Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP.92: Beyond Revenue: The Hidden Indicators Of Business Growth | The Ambitious Podcast
Transcript
- 0:00Just because your business makes more money does not mean you are
- 0:02actually going to make more money.
- 0:04The biggest mistake is that many people believe that the only
- 0:08indicator of growth for their business is revenue.
- 0:12So many of us as entrepreneurs believe that if we just make
- 0:15more money, all of our problems are going to be solved.
- 0:18I believe the reason that so many of us get tied into that is
- 0:21because so much of our goal has been given to us by somebody
- 0:24else. You don't want to be the
- 0:26business that's making seven figures but who is working
- 0:30non-stop around the clock every day.
- 0:32We need to start to revise what we determine to be progress in
- 0:37growth. You can't let the Internet and
- 0:39the outside noise tell you that all that progress is not enough.
- 0:44Hello and welcome back to Ambitious.
- 0:46Today we are talking all things progress in business.
- 0:50It can feel like the only thing that you want to have move is
- 0:55your revenue. You always are told whether it
- 0:58is by the loudest mentor that you might be consuming online.
- 1:02It could be a peer who does what you do.
- 1:04It could even be outside pressures, family, friends who
- 1:08put this extra pressure of is your business growing?
- 1:11And many of us attribute that growth or that progress to being
- 1:16financial. Is my business making more money
- 1:19this month than it did last month?
- 1:21Is my business making more money this year than it did last year?
- 1:25And as somebody myself who works with businesses day in, day out,
- 1:29one of the things that I would say is the biggest mistake is
- 1:33that many people believe that the only indicator of growth for
- 1:38their business or to say that they've made progress within
- 1:42their business is revenue. And I think what that does is it
- 1:46really pigeon holes there to be one and only one area that can
- 1:51tell you that the effort that you're putting in and the work
- 1:54you're putting in and the investments that you're putting
- 1:57in are actually generating something.
- 1:59And so when you don't see that number change and you think to
- 2:02yourself, well, why do I feel like I'm doing all the things,
- 2:05but I'm not making progress, it can be very frustrating.
- 2:08And so today I want to talk through some different ways for
- 2:12you to start looking at making progress in your business
- 2:16because there are a lot, and I mean a lot of other indicators
- 2:21outside of just revenue that are really obvious to me that a
- 2:26business is growing. And the reason I wanted to to
- 2:29cover these and the reason I think it's important is because
- 2:33when you start to see the markers, we're going to talk
- 2:35about today and we're going to break these into a couple
- 2:37different buckets and different themes of ways that you can look
- 2:40at your business. But when you go through these
- 2:43and you start to assess your progress, I will tell you when
- 2:46you see progress in these areas, you are going to see a domino
- 2:50within your business. And this is usually the
- 2:54indicator that you are making strategy changes, that you are
- 2:57seeing refinements. I have people come to me every
- 3:00single day who say, Kate, I want to make more money.
- 3:02I want to make multiple 6 figures.
- 3:04I want to make 7 figures. I want to make multiple 7
- 3:06figures. And I think it is because
- 3:09there's such a deep belief that money fixes everything.
- 3:12But it's interesting because sometimes I will say to
- 3:14somebody, what is your marker of success?
- 3:17Meaning not necessarily what the Internet told you is the right
- 3:20thing, not necessarily what a singular person online told you
- 3:24is the right thing. What do you believe to be
- 3:27success? And I remember I had someone who
- 3:29came to me and they said, Kate, I want to buy multiple
- 3:31properties. That was her goal.
- 3:33And so I said, OK, great. Well, do you want that to
- 3:36obviously come from the business?
- 3:37If so, we want to have an allocation of what you're making
- 3:40every month toward that. So what we basically need to
- 3:43make sure of is that you have really, really healthy profit
- 3:45margins. So when we looked at her
- 3:48business, she initially came to me with the goal of hitting
- 3:50multiple 7 figures. We'll come to find out she
- 3:53doesn't need to hit multiple 7 figures to hit this goal of
- 3:57having multiple properties. In fact, she may not even
- 4:01necessarily have to hit 7 figures based off how her
- 4:04business was structured in order to be able to get her multiple
- 4:07properties. So the reason I share this is
- 4:10because so many of us as entrepreneurs believe that if we
- 4:13just make more money, all of our problems are going to be solved.
- 4:17And with this, if we just make more money, that means that our
- 4:20business is overall successful. And I've also seen people who
- 4:25have and work with me, they come to me, they're like, Kate,
- 4:28please help me with this business.
- 4:29And they are making multiple 7 figures.
- 4:31They are making good money in their business and yet they do
- 4:35not see progress in a lot of the market we're talking about
- 4:38today, meaning their business is making lots of money, but the
- 4:42environment, the experience of their business is not enjoyable.
- 4:47And so This is why it is essential for us to look at
- 4:50progress in a way that is not just tied to revenue alone.
- 4:54And so I kind of attribute this as an analogy a little bit
- 4:57similar to those who are, for example, like looking to get
- 5:00fit, or maybe if you're looking to lose weight or lose body fat,
- 5:04whatever it may be, they always will tell you to not use the
- 5:07scale as the only way that you attribute your progress, right?
- 5:11So that's because we've got water weight as women.
- 5:14We have our cycles, we have whatever we ate the day before.
- 5:17There's so many factors that play into what the scale is
- 5:20going to show us. So what do they do?
- 5:22They tell us take progress photos.
- 5:24We want you to take, you know, measurements of what maybe the
- 5:27the size of your hips were versus what they are at the end
- 5:30of it. We want to also keep track of
- 5:33what weights are you using when you're working out.
- 5:35Maybe you started at a 5 LB weight and now you're doing 35
- 5:39LB weights, right? All of those are used as ways
- 5:44for us to track progress within working out, within building
- 5:47muscle, within losing weight. The same perspective needs to be
- 5:51taken when it comes to your business.
- 5:54And that is because otherwise you will very much feel like you
- 5:57are not making any progress. If you were just like looking at
- 6:00the scale and looking at the scale.
- 6:01All of us know that feeling when you know you maybe have for some
- 6:05people it's you've looked to gain weight.
- 6:07For other people, it's you've looked to maybe lose weight or
- 6:09lose fat and you feel like you have this goal and you're
- 6:13looking at something or you're trying to save and you're
- 6:15looking at your bank account and you're like, come on, Like
- 6:18you're just seeing this one indicator of success and you
- 6:22can't see anything else. And what it does, it's kind of
- 6:25like, you know, watching water boil, you feel like it's just
- 6:29not moving. And yet for all you know, you're
- 6:31making incredible progress in other areas.
- 6:33So let's get into exactly what are these different areas that
- 6:37you can see progress. And again, there's seven
- 6:39different categories that I would have you start to think
- 6:42about outside of just financial alone where we can start to
- 6:46assess are you making progress in these areas?
- 6:49So this is really going to be a reflection episode for you to
- 6:52ask yourself some of those critical questions of where are
- 6:55you seeing progress in your business?
- 6:57And can we use this as an indicator to say we are making
- 7:00traction And here's some other goals that I have in addition to
- 7:03growing my revenue. So with this, we want to first
- 7:15start with operations. And operations I know is really
- 7:18like a fancy a fancy word for most people.
- 7:20It's kind of like this overwhelming big, you know,
- 7:23umbrella phrase that you hear people say.
- 7:25But operations, some of the the core things that we look at are
- 7:29really the function, the machine of the business, if you will.
- 7:32So when you are running a business, you want to look at
- 7:36how is the business actually functioning and how is the
- 7:38business actually running? So one of the questions I would
- 7:41ask is turn around time. So let's just say for example,
- 7:45you have a task within your business and let's just say it
- 7:50is onboarding, right? So maybe when you sign a client,
- 7:54it used to take you 7 days to onboard a client or it used to
- 7:57take you 3 days to onboard a client.
- 7:59What if we started to see that happen within 24 hours?
- 8:03Even better, what if we saw it happen in 24 hours and it
- 8:06happened automatically without you needing to be manually
- 8:09involved? That is an indicator of
- 8:12something that would be an operational progress marker,
- 8:15which tells us that our onboarding used to be 7 or five
- 8:18days and now it's three days. The other thing that you can
- 8:21also look at is fewer mistakes or fewer edits, for example, in
- 8:26any aspect of delivery. So I was talking to somebody
- 8:29recently and they said, you know, how do I guide my team to
- 8:32make progress? So we went through their entire
- 8:34team, all the people that they had, they are an ads company.
- 8:38And one of the core players that they had was a designer, the
- 8:41person who actually designed the media for the paid ads.
- 8:45And so this person on average would have anywhere between 2:00
- 8:49to 3:00 edits to their design. And so I said an operational
- 8:53marker, meaning like an indicator of progress to help
- 8:57you guys to grow is to take what is right now 3 edits and make it
- 9:011 consistently, if not none for the media that they're doing.
