing.
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  Like I definitely see the impact and, and what that can do and
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  the significance of that. However, I also recognize that
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  that sometimes has become a deterrent for how approachable I
• 10:05
  come across to people, how frankly human I look like, do I
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  look like this? You know, I hate to even use
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  these terms, but like Boss Babe online, but do people really
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  know me? And it made me realize that the
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  professional level of branding and photography and videography
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  and even frankly, the website design and, and customer journey
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  of it, by the way it was created, it was very
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  professional. It's very bougie.
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  It's a very bougie website. But it also meant that while it
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  helped to give people information, it also set
• 10:42
  indirectly by being so professional and being so
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  branded kind of this, this tone, I guess I would say of me being
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  unapproachable or people being like, oh, I'm not nearly at a
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  level to kind of invest into that because the branding made
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  it feel almost maybe too luxury in comparison to where I wanted
• 11:00
  it to feel or land for people. So what it's taught me is that
• 11:05
  the investment, I would say we went in investing into this and
• 11:10
  the rebrand process with a substantial investment, like
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  we're talking high multiple 5 figure investment into our
• 11:19
  rebrand and website. And I wouldn't say it was
• 11:22
  necessarily a mistake because I don't really believe any of
• 11:24
  these are truly that like I would never do them again.
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  They've taught me a lot, but the websites didn't serve the
• 11:30
  consumer in the way that I thought it would.
• 11:33
  It helped to give them information, but by having two
• 11:36
  professional branding connected to it, it actually did equally
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  as much harm from a brand perspective as it did to the
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  positive of what it did for us from a conversion side.
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  So it's interesting because we actually tested as a business.
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  What if we took it down? What if we removed the website?
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  We took it out of our bio like we were.
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  We made it really. It still exists.
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  If you go search kateperkovic.com, you will find
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  my website. But if I remove that and I
• 12:02
  remove the extra branding and if I remove the extra pieces, would
• 12:06
  it maybe allow people to be able to connect with me easier or
• 12:10
  find me easier and kind of path of least resistance and also no
• 12:13
  extra branding to make it too luxury or too overdone when it
• 12:18
  comes to the branding of the actual offer.
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  And it will be very interesting for you to know our clicks in
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  the sense of our overall consumption on our website has
• 12:30
  basically stayed the same since we've removed it from our bio
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  and our core socials. But we have a lot more direct
• 12:37
  conversions happening through our application funnel then when
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  we had the website active. So it really went to show that
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  people who are going to search and want to kind of, you know,
• 12:47
  go through and discover you and you know, kind of search to get
• 12:51
  their own information, especially those analytical
• 12:53
  people, they're going to do that.
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  They're going to find your website hell or high water.
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  But the people who maybe don't need all of that, it could
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  actually be acting as a barrier that's causing them to not
• 13:04
  invest with you or not move forward with you.
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  The other thing I would also say is looking at when it when it
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  comes to money, I also feel like something that was interesting
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  for us was looking at the fact of how we were spending this on
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  certain offers. So for example, one of the
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  offers that I would say I learned a lot from were in
• 13:26
  person experiences because it's in person experiences are kind
• 13:29
  of different than a traditional online business or like an
• 13:33
  online offer. Because a lot of the time with
• 13:35
  online offers, you don't need to create it and spend it before
• 13:40
  people come. So for example, like if you want
• 13:43
  to have a coaching offer, if you want to even have a service, a
• 13:45
  lot of that is just your time is being integrated to create
• 13:49
  something. So maybe you're creating
• 13:51
  processes for an offer you want to develop, you're, you know,
• 13:54
  spending hours prepping some onboarding for some clients you
• 13:57
  want to bring on. But when you have it in person,
• 14:00
  there's a there's an aspect of commitment.
• 14:01
  So let's just say you want to host an in person event of 100
• 14:03
  people. You have to book the venue, book
• 14:05
  the speakers. Like there's an aspect of
• 14:08
  spending that is required before the sales.
• 14:11
  The same thing is also partially true when it comes to retreats.
• 14:14
  Retreats were something that I saw as something I really wanted
• 14:18
  to do in person and I still very much love.
• 14:20
  But one of our first experiences when it was our first go at
• 14:24
  this, that was kind of a lesson for us is that we had to look at
• 14:29
  confirming demand before we book something just the same way that
• 14:34
  we did in our online offers. Like I'm a big believer of you
• 14:37
  always confirm demand before you ever do anything to like deeply
• 14:41
  commit. So for example, you don't create
• 14:43
  a course and all of the course videos before you actually know
• 14:47
  you have course participants kind of thing because otherwise
• 14:50
  you've created this beautiful thing and the idea of, oh, if I
• 14:53
  make it, they will come. That's not how marketing and
• 14:55
  sales works. So I always caution people with
• 14:59
  this with online offers of courses, masterminds, any of
• 15:02
  that. I'm like, do not have this
• 15:03
  belief that just because I build it, they will come.
• 15:07
  That is not necessarily how it's going to work and it's putting
• 15:10
  you in a very risky spot of investing lots of time and hours
• 15:14
  into it without necessarily knowing if you have demand.
• 15:17
  The problem with a retreat is you can't sell a retreat if you
• 15:21
  don't have a location. So it's difficult when people
• 15:24
  say, OK, great, where is it and what are the dates?
• 15:27
  You kind of have to pre commit to a space, therefore to an
• 15:31
  investment before you really have tickets sold 9 times out of
• 15:36
  10. Now, could you keep it super
• 15:38
  risky and just be like, great, I'm picking this location, these
• 15:41
  dates and hopefully I'll find a space once I sell some tickets.
• 15:44
  Sure. But for me, my, my anxiety was
• 15:47
  like, there's no, there's no way.
• 15:49
  So I pre committed to, hey, I'm going to spend this amount of
• 15:53
  money. And I remember on our first
• 15:55
  retreat, like, and I'm very transparent about this with even
• 15:57
  the people who attended, like our first retreat was not a make
• 16:00
  money event. Even our first ambitious dinner,
• 16:03
  it was not a make money event. These events when I first did
• 16:07
  them were not something that I went into being like, this is
• 16:12
  how I'm going to make X amount of profit off of this.
• 16:14
  Like I really wanted to when I did my first ambitious dinner
• 16:18
  and when I did the first soulful scaling retreat, I really wanted
• 16:22
  to use those as proof of concept, which was really a
• 16:25
  matter of confirming, you know, what I wanted to do and that it
• 16:29
  was also something desired of our audience.
• 16:31
  But here's the thing. What I realized was the retreats
• 16:37
  you really need to make sure for in person services that the
• 16:40
  demand I would say is clarified times 2 compared to what you
• 16:44
  might do for another offering. And that is because with in
• 16:48
  person it is a little bit different as an offer.
• 16:50
  I find that there is obviously there's a lot more coordination
• 16:53
  needed from people in their lives in order to be able to go
• 16:56
  to it in person. So a lot of people will say,
• 16:59
  like, yes, I'm ready to do this less.
• 17:00
  Yes, I want to go. And then the time comes,
• 17:03
  obviously, to rearrange their life to make it happen.
• 17:05
  And it is difficult. And so I had this even with
• 17:08
  clients who do retreats, they say, you know, there's so many
• 17:10
  people who said they wanted to go.
• 17:11
  And then we put up, put up the ticket sales.
• 17:13
  We didn't have as many bites as I thought we would.
• 17:15
  And again, then the person running it feels pressure
• 17:19
  because they realize, OK, whoa, I have a, you know, Airbnb that
• 17:23
  I've paid X amount of money for or I have a potentially for
• 17:25
  larger events, you have a big conference room that you've pre
• 17:29
  booked for this event. So there is kind of this needing
• 17:32
  to really verify the market and really verify demand before you
• 17:37
  book something. Because when you book in person
• 17:40
  things, you're kind of committed once you state the event date
• 17:43
  and the fact that it's happening.
• 17:44
  And the other thing I also want to say around money as another
• 17:47
  kind of, I guess I would say mistake is that I also really
• 17:50
  learned a lot along the way that just because you invest in
• 17:54
  something one time does not mean it's created equal elsewhere.
• 17:57
  So just because you hire a VA on one side and you get this
• 18:01
  quality of service does not mean that the next VA who potentially
• 18:05
  is even the same investment is going to be equal in the sense
• 18:09
  of value or support. Photographers.
• 18:11
  I've hired A photographer that I was obsessed with for our
• 18:13
  business. I had worked with somebody who
• 18:16
  was a similar range and I was like, this is not what I was
• 18:20
  looking for for our business. And so that was kind of money
• 18:23
  out the window. I have had people that I've
• 18:25
  worked with who are fantastic when it comes to the marketing
• 18:29
  and the design part of our business and again hired
• 18:33
  somebody else with the exact same title and label within
• 18:36
  their position, very different outcome and results.
• 18:40
  So what I recognize as well is that we have to be really
• 18:44
  cautious that money and investments #1 are not tied to
• 18:48
  quality. So just because someone is
• 18:50
  charging you more or you are potentially charging more does
• 18:54
  not necessarily mean that your product or service is innately
• 18:57
  more valuable or more impactful. I also recognize that the kind
• 19:03
  of barometer of what we consider to be what it's meant to be in a
• 19:07
  certain service, right? So like just because I do design
• 19:10
  on one side and design over here does not mean that you're going
• 19:13
  to get the same design output, mean this same design product or
• 19:17
  result from both of those people.
