Latest / The DM Sales Gal: Close Sales in DMs with Instagram Stories, Lead Generation & High-Ticket Sales Strategies / Why You're Capped at 5 Clients (And Why More Leads Isn't the Answer to Scaling) | Ep 19

Transcript

Why You're Capped at 5 Clients (And Why More Leads Isn't the Answer to Scaling) | Ep 19 · The DM Sales Gal: Close Sales in DMs with Instagram Stories, Lead Generation & High-Ticket Sales Strategies

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: I call it ceiling season.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_03: Service providers hit a ceiling season where you're capped with clients.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: You can't take on any more clients because you're at actual capacity.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: If you had a desire to hire, even if it's not for client facing, like an operation support or VA or even just customer support, invoicing, putting together proposals, whatever, you don't have the cash flow because your MRR is not there to hire the person.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you're head down doing the work, your lead pipeline dries up.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: When you go, oh shit, I have to market myself.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: Let me tap into my referrals, let me ask my clients for an introduction, then you get booked out again and you go do the work and then you look up and your monthly revenue is tanking in the next 30 to 60 days.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just rinse and repeat.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's the ceiling season where you can't, you don't have the cash flow, your coffers aren't full enough to hire confidently hire someone so that you can work with more clients.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: But the only way to get those coffers filled up is for you to work with more clients and get more revenue so that you can confidently hire someone.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just this endless cycle of okay, well then what the fuck do I do if that is my reality?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: If your Instagram stories and your Instagram DMs aren't bringing you 16K hot and steamy leads, and you're not exactly at the sales goal you want to be at for this quarter, I've got you.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hey sales friends, I'm Alyssa, your cheap sales cow.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in business for 11 years, and I currently run a done for you lead generation and lead management agency with Instagram DMs.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm about to show you guys all of the juicy sales things on Instagram, Instagram stories to get new leads, and closing sales in the DMs and with sales calls.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into all of the juicy details.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, welcome back to the DM Sales Gal.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited because today we have a special guest here on our episode with us.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to introduce you to my client and pal, Emily Williams.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be talking all about how to scale your business and productize your offer, which Emily is an expert in and kind of a category of one unicorn and the only one that I hear talking about how to productize your offer so you can scale your revenue and actually help more people and not be stuck at I can only help four, five, ten clients.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna be talking all about exactly how she's done it, how you can do it too, why we do this, and all the different things.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I will let Emily say hello and then we're gonna get into the juicy details.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Emily is also hot in the middle of a launch right now, and it's going incredibly well.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll share some details on that as well because it does relate all about to productization.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll let you say five.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, hello.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so excited to be here and nerd out on all the data and all the things.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think that this could turn into like a five-part episode.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: So y'all better get used to hearing me because I'm gonna be back.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm so excited to be here.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a gross strategist for one-on-one service providers.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: So if you are a one-on-one service provider and you feel like the rhetoric and the advice and the marketing that's kind of being shoved down your throat from coaches, consultants, and educators and strategists and whatever in the online internet streets is not designed for you, it's because it isn't.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I serve service providers and I have only served service providers for the 15, 16 years that I've been in this space.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so I know you, I love you, you are my favorite little babies, and I want more one-on-one service providers to make really, really good money, impact more clients, but do it sustainably.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's the work we do inside of Sold Out Services.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm so excited.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, Emily, when I first got to meet her in the DMs from Threads, I was so excited.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've followed Emily for a long time.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: She's been in business.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: She's is it 15 or 16 between?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: I started technically in 2011, 2012, so whatever that math is.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we've been through, we've been through lots of eras then.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Emily has beat me over 15 years.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in business for over 11 years, and I've followed her for a long time.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: She's one of the only people I know that talks about productizing your offer, and we're gonna talk about what that means.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you if you'll define it for us in your own words.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, like in terms of productizing your offer, I just I'm actually, I wanted to say this at the beginning of the episode, where I am in my business, I'm not like having a lot of conversations about like what should I do to make an offer?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've had the same offer for a damn long time.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've been running my business in multiple iterations, I've been a sales consultant, I've been a sales coach back in the 2020 COVID days.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, now I've done Dunfruit Legion only as our main signature offer for going on four years.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't have lots of conversations with people at like my business stage of like how do I make an offer?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the classic problem we come up against is shit, I'm tapped.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot take any more clients, sometimes even with a team.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of times if we're a solopreneur, it's like Alyssa's doing done free weigen.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can take four or five clients at the max.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to wait list until Emily and Donisha, I can start you in two months.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: You want help what next week?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we get capped.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're a solopreneur.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't have anyone helping with client work, then we can't take more clients, we can't make more revenue, we're afraid to hire a team to help with everything, but client work specifically, and we just hit the classic word uh that's thrown around of bottleneck.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm bottlenecked, I can't make more money, I'm working my fucking ass off.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, and where am I ever gonna go from here?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll let you take it away.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: What is productization?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, so you don't you hit the nail on the head.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: That is productization.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: Those are those are all feelings and consequences of not having a productiz service.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, ultimately, I call it ceiling season.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: Service providers hit a ceiling season where you're capped with clients.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: You can't take on any more clients because you're at actual capacity.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: If you had a desire to hire, even if it's not for client facing, like an operation support or VA or even just customer support, invoicing, putting together proposals, whatever, you don't have the cash flow because your MRR is not there to hire the person.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you're head down doing the work, your lead pipeline dries up.