Latest / Sell Well: Helping Agencies Close More Deals and Grow Revenue / My Story: I Never Meant to Be a Business Owner

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My Story: I Never Meant to Be a Business Owner · Sell Well: Helping Agencies Close More Deals and Grow Revenue

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I built a marketing agency called Lost in House from nothing.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean nothing.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like trading design work for yoga classes, nothing.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And scaled it past a million dollars and had a successful exit.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now I spend my days helping agency owners close more deals and grow revenue without burning themselves out in the process.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I started this podcast because I know how lonely it can be building something and feeling like you're figuring out a loan.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So think of this as your weekly gut check from someone who has been exactly where you are and made it to the other side.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, to start out this podcast, I think it's only fair to share my story with you.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you the ins and outs of how I got to where I am so that you have a little more context going into some of my sales tips and um lessons that I learned along the way.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to start here.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I never intended to be a business owner.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you had asked me in college what I wanted to do with my life, none of this would have been the answer.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I would have thought it was way too cool.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's so far beyond my wildest dreams that sometimes I wonder how it all happened.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um it actually all started in March of 2020.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It did not start in a glamorous place.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like most people, March of 2020 was when my whole world shifted in a lot of ways.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And COVID was just a part of it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I found myself needing to look for a new job, and uh I was currently at a place that I needed to leave and uh was ready to make a transition, and I realized that I could go look for a job, or I had really started dabbling in branding and website design and thought maybe I could give this freelance thing a try.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly, I couldn't have even used those words with you.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that the term freelance existed.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was not something that was on my radar.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought maybe I'll give this entrepreneurial thing a shot for a second.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I kept using the term side hustle.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll side hustle for a little bit.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand that this is normally a big transition that people make.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: What I did know was that I had fallen in love with branding and website design and messaging, and that I had a handful of people in my corner who believed in me, even though my portfolio was literally just a few emails I had done in exchange for yoga classes.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I quit my job.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I ran in and I told my husband, I did it, let's go get margaritas, I want to celebrate.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he looked at me and said, bad news, the whole city just shut down.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Good news, we have tequila at home.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And like the rest of the world, for the next year and a half or so, we made margaritas at home.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we lived in a really weird time.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there I was, a brand new freelancer, no business plan, no portfolio, barely a portfolio, uh, and the entire world just went on pause.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: My husband, who was finishing his PhD at Vanderbilt at the time, which is not exactly a high-paying position to be a grad student, sat down with me and we made a plan.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: We put a scoreboard on the wall.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was actually a physical thing on our whiteboard.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: He told me, listen, I know you're goal-oriented, um, and I want to help you set up a runway for this so that it doesn't feel overwhelming like this nebulous how much money do I need to make and how do I need to do this?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna break it down month by month.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, this goal setting is something I still use with my coaching clients today.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: He said, you need to make$5,000 a month.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do that, you've bought yourself the month.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you do more than that, you've bought yourself extra time.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was like, right now, you currently have booked$7,500 worth of business, which at the time I was just blown away that people would pay me anything to uh design things and design websites and things like that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was just mesmerized that this was a concept.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, you have bought yourself a month and a half, and for anything more that you do, you have pushed out you needing to get another job.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I looked at this and I said, okay, I can do this.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I every deal that I closed, I felt like I was buying myself time.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was buying myself more time to pursue this dream.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that was so motivating for me in the beginning.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you are considering making the jump and quitting your job, this is such a good way to look at it.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so by May, I had bought myself until August, I bought myself a couple extra months.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when I went home to visit my parents, my dad said something really off-handedly for me that completely shifted my perspective.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: He just off-handedly asked me, How's your business going?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the first time that I realized I am running a business.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a business owner.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was just something that had not clicked for me.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think so many people go, I'm starting my own business and I'm doing this entrepreneur thing.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, all of a sudden it occurred to me, wow, I'm I'm really building something here.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm running something, and this is really exciting.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it got me motivated in a new way.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: The clients came from everywhere.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: All those trades I had done at the yoga studios, um, and all of the people that I met doing that, some of the people that I was meeting at co-working spaces, those relationships all paid off.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: A yoga studio owner referred me to a friend who needed a website.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: She referred me to a neighbor, um, and it really just started to go from there.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you that that first, I've added it up, that first website that I built, I put so many hours into it that I ended up making less than$5 an hour.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was so committed to making it awesome.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was learning as I went.