• 19:20
  And that for me was a big lesson because I think that there is
• 19:25
  sometimes this kind of perceived value, right?
• 19:28
  There's this perceived value that just because we're spending
• 19:30
  more, it is more valuable. And from a marketing and the
• 19:33
  psychology perspective, that mindset is very normal.
• 19:36
  That's very typical. But I had to remember that while
• 19:39
  that is my perception, I have to verify that, which is that just
• 19:43
  because I'm paying so and so, you know, 10 grand a month, I
• 19:47
  need to verify that, yes, there's a perceived obvious
• 19:50
  value there. But do I really know that to be
• 19:52
  true? And I've lost a lot of money.
• 19:55
  I feel like I've learned in the loss of a lot of money and
• 19:58
  investments that not all services are created equal.
• 20:02
  Not all. You know, contractors
• 20:04
  potentially with even the same title and compensation are
• 20:07
  created equal. And so I think it's important
• 20:09
  for us to to remember that just because you invest a lot in
• 20:13
  something doesn't necessarily mean that it innately is better.
• 20:18
  And so I think that that's something that I've learned
• 20:19
  along the way that I always verify.
• 20:21
  Now, I again, understand that if I invest this much, there
• 20:25
  probably should be a better level of service here, right?
• 20:27
  So like if you buy, for example, a Honda versus a Mercedes, there
• 20:32
  is a perceived value that the Mercedes by being more expensive
• 20:36
  should be better. But don't assume that would be
• 20:39
  my lesson for you because there are also things that present as
• 20:43
  a Mercedes that are really a Honda on the inside.
• 20:46
  And also as a total side note, no shade against Honda, I have
• 20:51
  and Acura, which is part of the Honda family.
• 20:53
  So don't don't feel any way about the Honda.
• 20:55
  If you own a Honda and you're like, hey, why are you making
• 20:56
  fun of my Honda over here? Now with this, let's move a
• 21:00
  little bit into team and operations.
• 21:02
  One of the things that I learned very quickly is that when hiring
• 21:08
  team, I had this whole philosophy of I didn't want to
• 21:12
  micromanage people. Like I was like, I don't want to
• 21:13
  have to be hovering over you 24/7 and you feel like I'm all
• 21:18
  up in your space to get things done because I was like, that
• 21:21
  just defeats for me the whole reality of why I would delegate
• 21:25
  in the 1st place. So what I recognized was that I
• 21:28
  don't want to micromanage somebody.
• 21:30
  I'm not interested in hovering over you all day every day.
• 21:34
  But that actually became an extreme that allowed me to miss
• 21:38
  in the earlier parts of my business, some red flags that
• 21:42
  were coming up. And I remember I had a specific
• 21:44
  instance with a contractor that was part time that I had hired.
• 21:48
  And there's a specific area of our business that they were
• 21:49
  working in. And I remember that I had said,
• 21:52
  Hey, if you could just like provide me your numbers, that
• 21:55
  would be great. Like just provide me your
• 21:57
  numbers whenever you're you're done with your tasks.
• 21:59
  And I remember they were providing me numbers and I
• 22:02
  started to look at the numbers and I thought, OK, you know, I'm
• 22:05
  just going to go deeper into this.
• 22:06
  Like there wasn't anything that was alarmingly wrong.
• 22:09
  I was just curious as to like, OK, great.
• 22:11
  I'm seeing the high level numbers.
• 22:12
  I just want to go a little bit into the details.
• 22:15
  And upon going into the details of those numbers, I came to
• 22:19
  uncover that that individual had been creating false numbers in
• 22:26
  our system for in the in the tracking.
• 22:29
  And basically came to uncover that there was false information
• 22:34
  being put in the individual numbers, which meant that the
• 22:36
  summary numbers were not real either.
• 22:39
  And So what it meant is that this came to my attention, and
• 22:43
  obviously from that this person was no longer working with us.
• 22:46
  But it taught me that there's a big difference between saying I
• 22:50
  don't want to micromanage somebody versus actually just
• 22:52
  managing them, right? So there's micromanagement and
• 22:55
  then there's management. And what I realized was I had to
• 22:59
  ensure that while I didn't want to nitpick every little thing
• 23:03
  they did, and I didn't want to be involved in every microtask
• 23:06
  and every little number tracked, what I recognize now is the
• 23:10
  power of auditing. So I want you to almost think
• 23:13
  about for yourself, like secret shoppers, right?
• 23:15
  Secret shoppers are the people who are hired by the head of the
• 23:19
  company to go into different locations and to basically be an
• 23:24
  anonymous second set of eyes within that company to ensure
• 23:28
  that what they say they're doing is actually what they're doing.
• 23:31
  So like, let's just say you have you work at Sephora, OK?
• 23:34
  And you have a way that you're supposed to greet customers when
• 23:36
  they walk in. If a secret shopper walks in,
• 23:39
  they're going to be looking to say, OK, does this person greet
• 23:41
  me the way that I expected them to or anticipated them to?
• 23:44
  So they're going to be looking for quality checks.
• 23:47
  And what I realized is it's not about reviewing every single
• 23:52
  file. It's not about reviewing every
• 23:54
  single document. It's not about being in every
• 23:56
  single piece all the time. It's about having randomized
• 24:01
  checks in the system that will allow you to catch a mistake if
• 24:05
  it happens. Another example I give to
• 24:07
  clients about this is like if you guys have ever watched, I
• 24:10
  don't know if you guys have ever seen that show how it's made.
• 24:12
  It's basically the show about whatever product and literally
• 24:16
  the factories of how they make it.
• 24:17
  So I was explaining that somehow this is showing the inner foodie
• 24:21
  and me. Somehow I ended up on the
• 24:24
  episode of Ben and Jerry's and it was showing that the Ben and
• 24:28
  Jerry's company, what they do when they make their ice cream
• 24:31
  is they literally have ice cream testers.
• 24:33
  So they have, you know, 2 random tubs or three random tubs per
• 24:37
  batch that are pulled aside to test the product.
• 24:41
  So they're not going into every tub of ice cream and testing to
• 24:45
  see what every single tub tastes like, but they are picking
• 24:48
  randomly out of each batch different things to test to make
• 24:52
  sure that the overall quality of work is on par with what they're
• 24:55
  looking for. So I really took from that.
• 24:58
  There is a perspective around. I don't want to micromanage.
• 25:02
  Yes, but you still need to monitor.
• 25:05
  And so that for me came in with randomized checks.
• 25:08
  So this is kind of how I operate now in business.
• 25:10
  I will go and do randomized checks in our data, randomized
• 25:13
  checks inside of planners, randomized checks inside of
• 25:17
  basically anything that someone is working inside of because I
• 25:20
  don't want to be everyday, what are you doing today?
• 25:22
  What are you doing tomorrow? But I do want to know, you know,
• 25:26
  generally speaking quality assurance wise that we are
• 25:28
  getting the outcome that we want here.
• 25:30
  And this kind of actually leads as well into another mistake
• 25:34
  which is that when you go to audit those areas, when you go
• 25:39
  to audit your systems or go to randomly do these quality
• 25:43
  checks, you have to make sure that you have systems that
• 25:45
  support you in seeing what you want to see.
• 25:47
  And so one of the other things that I learned from the
• 25:48
  operations bucket is that you need to be very careful to not
• 25:55
  over build your systems. And I would say one of the
• 25:59
  things that I'm really grateful for from our head of OPS.
• 26:03
  So our head of office is, is Kelsey and she's the head of
• 26:06
  Dear Kel's Agency and they do our operations for our business.
• 26:11
  And one of the things that I Love Actually about her OPS
• 26:14
  specifically is that there is a level of simplicity to it.
• 26:20
  But it's not like obviously it's complicated.
• 26:22
  It's not like basic by any means, but she keeps it simple
• 26:26
  enough that it's streamlined enough to use.
• 26:29
  There's no added fluff. There's no added kind of, you
• 26:32
  know, pieces in it that we don't need.
• 26:33
  Everything is really critically thought out to know, is this
• 26:37
  just an extra that's making things more complicated or can
• 26:39
  we make it simpler? And I can tell you that that has
• 26:43
  been for me something that I find really supports not only
• 26:48
  myself, but also like our general team of anybody else
• 26:51
  who's involved in the business because there has been things
• 26:54
  along the way that I have done or dedicated outside of our head
• 26:58
  of OPS. So like I had like, you know,
• 27:00
  some projects and things along the way that would be like one
• 27:03
  off things that I would do. And I remember that when anytime
• 27:07
  that we typically would look to bring it outside of ourselves,
• 27:12
  sometimes we ended up with more complication.
• 27:15
  And you know, in just any different contractors we were
• 27:18
  working with, they would sometimes bring more
• 27:20
  complication, more complexity to what we were doing.
• 27:24
  And I really will say one of the things that helped a lot with
• 27:29
  the click up that we have and the systems that we have and the
• 27:32
  platforms that we're using is now I feel like there's a really
• 27:36
  good understanding amongst our team that we really are looking
• 27:39
  for simplicity here. Like we don't want complication.