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: When you go, oh shit, I have to market myself, let me tap into my referrals, let me ask my clients for an introduction, then you get booked out again and you go do the work and then you look up and your monthly revenue is tanking in the next 30 to 60 days and it's just rinse and repeat.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's the ceiling season where you can't you don't have the cash flow, your coffers aren't full enough to hire confidently hire someone so that you can work with more clients.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the only way to get those coffers filled up is for you to work with more clients and get more revenue so that you can confidently hire someone.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just this endless cycle of okay, well, then what the fuck do I do if that is my reality?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I am someone who, if you haven't hired anyone yet, then I am a how can we systematize, productize, templatize, create structure first?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's your first hire.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: Productization is your first hire.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: Systems is a huge part of productization, it's not all of it, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: Productization, it is one of those things where like it's hard to put into one sentence because truly the redesign and restructure is a rebuild of your entire offer, its positioning, who it's for, the number one result you're after, the methodology in which you deliver it, then the structure in which that service is actually delivered and and interacted with.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: What is the client experience?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: What is the positioning for strangers to actually understand what it is that you do?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: What is your prospect pipeline, your lead conversion pipeline, like all of those things go into okay, well, can we productize it?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I have a framework inside of sold out services, it's called the Dead Framework, and we run it through your offer, your scope and deliverables, your marketing assets or the material that you want to be pushing out, your team, um, your founder time, like quite literally everything we run this framework through.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it's what can we ditch, engineer, assign, or downsize?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I am the person who so I come from a writing background.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: I've published a couple of books, we've talked about that in Slack.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things in the writing space, there's a phrase called kill your darlings, and it's something that I have been like, I'm I so I also went to art school.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: And if if anyone here went to art school, you remember like putting together your craft, your work, your project, and putting it up on the bulletin board and standing back and letting your peers and your professors critique the shit out of you and just like say, This sucks, this is good, cut this, this doesn't serve the project, this didn't meet the the scope, right?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: And you've been put through that ringer, time and time again.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: If you went to art school, I did that, and my god, it like flexes your mouth, it teaches you so much.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: But so from that, I was able to pull this like all right, I I'm not married to anything forever long term.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if it's not serving the number one result, if it's not serving my own capacity, if it's not serving the level 10 client that I want to, then it's gone.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have so many notes of more questions to ask you.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like all of my clients, I get like mad because you were like hiding multiple careers from me.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I didn't, you found all yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how did you not tell me all of the other Emily's that you also are and have been?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm like slightly less intimidated by Emily's gorgeous home because I know you went to art school.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: She's an artist, like whereas like my mom didn't.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Those are from my mom, and she didn't.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, mom.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: We love you.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: I was raised by an artist.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: I went to art school.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: I paid big money, got in big student loan debt to go to fucking art school, and here we are.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I love that about the US.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I just love that for a I went to NYU.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a doctor, even if I were a doctor, it'd still be paying off my student loans for a damn long time.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking to my colleague Sophie, and she was like, Yeah, you you guys in the US, like, you guys have like big student loans, huh?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, shut up.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Shut up.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I have student loans, and I will pay them off in a few years.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: When it happens, yeah.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: We're going.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, anyway, so I love that the program has like a DM and leads girl.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love that the program covers leads because I mean that's like what that's one of the reasons that I come in is people have leads.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Most of our clients now have leads.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk about where Emily had lots of leads too.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: They have leads, they just don't have the time or desire to talk to them, they know where they want to fit into their business.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I love that you're helping teach people that because the fantastic thing about productizing my offer is I can go help 15 clients.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Emily has clients, but also I still have to be taking in new ones, or I'm not doing my responsibility as a business owner to keep being able to help more people.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: We can't do that all alone.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I also want to touch on this is such a big investing thing, and Emily and I are having these conversations in her DMs right now about investing in her offer.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us ideally have gotten to a point where we have some savings and some business savings.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a pool.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: I could invest from here, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm gonna pay 3K, 5K, 10k, 20k for a website, for sold-out services, for a creative director, yeah, I can sync the money in initially, but how fast is my revenue gonna go up to make a profit on that on an ongoing basis?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and if you don't have the capacity to serve the new leads that'll come in or the new clients, then it's for fuck all because you can make a beautiful website and everyone's like, oh my god, I've I you can hire the copywriter and the brand designer and the website, and I want you to do those things for sure.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: But okay, we do them when you're at capacity, and then what happens when now you're drowning in inquiries that you're not following up with?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: Your customer service is tanking, your client experience is tanking.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: I can't tell you how many people come to me and they're like, we need to get in here and literally SOS this because my client experience is actually going down the toilet, and I'm only like the more clients I work with, the worst my client experience gets.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I hear a lot from people, and I'm like, oh yeah, we okay, then we need to fix that.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, they see you marketing to get more clients, and they're like, What the fuck?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I'm gonna say, too, for productizing your offer, and I've made content on this.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now scaling, and I can say it confidently, I'm scaling successfully with new challenges every every day.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: 100% doesn't solve all your challenges, doesn't make them now not exist.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta keep going, but Emily, and you gotta have a team around you, like you have to have people, whether it's you know, like C-suite people or a mentor or you're in a solid group coaching program where they're really there for you, you gotta have that.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I say too, like, I'm scaling successfully now.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like Emily has touched on because we planned for it.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because the two times before this third time, I fucking tanked.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, like just absolutely tanked.