- 9:06Why do we want that? We means that we are literally
- 9:08chopping down a ton of cost, meaning they're spending a lot
- 9:11less hours and therefore a lot less money.
- 9:13And it's helping you guys overall as a machine to work
- 9:16faster. So when we think about
- 9:19revisions, right, maybe you have someone on your team who is
- 9:23doing copywriting for you, or maybe you have even Ava who's
- 9:26building systems for you. How many times are you having to
- 9:30give feedback on a single piece of material?
- 9:33If that's something that's happening ongoing or all of the
- 9:35time, it means that you're running up a lot of extra costs
- 9:38because you're running up a lot of extra hours.
- 9:40So by decreasing that alone, you already are going to be making
- 9:43operational progress within your business.
- 9:46The other thing that I would also say is the handing off in
- 9:50the back end of the machine of a business, the handing off of
- 9:53things to other people without you being the bottleneck
- 9:57anymore. One of the things that is a huge
- 10:00sign in scaling businesses is that the owner or the CEO really
- 10:04is the bottleneck of the business.
- 10:06Like you are the thing that is keeping it from growing.
- 10:09It could be because you're again needing time to look at things,
- 10:13time to give feedback on things. You are the bottleneck because
- 10:17your time and energy is needed for a lot of tasks.
- 10:20So if you are the bottleneck in your business, a goal for you
- 10:24when it comes to progress may be the fact that you want to remove
- 10:28yourself as a bottleneck. Just removing yourself as a
- 10:30bottleneck is a huge goal within a business and that for some
- 10:36people can take them six months. For some people it takes them
- 10:39two years to fully remove themselves from the machine of
- 10:44their business. But doing so is a massive
- 10:46progress indicator that your business is growing.
- 10:50If you let's just say, or somebody maybe who's not done
- 10:52for you services, maybe you're in coaching and you feel like
- 10:55you're coaching all of your clients on your own.
- 10:57Well, your ability to either have offers that somebody else
- 11:00can help you to manage or maybe you're in kind of the bucket of
- 11:03having Co coaches. That could be something that is
- 11:06an indicator to say, hey, I used to be the only and the
- 11:09everything to my clients and now I have other people that are
- 11:12doing the delivery for me. It's huge.
- 11:15It's a huge indicator of your growth that you're not in the
- 11:18day-to-day of delivery, if that's something that's a goal
- 11:21for you. The other thing which I
- 11:24personally feel with a lot of businesses that I work with and
- 11:27especially I would say a lot of the agencies that I work with
- 11:31are done for you services I work with.
- 11:32It is documentation. So documentation and processes.
- 11:37I find a lot of the time when I work with businesses that are
- 11:40feeling like everything is very clunky, They feel like they're
- 11:42not really making progress. It's often because everyone's
- 11:45kind of winging it, everybody's kind of custom processing, every
- 11:49single situation that happens in a given day or week.
- 11:52And so it's only once you actually establish some aspect
- 11:55of process or some aspect of documentation that you're going
- 11:58to feel that rinse and repeat, right?
- 12:00So think about it almost like, OK, all of us know, for example,
- 12:03like Subway. Well, imagine Subway had no
- 12:07process, right? So imagine it was like, you can
- 12:09pick the bread first, you can pick the meat first, you can
- 12:11pick the toppings first, like whatever you want.
- 12:14It would be a mess. Subway is literally like a
- 12:17pipeline. So they've created this process
- 12:19where you always pick your bread first, then you pick your meat,
- 12:21then you pick your toppings, then you cash out.
- 12:24It's this really streamline seamless process to go from back
- 12:28to front of the store. Now imagine they didn't have
- 12:32that process, what that would look like to have a business at
- 12:37scale with no rhyme or reason, no system to how they do things.
- 12:41So when you think about the impact that that process has, it
- 12:46intensely streamlines everything in the experience as the
- 12:50customer. It really streamlines everything
- 12:52as the person delivering, IE the person making the sandwiches,
- 12:55all of it. So when you think about creating
- 12:58a process, you want to think about the fact that you're
- 13:01removing a lot of guesswork and you're removing a lot of buffer
- 13:04time. When we have a process and we
- 13:06have things documented in our business, it means that we're
- 13:10not having to think as much. You'll often hear CE OS that
- 13:13talk about, you know, what are one of your hacks to being able
- 13:15to grow your business? And they'll say, well, you know,
- 13:18I just decided to start wearing the same thing every day.
- 13:21Or I feel like I have the same routine every morning, or I have
- 13:23the same 5 steps that I do when I start my day for work.
- 13:27There's a reason that we love repetition in business, and that
- 13:31is because it removes room for error, It removes excess energy
- 13:36that we don't need to spend, and it removes extra thought and for
- 13:40many businesses, extra cost that goes into having all those
- 13:44little gaps. So putting a process in place
- 13:48can completely reinvent your business because you're actually
- 13:52cutting out all those extra pieces and you're finding a lot
- 13:55more efficiency by doing that. Now say you have a team that's
- 13:59doing everything custom or you feel like everything's kind of a
- 14:01unique situation. Then you put processes in.
- 14:04The other thing that you're also going to see is let's just say
- 14:06you have four team members that are kind of like they're all
- 14:09working. They're all, you know, working
- 14:11their full hours, but they're doing so in a custom way.
- 14:14When they start to have processes in place, you will
- 14:17start to see that they actually uncover more hours that they can
- 14:21work on the business. So it means that instead of,
- 14:24let's just say, you know, 90% of all their hours going into
- 14:27delivery, maybe now by having processes, they only have 70% of
- 14:32their time being put in delivery.
- 14:34So you can either one of two things, take on more clients,
- 14:37meaning you can take on more clients, generate more sales for
- 14:40the business with the same amount of team, or you can have
- 14:43them focus on other areas of the business if that supports you.
- 14:47So you'll see here how like we're not like, oh, marketing
- 14:50sales, marketing sales. We're uncovering the ability to
- 14:53grow, the ability to scale without necessarily having the
- 14:57thing we're focusing on be the front end of the business.
- 15:00It can also very well be the back end, meaning the machine
- 15:03that's allowing the entire thing to operate.
- 15:06The other thing that I would also say is a big factor, and I
- 15:09have to give a massive, massive shout out to Kelsey Dearborn,
- 15:12who is on our team. She's been like a, an OG team
- 15:16member since the very since the very beginning.
- 15:18And she has an incredible agency called Dear Kells.
- 15:22And if you look at it on Instagram, you can find it.
- 15:24When she came into my business, one of the things that I will
- 15:27say she did the beginning and she still continues to do today
- 15:31is that she looks at ways that we are overusing battery.
- 15:36So the way that I would almost kind of equate it to be an
- 15:38analogy would be it's the equivalent of having apps on
- 15:42your phone running in the background and taking up tons of
- 15:45storage when you know full well you haven't opened that app in
- 15:48like 2 years. So what she does with her
- 15:51operational brain, she basically goes in and looks at as the
- 15:55business is changing, as it's evolving, where can we adjust
- 15:59our actual systems we're using, meaning the platforms that we're
- 16:02using, how we're using them, she goes through and she audits to
- 16:05make sure, does this actually make sense?
- 16:08And here's the thing, which is why I'm obsessed with her brain.
- 16:11She actually, the reason I think she's so effective at what she
- 16:14does is because she doesn't focus on complexity.
- 16:17She actually focuses on simplicity.
- 16:20So there's a lot of people who believe it, like the more
- 16:22intricate the system, the better.
- 16:25And I would argue the opposite. Like we just recently had a
- 16:29system that we developed that was really, really, really
- 16:32complex. A lot of different pieces to it.
- 16:34And then Kelsey as of recent, some time had passed and she's
- 16:38like, hey, I found this thing that we can use and we literally
- 16:42opened it. And I feel like our entire team,
- 16:45like our eyes kind of were like, Oh my God.
- 16:48Because we see this, this system she presents to us and she's
- 16:52like, hey, what about this? And it literally took what would
- 16:55have been like, think about like a puzzle.
- 16:56It took like a 20,000 piece puzzle and it made it a 2000
- 17:00piece puzzle like instantly. And so why that was exciting to
- 17:05me is I'm like, great, we get the same outcome, we get the
- 17:08same information, we get the same data, but we do so in such
- 17:12an easy way, in a simplified way without all the clunkiness.
- 17:17And so while, you know, some people might say, OK, well, it's
- 17:20just a systems change. Is that a big deal?