• 27:41
  We don't want there to be a lot of rabbit holes that we could go
• 27:45
  down. I wanted to be very
• 27:46
  straightforward. And I really do think that
• 27:48
  simplicity scales. And I've just seen that time and
• 27:52
  time again, You and you, you create systems and you create
• 27:55
  structures. And when you get into the data
• 27:57
  of scaling a business, it is a rabbit hole.
• 28:00
  You can go down a deep, deep rabbit hole.
• 28:02
  And I find that sometimes when even for myself, sometimes I
• 28:06
  would be the problem. I would be the one who's like,
• 28:08
  we should do this and we should track this and we should get
• 28:10
  this data because I'd be really excited to see something.
• 28:13
  But then when it got into integration, it just became so
• 28:16
  complicated and overwhelming that it didn't help anybody.
• 28:19
  And we kind of ended up back at square one, which lost his time
• 28:22
  and ultimately lost his money because we had to go build all
• 28:25
  of that to have that realization.
• 28:27
  So I learned very quickly that your systems don't need to be
• 28:30
  complicated in order to be effective.
• 28:32
  They can be very simple. They can be very
• 28:34
  straightforward. The main thing is that they are
• 28:36
  presenting you with the information you need to make
• 28:39
  decisions that you feel like you were able to easily monitor,
• 28:42
  progress you're making and the outcomes that you're
• 28:44
  establishing. As long as you are getting
• 28:46
  outcomes in something, how you track all of that doesn't need
• 28:50
  to be complex in order to be effective.
• 28:52
  The other thing that I would also say is like contracts.
• 28:55
  So contract wise, what I will say is that when I first created
• 29:01
  our contracts for any of our offers team, any of it, I kind
• 29:05
  of went in with, you know, rose colored glasses, right?
• 29:07
  Like I really went into making this contract with like a
• 29:09
  standardized agreement of something that I found online.
• 29:12
  It wasn't necessarily something that I had gone deep into the
• 29:16
  rabbit hole of all these different clauses and someone
• 29:20
  said to me, you know, well, like what should we have in our
• 29:22
  contracts? And I said what you, what should
• 29:24
  be in your contracts is what you know is likely a possible kind
• 29:29
  of like outcome with the people that you interface with.
• 29:32
  So for example, a lot of the clauses that I now have in my
• 29:36
  service agreements for my offers are actually not something that
• 29:40
  are all that different from what I've experienced, right?
• 29:44
  So when I first started, I had these very basic contracts.
• 29:47
  I had these kind of standardized things that I got from
• 29:50
  templates, but you don't know that you need a failed payment
• 29:53
  clause necessarily until you know the extent of what can
• 29:57
  happen when it comes to failed payments.
• 29:58
  You don't know that you need a non compete with specific
• 30:01
  verbiage and what that verbiage is until you have someone who
• 30:04
  tries to compete with you, you often don't know.
• 30:08
  You know that you have to put your level of consumption of the
• 30:11
  program is not directly connected to a dollar value.
• 30:15
  You won't know that clause until you have someone who says, OK,
• 30:20
  well, like, if I only consume this much, can I only pay this
• 30:22
  much? Right.
• 30:23
  So like, you don't know until you go through those situations.
• 30:26
  And I think that something that I've learned along the way is
• 30:29
  that your contracts are really a living and breathing document.
• 30:33
  Like they kind of are ever evolving.
• 30:35
  They're never technically done. And I think that that's because
• 30:39
  we learned so many hard lessons along the way in business that
• 30:43
  we need to then take those awarenesses and take that
• 30:45
  clarity and move that into helping us to shape these
• 30:49
  agreements and to change them. And so I learned very quickly
• 30:52
  that, you know, there were so many situations that I just
• 30:56
  genuinely, when I first had a contract drafted, I would have
• 30:59
  never fathomed would happen. And then they did.
• 31:02
  And then I was like, OK, great. I felt initially insecure for
• 31:05
  not having that in my contract, but instead I switched my
• 31:08
  perspective to be OK. Well, yes, it wasn't in the
• 31:11
  contract, but this is an opportunity to say whatever
• 31:14
  happens within the business and within the experience of the way
• 31:17
  that we operate, we're going to take that clarity and we're
• 31:20
  going to take all of that and make sure that there's clauses
• 31:22
  that reflect those situations. So my invitation for you would
• 31:27
  be to ensure that your contracts are not like a one and done,
• 31:30
  that you're not looking at these as like, oh, I establish this
• 31:33
  contract when I first created this offer, when I first created
• 31:35
  my business even and you haven't changed it since.
• 31:39
  There may be an invitation for you to look at, are your
• 31:42
  contracts just the templates you started with or do they truly
• 31:45
  reflect the experiences that you've had in your business to
• 31:48
  date and that you have clauses to reflect that?
• 31:51
  Another lesson that was a that was a hard one for me.
• 31:55
  OK. So in business, business circles
• 31:58
  are big, but they're also small, especially in the female
• 32:02
  business category. So what I found was that there's
• 32:07
  a lot of overlap. When you have a tight knit
• 32:10
  circle, there's a lot of overlap and I would caution you to stay
• 32:13
  away from the overlap. If I could redo my business, I
• 32:18
  would not have so many overlapping relationships.
• 32:23
  I'm going to give you an example what this means.
• 32:26
  Like I have certain ones that for sure they work, like they
• 32:28
  definitely do work and they kind of have their own boundaries in
• 32:31
  the way that they they operate and that they work.
• 32:34
  But I think that the thing that I would advise is try to have
• 32:39
  some separation. Like for me, I feel like I've
• 32:41
  had a lot of overlap. I have a lot of, you know,
• 32:44
  clients that also were contracted for services for us
• 32:48
  and vice versa. I have had for example, family
• 32:51
  in my business. I've had a lot of overlap in a
• 32:54
  lot of different things. And it's not to say that I would
• 32:56
  say it's all bad, like by any means it's not.
• 32:59
  But I think the lesson that I learned is when you have a lot
• 33:03
  of overlap of relationships or you have a lot of overlap of who
• 33:06
  knows who, ultimately if you're just a human being, it's going
• 33:11
  to make the decisions you want to make in your business or the
• 33:15
  the actions you want to take, etcetera.
• 33:17
  It's going to make those harder because there is so much
• 33:21
  overlap. So like if you have something
• 33:24
  you need to say, but the person has a close relationship to you,
• 33:26
  there's an aspect of overlap. If you have to let someone go,
• 33:30
  but that person you want to let go also is a service of someone
• 33:35
  who used to be a client of yours.
• 33:36
  Like that's a lot of overlap, right?
• 33:38
  So while I believe that the most professional people can have
• 33:43
  separation, they can have like a personal relationship and they
• 33:46
  can do business, the thing I will say is there needs to be a
• 33:49
  clearly understood setting of expectations around that because
• 33:54
  it's one thing to say it and it's another to embody it.
• 33:56
  And so I remember I had to, which was very difficult.
• 33:59
  I had to message somebody who is a friend of mine who was
• 34:02
  providing us a support for our business.
• 34:05
  And I remember I had to message her and I had to say, hey, like,
• 34:08
  you know, there's just a couple following things that I love you
• 34:11
  as a person. Like there's nothing in our
• 34:13
  relationship that I would say or change or whatever, But this
• 34:17
  specific portion of the support that I've been getting from you,
• 34:21
  I don't personally feel like is working any longer.
• 34:25
  And that was difficult because like many people would say,
• 34:28
  well, how do you say that to somebody that you have a
• 34:30
  relationship with that you're friends with?
• 34:33
  And I'm very grateful that this individual is, is very
• 34:36
  professional in the way that they operate.
• 34:38
  And so they were like, listen, you know, we are good.
• 34:41
  Like consider on a personal level, we're set, we're good.
• 34:44
  And with that, I will take this feedback and I will, you know,
• 34:48
  integrate this moving forward. So it became a really positive
• 34:52
  thing in that instance. But it doesn't really matter how
• 34:55
  the outcome happens, it means you still have to deal with the
• 35:00
  emotions and the mindset and all the things that come up in those
• 35:04
  circumstances. So my lesson for me would be
• 35:07
  that, you know, I've had a lot of overlap in a lot of things of
• 35:09
  contractors, clients, services team.
• 35:13
  And while it's been beneficial in some regard to, you know,
• 35:17
  having a really close knit circle of people around you, it
• 35:21
  also has proved to be difficult because it has added this layer
• 35:24
  of complexity to decisions and conversations and things that
• 35:28
  happen within the business day-to-day.
• 35:30
  So when you have too much overlap, I think what happens is
• 35:35
  there's not enough distinction of the relationship.
• 35:37
  There's not enough distinction of expectations.
• 35:40
  And I think it just gets a little bit muddy.
• 35:42
  And I think along the way it has been an added layer of
• 35:45
  complexity that probably without it would have been a lot
• 35:48
  simpler. Now let's go a little bit into
• 35:51
  marketing and messaging. One of the things that I
• 35:53
  learned, well, I feel like it's an ongoing lesson for me.
• 35:57
  I shouldn't say learned this past tense.
• 36:00
  I'm still a work in progress. Just the way you are.
• 36:02
  OK, I don't know about you, but I feel like I have these these
• 36:08
  moments where I'm like, I need to be everywhere.
• 36:10
  Like I'm like, I got to do the blogs.
• 36:11
  I got to be a YouTube, I got to be on TikTok, I got to be on
• 36:14
  Instagram and I got to be doing e-mail.