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I love my clients from those times, and we still did really good work, but we could have done so much better, and I know it, and the team knows it, and they know it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: We did the best we could at the time, and also you can't like outgrow the experiences you haven't yet had.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't run scale productize better now if I didn't totally fuck up two times before with all the people around me that that affected, that I then tried to make it up to, which is an ongoing cycle too.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious for a few minutes for your story.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: How many times have I mean it did you productize once and it was awesome and it just worked fantastic?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why did you do this?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why did you productize?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you make productizing your business?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Which are two different things.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: You did absolutely now you're helping others do it.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I uh like a lot of service providers who come to me in SOS and they're like, hey, I'm this close to giving up service work because I'm burnt out, I can't do it.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, a lot of us, and this isn't talked about in this space, I talk about it privately in our in our private coaching space because it's a oh, it's one of my favorite spaces.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's such a safe space for people.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: But the resentment that you can feel toward clients when they're either not level 10, you're not the the energy and equitable exchange of energy and money is not equitable.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: We start to resent who we're working with.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: If we feel like things are going out of scope and they're asking for the sun, moon, and the stars, but they only paid for the tree, right?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what are we doing here?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we start to feel this like really weird energy around the business that we started, around the craft that we love to do, that we somehow find ourselves doing less and less of, but we're just like managing everything and we're not even managing it well.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's when some people start to kind of go down the route of like, okay, I'm either going to outsource all of this and pull myself entirely out because I'm so burnt out and I don't want a client to be able to email me or access me or talk to me at all.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: And you pull yourself so high-leveled, so far away, that you're not one with the people anymore.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: You don't know what your clients are actually saying, what they want, what they need.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: And to me, that's like the fun part of being a business owner.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: And if that part isn't fun for you, then I don't know why you're doing this because that is founder level work.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: But we we pull ourselves from founder level work because we think that's the thing that's going to escape our burnout.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: Or we entirely flip our business on the head, one that was working, even if it wasn't designed right.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: And instead of designing it right, we say, okay, I'll just I'll I'll do a course, I'll do a low ticket, I'll do a membership, and I here my capacity is passive income, right?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll start to create these low-ticket digital bullshit offers that cannibalize my actual service, that make dilute my authority and dilute my expertise.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, sure, you who've never posted on Instagram consistently are gonna now get tens of thousands of leads from where and sell them at a 1% conversion rate.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because did you know that's the industry standard?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: I bet you didn't because you don't, you've never had to look at that.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: You can convert at 80, 95% as a service provider, and then you try to apply that to a$97 offer and you're shocked that people don't want to spend money on it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's a whole tangent, clearly.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's so, it's so crazy.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I taught this like, well, I always like there was a time when I started my business when I was living in New York City and Harlem, like I had like, you know, a hundred bucks left at the end of each month.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was not making enough, and I just did what I thought everybody did, which is sell the big thing, sell the high-ticket thing because I need to make money.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, recurring revenue when it was a long time ago.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: But then in the same tune, like 2020s COVID era, beginning of the 2020s, we all freaked out because we thought no one's gonna spend money anymore.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're terrified.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: The world is crumbling.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was, and it was, and also really smart people who could afford it were making sizable investments to make changes, and then there's a whole camp of people on the God, I can't even talk about this without getting upset.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: The like summit bundle situation.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like I bought one bundle for like$52.50 with a hundred courses in it.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when I went to open them, like three weeks later, they're all expired.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what like then?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I was gonna say, because I'm on the cusp, influenced heavily by Emily, of resuming my own one-to-mini or one-to-medium as Emily.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: One to medium, we forgot it exists.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll bet you could find that too.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: But like, it's not if you're looking at like continuing your high-ticket or one-on-one services and productizing versus a group or membership, it's not necessarily the one is easier than the other.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I was gonna say too, just for my behind the scenes as a founder as well, in terms of like what I wanted to do initially as I grew the business, was oh, I can get people, I have a sales team.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have 10 as of next week, which is bananas insane.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I never I never like dreamt of that at all, ever.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I have a team that's helping with all of the like done-free weeds and sales work that we're doing.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then I did what Emily has touched on, where I got a lot of help with the client work, and I was left with the rest.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I was playing telephone between team members, I was fixing SOPs every single day, and my CRO was like, What the fuck are you doing?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have to redo everything, you can't keep growing, you're at a new level.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Stop.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have to swap scaling for like two months, yeah, change absolutely everything except the core of what you're doing.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, then you can keep scaling.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I call May my SOP's hell.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, just a terrible.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was miserable.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was crying like every few days, like sobbing.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: We me and my husband got married in March.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: We moved across the country in May to Denver from Louisville, Kentucky, and May was the busiest month, probably of business ever.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that just meant that the business was booming and I was in SOP's hell in my office for like 12 to 14 hours a day.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like I did want to give up and I won't because I've done it for 11 years and I fucking love it.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I was absolutely miserable if you don't have like a plan.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, a couple of things.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to talk about why you productized if you're willing, from your offer.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I also want you to talk about case studies because we know you're like one of three people doing it and really well and educating on it and inside of sold-out services.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I want people to know like how you productize and how do case studies contribute to that.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll put a disclaimer when our listeners hear case studies and they look up Emily and they look up you know, they know me, they're gonna think I have to talk about how I make people money.
