Latest / The Matriarchy Would Never | A Promote Yourself to CEO Podcast Series / How to Build a Resilient Life-First Business

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How to Build a Resilient Life-First Business · The Matriarchy Would Never | A Promote Yourself to CEO Podcast Series

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to grow from stressed-out solopreneur to confident CEO?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the right place.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Rachel Cook, and I've spent the last 15 years helping women entrepreneurs to sustainably scale their life-first business.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you're serious about building a more sustainable business, it's time to put strategy systems and support in place to make it happen.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Join me each week for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO, the hard lessons learned along the way, and practical, profitable strategies to grow a life-first business without hustle and burnout.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, CEOs.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the brand new update of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Rachel Cook, founder of the CEO Collective, where we have been helping women and femme entrepreneurs to sustainably scale their life first business.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you have been following me for a while and you have been waiting for updates on what's going on with the podcast, today is a day.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I'm going to share a lot of behind the scenes into what has been happening in my life and business over the last year and so why I'm deciding to go video first with the podcast, and what you can expect from us here at the CEO Collective and from all of our content moving forward.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get started with some updates because there has been a lot happening in my life that really drives how I run my business.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we talk about a life first business here at Promote Yourself to CEO, and this is what we help all of our clients with.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that life first business is literally our number one value.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: You will find it everywhere in our content and in our website is because that was the driving reason why I started my business.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: When I started my business in 2008, 2009, I was coming out of a period of extreme burnout.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was newly diagnosed with chronic fatigue and chronic pain.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I also wanted to start a family, which seems like very counterintuitive, right?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get a diagnosis and then go, well, I want to have kids.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for me, everything always happens at the exact same time.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I launched my business and then six months later found out I was having twins.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now those twins are 15.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now those twins are in high school, and my youngest is in middle school.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so things evolve.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you, and I'm going to be sharing in an upcoming episode, every new stage of my family life, every new stage that we're in together has really been a big reason behind why I tweak things and change things up in the business.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So in this season that I'm currently in, I have older kids.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a dramatically different role than I had when they were little, right?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you have little kids, and I know many of my clients and my community do have little kids, and you have babies and toddlers and preschoolers, you are in that hands-on parenting mode, right?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's full contact.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And how that impacts you when you're running a business is very different than when you have older kids who might not physically need you as much because you don't need to, you know, feed them or change them or diaper them, but they do emotionally need you.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that takes a whole different approach.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a whole different focus in your life.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the last year and so, I have really been feeling this shift in our family life as my kids were getting older, as my parents are getting older.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there is just a lot that happened over the last year or so that made me really think, okay, I've got to make some tweaks.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to realign to what my values are and what really matters most to me right now in this stage of life.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So let me talk a little bit about what has been happening behind the scenes that has led to me wanting to relaunch the podcast in a video first format.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: The first big thing is, like I said, my kids are getting older, but I'm also getting older and my parents are getting older.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a stage that we often hear as the sandwich generation.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I am smack dab in the middle of that sandwich.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I am raising kids who are still at home, still need me, still need my attention, and I have parents who need additional support and care.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the last few years I've shared openly about having to step in to help my parents even more.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And at this stage, my mother has full-time nursing care at home.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have been doing our very best to make sure that she can have the quality of life that she really wants in her own home environment.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: We actually built a whole new house for her in 2020 that was 100% accessible, meaning the counters are lowered so that she can wheel her wheelchair right up in the bathrooms, in the kitchens.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: She has a roll-in shower.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: She has a roll-in closet where everything is accessible to her as she's sitting in her wheelchair.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: We had to make sure all the doors were wide enough, like all these things we did to make sure that my mother could continue to age in place.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're at another part of this journey, which is my dad needs a little bit more help.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this past few years, I have really had to step up and support them a lot.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: As my dad is also an entrepreneur, I've been supporting him and making some big decisions about what to do with his business, about what to do with his real estate portfolio.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we are at that stage now where we are doing a lot of long-term planning, making sure that both of their care needs are met, making sure that they will have the support they need from nurses, because both of them now need additional support, watching medications, making sure they're going to the doctor, all of that, and making sure that all of their finances are going to be okay.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a big one.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I will do a whole episode on this.