• 36:17
  I got to be doing LinkedIn. And I constantly have this
• 36:20
  desire to be everywhere and do everything.
• 36:22
  And I say this as a business coach who knows the answer to
• 36:25
  scaling is not to be everywhere and do everything.
• 36:29
  But the thing that I will say, I remember in the earlier stages
• 36:32
  of business, I remember messaging Kelsey, who's been
• 36:34
  with me since day one, and I was like, Oh my God, I think we
• 36:36
  should do blogs, we should do Pinterest, we should do all
• 36:39
  these things. And again, blog and Pinterest
• 36:41
  works. It works very well.
• 36:43
  I have a lot of clients who have insane results with blogs and
• 36:46
  Pinterest. I have a lot of peers who have
• 36:48
  used blogs and Pinterest. It's very effective.
• 36:52
  The thing is you can't do everything, OK?
• 36:55
  You can't do everything. And so I realized as well that
• 36:58
  just because something provides visibility or virality does not
• 37:04
  mean that it provides conversion.
• 37:06
  And something that I had to really understand when I was
• 37:09
  building our kind of marketing ecosystem is to look at what was
• 37:13
  the thing that I was doing and what was the intention of what I
• 37:16
  wanted it to provide for us. So if you are somebody, for
• 37:20
  example, who's adding a new platform, if you are somebody
• 37:22
  who's wanting to start a podcast, if you want to, you
• 37:25
  know, maybe blow up on tech talk, you want to start e-mail
• 37:27
  marketing, you have to really understand what's the point of
• 37:31
  that platform for you and what are you looking for it to do?
• 37:36
  And so I learned very quickly that there was platforms and
• 37:40
  marketing approaches that were going to get us a lot of
• 37:42
  virality, a lot of visibility, but they weren't necessarily as
• 37:46
  inclined from a conversion perspective.
• 37:48
  So when I looked at scaling, visibility is important.
• 37:51
  You want to make sure that people know about you and who
• 37:54
  you are, that you're constantly getting more of that, like no
• 37:56
  trust for more and more people. But I was at this place in my
• 38:00
  business where I was really looking for conversion.
• 38:02
  And truthfully, I went wide when I should have gone deep.
• 38:05
  And what it meant is I was trying to, you know, add more
• 38:08
  platforms and do more things and be more places.
• 38:11
  But all that did was add bloat. It just added tons of people who
• 38:15
  needed to be paid to do all of these different areas that
• 38:18
  really weren't necessarily getting us any kind of outcome.
• 38:21
  They weren't necessarily getting us a result.
• 38:24
  I wouldn't say that was like the core of why we generated
• 38:27
  conversions. And so when I was OK, our goal
• 38:29
  is sales. If your goal is sales, then you
• 38:32
  should follow the seeds of what has generated the sales thus
• 38:37
  far. So you always want to plant the
• 38:38
  seeds of tomorrow, but also never pull your attention so far
• 38:42
  away from what's generated all of your success already until
• 38:45
  now. And so that's what I found I did
• 38:48
  when I tried to go wide. I kind of ignored
• 38:51
  unintentionally the things that we're really moving the needle
• 38:54
  for us in front of our nose, right there in front of us.
• 38:57
  And so it was only once I got back to center and realized, OK,
• 39:00
  no, that's what I need to be focusing on actually, that I
• 39:03
  really realized, OK, wow, I've been putting my energy in all
• 39:06
  these places that are not going to move the needle.
• 39:08
  So I think when you do start a new platform, you have to kind
• 39:10
  of be conscious as to what you're expecting of that new
• 39:14
  platform being started. What are you expecting of that
• 39:16
  new strategy? What are you expecting as the
• 39:18
  outcome? And maybe is it possible that
• 39:21
  the platform you're starting on or the platform that you're
• 39:24
  looking to market on, you're doing in the belief that it will
• 39:27
  generate conversions, but maybe it's not necessarily just by
• 39:31
  starting it going to generate conversions.
• 39:33
  And so I would also look at making sure that you don't
• 39:37
  believe that just having more eyeballs equals more money.
• 39:41
  Because I will tell you, I have helped so many brands and
• 39:45
  businesses at this point who have, let's just even say 5000
• 39:48
  followers, 10,000 followers. And some of them only market on
• 39:51
  Instagram. Some of them do TikTok and
• 39:52
  Instagram, but what's interesting is I have like 1
• 39:56
  client who had 200,000 people on TikTok.
• 39:58
  They make the same amount of money as another client who had
• 40:00
  20,000 on Instagram. So just simply having more eyes
• 40:05
  alone doesn't necessarily always equal to conversion.
• 40:09
  So I really for me now realize that there's an aspect of depth
• 40:13
  in the community that you possess that is just as
• 40:16
  important as having eyes of people, knowing that you exist
• 40:18
  and obviously growing your brand awareness.
• 40:20
  They serve kind of two different purposes is how I would put it.
• 40:24
  The other thing that I would also say is you as a personal
• 40:29
  brand cannot remove the personal of what makes a personal brand.
• 40:33
  Now I want to clarify, when I say personal, I'm not talking
• 40:36
  about being an influencer. I'm talking about when you
• 40:39
  believe that you're going to create yourself with so much
• 40:42
  branding. When you do that, you remove
• 40:46
  kind of like I was saying earlier with the website, you
• 40:48
  remove the baseline of what was allowing you to be effective in
• 40:52
  the first place. So like when I first started my
• 40:55
  business, I was like showing my face online all the time.
• 40:58
  I wasn't talking videos. I was in, you know, reels, I was
• 41:01
  doing stories, I was going live like I was doing all of the
• 41:03
  things. And then as my business scaled,
• 41:07
  I kind of pulled myself back more and more and more, meaning
• 41:10
  I wasn't really on video. I wasn't really taking content
• 41:13
  as much like I just wasn't, I was kind of mass producing.
• 41:16
  I got really into mass produced content.
• 41:19
  But what that also meant indirectly is that it became
• 41:22
  kind of cold, it became kind of unapproachable.
• 41:27
  It meant that there was really no connection.
• 41:28
  There was no authenticity, there was no depth really that was
• 41:32
  happening with my audience as a result of that.
• 41:35
  So because of that, I feel like that correlated in our marketing
• 41:39
  not landing as well. I, I really have never been able
• 41:43
  necessarily to completely remove myself as a personal brand.
• 41:47
  Now you can be very intentional about the way that you make
• 41:49
  content. You can be very intentional
• 41:51
  about the way that you show up, that the things that you talk
• 41:53
  about. You don't have to share a lot of
• 41:55
  your personal life. Like I don't share a ton of my
• 41:57
  personal life. I wouldn't say on my page.
• 41:59
  But what I do think is important is that you don't remove the
• 42:05
  personal connection that allows people to feel connected to you.
• 42:09
  So like, if you're just reading tons of carousels and tons of
• 42:11
  photo shoot pictures and all of that, it's not going to make
• 42:14
  people feel like they know you. It's not going to make people
• 42:16
  feel like they really understand your quirks and what makes you
• 42:19
  different. And I think for me, I so deeply,
• 42:23
  because I would, I would say that like social media is kind
• 42:25
  of a love hate for me. I like social because I like
• 42:28
  obviously being able to connect with you.
• 42:30
  I like being able to, to meet new people.
• 42:32
  I love obviously the ability that it allows me to talk to
• 42:35
  hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
• 42:38
  Like it's so beautiful in that way, but I don't know about you,
• 42:41
  but I find like, I don't want to be on social media.
• 42:43
  Like I'm not interested on living on my phone.
• 42:46
  And it's been an interesting relationship to navigate because
• 42:51
  you don't want to live on your phone.
• 42:53
  But then you realize that being personable and sharing some
• 42:56
  parts of your life actually is something that allows people to
• 42:58
  connect, which indirectly does allow as a business for those
• 43:01
  people to convert. So I hear people often say, you
• 43:04
  know, I don't want to be a personal brand, but they are a
• 43:07
  personal brand. And so I tell people like you
• 43:09
  kind of can't be like someone says quote to me.
• 43:12
  I don't even know if this is technically politically correct,
• 43:14
  but they're like, you can't be half pregnant.
• 43:16
  Like you kind of have to choose. Like if you're going to be a
• 43:18
  personal brand, do it right. And if you're not going to be a
• 43:21
  personal brand, then commit that way.
• 43:23
  I don't really believe that you can be a personal brand but have
• 43:27
  no personal insights within what what it is that you market and
• 43:31
  what you produce because otherwise you're just an
• 43:33
  education place, which means that I can find everything that
• 43:37
  you're telling me on ChatGPT just the same.
• 43:39
  So I think I was invited to realize that you can't scale
• 43:44
  yourself out of being a personal brand once you are one.
• 43:47
  At some point, you have to recognize you are the face of
• 43:50
  the business. You are the voice of the
• 43:51
  business. So even if you're just in the
• 43:53
  marketing and you've outsourced everything else, OK, fine.
• 43:56
  But like you can't remove the essence of what's making the
• 43:59
  personal brand personal in the 1st place.
• 44:01
  The other thing that I also would say with messaging, one of
• 44:05
  the mistakes that I fell into was I think kind of getting
• 44:10
  wrapped up in what I thought would work versus what was me.