• 20:43
  unknown: Right.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: My case studies have to be I made Sarah 93 trillion dollars in 24 hours.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So can you just explain like why you productize and how case studies were a part of it?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I uh there's two versions of of my timeline in history that deeply impacted the the work of productization that I do now and how SOS even came about.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: So all the way back in about 2014, I was a service provider, I was a photographer, I had partnered with someone, we were doing big brand and marketing campaigns for local product-based businesses, so like artisanal, like uh uh food companies, like uh pickles and salsa and truffle balls, like the most ridiculous things.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so we were styling sessions, and I was the photographer, and then I would copyright for their website, and we would do website branding, photography, all of the things.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I got so burnt out on that client work because I it wasn't productized, I didn't have a system, I didn't have boundaries.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: I clients could email me any they they had endless edits and revisions.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like if I had to edit out a reflection from a glass jar of pickle one more time, I was like literally going to lose my mind.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, should we name this podcast episode that that needs to be like the subtext?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I I had reached out to my business partner at the time and I said, if I have to pick up my camera one more time, I'm gonna quit.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like I literally can't do it.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: This is my non-negotiable.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so within months, we completely like let go of all of clients, didn't take on another client work, went all in on the podcast and courses and memberships and high ticket, mid-ticket, low, everything.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like I did that route.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: The reason why I'm so passionate about like it's not that those routes can't work at all.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: I was very successful at it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: You're I need you to recognize that you're running a different kind of business.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: It costs differently in both energy and money in order for you to run and be successful at that business.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of service providers have like a culture shock when they pivot to that kind of business because it requires a lot different from you and how you show up, your energies creating content, generating leads, all of it.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of the most, if not the most, aside from a brick and mortar, expensive businesses to run.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I just want to.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's like one thing you don't know about me.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that in I have uh other LLCs that I'm not operating.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: One of them was called Munch.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think you know I love I love food.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love food.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I love like restaurants and like local restaurants.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: In Louisville, I did like growth strategy and implementation for local restaurants.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I've been in that too, and it's a shitload of work.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be like incredible at it.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: But also, whenever I've really run multiple offers at the same time, whether it's like a one-month sprint VIP day versus a retainer or like a one-on-one service, anything lead gen versus a membership or a group or a course or a freebie or a campaign or a challenge, I feel like I'm running multiple companies.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because you are.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I have run multiple companies and I've stopped running multiple things.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: It feels like that because you are.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: And the leads needed, you know, I got to a point where I the amount of money that I needed to make every single month just to keep the lights on was more than what some people make in a year.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I just got so like the energetics just wasn't aligned with what I needed to make and how I needed to show up and how it was impacting my life and making me feel for about two years before I left that business, which was a multiple seven-figure business, I just kept saying, This doesn't feel fun anymore.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't feel fun.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: Where's the fun?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: How can we make it fun again?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it's because I was so far removed from the client.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: I was so far removed from the the people that I actually wanted to impact and how I could do that.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so what was interesting is that the first pivot of that, like I kind of talked about, was doing all of the courses, right?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, then in about 2020, when you know shit hit the fan and everyone was like, oh my God, what are we doing?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: I made the second mistake that I talked about, where it's doubling down on keeping and maintaining your team when you don't even know the ROI of what they're actually providing you because you didn't set them up to succeed in providing you an ROI.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: That is a leadership responsibility, not your team members' responsibility.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I had built the blow to team.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: At one point, we had 27 contractors, we had seven full-time employees, we had 401k, healthcare, like everything.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: I paid for someone's MAT leave.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: My husband worked for the company.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this was like my retirement plan.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: I never ever ever imagined leaving.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: This was it.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then I couldn't stay anymore.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: I just couldn't.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so in 2023, I left.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: It was Thursday of Memorial Day weekend.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: I voiced the thing that, like, once you say it, you can't take it back.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: The domino was pushed over.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: Within a couple weeks, we were both without a job, without a salary, without healthcare.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: We had a six-year-old at the time.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: It was crazy, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: So I took the summer and was like, What the fuck do I do now?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: And quite literally hired a career strategist to help me write a resume.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because I was like, fuck this online business.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I remember this.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've read I've read this email.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: We'll link all this in the show notes.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: But Emily is fantastic at emails.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: She tells crazy stories with crazy subject lines, like, here's how I lost mine and my husband's job open.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whoops.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Lover.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, go.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: Whoopsies.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so I hired this career strategist who's a local dear friend of mine and past client.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: And she was like helping me create my resume.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: And the whole time she was like, I'm gonna do this for you, but like I promise you, you do not want to do this.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: You are not built for nine to five work.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: You are not built for working for someone else.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: I've never, I my claim to fame is I've never had a quote unquote real job.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I graduated college, I did a couple part-time jobs at like a bakery and then house cleaning, and then I did this.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so like that's what I was doing.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I I've made both of those mistakes.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: So when I came out on my own in 2023, I was hell bent on, well, I need to replace my salary.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: The fastest way to do that is with one-on-one done for you services, period.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, there's no argument there.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: We all know that.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: I replaced my six-figure salary with contracted revenue and five clients because that was my capacity within five months.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: So now it's January after I've like done all this shit.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: I've got five clients and I can do the math, and this is how much money I'm gonna make.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: I am someone who likes to make a lot of money and a lot of impact, and I love I love business.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: I love strategy, I love selling, I love marketing, I love testing things, I love the game of entrepreneurship and business.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I know that like five clients and 150k revenue per year is not gonna fit it for me.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: That it's just not.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so immediately I was like, okay, great, I know that I can head to burnout because I've already been there.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: I know I can head to resenting these clients because I've already been there.