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of us do not know, are not aware of how very expensive it is to age and how long-term care really works.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, we have a full-time team of nurses who are round the clock at my parents' house.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that is required because my mother literally can't do any of her daily living activities without support.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So she needs support with every part of her daily life, transferring in and out of bed, managing medication, making food, going to the bathroom, getting showered and dressed, all of those things.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like she has to have hands-on support.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not safe for her to be alone by herself.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: She has to have somebody there.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And last year I had a situation where I was visiting my parents and my dad fell and hit his head on the corner of a wall.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it scared me so much because suddenly I could barely hear him.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: He called for me.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was sitting out in the living room with my kids and husband watching TV.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time I got back there, there was blood on the floor, and I realized he had blacked out and this had been happening.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: He had been having these fainting spells where he would black out and fall down.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we got him to the hospital, and it turns out he has a heart condition.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: He has apib.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know a ton about it, but I do know enough to know that it causes him to basically not be able to maintain his blood pressure if he's going from sitting to standing, et cetera.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so it causes a fall risk.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this means he needed additional help as well.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So these things all together have been a lot of stress on that end of my family life because I am the one, the oldest daughter, I'm the oldest daughter of an oldest daughter of an oldest daughter.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have sisters, but um they help as mess they can.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm the one that's become the, you know, person who is helping my parents figure all these things out, get their power of attorney in place, making sure that all the financial and legal stuff is in order and making plans alongside them to wind down my dad's businesses so that we can continue to pay for their care.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And their care is extremely expensive.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're talking probably$16,000 a month just to have the level of care that they both need for them to stay at home.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I share this and I'm happy to share even more about what I have learned with this because most of us do not understand what that looks like.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I'm pretty young to have to be navigating this.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: My mother's been disabled since 1987, and that means I've always been a caregiver.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was only three, four years old when she got hurt, and she's been fully wheelchair bound now for I want to say the past five or six years, but she always needed additional caregiving support and additional support at home.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I have seen a lot of this on the like furthest end of the spectrum as far as care needs, as far as expense to keep up this care.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very, very lucky that my dad was able to grow his business to the point where, in addition to their retirement and their social security and the payments my mom still receives as part of the settlement from her accident, all of those things, we have been able to figure out how to pay for the care that they both need.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: But it's incredibly stressful at times.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when suddenly my dad needed additional support this past year, it again pulled me and pulled my attention out of the business a little bit because I had to go start figuring some more things out, like the next level for my parents.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that impacted my business, just like it did when I had to take over my mom's care needs.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sharing this because that was a huge thing that happened in my personal life.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And chances are you have huge things happening in your personal life as well.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Things that are going to require your time, energy, and attention.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it can very easily pull you away from your business.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It can make you feel like I can't keep my business going and take care of these urgent things that are coming up in my life.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share with you on this podcast that you can, you can.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, these are the things that have proven to me that the approach I share with my clients, our 90-day CEO operating system framework, it really works.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is battle tested.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: It has been proven over and over again in my own life.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you probably didn't even realize last year that I was going through all of this stuff.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to navigating my parents and their additional care needs, I also had a health scare last year.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I managed to fracture my foot walking out of Pilates with my friend Wendell.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: That was unexpected, the first broken bone I've ever had in my entire life.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it knocked me off my feet, literally, and I had to slow down and change up how I was doing my day-to-day.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got a diagnosis that I had been looking for, but didn't expect.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a diagnosis of lupus.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a long journey.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people who have chronic health challenges, like I do, often find that it can take up to 10 years to start getting real diagnosis because there's usually not like a simple test.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it's a process of elimination, and you have to go to a lot of specialists, you have to do a lot of testing.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is incredibly frustrating because you feel like you're bopping around from one specialist to the next and they don't all talk to each other.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I finally got a diagnosis of lupus in addition to other chronic illnesses that I have been diagnosed with.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that that came up was because I was in an active flare, meaning I was not getting out of bed for probably three straight weeks.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was just so worn out and exhausted.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: This was around, I want to say May or June of 2024.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and my dad's fall happened early April.