• 44:14
  And I'm going to kind of explain.
• 44:16
  I think when we, when we consume online, there's so many people
• 44:19
  who have very specific brand tones.
• 44:22
  So like I have one person that I work with who's very spicy.
• 44:26
  Like they are like just cut you right to it.
• 44:30
  Like they are just like they're taking no softness to the way
• 44:34
  that they deliver their message and like, good for them, you
• 44:37
  know, like that's their thing. For me though, what I realized
• 44:40
  is like, I have like I would say I had a client describe to me
• 44:44
  once they said you're the, the combo of like where Princess
• 44:47
  meets Pitbull and I was like, OK, OK, so I took that in.
• 44:53
  But then I realized I was like, she's on to something, which is
• 44:55
  the fact that like I do have a very sweet side to me.
• 44:57
  I, I do love to support and be empathetic and to hold space for
• 45:01
  people. And I'm also going to be the
• 45:03
  first to tell you that something you're doing is a waste of your
• 45:05
  time and you should not be doing it.
• 45:07
  And what I found though, is that I took two extremes in my
• 45:12
  messaging. At one point, I was very spicy.
• 45:14
  Everything was agitation. Everything was you're making
• 45:17
  mistakes here. You suck at this, you this.
• 45:20
  And I feel like I, again, unintentionally, like many other
• 45:23
  people, I kind of got sucked into what I thought that the
• 45:27
  space wanted from me. I had messaging at one point
• 45:31
  that was like what I considered to be like bubble gum Kate.
• 45:33
  It was like very sweet, very like, I'm not going to be too
• 45:36
  stern because I don't want to scare anybody away.
• 45:38
  And it was really worried about being too stern or being too
• 45:43
  direct. But then I realized I was like,
• 45:45
  but the directness and the sternness is actually what has
• 45:50
  allowed my message to land. Like that's actually been
• 45:52
  something that's been good for me, not bad.
• 45:55
  So it became realizing that you don't want to go to one side of
• 45:59
  the spectrum because you believe that it's going to be better for
• 46:02
  you. You have to really know what is
• 46:04
  my brand tone? Like, what is my way of
• 46:07
  marketing? What is my way of messaging?
• 46:10
  And I think that I've had the really sweet side before.
• 46:13
  I've had the Super spicy side before.
• 46:14
  And I feel like just now in the last couple years, am I really
• 46:18
  starting to realize, like where I fit in that middle, which is
• 46:22
  that I really am that Princess meets Pitbull, which is where
• 46:26
  you do have those moments where you're, you know, very sweet and
• 46:30
  very kind and very soft. But you also are not afraid to
• 46:33
  have an aspect of being stern if you think that that's going to
• 46:36
  help someone. The problem, I think, comes into
• 46:39
  the fact that sometimes when we see that something is working so
• 46:43
  well for someone, you wonder, should I be doing that?
• 46:47
  Like, is that who I have to be to be successful?
• 46:49
  And I fall into the same thought pattern all the time.
• 46:52
  Like I fall into the like, Oh my gosh, do you have to be like,
• 46:54
  that's be like, I have to be like that.
• 46:55
  Like that's what to be on the Internet today in order to be
• 46:57
  effective. And I've done all of it.
• 47:00
  Like I, I, I'm, I'm never someone who will bark at
• 47:03
  something until I try it. Like I'm never going to minimize
• 47:07
  something until I've given it my best go.
• 47:10
  But I do think there's a difference between trying it and
• 47:12
  then trying on someone else's mask for an extended period in
• 47:17
  your business. Because I think it's one of the
• 47:18
  fastest ways to lose yourself. And I think it's truthfully one
• 47:21
  of the fastest ways to lose trust with your audience, which
• 47:24
  is that, you know, I'm sure you have even consumed someone where
• 47:26
  you feel like, well, that was a switch up.
• 47:28
  Like this person's personality just got really intense online
• 47:31
  through their marketing. I've had that and I've seen that
• 47:34
  and I think that that really it impacts people to say, do I need
• 47:38
  to be different in order to be successful?
• 47:40
  And as someone who has gone to both extremes and now feels like
• 47:44
  I'm at the center line, my insight to you would be to
• 47:46
  listen to your own voice and listen to your own tone.
• 47:50
  You do not need to scream on the Internet in order for people to
• 47:52
  listen to you. You also, though, do not need to
• 47:56
  soften your message because it makes other people more
• 47:58
  comfortable. It really it is about
• 48:00
  understanding what is your natural tone, what is the way in
• 48:03
  which you're going to present in marketing and most importantly,
• 48:06
  ensure that the way that you show up in marketing is who
• 48:09
  they're going to get in the service.
• 48:10
  Nothing kills me more than seeing someone who markets
• 48:13
  aggressively, but they're like a little mouse in the way that
• 48:16
  they support or someone's a little mouse in the way that
• 48:20
  they market, but then you get into their service and there's
• 48:21
  like this big lion of a personality.
• 48:24
  It's like, whoa, there's a huge discrepancy here.
• 48:27
  You want to have congruency between the way that you market
• 48:29
  and the tone there as you do within the way that you support
• 48:32
  inside the actual service itself.
• 48:34
  Let's talk about sales. OK, so let's talk about offers
• 48:38
  and sales. Sales.
• 48:41
  Oh, this one hurts. There's a couple instances.
• 48:45
  There was 2 launches that I want to share.
• 48:48
  So one launch was a Black Friday launch.
• 48:51
  And this launch we were all squared up to go.
• 48:54
  I think this was like our third Black Friday launch that we'd
• 48:56
  ever done. And so we, we do this Black
• 48:59
  Friday launch and we're like, yes, let's go.
• 49:01
  We again, unintentionally, it was a mistake.
• 49:04
  We deleted all of our media by accident.
• 49:08
  So basically we had created all of our reels.
• 49:10
  They were sitting ready to go and the folder that we had all
• 49:14
  of those in got deleted. And with that, in wiping them,
• 49:19
  we didn't realize that we were wiping all of the media.
• 49:21
  So literally think about four weeks worth of media for Black
• 49:26
  Friday in the garbage out the door, like just gone the day
• 49:30
  before the doors open. So of course I'm like, OK, this
• 49:34
  is not good. This is not good because it
• 49:37
  means that we obviously have no media and we open doors
• 49:41
  tomorrow. So this told me a couple things
• 49:44
  #1 when it happened, I remember our team was like, Oh my God,
• 49:49
  because like we have no media and I remember it like there's
• 49:51
  nothing we can, we can be stressed about it.
• 49:53
  We can be, you know, like having a conversation about it.
• 49:56
  We can kind of circle around this.
• 49:57
  But the end of the day, it's not going to change the fact that we
• 49:59
  don't have media. So we need to hit the ground
• 50:01
  running and we need to create something and get something made
• 50:04
  here because otherwise our stuff's not going to land.
• 50:07
  Like it's not, we're not going to have anything to work with.
• 50:10
  So it help me to understand, number one, that you want to
• 50:14
  ensure that whatever it is, you're finding your face with a
• 50:17
  crisis, that you don't spend all your time just emotionally
• 50:22
  feeling the crisis, that you don't do anything to respond to
• 50:24
  the crisis in front of you. Like it's like having a fire in
• 50:26
  your house and be like, Oh my God, a fire, Oh my God, a fire,
• 50:28
  Oh my God, a fire. And you're like, call someone,
• 50:30
  get water. Like we need to remember with a
• 50:33
  deal with the crisis, not just acknowledge that it's happening.
• 50:36
  And I think that that was a positive lesson, what I learned
• 50:39
  in that, which is that you don't ever want to make the mistake of
• 50:41
  letting the acknowledgement of the crisis keep you from solving
• 50:44
  the crisis itself. But with that, it also helped me
• 50:48
  to realize that you need to have backup and safety net systems in
• 50:54
  your business. So I, at the time, again, was
• 50:59
  very scrappy in the way that I was doing business.
• 51:01
  So because of that, I didn't have a ton of backup systems.
• 51:04
  I didn't have a lot of things created that were safety Nets
• 51:07
  yet, right? Because I was always just moving
• 51:08
  so quick, go, go, go. But I think that many of us are
• 51:12
  moving so fast that because we have so much speed, we also
• 51:15
  indirectly may have a lot of vulnerability within the
• 51:18
  business. So it's important to ask
• 51:20
  yourself in trying to move quickly, are you leaving
• 51:22
  yourself open somewhere? So like for us, we were trying
• 51:25
  to move so quickly to get everything ready for this launch
• 51:28
  that we didn't think about making sure it was backed up on
• 51:30
  a system. We didn't triple check all of
• 51:33
  the, you know, crossing of the TS and dotting of the IS before
• 51:36
  we had deleted the folder. And it was really our mistake.
• 51:39
  It was our lesson to say, listen, there needs to be a
• 51:43
  backup area. So like, even for example, from
• 51:46
  my phone, that's got all the media on it that I take.
• 51:49
  It's also backed up in an online platform so that God forbid
• 51:53
  anything should happen, We have all of the media set like saved
• 51:57
  in a central place. So I think it is important to
• 52:01
  ensure that you have like a secondary backup system.
• 52:04
  This even also, by the way, applies to team members.
• 52:07
  Even when you have a team member that you work with, ideally
• 52:09
  another team member should be able to do like a 50% capacity
• 52:13
  of that person's job because it means that you're not
• 52:15
  technically ever truly, truly vulnerable within your business.