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: I know I can easily go the DIY course membership route because I've already done it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: What where is that alternative pathway?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I talk about a lot of like productization in this one-to-medium business is like this invisible pathway that so many of us are stepping over because the service providers who are bespoke and have a chip on their shoulder about I only serve three clients because that's the best way to give them time and attention, and then our one-to-many people who are like, I have 72,000 people on my list and you need more.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like, dude, did we forget that there is a middle ground?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: The middle.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's me.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hi.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Emily basically is that.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love, I love all of these notes too.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was, I mean, I've worked with founders who do all different things, and I definitely agree.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you're trying to scale, there's a point where you remove yourself so much that you know, people talk about the face of the brand, and should my face be in video and can it operate without me?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And all the ops gals are saying, like, could you take a week off and the business wouldn't die?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: All this shit.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: But also, I think, like, you know, we have uh we have clients too who truly want to be CEO and sit up here and be like pinged when they're needed.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's totally fine.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And usually it's because they want to be close to retired, or they have multiple other businesses or investments or non-profits that they're starting, like they're doing good fun shit.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: But also, I think like I've seen lots of founders who, if you don't pay attention to the seasons of business, like you said, like you don't know what you want.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm gonna go to the next question because I still have more for you, even though that was so good.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you fit like how do you fit Kate?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, two questions.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: First one that I was gonna ask.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have helped service providers in all different niches, and Emily has uh assigned six new clients in what, like starting on the sixth, so like 13 days that we're gonna be.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, five of them have come through in the last like three or four days.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's crushing it, and there's lots more to come.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: You've helped all sorts of service providers inside of sold-out services, her group program, which she's gonna tell you a little bit more about at the end.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Who has the most resistance, the most struggles to productize?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is that creatives?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know you got some new creatives and sold-out services members because I was logging in your tracker for lead tracker this morning.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is it creatives?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have friends here in Denver.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've never met a photographer who doesn't talk to me about massive burnout.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, I'm done.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, those poor photographers.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I have a friend here, Danny, who just did like a beautiful wedding, and then they're like, We want all of our money back, and she's like, What the f flip are you thrill flipping talking about?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, that's a fun story.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: She talks about it too.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: But, anyways, who has the most trouble productizing and why do you think that is?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I mean, definitely my bread and butter of who I serve are are service providers who are more B2B, and so that photographer space is a little tricky when you hit with B2C, you can only change a customer, an actual um uh civilian, right?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: Civilian off the street.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: You can only change their behavior so much, and I'm definitely not the expert in B2C, but that B2B to space, I I own that B2B space.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of my people, what's funny is that like the people who you think would have the most difficult time wrapping their head around productization are the ones who come in most convinced that productization is what they need.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like, my creative people who are my branding experts, my website designers, my copywriters, the people who I would consider in kind of that marketing and real creative space, they know there's no other option for them to scale but to productize.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so they might not know what it looks like, but they come in and they're like, I know that productization is the key and you're the one that's gonna help me figure it out.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's folks who are in spaces that I could literally productize with my eyes closed underwater, who come in and they're like, I don't actually know if this would work.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: And some of those people are just in spaces who like we haven't had those conversations, so like systems specialists or you know, PR folks, or people who like maybe are not that systems is new, but like some of these are are newer to the online business world of being super successful, and so they're they're just they're figuring out like a marketing agency has existed for eons, right?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: A design agency has existed for eons.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: If you are an agency that is like a picture, one of those big places in your downtown that's in a high-rise building, has that flashy name on the outside, they're fucking productized.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you that right now.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: And they may not be doing it well because it's corporate, but they're productized.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: There's processes, there are standards, there's here's what we're only gonna do and what we're only gonna offer.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: And it's because they want to make sure that they are a sellable asset.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: That if they want to sell that agency down the line, that's what they're prepping for.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, guess what, Garley?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: We can apply those same things to our business that you don't have a desire to sell.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel like we had this conversation too about applying like corporate business practices in like ethical ways.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, two hours.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, they're not dumb, like they're doing hello.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, billion-dollar companies, a lot of money.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Emily is in we've only been this is like our third week working together, so it seems like a long time, but it has not been.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: But Emily has influenced me so much already, and I'm gonna ask you about case studies next.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: But Emily has influenced me so much already, and we need to update my onboarding.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned that totally, yeah, yeah.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you uh I'm planning to hire Emily also.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of like offers, our onboarding, if somebody is a marketing agency, a PR firm, we're now really moving to doing a lot of group programs because I'm loving it, as is the team.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless of whatever, if it's service-based or group programs or whatever it is, we ask everybody when they come in, like, what's the one main offer?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Which begs the question you have to have one because if you want to make skills, yeah, and then we have clients too, and it's it's so sweet.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And sales, I say, is like a living animal, like shit changes every day.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Bonuses might be added, like dates might change, cart open, cart closed, behind the scenes deals.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm very well versed in that shit.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: But also, if you decide at, you know, I woke up at 4 45 a.m.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: because the cat won't shut the fuck up about drinking from the shower ever.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: And like, husband, we've discussed this, and you are a mama.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think that like even like cat and pet moms, like the voice registers to me and not to him.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: But he does lots of other things for the pet.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: He does the poop scooping, so I'm grateful for that.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if you I delegated that to my 10-year-old, here I will pay you money to do that.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you wake up at 4 45 in the morning because your bangle cat won't shut up, and you decide that I'm gonna make this new offer and we're gonna sell it tomorrow.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: The amount of um operations folks who I've worked with inside of SOS and even one-on-one over the years before this group container opened, their number one complaint about the clients that they work with is that they change their mind every two goddamn seconds.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: And they come into that Slack meeting on Monday morning and they're like, actually, this is what we're gonna do, and then by Thursday it's something else.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: And you can't build a system, you can't build structure around chaos.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: You just can't.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: And if it takes you five minutes to explain what you do, who you do it for, and why it matters, then we don't have the clarity on that.