- 17:22It's a huge deal because with a systems change, it means the
- 17:27system can support you faster and doing what you're looking to
- 17:29do. And in this instance, what it
- 17:31meant is that the system that she presented to kind of swap
- 17:35out her old one was something that allowed us to see the
- 17:38information we need to see very specifically, only showing us
- 17:43what we needed and nothing else. And so it allowed us to see what
- 17:47we needed to make decisions, make those decisions faster, and
- 17:49therefore move on faster. So something that might have
- 17:53previously taken us, say, I don't know, 20-30 minutes to
- 17:56assess might now take us, to be honest, 5 minutes to assess.
- 18:01You go through, you see them, you can manipulate the numbers,
- 18:03boom, got it done and you move on.
- 18:06So when you think about that as like a weekly practice, right?
- 18:09Say you're looking at something every Monday as part of your
- 18:11prep for a team meeting and you're like, oh, I have to go
- 18:14through these forms or I have to go through this dashboard or I
- 18:17have to go through this, this system of some kind to kind of
- 18:19prep for something. Imagine that thing.
- 18:22It's a strenuous process being put into a new system and taking
- 18:25you half the time. Well, by having it taking you
- 18:28half the time, you've now uncovered half your time back.
- 18:32So now it becomes, OK, great, where do we want to use that?
- 18:36And that extra half of time is what again indirectly is going
- 18:39to help you to scale the business.
- 18:41You have more time to focus on needle movers and outcomes.
- 18:44So like you'll see this is just, and we have six other buckets to
- 18:48go that is just inside of the operations bucket alone.
- 18:53So This is why it's really, really important that you
- 18:56understand where are areas that we can create progress that will
- 19:01through doing so create scalability within the business.
- 19:05Because I will tell you there's a lot more outside of just more
- 19:09marketing, more sales. Now, obviously, as I said at the
- 19:11beginning, there is this kind of common belief or this common
- 19:15perception that the main thing that we should be evaluating is
- 19:19just more revenue. Like all we care about is just
- 19:20more money, more money. Like that's the only thing that
- 19:22matters. And as somebody, as I said,
- 19:25who's who's in, you know, very big businesses day in, day out,
- 19:30I will also tell you one of the things that not nearly enough
- 19:34people talk about is profit. And that is because people are
- 19:39seeing this glamorized number of, you know, I'm a 7 figure
- 19:43business, I'm a multiple 7 figure business, yes.
- 19:45But like, how much are you actually keeping of that?
- 19:48Whether you are keeping it as the individual, the CEO of the
- 19:51business, or maybe you're just keeping it inside the business
- 19:55to reinvest it, which is typically the smarter route.
- 19:58When you are looking at how much money your business is making,
- 20:02you really got to ask yourself that tough question.
- 20:05How much money is your business actually keeping?
- 20:08Because the thing that is the, the biggest lie that we've been
- 20:12told is that just because you make more money, you're going to
- 20:16make more money. OK?
- 20:18So just because your business makes more money does not mean
- 20:20you are actually going to make more money.
- 20:23And that is where profit and understanding the actual
- 20:26structure of your numbers comes in.
- 20:28You need to understand what your profit goal should be for the
- 20:32type of business that you are. And that is because different
- 20:35businesses generally speaking have different margins
- 20:38associated. So like for example, if you own
- 20:41like a physical product business, the margins depending
- 20:45on what category you're in are not super, super high.
- 20:48The kind of more I would say like service based businesses
- 20:51typically are considered to be a higher number.
- 20:54Like a lot of my clients, I have some clients that you know are
- 20:58in the round 30 to 40% profit margins every month.
- 21:01And I also have businesses that are playing in like 80% profit
- 21:05margins right now. So it really depends on the type
- 21:07of industry you're in. But the key is number one, do
- 21:10you even know what your profit margin is right now?
- 21:13Like do you even have that data? Do you have that awareness?
- 21:16And if you don't, that's the place to start.
- 21:18But if you want to make progress this year financially in your
- 21:22business, you can also say, hey, I want to make the same 10,000 a
- 21:27month I'm making right now or the 15 or the 50 or the 150,000
- 21:31I'm making right now per month. But I want to make a higher
- 21:34margin off that. So maybe thus far you've been
- 21:37operating on like 20% margins or 15% profit margin.
- 21:42Great. The goal this year needs to be
- 21:44that we want to get that closer to about 40% margins.
- 21:48You will note that your business overall revenue is going to look
- 21:52basically the same, but your outcome and what it's going to
- 21:56feel like in your business is very, very different.
- 21:59So I have a quick story with this because I actually had a
- 22:01client who I was working with and they were doing about, I
- 22:06want to say like 180 or SO200K or so a month.
- 22:09And I remember they came to me. They had a very, very big team
- 22:12and they in starting to work together, we were like, hey, I
- 22:16really want to streamline this. Like I just feel like I'm
- 22:18busting my butt. I'm making so much money and yet
- 22:21I just feel like I need to be making more sales.
- 22:23And I was like more sales like $200,000 a month.
- 22:27What's the issue? And she's like, I don't have the
- 22:29lifestyle that I want. Like I feel like there's just,
- 22:31there's, I'm barely paying myself from this big business
- 22:35and I just don't get it. So we went into the PNL and very
- 22:38quickly we realized that her margins were basically non
- 22:42existent, like there was no really owner compensation for
- 22:46her. And also with that there was
- 22:48really no profit happening in the business at all.
- 22:50Very, very, very small margins. And that was because of how the
- 22:53business was structured. And so Fast forward when we
- 22:56worked together, at the end of it, I was like, OK, wow, this is
- 23:00a totally different business. By the end, she herself was
- 23:04taking home multiple 5 figures per month as the owner of the
- 23:09business. And that is because we
- 23:10restructured where she was spending, how she was spending.
- 23:13Here's the fun part. Her business was making the same
- 23:16amount of money. Her actual team cost decreased
- 23:20significantly, but yet she was able to manage and serve the
- 23:23same amount of clients. She was in the same amount of
- 23:25marketing platforms. Everything remain the same.
- 23:28We just made tweaks within the ways that she was spending and
- 23:33in the way that she was operating behind the scenes,
- 23:35which is the thing that was costing her so much money.
- 23:38So with this, she started to be like, this is a whole new
- 23:42business. I'm making the same amount of
- 23:44money as last year, but the experience is so different
- 23:48because of the margins being what they are.
- 23:50And so for her, what she came to realize was she didn't want to
- 23:53make more money. She's like, I don't care about
- 23:55making, you know, 400 or $500,000 a month.
- 23:58Like, I don't care about that. I just want to stay right here
- 24:02and keep this place and really protect the margins that I have
- 24:06now. And so that's what she's doing
- 24:07with her business and that's what for her was progress to
- 24:11like really keep her happy place.
- 24:13You know, she still makes multiple 6 figures a month, but
- 24:16she's having a totally different lifestyle associated with that
- 24:19revenue, which for her was the progress marker.
- 24:22The other thing that I would also say is, is a good indicator
- 24:24as well is in the financial bucket, understanding how your
- 24:29finances are produced. So for some people when they
- 24:32come to me, they feel like, Kate, I am living off of live
- 24:36launches. It's like 1 launch after another
- 24:39and I feel like I have no sales in between.
- 24:42And if you feel like you have to launch in order to make sales,
- 24:46that is something that can be a progress marker or IEA goal for
- 24:50you this year outside of just revenue.
- 24:53So let's just say hypothetically you're making $1,000,000 a year
- 24:57in your business or $500,000 a year.
- 25:00But that 500,000 or that million requires you to be launching
- 25:04every 30 days in order to maintain it.
- 25:07The goal this year could be that you want to focus on how you can
- 25:13get that same level of revenue but only launch twice this year,
- 25:17only launch once this year that can become defined as like the
- 25:21new marker, the new indicator of success within your business.
- 25:25And so we've helped people that had an entirely launch based
- 25:29model to keep and and actually exceed the same level of revenue
- 25:34while not having to launch anymore.
- 25:36And so for them, the goal was not to increase money, it was to
- 25:39change the experience associated with the same money.
- 25:42And that was to pull away from live launching and to move much
- 25:46deeper into more of an Evergreen model.
- 25:49The piece with that is also the fact that, again, a big
- 25:52indicator of financial success for many businesses should not
- 25:55just be how much you're making, but it also should be the
- 25:58predictability of what you're making.
- 26:01And, you know, I think that, again, there's a lot of
- 26:03glamorized marketing around that.
- 26:06We should be so excited to hit a 10K month.
- 26:08We should be so excited to hit, you know, 50K month.
- 26:11And they are massive milestones. It's not to say that you
- 26:13shouldn't celebrate those things, but I think that we've
- 26:17put too much emphasis in that versus what all of us want as
- 26:22entrepreneurs, even though we've gotten into a very unstable type
- 26:26of career by being an entrepreneur.
- 26:29The thing that we also have to recognize is like one of the
- 26:31things that so many of us want is stability.