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you can start to see where I'm going here.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like last year was kind of like a comedy of errors.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost like anything that could have gone wrong on the personal front was starting to go wrong.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Dad fell, I had to step up more there, then I got this diagnosis.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had a flare-up, I was in bed for almost a month.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just incredibly stressed out and taking a lot on at the same time.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: The final kind of like nail in the coffin that proved to me how powerful my work is and how powerful this framework is was navigating the loss of my cousin Holly.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: My cousin Holly died September of last year because of Hurricane Helene.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So last year was rough, y'all.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Last year was a hard one for me.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people in the outside world don't really know all of this because my business was able to keep on going.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk about how my business was able to keep on going and how this relates to what's coming up in the podcast.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that I teach all the time is the importance of building assets in your business.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Having assets in your business means having things that you did the hard work once, you built it once, and then you can use it again and again and again.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been podcasting now since 2013 and have hundreds of episodes in the library.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of assets.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we've we've called through them every once in a while and pulled out stuff that was no longer relevant.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I have a ton of content that is super relevant.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually didn't produce new episodes for most of last year.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you had been subscribed to the podcast, you're thinking, well, how is that possible, Rachel?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I actually got a new episode in my iTunes or in my Spotify every single week from you.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: We repurposed all the content.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that is such a relief for me because creating a podcast takes a tremendous amount of time and energy and attention.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: But when you have been doing any sort of long-form content creation for several years, what happens is you actually build up a library of content that then you can use again and again and again.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to every week be putting something else out there.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So because we had these assets in our marketing, we were just able to use them over and over again.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that continued to drive our client growth engine.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Every week we had new podcasts going out or repurposed podcasts going out.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And people on the outside who were simply subscribed really didn't know that those were episodes that maybe I published a year ago or three years ago or five years ago.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that gave me the break that I needed so that I could stay focused on what was going on in my life.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's one huge thing that helped me to keep things going on the business side of things, was the fact that I have assets I've created.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it allowed me to take a break from actively running the client growth engine to more passively running the client growth engine and using assets we've already created.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I share this with you because I want you to be thinking, what have I created in my assets, in my marketing assets, in my sales assets, in the delivery of my products, programs, and services that I can rinse and repeat, that I can use again.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So in your marketing, whatever your core content is, maybe there's a way to repurpose that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I have several clients now who have built out their entire client growth engine, knowing that they are going to repeat it every year.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is so incredible.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just knowing that you can set it and not worry about it too much, you do have to maintain it, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just like any system, you have to maintain it.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you can create it once, do the hard work up front, and then reuse it again and again.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing with sales assets.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: We ran everything as normal last year.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So last year we continued to host the CEO retreat every single quarter, continued to promote it in exactly the same way that we do every single quarter.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't recreate the wheel here.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I used the same sales assets, the same sales page.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have now a library of sales emails.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So for every single CEO retreat, I have different versions of those sales emails and the social media content and everything that goes alongside of it because I've just been building these assets over the years as I have been running the CEO retreat.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Same with the CEO collective.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I did not have to create anything from scratch.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to repurpose things I had already created.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this was hugely helpful for me because I was going through a lot on the personal front, as I shared.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: But before all that stuff started happening, I also had business projects in the works.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I had some big projects that I was taking on in 2024 and I needed to create some bandwidth for myself.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple of the big business projects that I had, one was I created the entire 90-day CEO operating system training, which essentially is five online courses I created within six months.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we now have a completely brand new series of content for members of the CEO collective.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: We have an entire training on creating your CEO vision and leading with your values.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love that we were able to start from our life before business philosophy and make sure that people were really getting clear about what they wanted right now, what matters right now.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because as I shared, there are going to be different seasons of your life and you need to be able to attune to it.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be able to align your business with what you actually need in the season of life.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's going to change every few years, especially if you are like me, a parent, a caregiver.