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's not saying that we can't get there, that's literally what I can help you with.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: But I have program agreements.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: So when you come into SOS, I'm really hell-bent on we need to be on the same page about what we're working toward here.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: If you're coming to the call with 17 different ideas, you're never gonna see momentum on one.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the only way for me to impact more people is if I help you in your business get a good result, period.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so I need to make sure that we stay focused.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so you have to actually initial off on program agreements that says things like um, I make decisions based on data, not just fear and emotions.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm committed to productizing one offer and going all in on one platform and one level 10 client.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: Can those evolve a hundred percent, but we're not gonna be juggling more than one at a time.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's a couple other in there too, because I'm just like, I promise you, if you just do it in this way, it will work.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: As soon as you deviate from the structure, I can't promise that it's going to work in the same way, and now all of a sudden we're misaligned, and I don't like that.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I love all of this.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love that that's like in your agreement with them, too.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you about case studies next, too.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I was going to say about the offers.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so I have a chief revenue officer, Zoe Woodward, and I think Emily has met her at this point because I never stopped talking about her.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: But we were talking this morning that I want our like agency to evolve and our like signature offer being like, well, done-free leads, which I phrased it that way because it's lead gen and lead management.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: But we want to be doing lead management, which then begs the question.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Emily does sales calls called fit checks.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of our clients do sales calls.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be able to offer that to everybody that we do their sales calls.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I told Zoe that this morning, and I'm like, in the midst of a slack jungle buzz, and she's like, slow down.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: You do realize if we add this massive, big, important, needed piece to your offer without SOP'sing it first, you're gonna get yourself and your clients and your team and your back end team into a fucking shit show.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of being the visionary and saying, Let's do it, she was like, if you do it without a plan, it's gonna fucking cost you all of this time, stress, hours, billable hours of your team.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to do it, we can do it the right way.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna take this long.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: You'll need these numbers.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, slow the fuck down.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: And like, I'm a big fan of even beta testing within your offers.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if you wake up at 444 in the morning, you're like, oh my god, I have this brilliant idea.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: Don't make a new offer, make the one you have better.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, provide bigger results, faster results for the person you already have in the container that you already have it.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you want to offer sales calls, okay, great.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Pick your top one to three clients that you're like, oh, banging, we could come in there tomorrow, and I'm pretty confident it would work.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: Create the process, beta your own clients in hey, we're gonna have a personal call.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna talk about rolling this out for everyone, but I want to test it with you.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: We don't know the process yet.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: Here's how I think it's gonna go.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: Here's where I want your feedback, X, Y, Z.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: And then you have a refined process.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: Now that's something you can plug in and train the rest of your team.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I should be like paying you for a strategy call.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's how that I'm going to next week for the following week.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited about that.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be paying you.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's talk about case studies because it's a it's a huge deal.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about case studies, and then also I want you to be able to talk about sold-out services like with detail too, and the launch a little bit.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll try to do five, three to five minutes on each.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know, yeah.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna be fast because girl, I got a sales call after this, and so we're ready.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've been racking them up, truly.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, case studies.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: What is a case study in 2026?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think an important thing that you and I are working on is like, but what if I like have a shitload of data, but I don't actually have my shit together?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was bemoaning to my creative director and my email marketer who I owe my sales page to.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Usually I write a sales page and then I add in the case studies with screenshots later, but it's not the full picture and it's not doing its job.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I told them, Emily Laura, like, I'm going to make case studies for this sales page, but it means that I need to go through all my feedback forms, the few places I've collated the feedback forms, and then about a hundred screenshots from the last three months to collect granular Slack and DM feedback.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, why do we do case studies?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: What is a case study?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_03: How do you do it?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, case studies make a huge difference when you are trying to get and convert beyond referrals.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: So cold audiences, um, when we need to exp expedite the trust building process, right?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: I call it that buyer bridge.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: The buyer bridge can be really lengthy.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: It can be as short as a couple days or a week, and it can be months and months and months, right?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's you establishing your authority, your expertise, that you understand the problem, that you can fix the problem for yourself and for other people.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: Here it is, right?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: We can do storytelling where you're just explaining, like, I worked with Sarah, she came to me with this problem, and then this happened.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: And those are definitely effective.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: Please do them if that's all that you have.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: But when you have screenshots, like Taylor of the Threads Agency, Threads Marketing Agency talks about this all the time, where she's like, when as a human, if we see an actual screenshot of something, that the trust is is exponentially higher because we know you didn't make that up.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: And in a world of AI and just lack of trust in this space in general, uh, that is only going to help you.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: So getting them is important.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: We can definitely talk about what you do with them once you have them and needing to sort them.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um not everyone has that problem because not everyone even has them in the first place.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: So you've been doing you have them at least.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: But like I'm talking to people who haven't even started measuring like the thing that they actually want to impact.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so what we talk about in SOS is what's the number one result?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: If you could close your eyes right now and think about your signature offer, and you could only pick in one sentence one result that you want every single client to walk away with after working with you in that container, what would it be?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: Now, once we identify what that is, how do we measure it?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: Some people, it's confidence, it's sales, it's leads, it's revenue, it's more inquiries, it's website traffic, whatever.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's um, I help you build your client onboarding system so someone goes from inquiry to booked faster, like whatever.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's so many different things that you can track.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's normally money, time, satisfaction, confidence in some level.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe there's health, probably, relationships, like how many dates do you want your people to go on in a certain like it's a number though, right?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: There's a number, it doesn't just have to be revenue.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, what is the number you want to impact?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then how are you actually measuring that?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: I, as service provider and working with service providers, I want to make sure that you're getting their benchmark.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, where are they at before they work with you?