- 26:34All of us want this aspect of predictable income, predictable
- 26:38revenue. And so another indicator that
- 26:41you can use for your finances. Again, let's just say that
- 26:45you're making, you know, half a million a year in your business
- 26:47right now. Maybe the goal this year is not
- 26:49to go to 1,000,000, but it's to feel like you have stacked
- 26:53monthly recurring revenue for months and months and months to
- 26:56come. That to you is like we have,
- 26:58let's just say your goal is 8 months.
- 27:00I want to have eight months of revenue coming in that cover our
- 27:04expenses plus XYZ profit margins.
- 27:07And that is going to become our new indicator of success to have
- 27:11this aspect of stability and to have this aspect of predictable
- 27:15revenue coming in each month. The other thing that I will say,
- 27:21this is for all of you who are, it's usually pretty common in
- 27:24the agency space, not as common in the consulting space or
- 27:27coaching space. And if this tickles or resonates
- 27:30with you, there's a reason. If you have all of your revenue
- 27:35being locked into one or two or five of your clients right now,
- 27:40it is the riskiest place to be in business.
- 27:43And that is because, yes, it's really exciting and it's sexy to
- 27:47sell high ticket or to have, you know, those like OG clients
- 27:51like, oh, but Kate, they've been with me for a year.
- 27:53They've been with me for two years, Yes, but what if they
- 27:56leave? Then what?
- 27:59So another really good way to help yourself to make progress
- 28:03in the business is to not feel that your business would be
- 28:07vulnerable or that your business would be impacted or affected if
- 28:12you lost your quote UN quote OG client or your biggest client.
- 28:17It is such a level of freedom because there's many people who
- 28:22feel like if they lost their biggest client or if they lost
- 28:27their, you know, highest paying client or their longest standing
- 28:30client, they're like, Oh my God, I don't even know what I'd do,
- 28:32right? A lot of agencies, especially
- 28:35people who have ongoing services they will have and you're
- 28:39between like 2 to 5 clients that are like the bread and butter of
- 28:43their business. And there's kind of this
- 28:45unspoken belief that they're never going to go anywhere.
- 28:48And I always tell people assume all clients will leave you
- 28:53because they will at some point they will.
- 28:56And so you always have to stay ready that you don't rely on
- 29:00those clients that you feel a sense of safety with because at
- 29:04some point when they leave, you have to have a plan and a
- 29:07process for something else. So when someone has very little
- 29:12dependency on those big clients or like they don't really feel
- 29:17like them leaving would impact the business much, that to me is
- 29:21a real flex. That to me is a real indicator
- 29:24of progress and of success of the scalability of the business
- 29:28because otherwise it means that the entire business's success is
- 29:32really dependent on like three to 10 people that that agency or
- 29:37that that company is serving. And it's a very risky spot to
- 29:40be. So to make progress this year,
- 29:42yes, you might have the same amount of revenue, but if you're
- 29:45like, we're way more stable than we were a year ago because we no
- 29:48longer need that big client or those top five clients in order
- 29:52for our business to succeed. We've actually balanced out
- 29:56where our income is coming from. And a quick story on that.
- 29:59I had somebody that I was serving and they had clients
- 30:02that were paying them 8500 a month, I believe it was.
- 30:06And they were like, you know, we're, we're so excited.
- 30:08We're making so much money. We have all these clients that
- 30:11are paying us 8500 a month. And that was on the agency side
- 30:14of their business. They had both agency and
- 30:16consulting. So they only took on a set
- 30:18amount of clients, right. So they had like about I think
- 30:20it was a 10 clients at 8500 a month.
- 30:23Anywho, they have these clients and in one month, 4 clients were
- 30:29like, hey, we're not renewing or hey, we're not continuing.
- 30:32And I remember that phone call like it was yesterday.
- 30:34They were like Kate and I'm like, yes.
- 30:37And they're like these clients are not continuing.
- 30:40And I'm like, OK, well, like as I said, all clients leave at
- 30:44some point. So like, this is something we
- 30:45obviously had to be ready for. But what I didn't realize was
- 30:48like there was no marketing strategy.
- 30:51There was no sales strategy. There was this kind of unspoken
- 30:57belief that these clients were not going anywhere, that these
- 31:02clients were like our Ogs, they're going to be with me
- 31:04forever and this big long story about what it's going to look
- 31:07like. And then obviously, you know,
- 31:10here we are, these clients are leaving.
- 31:12So there becomes this panic of like, I never thought they'd
- 31:15leave. Now they're leaving.
- 31:16Like, what do I do? And I said, this is great.
- 31:18This is an indicator for you that there's growth needed in
- 31:21the business that we cannot be dependent that these two clients
- 31:26are going to be the make it and break it of your business
- 31:28success or its ability to continue.
- 31:30And what's interesting was that individual actually came to me
- 31:35and said, Kate, I actually realized I don't want to be an
- 31:37agency owner because they did not want to diversify where
- 31:42their revenue was coming from. And they were like, I really
- 31:46genuinely thought that when people were with me, they'd stay
- 31:49with me. And so this person like they had
- 31:51clients for like a year. Like the clients did stay for a
- 31:54year. They had pretty decent retention
- 31:55still, but they said like, I just the thought of going and
- 31:59marketing and selling on that type of business was not what
- 32:02excited them. And they had never had to flex
- 32:04that muscle because they always had their OG clients.
- 32:07So once they had to flex that muscle, it actually was the
- 32:10opportunity and indicator for them, hey, this is actually not
- 32:13what I want. I actually don't want this
- 32:15business. And so they ended up closing
- 32:17down their agency and have since gone entirely into consulting.
- 32:21So it's interesting because when we think about revenue, right,
- 32:25so many of us are like, how much do you want to make next month
- 32:27in the business? What did you make last year in
- 32:30the business? It's not to say that you
- 32:33shouldn't have financial goals because obviously that's the
- 32:35basis of business, you have to make money.
- 32:38But I think this idea of like doubling, tripling, quadrupling
- 32:41our income year over year is not realistic.
- 32:46And even if it was something that, you know, every single
- 32:49business should normalize, I actually don't know that that
- 32:51should be the goal post. Because if you're a 7 figure
- 32:55business with a, you know, 5% profit margin, I don't really
- 32:59care if you make multiple 7 figures because you're still at
- 33:025 figures profit. What I'd rather is you make 7
- 33:07figures, you don't go to multiple 7, but we take the 5%
- 33:10profit margin and we make that 55.
- 33:13Now we're talking, right? Very different style of
- 33:16business, very different experience in the business, same
- 33:18amount of revenue. So This is why it's really
- 33:21important that we we ask ourselves those critical
- 33:24questions of like, why do I want to make more money or why is the
- 33:27goal this year to just double and to double and to double?
- 33:30Like am I going deeper than just the surface level of how much
- 33:34the business is making? And this is just my personal
- 33:38perspective. I believe the reason that so
- 33:40many of us get tied into that is because so much of our goal has
- 33:44been given to us by somebody else.
- 33:46We don't really think about our own experience with the money
- 33:51we're asking. We think about, OK, well, you
- 33:54know, you want to make 7 figures.
- 33:55Why? If you want to make half a
- 33:57million this year, why? Like, what's the real underbelly
- 34:01of why that goal is even a goal for you?
- 34:04And if you say things like, well, I want to make more money
- 34:07for myself, or I want to put away more personal savings, or I
- 34:10want to hire another team member, or I want to reinvest
- 34:13back in the business, this is your invitation to look at maybe
- 34:16making more money in the business is actually not the
- 34:19thing that's required to have you do that.
- 34:22Like, what if everything you want for yourself and for your
- 34:24business could happen without just revenue being the only
- 34:28marker? So by no means do I want you to
- 34:31think that I'm telling you not to have financial goals.
- 34:33I want to be very, very clear. My coaching here is not to say
- 34:38that you shouldn't have financial targets.
- 34:40You should, but I think that those should only be the target
- 34:44after we've looked at some of these other pieces to say are
- 34:46there other areas that need progress in addition to just the
- 34:49revenue. Another category that I think
- 34:52many people don't look is a little bit behind the curtain,
- 34:55which is talking a little bit about about leadership and
- 34:58overall team and the dynamics of anyone that's working with you
- 35:03inside of the business. So one of the big, big
- 35:06indicators I look at that someone's business is scaling is
- 35:10that they are able to delegate responsibility.
- 35:13They're not delegating tasks. You have a team that is rooted
- 35:19and actually supporting you with getting outcomes.
- 35:22They're not just people who do things for you.
- 35:25And you will know very quickly if you ask yourself this
- 35:27question, what kind of team you have?
- 35:30Do you have people that get you outcomes?
- 35:32Do you have people that manage those outcomes on their own
- 35:35without you kind of having to quote, UN quote, babysit it the
- 35:38entire time? That is a massive indicator that
- 35:42someone's business is scaling, which is the fact that you used
- 35:45to have, say four or five people who all needed to constantly
- 35:49say, OK, now what? Now what?