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Usually we have things that shift and evolve in our lives.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that means we need to be able to realign our business to make sure that it works for our life and supports our life.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really love that training.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really excited that we got to collaborate with Erica Corday and India Jackson, a pause on the play, to bring their from implicit to explicit values training.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to license that from them and fully incorporate it into our CEO vision and values program.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: We also created a whole new training on the client growth engine.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been following me for any length of time, you know I've been talking about this five-part marketing, sales, and delivery framework, you know, attract, engage, nurture, invite delight.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is on so much of my content.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is in our CEO planner.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of how we run the CEO retreat.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this is work that I have been creating.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is intellectual property I've been working on for 15 years now.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it was time for me to actually sit down and bring it all together and update everything into this new framework that we now call the client growth engine.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was incredibly fun for me to create because now all of my clients can go in there.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And once you understand the framework, you can very easily see where things need to be tweaked in your business.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can very easily see if something is changing in the world or is something is no longer working, you can start to see where you need to make those changes.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you can also see the gaps that you might have and improve those areas so that your marketing, your sales, your client delivery runs even smoother.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that was another huge part of creating all these online trainings.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: We created the Team Growth Engine training.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: My director of operations, Amber Kinney, created amazing new, fresh content for everyone in the collective who is working on growing their team and doing it in a really equitable way where everybody on your team is valued, where everybody on your team is aligned with your values and working really cohesively and cooperatively together in your business.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Worked on a whole new CEO leadership training.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, so much that I put in there and I'm still adding here and there to it.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because the reality is growing a business pushes you up against your growth edges, right?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: As you are growing your business, just like as you're growing in life, there's going to be a new level that you reach.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And just like they say, new level, new devil, there's going to be new things that come up as you are pushed out of that comfort zone.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have big goals and big vision, big ambitions, then you have to be willing to rumble with the emotional discomfort that comes with those growth edges.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I created a whole new online course about CEO leadership.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really about being in integrity, being in alignment, and how to navigate those very emotional growth edges as uncomfortable as they are, so that you can lead your business to the next level.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we have our 90-day CEO process that we teach at the CEO retreat that is a part of our CEO planner.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you can tell that was a huge undertaking creating all of those courses over six months.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the biggest reason I felt like I was finally ready to do that was because I was also ready to launch our 90-day CEO certified professionals training.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we wrapped up our first cohort.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have some amazing 90 day CEO certified professionals who are now out in the world bringing this framework to their clients and to different industries, which I really, really love.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we have people who are talking about product based businesses.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Gabby Day has just launched.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Type ma'am.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: She is also the founder of Bright Body.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as a formulator and a product-based business, she has taken everything that I teach and now is going to be supporting more product-based businesses with that, which I'm so excited about because that is not my specific niche.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to focus more on service-based businesses.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that she's able to take what I have created and adapt it directly for product-based businesses.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're an e-com business, you've developed a new product and you're looking to grow it, go follow Gabby Day at HypeMam and Brightbody.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: She's amazing.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Tiffany Slater from HR Tailor Made is now also taking this framework into the conversations she's having with leaders of bigger organizations and nonprofits.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: She has basically a fractional HR business.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: But as we dove into this even more, I was like, Tiffany, you really are a leadership coach here.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a huge opportunity because we are in the middle of a huge shift, a very disruptive time in the world of business, in the world of work.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And by bringing these frameworks and these strategies, we can help people be more values-driven leaders and have that integrity and be willing to break free from the status quo in order to create better businesses.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: We can do business better than it has been done in the past, which I'm really excited about.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we have some more people coming out that are going to start talking about the 90-day CEO operating system.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Melissa LePointe, I can't forget Melissa, she is our Canadian member who is now working with the healthcare world in Canada and helping bring this framework to nonprofits and healthcare organizations.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really excited because that was something that I spent all of 2023 mapping out.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I spent all of 2023 working with a lawyer to get all my trademarks established.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Very excited we have the trademark for 90-day CEO, 90-day CEO operating system.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's such a big deal to have all those trademarks locked down.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: She helped me map out the certification and what exactly that would look like and how we're allowing people to use our brand and our trademarks.