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: I've gone on zero dates in the last 90 days and I want to go on 50.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, great.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: You have a benchmark and then you have a goal.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: Now that we have the goal and the timeline of that goal, because we fucking asked them, how are you actually measuring that?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: Is it every week?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_03: Is it every month?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like, are they filling out a form?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: Are you checking in with them?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: Are you just listening for it on a call?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: But then are you documenting that somewhere?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then how do they feel as they get closer to that?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, you booked your first five dates.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: How do you feel?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, you're halfway to your booking date goal.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: How do you feel?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think was the biggest impact in you booking 25 dates?
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: How have you felt about the dates?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're getting quantity but also qualitative data, storytelling, emotion, whatever.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: I love to ask a scoring metric and a storytelling.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: Why did you give yourself that score?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: Or how do you feel about this thing now?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: Or why do you think this thing impacted that, or whatever?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: You start to get verbatim so you can copy stock your own clients to then use in your messaging moving forward.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_03: How do you think these people ever got like really fucking good copy?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's because they started tracking this shit and paying attention to it.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: So that's how you start plugging it in right now.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: I know I threw a lot at you, but you want to get to the problem that Alyssa has, right?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: You want to get to the problem where you're like, I've got screenshots on screenshots on screenshots, I've got emails of people saying this, and texts of people saying this, and Slack messages of people saying this, and now I don't know how to utilize it.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's a completely separate conversation.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: But we first need to identify what we're even fucking tracking, figure out the system to actually track it and measure it, and then we can actually use that material.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is like gold.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have to make so much content from this episode to share with people.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think, like, I mean, it's a wonder to me.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: The online space has gotten so much bigger, but it's crazy to me that it took this long for us to meet because our like business principles around case studies About how you market it around using people's language are so similar with like our own like fun language around it.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like the way that you said like analytics or quantitative versus storytelling, I would call that like tangible versus intangible.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: So similar.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing Emily touched on too would be if you don't have, like, let's say, you know, it's day one of case studies and you don't have screenshots and you don't have that many feedback forms, or they don't really have metrics in them.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing we didn't mention yet, and I'm gonna go to the next question in a second, is like, you know, if you don't ask the right questions, you're not gonna get the right answers.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I hire Emily to make my case studies, which I'm planning to, for her help on making the case studies, and Emily says, How is the experience?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, Oh my god, I fucking love Emily.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: She's the greatest.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: We made great case studies.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what did you purchase?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: What did you guys do?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Where were you before, after?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we have to ask the right questions.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, regarding the leads problem as well, like the case studies problem and the leads problem.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you can market this shit into like if you can put this into marketing, into carousels, stories, reels, case studies, sales pages, you'll end up where I am too, which is we have 2,500 leads and have a team of 10 to go through them, which sounds really sexy.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of work, but it is worth it, and it's really, really fun.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the case studies, if you don't make them, literally hold you up.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a lead right now who's lovely named Sandra, and she was like, All right, these case studies are good, but where's one that's directly applicable to my niche with my offer at my price point in the last six months?
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Let me go pull all this shit for you.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let me okay, Evelyn's gotta go in a second.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us about SOS and the as long of the minutes that you have versions.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, of course.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: We have seven and a half minutes.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, sold out services is my 12-month done with you group program where we take your undefined, not very valuable, certainly not repeatable, and not sustainable at scale service, and we make it so.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: We productize it from top to bottom.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: We work together over the course of a year in four separate sprints.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: So SOS is broken down into four pillars.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: Each sprint is 90 days, but you can go through it at your own pace.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: So you could truly get through the entire program, I don't know, within three months, four months, and then we spend the rest of the time dicking around, like looking at the data, having fun, trying different strategies on, and just like being in community with each other and and consistently approving.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you are on the more newer side to productizing and scaling for the first time, then I recommend that you go a little bit slower and we just like take our time with the data and implement and then calm chat and and we get feedback on all of that.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: We go from um offer ecosystem and you know your number one result, your authority anchor, your methodology, um, your level 10 client, all the way to content and visibility.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, how are you showing up on the platform of your choice in in the way that's actually going to put the bat signal out for level 10 clients, give them that buyer bridge so they understand that you can solve their problem and then ultimately provide a booking moment so you can understand what is your prospect journey.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: I want you to be able to answer when I do X, Y happens, right?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: That that is that gives us so much power as service providers, and it's gonna get you out of that feast or famine mode of that booking ceiling season cycle, like I talked about.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: Then we head into sales and conversions and we talk about actually creating a campaign around your offer.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: I fucking love launching and I love content.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I want you to pick the strategy and the platform that sounds fun for you.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: I'm working right now with a marketing agency founder, a local marketing agency founder.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: She does marketing for restaurants, right?