- 35:51Now what? And instead they're coming to
- 35:53you saying, hey, here's the progress report.
- 35:55I got this. This is the outcome we got.
- 35:57Here's how the metrics have gone up.
- 35:58Here's what I'm thinking. And they really own their area
- 36:02of the business. They really take charge and
- 36:05headline that as their own individual thing.
- 36:09And it's something that I, I really, really recommend for
- 36:12people to look at because if you have a team, again, you might
- 36:16scale revenue, but you're also kind of scaling your own To Do
- 36:18List because you don't really have people you can effectively
- 36:21delegate to. You're really just giving them
- 36:23tasks. You're not really giving them
- 36:25full ownership or responsibilities.
- 36:28An indicator of that as well is also looking at how much of the
- 36:32time are you needed to make decisions in the business.
- 36:36One of the things that I think is really freeing for people is
- 36:39to understand how decisions are made and with this see progress
- 36:43in decisions. Like if in the earlier stage of
- 36:46your business you're like every single thing had to go through
- 36:48me. I feel like no decision can get
- 36:50made without me. No plan can get made without me,
- 36:53no next step can be taken without me.
- 36:55And initially, I think when we're building a business, it
- 36:59feels very exciting because you think, OK, like I'm needed and
- 37:03like I'm building this and it's like you're, you're involved in
- 37:05the creation. But then as any scaling business
- 37:08owner knows, you get busier and busier and you don't have time
- 37:13to be involved in absolutely everything.
- 37:15And so you have to evolve out of that structure if the business
- 37:19is going to grow. And so one of the things that I
- 37:22also look at is in a team, how are people able to move without
- 37:27the lead? How are people able to move
- 37:29without the CEO always being present or always being there?
- 37:33And if they can't move, if they can't make decisions, then
- 37:37that's also something that we need to be aware of because that
- 37:40needs to become the progress marker for the business.
- 37:43On the contrast, I had a client who had team members and they
- 37:46were like, Kate, I feel like I'm constantly inundated with what
- 37:50about this and what about that? And so the marker for their
- 37:52business was that we wanted to have them instead of being in it
- 37:57all the time to move them to being more into like an
- 38:00escalated or an escalation role. Basically meaning that we
- 38:04created processes in their business that at a certain level
- 38:08of that process, it became an escalation, which means that it
- 38:11then basically said Ding, Ding, Ding, get so and so involved
- 38:15versus every single task having that person involved.
- 38:18And so that again, for the CEO created tons of capacity to grow
- 38:24the business. They would not have otherwise
- 38:27been able to scale the business because they were literally in
- 38:30the day-to-day thick of it all the time.
- 38:32Another indicator as well when it comes to team and to
- 38:36leadership is turnover. My goodness, the amount of, I've
- 38:43worked with some agencies that their team are like the OG team,
- 38:48they've been there since like the beginning.
- 38:49They've got like their core, you know, 357 people and they're
- 38:53just like hustling it out together.
- 38:55And I, I love to see it. I love to see it.
- 38:57On the contrast, there's also people who have agencies or
- 39:02businesses where the turnover is insane.
- 39:07The amount of turnover between team and the people involved in
- 39:11the business is insane. That is not an indicator of a
- 39:14stable business. If you are just like burning
- 39:18through people, you're hiring and firing, hiring and firing
- 39:21non-stop or even worse, you're hiring and people are quitting.
- 39:27That is something that I will say is like, OK, you know, we
- 39:31need to not be focused on revenue.
- 39:33You don't even have a stable back to your business from which
- 39:38to provide to the people you're selling to.
- 39:40So if you wanted to you double your revenue or triple your
- 39:43revenue, that's really irresponsible to even be
- 39:46thinking about if you don't have a well structured team.
- 39:51Now, I don't want to, as I say this, create any shame in
- 39:54anybody that like just because you have people who have quit
- 39:58before or like, Oh my gosh, is that me?
- 40:01Having someone like a couple people who over the duration of
- 40:05your business quit is normal. That happens, but the reality is
- 40:10how fast. Is this happening and how
- 40:13frequently is it happening? So meaning is someone coming
- 40:16into your business and kind of realizing in like 2 to four
- 40:19months that they're like, no way, and they're leaving the
- 40:22back door. And are you potentially having
- 40:25this kind of rinse and repeat experience where you hire
- 40:29people, you feel like you train them, you get them integrated,
- 40:32couple months go by and then they're like, I'm out of here
- 40:35and they don't want to stay. To me, it's not a stable base of
- 40:39a scaling business. So when people are like, OK,
- 40:41like, yeah, how do we double our revenue this year?
- 40:43How do we triple our revenue? I'm like, hey, hey, Becky,
- 40:46you're gonna need to dial in a team first.
- 40:50You have no responsibility looking to increase your revenue
- 40:55when out of the last four people you've hired, 3 have quit.
- 41:00Like that's what needs our attention, not you doubling or
- 41:03tripling the business. So you, a lot of the time people
- 41:07will think about churn when it comes to their clients.
- 41:11You also should be thinking about how many of your team are
- 41:15wanting to leave or how many of your team are looking to move
- 41:18on. That's also an indicator of the
- 41:20really the basis of your culture, the inside of your
- 41:22machine and how it's doing. And the thing that I would also
- 41:25say is like, for me, like the Creme de la Creme of scaling
- 41:29when it comes to team, is that your team feels like an asset to
- 41:33you, not an expense. And I had a conversation with
- 41:36somebody recently about this because they were at this place
- 41:41where they were like, hey, I need to cut costs.
- 41:44So I have to just like, chop everybody.
- 41:46And there was no emotion to it. It was really interesting.
- 41:51I said, OK, well, whoa, like, how do you feel about this?
- 41:54They're like, what's just like, what has to happen?
- 41:56And I'm like, yes, like, obviously logistically in the
- 41:59business, like if that's what has to happen, it has to happen.
- 42:01But like, how do you feel about it?
- 42:02And we uncovered that she really didn't see her team as an asset
- 42:09because truthfully, your team should be somebody that you
- 42:12like, look at. And you think, I don't even know
- 42:15what I would do if I lost that person.
- 42:17It would feel like a big loss. And like, for me, I feel like
- 42:22that about every single person that's in our business.
- 42:25Like I don't have a single person that I'm like, Oh yeah.
- 42:28Well, if they weren't helping us, like, it wouldn't be a big
- 42:30deal. It would feel like monumental
- 42:34for any person to not be involved that we work with right
- 42:38now because they're such an asset in the role that they're
- 42:42in. Like, so many of them are like a
- 42:44category of one in the sense of the way they do things.
- 42:47So if you have a team that you don't feel that way around, that
- 42:50is something that to me is a very big indicator that we need
- 42:53to dive deeper on that because I have had many conversations with
- 42:57people who have to let go of team members for whatever the
- 42:59reason might be. For some people, if they're
- 43:02restructuring their business or some people, it's the decreasing
- 43:05expenses and some people, you know, it's interesting when that
- 43:09their back gets against a wall, they have no qualms letting go
- 43:14of somebody. Like there's no resistance.
- 43:16There's like a great 321 go. It's Sarah and she like they're
- 43:19they're going. And here's the thing that I
- 43:21believe to be true about that one or two things.
- 43:24You knew all along that this person was not a good fit and
- 43:29you were in denial for whatever variety of reasons.
- 43:32You don't want to have to hire somebody new and you're like,
- 43:35oh, well, they're not that bad. I guess I'll keep them.
- 43:38You had, you know, situations that happened, but you thought
- 43:40I'll maybe it'll get better. You maybe don't have a good
- 43:43connection with this person, but you thought, you know, I don't
- 43:45have to be their best friend. They just got to get the job
- 43:47done, right. So there's a lot of these
- 43:49beliefs that allow sometimes team members to stay within a
- 43:52team, even though the leader knows that this person is not
- 43:55like a core asset. And I always tell people, if you
- 44:00know that someone's not an asset in your team, they shouldn't be
- 44:04there. Every person that you let go of
- 44:07should be a loss, because if it's not a loss to you, it could
- 44:13be that you are not emotionally connected to your team.
- 44:15So there's a high possibility of that, that you see them as
- 44:18people who work for you, not you work for them.
- 44:21So that's something that you could invite yourself to dive
- 44:24into to say, how do I perceive my team?
- 44:26Because that's important as well.
- 44:28But there's also an aspect here, which is that some people don't
- 44:31see everybody on their team as crucial.
- 44:35They're just comfortable and it's one of the best things that
- 44:39I ever learned from a mentor of mine years ago who said if you
- 44:42even have an inclination that there's somebody that you would
- 44:45let go, it means that you didn't see them as inherently valuable
- 44:50in the 1st place. So like a lot of us, if you know
- 44:53someone you're kind of thinking about, they need to go, you
- 44:55already know, OK, so like let this be your invitation to look
- 45:00at. OK, great.