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot that goes into certification.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'll probably do a whole nother episode on that.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it took like a year of planning and then six months of re-recording everything and then bringing that first cohort through in order to get them out into the world.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: So those two things, I mean, that took a ton of time and energy for me.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then you throw on top the personal things that I had going on, you can start to understand why I was really big on repurposing everything last year.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was repurposing the content, I was repurposing the podcast, repurposing social, repurposing emails, because I have a whole vault of content I've created over the years that is relevant and useful.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sharing this with you because maybe it'll make you think a little differently about how you're approaching your marketing and your business, how you're approaching looking at the systems and assets in your business.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: We know from experience that when you create these assets that are evergreen, that are relevant for a long period of time, it takes so much pressure off you long term because you can leverage those assets again and again.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when you build out the systems, when you use the client growth engine, when you have a team growth engine, when you understand how all these systems work together into a full operating system for your business, suddenly you can remove yourself from a lot of that equation and it can continue to run without you, which is just an incredible thing.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a huge win for me, even though it was a hard year on the personal front.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um we were able to continue marketing the business.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to sell a whole new certification program.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: We ran all of our CEO retreats, we enrolled into the CEO collective, and we also made some other big decisions because when I was talking to my clients over the last few years, you know, 2020, 2021, 2022, they were difficult years because of the pandemic and a lot going on on that front.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there was also a lot of money being flooded into small businesses.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so businesses like mine, a lot of small businesses had a huge influx of clients and a lot of access to funding and resources that a lot of us hadn't had before.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, at the end of 2022, going into 2023, that started to drop off.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: We started to see the results of that.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: We started to see that people didn't have as many resources as all sorts of other volatility shot up.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Inflation was going crazy, things were becoming more and more expensive.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: It just became more expensive to run a business.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we decided to reevaluate a lot internally in our business.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a couple of decisions I made last year, I actually was a little nervous that maybe these were the wrong decisions.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Was I going to be, you know, hurting myself or cannibalizing my own business by making these big decisions?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: But some things that we decided to do, we decided to lower the price point for the CEO retreat, for the virtual CEO retreat.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I had been running the CEO retreat every single quarter since 2018.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for a long time, I had that price point at 997.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't matter if you were attending in person or virtual.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, I started to look at what were our actual costs, what actually went into all of it.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the big thing is the CEO retreat that is in person is mostly all of our clients.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is part of their access inside of the CEO collective.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: They get access to every single CEO retreat.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided I was going to adjust the pricing a little bit so that more people could attend the CEO retreat in a more accessible way without incurring all the additional expenses of travel.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we decided to lower the price point of the in-person or the virtual retreat and the in-person retreat.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So now we have the virtual retreat is$4.97 if you are just doing virtual, and it is$9.97 if you are attending in-person.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we always have early bird, usually in the month leading up to the CEO retreat.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was really, really excited to see that that change paid off for us.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I know often we'll talk about, you know, you need to increase your prices, you should be looking at how you can increase prices over time, but sometimes you might need to lower your prices, especially if you are looking at what it actually costs to deliver something, and if you're looking at how that fits in with your whole ecosystem of your business.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: So for us, the CEO retreat is usually the first step for a lot of people in coming into our coaching and consulting containers.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we knew that if we could make it easier and more accessible for those people to get started, they could start seeing some results.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also introduced a new tier inside of the CEO collective.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when I launched the CEO collective, we had increased the price point over time because we were offering additional access to coaches and support and accountability.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: But again, over the last few years, I was listening to my clients and paying attention to what was going on.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as businesses become more expensive to run, I know there are other programs out there that are like, just keep raising the price, keep raising the price.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I just didn't feel good about that.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't sit with me because I know my clients extremely well.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that there was a large amount of our clients who were through that first six figures or right near that first six figures, and they were trending towards their first$250,000,$300,000 year.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had another segment of clients who had already passed that$250,000,$300,000 a year.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that tipping point is a big one for a lot of small businesses.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a tipping point because usually around that level is when people start getting serious about building out their team.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a whole nother level of challenges, right?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Once you get to$250,000,$300,000 a year, you're pretty sure you have a good offer.