• 52:19
  If one person should, you know, go down for whatever reason.
• 52:22
  This also was an indication that things can change very quickly
• 52:27
  and you have to be able to adapt.
• 52:29
  Because honestly, that could have been full reason for us to
• 52:34
  say we're not going to do Black Friday this year.
• 52:35
  It could have been full reason to say, like, we're not going to
• 52:37
  do the promotion, We're not going to do the launch.
• 52:39
  Like we're just going to take this as a sign that we're not
• 52:41
  supposed to do it. And I really believe that in
• 52:44
  those moments, you really have to decide if you're going to
• 52:47
  take a deeper story from the crisis.
• 52:50
  I was like, oh, this is like, you know, the universe's sign.
• 52:52
  I'm not supposed to do this launch.
• 52:54
  Or is it actually the sign that you should had your media backed
• 52:56
  up And this is the lesson that you get from this.
• 52:58
  So you get to, you know, dive in and learn how to bounce back and
• 53:02
  how to fix it. Now, it's important I think to
• 53:04
  in those moments just to not drive a deeper meaning from
• 53:06
  something versus solving it directly.
• 53:09
  But we also had a separate launch.
• 53:11
  This was two years later. We had a launch that we were
• 53:13
  doing around Accelerator. And when we did this launch, I
• 53:18
  remember this vividly. We went in and we knew from our
• 53:23
  data up until that point that we had a lot of analytical buyers.
• 53:28
  But it was interesting because we'd always, we'd always had
• 53:30
  driver buyers, which are people who move very, very quickly and
• 53:33
  we have analytical buyers. Those are the two that we always
• 53:35
  have had for a very long time in our audience.
• 53:38
  And then we started to put out content around that because we
• 53:41
  really just kind of were like, this is how it's always been.
• 53:43
  So this is what we're going to do.
• 53:44
  And if I'm going to be honest, the mistake was I got
• 53:46
  comfortable. I wasn't on my A game.
• 53:49
  I was kind of marketing with my eyes closed type of situation
• 53:52
  and I fell into comfort. I fell into kind of the comfort
• 53:57
  of how I knew we always marketed the comfort of how I knew.
• 54:00
  We always, you know, the topics we talked about, the way we
• 54:02
  displayed the message, the way we had always launched.
• 54:06
  And I kind of skipped over the additional step, which was to
• 54:09
  verify your, your media and your marketing data to ensure that
• 54:14
  your buyer type is as consistent as you thought it was.
• 54:18
  So we go into the launch and we are like, OK, great.
• 54:20
  We get to this phase where we put out this big announcement
• 54:23
  and I will tell you it was crickets.
• 54:26
  It was crickets. And cue the imposter syndrome.
• 54:30
  Cue the mental spiral. I went down a rabbit hole
• 54:34
  because I thought, this is just not going to work.
• 54:36
  Like we're not going to have, we're not going to have any
• 54:38
  launch here. What the heck is happening?
• 54:41
  So then we sit together and we're sitting and looking at the
• 54:44
  marketing. And I thought, OK, maybe our
• 54:48
  marketing buyer type has changed.
• 54:50
  So we put out two pieces. We created rapidly 2 pieces of
• 54:54
  media and we put those out and they were specifically targeted
• 54:57
  to an emotional buyer type. We put those out.
• 55:00
  Tell me how all of a sudden the messages start coming in, the
• 55:05
  engagement starts to skyrocket and I go, Oh my goodness.
• 55:09
  We created our entire launch plan based off of the the fact
• 55:13
  that we thought we had driver and analytical buyers, but
• 55:15
  really what we have is we have emotional buyers.
• 55:19
  What am I doing? So I was like, OK, great, back
• 55:22
  to the drawing board. So we had to go through all of
• 55:24
  the marketing concepts. We had all the media that we
• 55:26
  created and we had to start to create more balance with a lot
• 55:29
  more targeting toward emotional buyers.
• 55:31
  So at the end of that, I believe that launch and it's like
• 55:35
  entirety we did about like $500,000 or so or $600,000 like
• 55:39
  that. It was crazy in sales, but that
• 55:41
  launch I remember was very specific because it taught me
• 55:44
  something, which is that you cannot get comfortable.
• 55:48
  You cannot assume that the the way things have always been is
• 55:52
  how they will always be moving forward.
• 55:54
  I got really comfortable in assuming things.
• 55:57
  And when you assume things, that's usually where things
• 56:00
  start to get very, very messy and very complicated.
• 56:04
  Because when you assume, you take your eye off of things and
• 56:07
  we take your eye off of things, you might miss changes that are
• 56:09
  happening right underneath the surface, right in front of you.
• 56:13
  So one of the things that I now look at is making sure that my
• 56:17
  marketing data is something I look at every single week, every
• 56:19
  single month to look at trends. I'm looking at our inquiries,
• 56:22
  I'm looking at clicks, I'm looking at calls booked.
• 56:25
  I'm looking at all of those things continuously nonstop
• 56:28
  because I never want to assume, but this is going to happen
• 56:31
  because it's always happened because things can change so
• 56:34
  quickly and especially within the marketing bucket.
• 56:36
  So with this, let's go a little bit into leadership and vision,
• 56:41
  OK? One of the things that I will
• 56:44
  say is I am, and I'm going to say this and put myself on the
• 56:48
  stake. I am notorious for biting off
• 56:52
  more than I can chew. OK, I am notorious for it, and I
• 56:57
  have a lot of as a natural marketer, I have a lot of great
• 57:00
  ideas. I have a lot of good concepts.
• 57:03
  I have a lot of great ideas. The problem is I don't always
• 57:05
  have capacity to execute those ideas to their entirety.
• 57:10
  One of those ideas was something that truthfully, I'm just going
• 57:15
  to be honest, I'm a teensy but embarrassed about because I
• 57:21
  really saw the vision of it. But once I got into the doing of
• 57:25
  it, I realized, Oh my goodness, this is not for me.
• 57:29
  So when I started in 2020, what was this, 2020?
• 57:32
  OK, January 2025, I had this idea and it was called, as you
• 57:36
  may remember, the Becoming series.
• 57:38
  OK, the Becoming series was something that I wanted to do
• 57:42
  because I wanted to share more of my personal life with my
• 57:44
  audience. I wanted to just be a little bit
• 57:47
  more open. I feel like I was being too
• 57:49
  business, too strategy, too closed off.
• 57:52
  Here's the problem. I skipped over the fact that I
• 57:57
  don't like to vlog my life all day every day.
• 58:02
  Oopsie. That's the center of this
• 58:04
  series. So like, it made me realize the
• 58:07
  vision of something sometimes is conditional upon the process,
• 58:14
  right? So like, if you want to have a
• 58:18
  garden full of flowers, OK, you got to plant them.
• 58:21
  If you hate gardening, you might like the flowers, but you don't
• 58:24
  like the process of what it requires to have the garden.
• 58:28
  So I was sold on the garden, but I wasn't sold on the gardening.
• 58:33
  So because of that, I learned very quickly, I think I got like
• 58:37
  probably, I want to say like 6 weeks, 7 weeks in and I realized
• 58:40
  I don't want to be on my phone 24/7 vlogging this process.
• 58:45
  And so I felt really ashamed because I was like, I hate the
• 58:50
  feeling as many of us do, of starting something and not
• 58:52
  finishing it. But I had to also release what
• 58:55
  it meant about me to not do it. Like originally I thought I have
• 58:59
  to do this because I told people I was going to do this.
• 59:02
  But then I thought to myself, you don't have to do something
• 59:04
  just because you told people you would.
• 59:06
  You have to do something because it's truly a thing that's going
• 59:09
  to help to serve them. And what I realized was me doing
• 59:15
  that was not me showing up authentically and me not showing
• 59:18
  up authentically was not going to be serving anybody.
• 59:20
  So I realized that there was just certain things that in the
• 59:24
  process of my business, I've had a lot of vision for things that
• 59:29
  I want to do, but I sometimes have not always been the best at
• 59:33
  checking in to see if I actually have capacity to fulfill said
• 59:37
  vision. And it's just, it's constantly
• 59:41
  like a humbling thing because I think that it's really easy for
• 59:46
  us as business owners to fall into like, well, this is what I
• 59:48
  want, so I'm going to go do it. Let's put on the vision board.
• 59:50
  And then you get into the process, then you get into the
• 59:52
  steps, then you get into the actual outline of what that
• 59:55
  would require from you. And you realize very quickly,
• 59:57
  no, I actually do not have the capacity to do that.
• 1:00:00
  So I realized with that, that my lesson in this and in that
• 1:00:05
  becoming series actually. Was that I wanted to moving
• 1:00:08
  forward for any new ideas that I had.
• 1:00:10
  I had to be sold in the process before I was sold in the vision.
• 1:00:14
  And it meant that I had to be OK, not that I had, I had to
• 1:00:18
  have it all outlined, that I had to have every step detailed.
• 1:00:22
  But I had to know what was this going to require of me
• 1:00:24
  commitment wise and am I OK to commit to that in order to
• 1:00:27
  commit to the vision. So it's kind of like if you're
• 1:00:29
  going to have a vision of running a 10K, are you as
• 1:00:32
  committed to the process of what it looks to train for a 10K as
• 1:00:35
  you are doing it? And if you're not, then maybe
• 1:00:39
  that really isn't a vision, It's more of just a dream.