- 45:02Who are those core players? And an analogy that I was given
- 45:05is that a good team of a scaling business is like an NBA team.
- 45:09An NBA team, whoever is gonna be on that bench have to be the top
- 45:15A+ players. If you are gonna be on this team
- 45:18and you're gonna be on this bench, the same thing is true
- 45:21for you as a business owner. If you want your NBA team of
- 45:25team players, if someone is not stepping up and cutting, you
- 45:29know, their weight basically within the team, there needs to
- 45:32be an invitation to do so or you have to really protect the
- 45:36assets because those are that bench is significant to be on
- 45:41for multitude of reasons. You know, obviously it's taking
- 45:43up space where somebody else could sit, but it's also this,
- 45:48the NBA bench kind of analogy is also to ensure that as you up
- 45:52the caliber in your business and as you up yourself, you up the
- 45:56level of the business that you want, you're surrounded by
- 45:59people who add to that elevation, who compliments you,
- 46:02who support you, who challenge you to the growth that's
- 46:06possible for you. So if you do not believe that
- 46:09someone on your team is an asset right now, it's your invitation
- 46:11to dive into. So when I look at a team and I
- 46:14say, OK, great, well, you know, how is your team?
- 46:16People will say, yeah, they're great, they get their job done,
- 46:18but they don't see them as an asset.
- 46:20And so that's something that I always dive into with people.
- 46:22Now, the one that we all want when we go into business, what
- 46:25do we want more than anything? We want more money, we want more
- 46:29time, we want more freedom, we want more location freedom.
- 46:32We want the pina colada on the beach in wherever, and we just
- 46:37want to relax and make passive income.
- 46:40That was a dream that all of us were sold, right?
- 46:42So let's look at maybe instead of just money, how is your
- 46:46lifestyle changed, even if potentially your money in the
- 46:49business has stayed the same or it hasn't quadrupled in the last
- 46:52year? How many hours you're working?
- 46:55I was literally at brunch this past weekend and I was saying to
- 46:57somebody, I remember that, you know, for a moment I thought, oh
- 47:02man, am I making enough progress, right?
- 47:04Like I was thinking about how fast I was growing.
- 47:07And then I shared that I literally used to work non-stop.
- 47:12Like I was like up at 5:00 in the morning.
- 47:14I was going to bed at 1:00 in the morning.
- 47:16It was non-stop all the time. And I was saying that what's
- 47:20interesting is the business, even though it might be in a
- 47:23similar spot, is also such a different experience for me.
- 47:27And that to me is 10X because it means that my hours I'm putting
- 47:33in are a lot less than they once were and yet the outcomes can
- 47:38remain the same. So that's a really good
- 47:40indicator of progress because it means that you're working and
- 47:44again, decreasing cost, you're working half the time, but
- 47:48you're managing to get the same outcome.
- 47:50So like that's for me a big deal, which is how little input
- 47:55that can actually impact the output and actually potentially
- 47:59increase the output, right? So in scaling a business, it's
- 48:02not about more hours, it's about leveraged hours.
- 48:06So it's not this idea of like, how can I work more?
- 48:09How can I spend more time tonight?
- 48:10How can I work the weekend? It's about saying if I work less
- 48:15or even if I'm really, really strict about my calendar, how
- 48:18can I get 3 times more outcomes while working the same amount of
- 48:22time, if not less time? So a great indicator of success
- 48:26and a scaling business to me is when someone's like, I've never
- 48:29worked less and I've never made more.
- 48:32That is like, OK, amazing. It tells us what we need to
- 48:35know, which is that you're really intentionally leveraging
- 48:38your time. The other massive one for people
- 48:43scaling businesses is that you can take time off and your
- 48:46business does not fall apart. It's huge.
- 48:49It's absolutely huge as a scaling business is can you step
- 48:54away from the machine and will it die?
- 48:56And there's so many people who I will talk to who go on vacation,
- 49:00but they don't act. They're constantly on their
- 49:02phone. They don't actually take a
- 49:03vacation or they feel like I can't do that because I have
- 49:06this happening, my client needs this and I can't step away.
- 49:09Being able to step away from your business is such a massive
- 49:13thing because it means that the business truly is its own
- 49:17self-sustaining entity. It means that your business
- 49:20really can truly function without you.
- 49:24And so that is a massive indicator of your growth as a
- 49:28business, as an individual, as a company.
- 49:31There's so many levels, but it's a massive indicator of progress
- 49:34because there's a lot of people who stay in their business and
- 49:37who can never step away. And with the stepping away, it's
- 49:40even 2. When you're resting, where's
- 49:43your head at? So like I, I was noting down
- 49:45like what an indicator for me was like when I would go to a
- 49:49massage before I'm remember when I would be on the massage table,
- 49:52I would be non-stop thinking about business.
- 49:54Like I would be like, oh, I'm going to make this lead magnet.
- 49:57I'm going to make this new offer.
- 49:58And like, oh, I could feel like this would be a cool marketing
- 50:00concept we could do. And I'm like, girl, relax at
- 50:04your massage, right? Like just be present.
- 50:07And I felt like I couldn't because my mind was constantly
- 50:10running about business. And I know like I even talk to
- 50:13people now and they'll be like in the middle of the night.
- 50:14I had this random idea for a piece of content.
- 50:17It was so annoying. I was like, just go to sleep,
- 50:19you know, or you wake up in the middle of the night and you're
- 50:21like, oh, that's an automation I want to create.
- 50:23And you're like, or an offer you want to create and you're like,
- 50:25thanks, brain. That moment where you can just
- 50:27be like, I'm so insanely present and I'm not constantly thinking
- 50:31about the business. Like I feel like I truly do have
- 50:33a moment and like a time of mental separation.
- 50:36It's huge. And because of this, you know,
- 50:39another experience you might have that is growth, a growth
- 50:43indicator for your business is that you're not constantly
- 50:45drained, you're not constantly burnt out like this is, I will
- 50:49say, of all the seasons of my business, like the least burnt
- 50:52out that I've ever been. And I look at my business and I
- 50:57think to myself, like, you know, am I in this current moment at
- 51:03this place where I'm like 6X my business?
- 51:05Like I'm honestly not. And I would say that like it's
- 51:09really freeing because it's actually about the experience of
- 51:13the business, not some vanity thing.
- 51:15And while obviously in this, I want to be very clear, it's not
- 51:19like I am not looking to grow or that, you know, any of that is
- 51:23not still our target. It's just that it's not my
- 51:25identity. It's not my core progress marker
- 51:29for me. I'm tracking things like how
- 51:31much time do I go and like be socializing and have fun and
- 51:36play and how am I sleeping and how much am I working on the
- 51:39weekends? Like, do I feel like I'm having
- 51:42to compromise my life in order to do the business?
- 51:45And if I feel like that's constantly happening, that's
- 51:48like a Ding, Ding, Ding, something's wrong.
- 51:50So the the progress indicator for me is about like, how is my
- 51:54energy while the business is operating?
- 51:57Like how do I energetically feel about business?
- 52:00And the way that it's feeling to me day-to-day, it's a big
- 52:03indicator of something that you can look at outside of just
- 52:07money alone. And also with this, I think for
- 52:11me, what was a fun Phase, I remember this phase was like
- 52:15deciding where I spent my time. Like I just hadn't had that
- 52:19moment before of like really being able to just spend my time
- 52:23wherever I wanted to. Like, I always felt like there
- 52:25was a, a right or a thing that needed me all the time, a right
- 52:29place that I had to be. And so when you have these days
- 52:32where you're like, I can, you know, my boyfriend and I just
- 52:36went to, it was like on a random weekday and we got up and just
- 52:40like went to the spa and we sat at the spa and we had champagne
- 52:44and we were just like hanging out.
- 52:46And I had no guilt. I had no like, Oh my God, I have
- 52:51to get back to my laptop or Oh my God, I got to get back on
- 52:53Slack or Oh my gosh, I got to get to my emails or Oh my gosh,
- 52:56I have to put some on social. Like right now.
- 52:58I think I post it like 3-4 days later because I was just like so
- 53:02present and I didn't feel any pressure.
- 53:03And I was like, wow, old Kate would have been like, got to
- 53:06quickly answer DMS Like I would be walking and voice noting
- 53:10people or I'd be like on the treadmill doing voice notes.
- 53:13Like I was just constantly never actually truly present.
- 53:18And it's because I wasn't allowed to focus on what I was
- 53:20focusing on. I always had something else I
- 53:22needed to be doing. So there's also such a freedom
- 53:24when someone gets this moment where they can say, like, what
- 53:27do I want to do with my time today?
- 53:29And I had a past client actually messaged me this morning.
- 53:32She's in the middle of a big move.