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know how to market, you know how to sell, you know how to get clients.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably some areas we can improve that with our client growth engine framework and close some gaps and build the assets so you're not having to do so much in order to get those same results.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: But once you cross that threshold of about 250 to 300,000 is when you start realizing there's not enough me to go around.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: How do I grow a team?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get the right person on my team?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: How do I delegate things?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: How do I communicate to my team?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: How do I make sure everybody is going in the same direction instead of feeling like I'm constantly putting out fires and becoming the bottleneck in the process?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: So because I was really clear on what was happening with these kind of two sides of my clients in the CEO collective, I decided I was going to offer two levels inside of the CEO collective.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: So now we have the solo CEO, and we also have the scaling CEO.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the scaling CEO is designed for members of the CEO collective who are already past that$300,000 mark, who have started building a team, and they really want to make the operations of their business run smoother.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: They want to be able to get out of their own way and empower their team to become leaders in their specific areas of the business.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the Solo CEO is really designed to help those small business owners who are still very much owner-operated, maybe have an assistant, but they are at the point where they really need to lock in and nail their marketing, their sales, and their client delivery, that client growth engine piece before they grow.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: So offering these two different tiers meant making a level that was less expensive.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I was wondering if I was going to regret that, but I trusted my intuition, which said, no, this program is what is going to get them to that next level.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: So those were some big decisions that are actually pretty counterintuitive, right?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Offering a lower tier or offering a lower price point.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people, and even I have encouraged clients to not do that.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: But because I know my community so well, because I spend so much time in conversation with them, I knew I wanted to build out the levels and the access that would allow them to just get started so they can get these systems and infrastructure in place in their business and grow right alongside of us.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So let me see.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I repurposed content for the entire year.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I offered more accessible, lower price point access into our core programs, a CEO retreat, the CEO collective, and I basically repurposed all my content all year long, and no one knew.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: No one knew that I was actually working less, I was charging less, and did more than I had the year prior.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: My revenue was about the same, a little bit higher.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: My profits were actually a lot higher because I simplified in my business and because I really got clear on honing those assets.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to share all of this today because entrepreneurship is not a linear journey.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is full of ups and downs.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is full of navigating challenges in our personal lives and challenges in the world.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: We are all going to be impacted by challenges in our life at some point or another.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: None of us are immune to illness.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: None of us are immune to loss and grief.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: None of us are immune to, you know, feeling like the rug has been pulled out from underneath you in your personal life.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: We all experience that.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of the human experience.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And a huge part of being able to navigate that as an entrepreneur is being more resilient.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is learning how to be more resilient.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is learning how to be more strategic and making sure that your business is able to work for you, not just you constantly working for it.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, your business doesn't operate in a silo.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Your business is impacted by what's happening in the world.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is impacted by what's happening in the world right now.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in the small business space, a lot of the advice, a lot of the conversations out there act as if you are not affected by those things.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we are.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: We are all existing in the context of what is happening around us.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is so incredibly important for us to talk about as small business owners and for us to learn how to navigate and build that resiliency so we can decide how we are going to respond to what's happening around us instead of reacting to it.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna drop a second episode today.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want this one to get too long, but currently we are going through another upheaval in the world.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And especially if you are here in the United States, I feel like there is this sense of how do I keep going when things are not normal?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: How do I keep going when it feels like the world is a dumpster fire?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm gonna explore with you in the next episode of Promote Yourself to CEO.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for listening in today to this episode.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed my, you know, pulling back the curtain and sharing some behind the scenes of what happened in my business and in my life this last year and a half or so.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to hear from you.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know what you think.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know what you think of the video first approach.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if you have more questions for me or you want me to dive deeper into any of these topics, please let me know because I will be recording more content over the coming days and weeks.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know me, I like to batch it a little bit when I am feeling well, so that when that season comes and I'm not feeling as well, it's already locked and loaded, ready to go for you.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you're letting me know what else you want to hear about.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next episode.