• 1:00:41
  So I really have been trying to create this clear distinction
• 1:00:44
  now of if I want to do the marathon, am I ready for the
• 1:00:47
  training? And if I say no to the training,
• 1:00:49
  then I'm saying no to the marathon.
• 1:00:51
  Because I was so easy for me to get so excited about the
• 1:00:56
  marathon, to get so excited about the big thing that I was
• 1:00:59
  going to be doing. But then I'd get into the
• 1:01:01
  training and I'd go, oh, cute. Like this is serious.
• 1:01:04
  This is a lot of commitment. And so it's, it's a very
• 1:01:07
  humbling experience. And I wanted to share that and
• 1:01:09
  just like throw myself in the stake with that because I think
• 1:01:11
  that many entrepreneurs, maybe even yourself, you've done this,
• 1:01:14
  you've had these really big ideas for things you wanted to
• 1:01:16
  do, but you feel like maybe you don't have as much follow
• 1:01:20
  through as you'd like. And I would invite you to look
• 1:01:23
  at maybe that's not because you're not committed, It's not
• 1:01:25
  because you're not motivated. It's not because of anything
• 1:01:29
  that you know is self judgement or any of that.
• 1:01:32
  It doesn't have to be that deep. I think it could also just be
• 1:01:34
  the fact that you maybe are not as bought in on the process as
• 1:01:40
  you thought you were. And maybe you really do need to
• 1:01:43
  be bought in the process, not just the vision itself, right?
• 1:01:46
  Like another example, which is a very extreme one, but I was
• 1:01:48
  talking to someone about the other day.
• 1:01:51
  It's a different thing to be bought in on having children,
• 1:01:55
  like physically being a parent than it is to the process of
• 1:01:58
  raising children like, and this isn't, it's an important
• 1:02:01
  conversation that a lot of people have.
• 1:02:04
  Having kids is not the same as being a mom, having kids not the
• 1:02:07
  same as being a dad. So with that, you have to be
• 1:02:10
  bought in on raising your kids, like being part of their lives,
• 1:02:15
  like raising them and pouring into them in the late nights, in
• 1:02:18
  the early mornings and all of the roller coaster that is
• 1:02:21
  encompassed with having children.
• 1:02:23
  Because just being like, oh, I'd like to have kids around is not
• 1:02:25
  the same thing as raising children.
• 1:02:27
  So that's how I want you to think about it.
• 1:02:29
  When it comes to business, are you bought into the vision of
• 1:02:32
  what it could be as much as you are into the reality of the work
• 1:02:36
  that it's going to take? And I in certain buckets in
• 1:02:39
  business, when I get really excited about something, I feel
• 1:02:42
  like I kind of forget a little bit sometimes about the process
• 1:02:45
  because I'm just always someone who's been like, you know, 321,
• 1:02:48
  we'll just make it work. Like I'll figure it out and I
• 1:02:51
  will, but The thing is I sometimes lose myself in the
• 1:02:54
  process and I realize that I'm trying to make it fit when it
• 1:02:56
  really doesn't fit. So that's something I would, I
• 1:02:59
  would invite you to look at. And the other thing I'd also say
• 1:03:01
  with leadership is mentorship. So I've invested in a lot of
• 1:03:06
  coaches along the way. I've invested in a lot of
• 1:03:08
  mentors, a lot of services. And I'm going to be honest, I
• 1:03:11
  would say 70% of those I've been disappointed with.
• 1:03:14
  And I'll tell you why. I learned very quickly that
• 1:03:20
  everybody's human, OK? So I've learned very quickly to
• 1:03:24
  not idolize people, to believe they're better than me.
• 1:03:29
  They have different information than me, but they're not better
• 1:03:32
  than me. And the reason I share that is I
• 1:03:35
  remember there was somebody that we had hired for some marketing
• 1:03:39
  consult, and I was like, this person's going to give us and
• 1:03:41
  drop these knowledge bombs. Tell me how I walked away.
• 1:03:45
  And I learned nothing. Like I remember debriefing with
• 1:03:51
  the team and, and, and them kind of asking questions about this,
• 1:03:53
  that, or the other. And I learned nothing.
• 1:03:55
  Like, I, like, I was like everything that I, just
• 1:03:57
  everything we just did, I literally already knew.
• 1:03:59
  Like none of this was new information.
• 1:04:02
  But because of their marketing, I had believed that they had
• 1:04:05
  this like secret sauce that I was just OK, like, well, I've
• 1:04:08
  just got to be missing something here.
• 1:04:10
  And what it meant is that it just further validated that I
• 1:04:13
  wasn't missing anything. I just didn't trust myself
• 1:04:15
  enough to see the process through.
• 1:04:17
  I wasn't patient enough and as a result, I went and invested with
• 1:04:21
  this person and got really no movement truthfully.
• 1:04:24
  And so I realized in that moment, I am no longer
• 1:04:27
  interested in idolizing other people, to believe that they
• 1:04:30
  have all the answers, that they have everything that is going to
• 1:04:34
  completely change me and my business.
• 1:04:38
  Instead, I just want to know what do you know differently and
• 1:04:41
  what results do you have that are different than what I've
• 1:04:44
  generated? So sometimes we can take these
• 1:04:46
  big accolades or, you know, even people just boasting about how
• 1:04:50
  much they know to be credible, but unfortunately, it was not
• 1:04:54
  credible. I also think that it's important
• 1:04:56
  to recognize that not all mentorship is created equal.
• 1:04:59
  I had this question from someone recently who said, you know,
• 1:05:01
  should I do AVIP Day with me or should they do private?
• 1:05:03
  And they went into private ultimately.
• 1:05:06
  But what I realized was, you know, I again had hired someone
• 1:05:09
  for AVIP Day, like an intensive and I went and I had all these
• 1:05:15
  high, high hopes of what it was going to generate.
• 1:05:17
  And I left and I was really disappointed.
• 1:05:20
  And I realized that, you know, I thought in this one day
• 1:05:24
  experience that we were going to get a lot of outcomes, that the
• 1:05:28
  process was going to look a lot more tactical.
• 1:05:31
  There'd be a lot more strategy involved.
• 1:05:33
  And it felt like it was very like surface level.
• 1:05:36
  It was very emotional. There was no like making
• 1:05:39
  decisions, drafting of plans. And I thought, what am I paying
• 1:05:44
  for here? Like, what am I paying for if
• 1:05:46
  this is all that I'm getting? It felt like I didn't really get
• 1:05:48
  anything and I was very frustrated.
• 1:05:51
  So that had happened. And then I, I just, along the
• 1:05:54
  way, I started to kind of get this investment fatigue because
• 1:05:58
  I really started to realize there was a series of
• 1:06:00
  investments where I feel like I got nothing from it.
• 1:06:02
  So if I got nothing from it, then why am I freaking investing
• 1:06:05
  anymore? Like, why am I going to keep
• 1:06:06
  going? So instead what I did is I, I
• 1:06:09
  changed the way I invested and I started to ask myself questions
• 1:06:13
  of what does this person know that I don't know what results
• 1:06:16
  of this person generated from for themselves or for other
• 1:06:18
  people that I have not generated.
• 1:06:20
  And most importantly, are they willing to provide me education
• 1:06:25
  based selling? So here's what I mean by that.
• 1:06:28
  You want to ensure that when you invest with someone, they're not
• 1:06:32
  one of these people who say, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:33
  We'll dive into that when you work with me.
• 1:06:35
  No, if I'm going to invest with you, I want to know what is it
• 1:06:39
  that you see that you would want us to work on together or like
• 1:06:42
  if based off what I've told you about my business or told you
• 1:06:44
  about myself, what do you see are areas of development.
• 1:06:47
  And the last couple investments that I had made, like from when
• 1:06:50
  I record this, the last few that I made are all really happy
• 1:06:54
  positive investments. Like they're not.
• 1:06:55
  None of them I've been disappointed with, none I've
• 1:06:58
  been upset with. And I think that that's because
• 1:07:00
  I really have gone into the actual purchase decision
• 1:07:03
  differently by not making this person an idol, by realizing
• 1:07:07
  that there's either proof. It's not perception, it has to
• 1:07:09
  be backed by proof. So again, proof of what they can
• 1:07:12
  do for themselves or for others. Ideally for others though, cuz
• 1:07:14
  like a lot of people talk about their results, that's not the
• 1:07:17
  same as what you can teach someone.
• 1:07:18
  So what have they done for others?
• 1:07:21
  And are they willing to give me insight before the investment?
• 1:07:24
  Those for me are really important now when I make a
• 1:07:27
  decision because it means that I understand why I'm investing and
• 1:07:31
  what this person is bringing to the table and they are also
• 1:07:33
  taking responsibility for what they intend to bring to the
• 1:07:36
  investment as well. The other thing I would also say
• 1:07:39
  is sometimes you're just looking for a square peg in a round
• 1:07:42
  hole. Like it's just they don't fit
• 1:07:45
  and you're sometimes looking for investment and insight in the
• 1:07:50
  wrong places. I think there was sometimes
• 1:07:53
  where I was really trying because I invested in a certain
• 1:07:57
  area to try to make this mentorship fit for another need
• 1:08:01
  that I had when really the other need was just not something that
• 1:08:05
  was going to get met here. And like, that's OK.