- 53:33She's like moving cities. And she was like, Kate, I
- 53:36literally had one call this morning and my entire day is
- 53:40open. And I thought to myself, you
- 53:42know, oh, my instant brain was like, what should I do in the
- 53:44business? And then she thought to herself,
- 53:47literally nothing. There's nothing I need to do in
- 53:48the business. I literally, I'm just going to
- 53:50go adventure around my new city that I live in.
- 53:52Like I'm just going to go explore.
- 53:54And that's to me, like a true indicator of success.
- 53:57Like, yes, you know, all of us want to make more money, but
- 54:01what if the feeling of what you focus on each day could be truly
- 54:04something that you determine when you wake up?
- 54:06Here's what I feel like doing today.
- 54:08Or if it's a matter of you wake up and you're not burnt out and
- 54:12you're not uninspired, you're actually energized and excited
- 54:15about business again. Or you're working half the hours
- 54:18that you did last year, but you're making the same amount of
- 54:20money, if not a little bit more. Like that, to me can be a
- 54:23massive goal for a business owner.
- 54:25Now with this though, these are lifestyle things.
- 54:29OK, this is a lifestyle reality you can check in on.
- 54:31But what about client indicators?
- 54:33What are things you can focus on with clients that are progress
- 54:36markers? 1 is retention.
- 54:39I think so many people underestimate the power of
- 54:41retention. And a easy question to ask
- 54:44yourself is how many of the clients that I, that I signed to
- 54:49work with stay with me? And if they stay with me outside
- 54:52of the initial contractor container, how long do they stay
- 54:55outside of that initial contractor container?
- 54:58That is a great indicator of how your retention is within your
- 55:01business. So when we focus on retention,
- 55:04there's a lot of opportunity, a lot of scalability that comes
- 55:07with having people not just sign but also stay.
- 55:11And so that would be something I would invite you to look at if
- 55:14you're wanting to grow your business because indirectly that
- 55:17will also massively affect your revenue.
- 55:20Great quote that I learned was that scaling businesses are
- 55:22built off of retention and not acquisition.
- 55:25And that to me was a big insight because it really it was a
- 55:30simple phrase to basically say, understand where you're supposed
- 55:33to focus in business. Like so much of the online
- 55:37marketing tells us, marketing, sales, marketing sales, yes.
- 55:40But it literally takes so much extra time, money and effort to
- 55:43convert somebody new versus the person you've already converted
- 55:47when they signed with you and keeping them a happy client and
- 55:50keeping them inside of your world.
- 55:52So I would say focusing on retention is a great indicator.
- 55:56So let's just say right now you have on average your clients
- 55:59stay with you three to six months.
- 56:00Maybe your goal this year should be that we want to try to keep
- 56:03clients with us on, you know, for like 9 months or a year,
- 56:06whatever, maybe double their contract is.
- 56:09That can become your new marker of success, which again is going
- 56:12to indirectly massively affect revenue for you.
- 56:15Also clients coming back. The other thing that I also note
- 56:19is like, even if clients leave, something I also look at in
- 56:22business, which I think is a really underestimated metric is
- 56:25how many people leave and come back.
- 56:27And it's interesting, you know, I obviously like any anybody in
- 56:30services, I have had clients that have left and you know,
- 56:35we're friends and we're, we're connected, but I haven't worked
- 56:38with them again. But I also have a good amount of
- 56:41clients who have come back, some of them another time and some
- 56:44multiple times, right? So like I had a client who was
- 56:47in accelerator and then she came back and did an intensive and
- 56:51then she did AVIP day and then she came back and did
- 56:54accelerator again. So there's a lot of repetition
- 56:58in coming back and what it tells you is that your service is
- 57:01something distinct, your service is something that people value.
- 57:05And so again, what that is an indicator of in the world is the
- 57:09people that are actually happy and fulfilled with your product.
- 57:13So things I look at are retention, meaning how long they
- 57:16stay, but then also looking at how many people have ever left
- 57:19your service and come back. That's also a really good
- 57:21indicator of something you can track that will help you to grow
- 57:25the business. This is one that I will say is a
- 57:29really big one is referrals. If you don't have referrals, you
- 57:34don't have a good product. And I know that that is a very
- 57:37hard thing to swallow. People who are happy with a
- 57:42service rave to their friends and to the people around them,
- 57:46to their peers about how much they love the service.
- 57:49Like you guys will hear me talk about the incredible different
- 57:52companies that we work with and you know, the photographers that
- 57:56we use and the, you know, operations company we use.
- 57:59As I was saying earlier today in today's episode, dear Kells is
- 58:02like the backbone of the machine of our business.
- 58:05And So what I will say is the reason I refer business to her
- 58:09or the reason that I refer business to anybody inside of
- 58:12our our company is because they are the best.
- 58:17Like they are incredible what they do.
- 58:19And as a total side note, a shameless plug, if you are
- 58:22looking for support with marketing podcast, anything,
- 58:26shoot me message on Instagram. I will send you the list of all
- 58:28the people that I recommend. But the reason I refer them is
- 58:31because I'm such a happy customer.
- 58:33So if you don't have referrals, it often means you don't really
- 58:37have a lot of happy customers. You want to see, hey, so and so
- 58:40recommended you to me or so and so said that you're the go to
- 58:44person to work with. You want people sending you
- 58:46business because it means that people not only like your
- 58:49product, but they support your product, they support your
- 58:52brand. So again, it's an indicator of
- 58:54success because if you don't have a lot of referrals
- 58:56happening, if you don't have a lot of retention, if you don't
- 58:59have a lot of people coming back time and time again to work with
- 59:02you, you need to see that as a glaring, flashing red light that
- 59:07something needs to be looked at when it comes to the inner
- 59:09workings of your business. You should not just be focusing
- 59:12on front revenue and signing more people in.
- 59:15The other thing that I would also say is an easy one to track
- 59:20internally, but it's something that will again as a kind of
- 59:24down line or a through line impact your revenue is the level
- 59:28of results. So you know, even for me over
- 59:31the years, one of the things that I focused on was not only
- 59:34that I got clients outcomes, but what those outcomes were.
- 59:37So you know what, initially I focused in the six figure
- 59:40bucket, then it was multiple 6 figures, then it was 7, then it
- 59:43was multiple 7, then it became how fast can I get them?
- 59:46These results, meaning how quick can I not just that I can get
- 59:50them, but how quick can I get them?
- 59:52And I remember I had a client who like hit seven figures so
- 59:56fast and working together. And so then after that I was a
- 59:59great my marker is to try to create as quick of results in
- 1:00:03like an ethical way. Or whatever, like not by cutting
- 1:00:06corners by any means, but to look at how fast can I get
- 1:00:09people results and with that, what results are possible for
- 1:00:11them inside my world. And so when your work delivers
- 1:00:16bigger and bigger outcomes for people, you're going to find
- 1:00:19that generating sales, generating more revenue in the
- 1:00:22business, seeing people stay longer, seeing them refer more
- 1:00:25people is going to be so easy because again, people are more
- 1:00:29vocal about getting great outcomes.
- 1:00:32And it's honestly so much easier to market a product and to sell
- 1:00:37a product that has fantastic support or fantastic outcomes.
- 1:00:40Now, the last one here is more about you.
- 1:00:43And it's about you asking yourself the questions of how am
- 1:00:48I growing? Like, what's my progress looking
- 1:00:50like? And one of them is the fact that
- 1:00:52you're able to make fast decisions.
- 1:00:55I remember, you know, being in this place where again, like
- 1:00:58revenue was growing, but every decision took me what felt like
- 1:01:022 months to decide on something. And it was so frustrating
- 1:01:06because you want to make quick decisions.
- 1:01:07You want to feel like you can have speed.
- 1:01:09In business, we always talk about, you know, success loves
- 1:01:13speed. You have to know 321 go and, and
- 1:01:16you move quickly and you take the action necessary.
- 1:01:19But it's, you know, easier said than done.
- 1:01:21And so with that, you might be focusing on revenue where again,
- 1:01:25there's a lot of time being, you know, lost and burned in a lot
- 1:01:29of just rumination and over processing and circling the
- 1:01:33drain on things when you really could 321 go and and make
- 1:01:38decisions much faster. So for me, I often assess myself
- 1:01:42as part of my success. I often assess myself to say,
- 1:01:46where do I need to level up? Where do I need to change in
- 1:01:49order for the business to, as a result, scale and grow as well?
- 1:01:53I also will say a big growth for me too was detaching my identity
- 1:01:59or my success from the businesses outcomes.
- 1:02:01I used to be so deeply defined by my business, like my business
- 1:02:06was my only identity. And I feel like truthfully, only
- 1:02:09in the last probably I'd say like 2 years has that started to
- 1:02:12change. And that's because I realized
- 1:02:15that like I was going for more and more and more, but I was
- 1:02:18going for more in business because I didn't feel enough
- 1:02:20without it. I believes that I had to make
- 1:02:23more money to be more valuable. I had to have more, you know,
- 1:02:26flashy success in order to be seen as more of an authority.