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was the very first website I had ever designed for anyone.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think I charged her$800 for a brand and a website, which felt like a fortune to me at the time.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'm telling you, I think I put 800 hours into it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I worked on it day and night.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm still actually really proud of that site.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it ended up turning into tens of thousands of dollars of business later.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: She ended up referring me to three more people.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some of those people became long-term clients of mine, and they referred me to more people, and it just snowballed from there.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: By the fall of 2020, I found myself completely overwhelmed with capacity.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I um was saying yes to so many things.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had so many different side deals.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Our whiteboard was looking crazy because I was still tracking everything and trying to buy myself more time and more time.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, my husband was like, Hey, you've proven that this is a really good concept.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's work on how to build this out.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think you could use an assistant.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started budgeting in what does it look like to scale this and to get some of these things off my plate and get some more organization in my business.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I hired my first part-time assistant.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I was going into a co-working space called Collective 615 almost every day in Nashville.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's an all-female co-working space, and I started finding more community and started finding more purpose with the people that I was able to work with every day.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then things started to get really good really fast.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: By the end of year one, we had tripled my salary and we were headed into year two.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: At this time, um, my assistant had ended up needing to transition.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: She was moving, and I was ready to potentially bring on a full-time assistant, a W-2 employee for the first time.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I started interviewing and found two people that I absolutely adored, and at the same time decided to rebrand what I was at the time calling Suzy Marketing, it was just me, to Lawson House and decided to rebrand and say, you're gonna work with our team and not just me anymore.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: My purpose in doing so was that I didn't want to build this around my face or my brand.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't trying to become an influencer.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I really wanted the brand to be standalone without me needing to be behind it.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: While I was interviewing for this executive assistant position, um, like I said, I came across these two girls who were uh one had just graduated and one was about to graduate.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when I told my husband, you know, I think one of them could be a great graphic designer.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can't decide which one I need more help with, he was like, Suze for the love.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Please hire both of them.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: You are drowning.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: You need more help.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Take the risk, bet on yourself.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've done it before and it's paid off.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Bet on yourself again, bring on two employees and see how it goes.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: It went great.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're both amazing women and ended up staying with me.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is still with Lost in House now.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: She's actually currently the CEO.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the other one had a phenomenal career with Lost in House and now does amazing design work and event work.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so proud to have worked with both of them.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So there we are, the three of us.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are getting on calls, winging it, figuring it out, closing deals, and then we hit a wall.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: We had built a whole business on referrals, and for a while that was incredible, but the referrals started drying up, and the ones that we were getting were pulling us into an industry niche that wasn't right for us.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: We had mean clients referring us to their mean friends, and my team of three uh was exhausted.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was exhausted.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: We had our first red month ever, and I started asking myself, am I going to be able to keep doing this?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Am I going to be able to take care of my employees?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: This even working anymore.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's when a cold email landed in my inbox from a lead gen agency called Midleads.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you've gotten a million of these emails, I've gotten a million of these emails, but they hit me at the right place, right time, and there was something about this one that made me take the call.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It turns out there were these two guys based in Atlanta.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: They went to Georgia Tech, they lived down the street from me, and they were starting this lead gen agency.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, okay, if this goes sideways, at a minimum I can track these guys down.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: They pitched me on cold email outreach.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea what that even meant.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I said, I don't even know who I want to go after.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't like who I'm working with now.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, we're gonna help you figure this out.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the amazing thing that they did was they actually coached me on how to close cold, how to set myself up with some kind of a freebie that would stand out.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we started to put together what became the engine behind Lost in House.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: That one conversation changed everything.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: The first month they put 10 calls in my calendar, just like they promised.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And out of those 10 calls, I closed seven.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Seven of those clients stayed with us for an average of two and a half years on retainer.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: They referred us to hundreds of thousands of dollars of business throughout those two and a half years.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It gave us incredible case studies to go out and get even more business.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: It really was the gasoline on the fire that we needed to take things to a whole new level.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was the moment that I stopped being a designer who sometimes sold things and became a CEO who sold first and built a team to deliver.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: My whole job shifted.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I got off the design tools, I focused on revenue, partnerships, and on sales.