• 1:08:07
  It didn't mean that this person was wrong or that it meant
• 1:08:10
  anything about necessarily their services.
• 1:08:13
  It was more just for me, it just wasn't a fit.
• 1:08:17
  And I was trying to find like the color blue in a red sandbox.
• 1:08:21
  Like it just didn't make sense. And so I also have learned the
• 1:08:25
  hard way when you just have outgrown mentorship.
• 1:08:31
  And I want to clarify, I think outgrowing mentorship is
• 1:08:36
  understandable. I think the goal should be to
• 1:08:38
  outgrow mentorship because it means that you've worked on
• 1:08:42
  something, you've generated outcomes with it, and you're now
• 1:08:44
  needing outcomes or support with outcomes in a different area.
• 1:08:48
  To me, that's actually an indicator of progress.
• 1:08:50
  It's an indicator of success. I think that's a positive thing.
• 1:08:53
  The thing that I would say is important to recognize is that
• 1:08:56
  when you when you have that inclination that you've outgrown
• 1:08:59
  something, I think that's the indication to move on.
• 1:09:01
  Because I had some feelings along the way in different
• 1:09:06
  coaching relationships where I felt like I kind of got what I
• 1:09:09
  needed from this, Like and it didn't mean anything about the
• 1:09:12
  coach, didn't mean anything about the program.
• 1:09:14
  It didn't mean anything about that.
• 1:09:15
  I was like, I just need blue and this program or this coach is
• 1:09:19
  purple. Like I just, I need something
• 1:09:20
  that's just all in on blue or yellow in the sense of the type
• 1:09:23
  of coaching I needed in that moment.
• 1:09:25
  Sometimes I went into something and I really needed strategy and
• 1:09:28
  then I would get my strategy and I'm like, I really need some
• 1:09:31
  mindset help. Then I would go and get some
• 1:09:33
  mindset leadership help and then I needed only leadership
• 1:09:35
  coaching but not sales coaching. So it was like there was certain
• 1:09:38
  times where I realized I just need something different than
• 1:09:42
  this person provides and it doesn't mean anything about that
• 1:09:44
  person. It just means that what I'm
• 1:09:47
  looking for is a specialty. So I need to go find specialist
• 1:09:49
  support. So I think it's also important
• 1:09:51
  when you're looking to invest into mentorship, to not invest
• 1:09:55
  into a mentor, to expect them to be all things, understand why
• 1:09:59
  you're hiring them, what do you want to learn from them?
• 1:10:01
  What is the outcome you're looking to achieve?
• 1:10:03
  And are you potentially looking for insight in the wrong places?
• 1:10:07
  The other thing that I would also say about all of this,
• 1:10:10
  though, is that your biggest lesson in your business and even
• 1:10:15
  frankly, a lot of the lessons I've learned personally in the
• 1:10:18
  last two years have come from what are technically speaking,
• 1:10:21
  my biggest failures. And it's hard because none of us
• 1:10:25
  love to fail. I wouldn't say like we like the
• 1:10:28
  feeling of failing. Most people don't like the
• 1:10:30
  feeling of failing. But I think that the the
• 1:10:33
  mistakes they've made of, of spending money and losing time
• 1:10:37
  and, you know, missing things that maybe now I'd be like, Oh
• 1:10:40
  my God, that was so obvious. We could have prevented that.
• 1:10:42
  You don't know until you go through it.
• 1:10:45
  And I think it's so easy, you know, the hindsight's, you know,
• 1:10:48
  obviously great to have, but that's all good and well after
• 1:10:53
  it's happened, right? Like you need to be able to
• 1:10:56
  allow yourself to make these mistakes and not make them
• 1:10:59
  something deeper about you. Like, I recognize that I've made
• 1:11:03
  investments that I could have asked better questions and I
• 1:11:05
  wouldn't have lost, you know, $50,000.
• 1:11:08
  But you know what, guess what? That's just my learning to ask
• 1:11:10
  better questions next time. I learned that I was staying in
• 1:11:14
  certain mentorship relationships too long.
• 1:11:16
  It doesn't mean anything about that mentor.
• 1:11:18
  It just means that I learned that I need different things and
• 1:11:21
  when I have that inclination, it's my time to move on.
• 1:11:23
  Like you need to go through those to develop the awareness
• 1:11:27
  and the insights. The invitation I would ask you
• 1:11:30
  is are you wanting the lessons without the learning curve?
• 1:11:36
  Because I realized when I was making even this list of all the
• 1:11:39
  things I was kind of like truthfully, like nervous to
• 1:11:42
  share them because I, I think sometimes there's this
• 1:11:44
  perception that when someones a business coach, they don't make
• 1:11:48
  mistakes, right? Like it's like they know they've
• 1:11:50
  got the blueprint, they've got the strategy and we do.
• 1:11:52
  But there's also, I realized, you know what, I wouldn't even
• 1:11:56
  label them as made mistakes. They're kind of an opportunity
• 1:11:58
  where I miss the mark. Like it's like where you you
• 1:12:00
  shot for it and you just you miss the mark.
• 1:12:03
  And there's so much to be learned from these.
• 1:12:05
  And if all of these had don't happened, me not saving for
• 1:12:07
  taxes would not have given me the financial systems I have
• 1:12:10
  today. If I had not made those bad
• 1:12:13
  coaching investments, I would not know now how to make a good
• 1:12:15
  coaching investment. If I hadn't made the issues with
• 1:12:18
  some of our launches, I would now not have a rinse and repeat
• 1:12:21
  system from which to launch. Like there's so many insights
• 1:12:26
  that could just not have been there without this.
• 1:12:30
  So I want to invite you, as you know, part of today's episode to
• 1:12:34
  look at for yourself. What are some of the things that
• 1:12:36
  you have missed the mark on? Like even if you want, if you
• 1:12:40
  want to use this as a journal prompt, go to a coffee shop, sit
• 1:12:42
  down and say, OK, what are some of the things that I look back
• 1:12:44
  on my business and maybe even on your life personally that you
• 1:12:47
  feel like you've made a mistake on?
• 1:12:49
  What are things that you feel like you missed the mark?
• 1:12:51
  It could be things when you were growing up.
• 1:12:53
  It could be things in your business.
• 1:12:54
  It could be things even right now in your life.
• 1:12:56
  Maybe it's with friends, with a partner, a romantic
• 1:13:00
  relationship. What are things that you feel
• 1:13:02
  like you've made mistakes along the way?
• 1:13:04
  And ask yourself, have you actually dedicated time to
• 1:13:07
  reflect on those to know what was the take away?
• 1:13:11
  Like the lessons are only going to present themselves if you
• 1:13:14
  take the time necessary to reflect on the experience.
• 1:13:18
  If you're just on to the next, on to the next, on to the next,
• 1:13:21
  you fall into this very easy opportunity of just kind of
• 1:13:27
  doing the same thing over and over.
• 1:13:29
  You rinse and repeat the same cycle, not intentionally, but
• 1:13:33
  because you haven't taken the effective time to reflect on
• 1:13:36
  what you want to do different next time.
• 1:13:38
  So what I take back any of these experiences?
• 1:13:40
  No. And do I anticipate that I'm
• 1:13:42
  going to have another list of 10 of them at the end of this year?
• 1:13:45
  Yes, because it is a constant learning curve.
• 1:13:48
  And I would say for me, I'm not scared to fail.
• 1:13:52
  I'm not scared to make mistakes. I'm not scared to spend.
• 1:13:55
  I'm not scared to move quickly because I know that that's been
• 1:13:59
  a part of what's helped me in my business.
• 1:14:01
  But I think it's also crucial to ensure that you are catching the
• 1:14:05
  lessons that are there for you along the way.
• 1:14:07
  So the invitation I have for you is sit down and look at what are
• 1:14:11
  the lessons, what are the invitations that I've been given
• 1:14:14
  over the last couple years in my business.
• 1:14:15
  And with that, how can I make a plan and get some awareness of
• 1:14:19
  how I want to shift that and how I want to change those moving
• 1:14:22
  forward? So with all that being said,
• 1:14:25
  thank you so much for listening today.
• 1:14:26
  I also want to say a massive thank you to all of those of you
• 1:14:29
  who have been subscribing to our channel, subscribing to the
• 1:14:33
  podcast on YouTube, on Spotify. I also have been seeing all of
• 1:14:36
  you guys who've been leaving ratings on Spotify and Apple.
• 1:14:39
  So thank you so much for those of you who have been doing that.
• 1:14:41
  And as always, I just love hearing from you with your
• 1:14:44
  takeaways, your Nuggets, your aha moments from these episodes.
• 1:14:48
  So in listening today, if there is something that you feel like
• 1:14:50
  downloaded for you, you had this aha moment, you had this light
• 1:14:53
  bulb on, something that I share, or maybe you even just want to
• 1:14:56
  share a mistake that has come up in your business, in your life.
• 1:15:00
  And again, you want to share some of that reflection with me.
• 1:15:02
  I want you to know my DMS are always open.
• 1:15:04
  I love, love, love hearing from you.
• 1:15:06
  And with that being said, we will see you on the next
• 1:15:08
  episode. And, as always, stay ambitious.