- 1:02:29I had to do these big things to be big enough myself.
- 1:02:34And so I really think that a massive indicator of growth when
- 1:02:38I work with people is that they are themselves separate from the
- 1:02:42business. They love their business.
- 1:02:44They're obsessed with their business, they are passionate
- 1:02:47about their business, but their identity is not their business.
- 1:02:51And I think that's a massive indicator that many of us should
- 1:02:54be focusing on outside of just more money.
- 1:02:57And also I will say in kind of tied into that because you when
- 1:03:03you detach your identity from business, you are going to feel
- 1:03:06like you don't personally take the roller coaster that your
- 1:03:09business takes. So like your business going up,
- 1:03:11your business going down doesn't mean that you are up or you are
- 1:03:15down. And I think that that's a really
- 1:03:17big for me indicator when I work with a client that they are
- 1:03:22growing so much within their business because so many of us
- 1:03:25are riding like we are strapped to our business roller coaster
- 1:03:29and we can't get off. And I think it takes a really
- 1:03:32strong and again, a lot of growth within a person to be
- 1:03:37able to see that the business has fluctuations, but they still
- 1:03:41have a baseline. And it's again, easier said than
- 1:03:43done. But that's why I think we need
- 1:03:45to be focusing on what are our goals and what are we saying are
- 1:03:49the things you want to focus on this year maybe for you, one of
- 1:03:53your goals that you're like, I don't want to ride this roller
- 1:03:55coaster anymore. Like I don't want to be on this.
- 1:03:58I want to be aware of it. I'm going to fix it.
- 1:04:00I'm going to own it, but I don't want my life to take the roller
- 1:04:05coaster that my business takes because in being an
- 1:04:07entrepreneur, that's what you've signed up for.
- 1:04:10You've signed up for your business to be a roller coaster,
- 1:04:12but it doesn't necessarily mean that you and your life have to
- 1:04:15follow suit. And so I think that that's also
- 1:04:17a huge indicator. And truthfully, one of the last
- 1:04:21ones is and a big one that I see from people when they're scaling
- 1:04:25and when they're stepping into that like scaling phase of, of
- 1:04:27growth for themselves is that you are operating from a place
- 1:04:31of being proactive and not reactive.
- 1:04:34It is such a key indicator for me of people who are on their
- 1:04:38path to growth is that they're not this happened.
- 1:04:42So now I do blank, right? Like they're not constantly just
- 1:04:46fire, fire, fire fires. Yes, fires happen.
- 1:04:49They happen to me, they happen to you.
- 1:04:51It's part of the business, but it can't be that your business
- 1:04:55is consumed by the fires. And so if someone is completely
- 1:04:59consumed by being reactive all day, every day, it basically
- 1:05:03means there's not really any needle moving happening in the
- 1:05:05business. So that would be something that
- 1:05:07I would focus on with someone is to say, listen, we are
- 1:05:09constantly in reactive mode here.
- 1:05:11Your everyday, your every week is because a client said this
- 1:05:14and a team member needs this and this is what the market's doing
- 1:05:17today. And I need you to go do this
- 1:05:18this week. And you have this list and then
- 1:05:21you look up and you think, why do I feel like I did nothing
- 1:05:25this week? Like why do I feel like I didn't
- 1:05:26move the needle at all? And not sometimes it's because
- 1:05:29you didn't, you didn't move the needle.
- 1:05:31And this is where the opportunity comes in to say I am
- 1:05:33being way too reactive in business.
- 1:05:35I got to start being proactive. And so the invitation is to say,
- 1:05:40OK, great. How can I use that as an
- 1:05:42indicator to assess each week to assess each quarter or this year
- 1:05:46to say, looking at how I did this year, how reactive was I?
- 1:05:49How proactive was I and the reason we go through these
- 1:05:53today? You know, obviously today we we
- 1:05:55cover operational things to look at different financial markers
- 1:05:58outside of just revenue, team and leadership, your time, your
- 1:06:02lifestyle, your client and your delivery in your market
- 1:06:05indicators, your personal growth as the CEO.
- 1:06:09The reason I share these is because I will tell you I've
- 1:06:12seen dozens and dozens of businesses that have come to me
- 1:06:16and they are making so much money and they are quote UN
- 1:06:20quote failing or making 0 progress on any of the things we
- 1:06:23talked about today. You don't want to be the
- 1:06:26business that's making seven figures but who is working
- 1:06:30non-stop around the clock everyday.
- 1:06:32You don't want to be the person making seven figures who's also
- 1:06:35feeling like their brain is constantly consumed with
- 1:06:38business and you can't turn it off.
- 1:06:40You don't want to be the person making seven figures who feels
- 1:06:43like their clients are coming in within three months, they're all
- 1:06:45leaving, getting no referrals, no renewals, no people raving
- 1:06:49about the product, no testimonials.
- 1:06:51You don't want to be the person who is making seven figures but
- 1:06:54who feels like you were having to look over every single thing
- 1:06:57within your business and nothing can go through the business
- 1:06:59without you touching it. We need to start to revise what
- 1:07:04we determine to be progress in growth.
- 1:07:07And so the invitation today is to look through this and to
- 1:07:10maybe give yourself some grace, go back through some of these
- 1:07:13different pieces and say, wow, I actually have made a lot of
- 1:07:16progress from last year. And maybe you're not going to
- 1:07:18see that directly only in revenue, but there's other
- 1:07:21things that threw us talking through this today.
- 1:07:23You say to yourself, wow, I have way better boundaries and I have
- 1:07:26way better retention and I have way better systems and I am
- 1:07:29working less than I ever have. That's massive.
- 1:07:33That's massive. And so let this be the
- 1:07:37opportunity for you to also give yourself a pat on the back.
- 1:07:40Let this be an opportunity to acknowledge yourself in how much
- 1:07:43you have done and how much progress you are making because
- 1:07:46it's huge and you can't let the Internet and the outside noise
- 1:07:50of like you should be making this much and this is what your
- 1:07:52goal should be. Tell you that all that progress
- 1:07:55is not enough. And on the contrast, if maybe
- 1:07:58you are listening right now or you're watching right now and
- 1:08:01you think to yourself, but I got a lot of work to do.
- 1:08:04The thing I also want to say is this is not going to happen
- 1:08:07overnight, but it is going to require you to desire other
- 1:08:10change other than revenue in order to have a very different
- 1:08:13experience in business. So if you have been the person
- 1:08:16who is entirely focused on money and absolutely nothing else, I
- 1:08:20want you to know that you can make the same, if not more
- 1:08:22amount of money in your business by focusing on some of these
- 1:08:25other progress markers. The businesses that I work with
- 1:08:29that are the most stable, that scale the fastest, are the
- 1:08:31people who recognize that the revenue and the money the
- 1:08:35business is making is just a vanity piece.
- 1:08:39There's so much underneath it that allows it to be able to
- 1:08:42continue to grow. And there's also a lot to be
- 1:08:46said for not just how much you make, but what your experience
- 1:08:49is in the pursuit of making X, whatever that number is for you.
- 1:08:53So I would love of love to hear maybe one or two that were take
- 1:08:57away for you today. Maybe you know, two things maybe
- 1:09:00that you've grown in this year. It could be two things that
- 1:09:02you're really kind of latching onto for the next, say, six
- 1:09:05months or 12 months that you really want to make progress in.
- 1:09:08We often talk with the fact a great quote that I I learned
- 1:09:11from a past mentor. Is it the best transformation
- 1:09:13that anyone can have is the one that you're witnessed in?
- 1:09:16And so let this be your opportunity to be witness in
- 1:09:19that if there is something that you have as a goal that you're
- 1:09:22like, I really need someone to see me in this so that I can
- 1:09:24stay committed to it. This is your invitation.
- 1:09:27Shoot me Adm It was literally, I cannot tell you.
- 1:09:29It fills my bucket more than anything to connect with you in
- 1:09:33the DMS when you guys were like, hey, I loved this episode.
- 1:09:36This was a take away for me or I just listen to X episode and
- 1:09:39this is a piece of homework I'm working on or this is my big
- 1:09:41goal after listening. Thank you, whatever it is, shoot
- 1:09:45me a message. And also if you're like, hey
- 1:09:46girl, I could use some help with XYZ, you guys know where to find
- 1:09:49me. So with all that being said, I
- 1:09:51hope today was a helpful episode for you, a good opportunity for
- 1:09:54reflection. I am excited to dive in on the
- 1:09:57next one. So with all that being said,
- 1:09:58we'll see you on the next episode.
- 1:09:59And, as always, stay ambitious.