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like I need to connect you two because I bet you guys could nerd out about a bunch of stuff.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: And we are taking strategies from the one-to-many world and we're applying it in her industry.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: She's hosting a webinar for other restaurant owners to talk about her guest demand system, her methodology, her framework, and how she can create the results that they actually care about.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: She's breaking the mold.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_03: When every marketing agency owner is saying this, she's saying that.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: When they're selling over here, she's selling in this way.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: How can you break the mold in your own industry so that you can stand out and provide excellent service?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then finally, we're wrapping up.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: Is it Jen or not?
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_03: This one's Bonnie.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Bonnie, yes, I love Bonnie.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was gonna next question.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna ask her to talk about a case study and like two questions that so I'm in Emily's DMs with our team helping her out.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Two questions that we get a lot about SOS is I've been living off referrals.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: How are we gonna get more leads?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which you were touching on.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is I was talking to Lauren does marketing this morning.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Emily said that she got some like carousel support from you.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I had a 4:45 a.m.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: carousel idea or seven of them.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what the fuck do I do now?
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's another question.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: People, I call this, and I coined this term a month or so ago, I call this a master marketer.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: Emily is a master marketer.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a compliment.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's also just because I love it.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's your category.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: So how the fuck, like, how do you help people market this?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: What if I don't do good carousels?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: What if I'm scared to get on stories?
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's LinkedIn, email?
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what kinds of marketing do you help them with to reach their weeds?
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is one question they ask.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_03: So part of my my thing is I stay in my own lane, right?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I like a marketing strategy.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's not applicable necessarily or it's not married specifically to threads or Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna give you the behind the scenes of every single thing I ever do so that you can take and pick and choose what works for you.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_03: But when I don't know how to succeed on LinkedIn, for example, because I hate LinkedIn, I bring in the experts.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: So inside of SOS, you get access, as long as you're an active member, to that month's guest expert in that training.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I specifically bring in people who I know how to do this thing well, but I don't know how to teach it, or I don't know how to do this thing well and I don't want to learn how to do it well, but you might want to learn how.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: My clients aren't on LinkedIn, but a lot of my clients in SOS, their clients are.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm bringing in the incredible Sarah Roy.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_03: She's coming in in October.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: Sarah does not pay for LinkedIn premium and she does not send cold DMs, connection requests, but she books clients every single month on LinkedIn.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_03: How does she do it?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: She's gonna talk about it inside the community.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm gonna share with you guys that I'm open, I'm transparent.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_03: There's no, you know, question off the books for me when it comes to okay, I used email marketing and here's how it worked.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: I grow my email list and here's how it works.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_03: I ran a webinar, a free class, a challenge, here's how it works.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: And if you want to try any of those on, I would love to map that out with you inside of the program.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's literally what we do in selling and conversions is pick the pathway, pick the booking moment, is what I call it, that you're providing people to take action.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it can be anything.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care if it's stories or carousels or whatever.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: And if ultimately you want to do carousels, I'm gonna recommend you to people like Lauren or other people who do template pack design or can help you with that branding.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a really quick asset for you to be able to plug in if that's the strategy that you want to deploy.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is incredible.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have to let Emily, I feel like I'm like, you're gonna like run to an errand, but she's just gonna run and do a sales call and get some other credible person into sold out services.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Where can where do you want people to find you?
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: The pod, Instagram, where do you want them to find you?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm hanging out on threads all the time.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_03: So at Sell the Damn Service on Threads and Instagram, hop into my DM, say hello, let me know what you took away from this episode truly.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_03: If you love listening to podcasts, hello, you should definitely go listen to my show.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's sell the damn service on Spotify and Apple.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, uh first things first, I think for sure go to sold out services.com slash authority.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't even talk about authority anchor today.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's a whole other conversation.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: But you can go ask Alyssa why you need it and she'll tell you, and then you go get it.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's free.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you can test your positioning to see how it's gonna land with strangers so that you can pressure test that and say, Oh, I've got a lot of work to do, and I don't actually know my authority anchor, I don't know my number one result, I don't know my level 10 client, I don't know my unique methodology, then that's a sign that maybe we need to chat about working together inside of SOS.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's gonna be your first kind of like stage for like how scalable is your service right now if you did nothing.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so so much for being here.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: This was incredible.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna link all of the Emily things in the show notes.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited for you for your sales call.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: Go crush it.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: Her usual, guys, please DM Emily and let her know what you thought of all of her golden nuggets.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we will see you next week.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Emily, thank you so much for joining us.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: Bye, thank you.