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: We hired specialists who were even better at the work than I ever was, and we started growing.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: In year three, we had 3X again.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in year, by the end of year four, Lost in the House had hit$1.2 million in revenue.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: By the time that we were operating at seven figures, I had fallen in love with a totally new job description that lit a fire under me in a way that I had not experienced before.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was closing cold emails at a 50% rate.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was taking up to 18 sales calls a day.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: We were cranking through proposals.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was closing six-figure deals, and we were operating at a really high level and increasing our capacity with incredibly talented designers.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to hire some of my friends.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was just an absolute blast.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But when you operate at that level and you're always wanting more and you're always wanting to grow, eventually you run out of your own creativity and energy.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what people call burnout.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I found myself in that spot.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: When we hit that$1.2 million shortly after that, I kind of realized everything that it had taken for me to grow this and all that I put into this, I was ready for my next rodeo.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like what I had come to love at Lawson House and what I wanted to grow here, I had done it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was working really well.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: The team loved working together.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I really, they are an incredible team.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had just launched some new products that I was really proud of, but I found myself just not getting super excited about my next sales call.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't ready to um just keep grinding like this.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And one day my husband asked me, if you just worked at Lawson House and you weren't in charge, would you stay?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't even hesitate.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just laughed at him and said, Oh, I would quit.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, Why don't you?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: This started opening up a can of worms for me.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I had never thought that I would have the opportunity to leave this.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: It felt like, you know, at one point he asked me different conversation, but he asked me, How long do you think it lot you'll work at Lawson House?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I don't know, till I die.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, that feels crazy.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: It just felt like this had become such a huge part of my identity.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I was having a really hard time untangling it from what was the business and what was me.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we started to unravel some of this, I kind of realized, you know what?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think the team's really happy and I think the business is doing really well, but I don't know if I am anymore, and I think I'm ready for something else.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started crafting a plan.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: We started to figure out what would it look like for me to quit what I've built.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Caroline, uh my director of operations, and asked her if she would be interested in being CEO.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll have to give more details in a separate episode because that was a hilarious conversation.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: We got lawyers involved, we figured out a structure that felt fair to both of us, and we made a deal.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: The day that I signed those papers and sold the agency to her was one of the most joyful moments of my entire career.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: No regrets, no bitterness, no fear.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: It just felt exactly right.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that exit set both of our families up.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Lost in House is still running today, still growing and still growing without me, which is honestly the best possible outcome.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, why am I telling you this whole story?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because everything I just walked you through, the scoreboard, the pivot, the cold outreach, the learning to sell first and deliver second, knowing when to scale and when to step back, I have found that that's the stuff nobody teaches you.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had to learn it by living it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to help business owners do all of this faster with a lot less stress and hopefully a lot less tears and anxiety.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I felt really lonely in my entrepreneurial journey.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like nobody was walking alongside me in it, um, holding my hand, knowing what I was going through.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I talk about my husband a lot in this story.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's been an amazing advocate to me and has walked alongside me as a partner, but it is really hard to explain to somebody what it's like to have to answer to clients and answer to your team and answer to your family and balance all of these things.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what I get to help my clients do now.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: We look at the whole picture and look at what you want your life to look like.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to exit?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to scale?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to build your team?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you not?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And figure out how to make your business more profitable, help you make more money, find more freedom, and find more peace in the business that you're building.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have that ability, you can do this.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: It all starts with building a sales first business.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what I hope this podcast does for you.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: In the next episode, I'm going to talk about why I think most people say they hate sales and why I think that's actually not true.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: If this is you, don't miss the next episode.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: If today's episode resonated with you and you're sitting here going, Oh my gosh, there are so many things that I would love to tell you.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could tell you my story too.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to connect with you and just schedule a coffee chat to hear more about your story.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing I love more than hearing about people's business journeys and their experience.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you can check me out at susiecoli.com, shoot me a message, and we can connect and find a time to chat.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would absolutely love to do that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, obviously, not a sales pitch.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: I really just love to connect with business owners and would love to hear more about your story.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you subscribe, share this podcast with a friend.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's connect soon, and I'll catch you next time on the Sell Well podcast.