Tag: goal setting

Your Red Thread & Building Authority (Part 2)

Your Red Thread & Building Authority (Part 2)

Transcript

Excellent.

In the last session, just as we all file back in, if you don’t have to be off camera,

please come on camera we can see your lovely face.

Katie said I would love a session on setting up an agency for the record. Anyone else. That’s pretty awesome.

I anybody who’s been in ten XFC or past masterminds with me knows I get very frustrated when people are like, no.

No agency, and I’m like, there’s so much opportunity. It’s making me crazy.

So it’s good.

Yeah. So we can definitely talk about that. Well, like, definitely in the new year. So, Jessica, for you, I know you have homework around agency thinking.

Just have some questions ready to go in the new year. And then when we see, you know, that stacking up, we can just book something, somewhat randomly pop. Possibly in January.

But Sarah is here. And if Sarah, if you can make a note of that to follow-up. Noted. Thank you very much.

That’s what the check mark was for. There’s no no. No. Oh. Loading. Oh, shoot. There’s a check mark.

Did you put that in chat?

Yeah. Ah, there’s a check mark. Okay. I didn’t see it. My bad.

Alright, here we are. We are talking about what you are planning to do. In Q1, just calendar year, Q1. I don’t know what your fiscal year is, but, that is January, February, March. How are you going to be acting on your authority building plan the page, what have you decided to do? I would love a volunteer, just a reminder that A lot of the things that you might take and apply to your own plan are that phrase caught not taught, right? So you might pick up on things to do on your own plan by watching us talk through someone else’s plan.

So please do paid this as a moment to take your notes, and apply to the session to, your own, sheet.

Who would like to volunteer instead of being called on by me, which is the alternative if there are no volunteers?

Jessica, do you want to? I saw a random flipping of the hand, and I’ll take that as a I don’t mind. You’ve torn me apart before Joe. It’s I’m open to your feedback. Okay.

Let’s see what you’ve got. K. Now remember, I’ve been sick for the few days. So this is the result of my illness.

So just share my screen. Yes, please. Okay. Yeah. Because I can tell you this is not the detail I would normally need to, but sorry.

Okay. Alright. So we have I will own e commerce sales strategist.

Do you see updating that based on what we just talked about last time?

In the last session just now? Yeah. I think that it would I would just change it to that seasonal sales, probably.

Since, yeah, it sounded like everybody had a resounding the seasonal sales could lead you to, being the Bernee Brown of yeah. So, yes, I would.

Why wouldn’t you say I will own, quote, unquote, be the Bernee Brown of e commerce by January twenty twenty six? That’s a real question. There’s it sounds like an assumption, but it’s not.

Mostly it’s just a self confidence issue.

Like, I I listened to you when you said put in the idea of seeing that in a LinkedIn profile.

It’s bold and I yeah.

But then I have something to live up to. So, yes, I could say that.

I think that you will say that. That’s what I recommend that you do. Just put it in there.

And then now you have a bigger objective, which I find always better. The ten x is easier than two x idea.

By January twenty twenty six, okay, so that Jeff can retire from the hardcore labor that he does. Okay.

My target of e commerce CEO is head of growth in CMOs. We’ll see my name two times a week, every week because the following efforts.

You have you are doing a lot Yeah. For the same things across all quarters.

Your book, seasonal sales psychology, but you don’t have a talk associated with that. You’re going to have one, but there’s no note there. So the book is Seasonalsales Psychology and you want to be in first draft writing by March. Is that accurate?

No. I think with the book, it was so the beginning of January would be come up with the book concept. A rough draft of it and then outline it but no, I think by March, I’d still I guess I was hoping that in March, I’d be gathering the research the data and start potentially drafting in q two.

Okay. So if you like any of the questions, etcetera, look to me, like, you were getting into the first draft, but you’re saying that’s, like, the more complete version of the outline? Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. Perfect. Okay. Cool.

You will have a bunch of content.

So you’ve got the signature offer, and then you’ll be doing How come this the newsletter is only January?

Oh gosh. Sorry. I yep. Because I over oversight. It’s an oversight. Okay. So you will do more in January, February, March.

No. So the goal with the newsletter would be at minimum. So here’s what I had to do because this I don’t know for whatever reason the check marks work for me, but then breaking it down as hard. And I had to think about how would I do all this content and make it consistent.

And so the only way I could think about it was, okay, I’m gonna do my big thing will be podcast YouTube. It’ll be a video. Video. And then I’m going to commit to recording.

I at least fifteen minute video every week and then I’m going to modify, repurpose whatever in all these other channels.

That was the only way I could think of it. Really. So that was kind of why I checked off so much and the why I put things there was because I kind of had that in my mind one video could become all sorts of things including like a weekly newsletter would be some some version of whatever I talked about in the video that week. Does that make sense?

Yes. Everything should be working together. Absolutely. I’m only slightly So I’m wondering, you have research for the book happening in February and March.

But you need the research for the book in order to write the newsletter, do the podcast, and even have a medium blog.

So that all needs to move up.

Further.

Okay.

Yeah. So yeah.

If you’re going to start. Otherwise, if the research does happen in February, then the newsletter of the podcast, and the blog can’t start until February because what are you gonna write about? You’ll need research. Yeah. So I would update that. Also, where is your note on You just told us something about this, plan that you have for the podcast on YouTube, but I don’t see it noted anywhere on here. Well, I just put just nap.

But then you have that podcast on YouTube, but where’s Then you had a whole thing you talked through, but it’s not written anywhere on here.

Oh, yeah.

Yes. I can write I didn’t am write that in. Yeah. That’s just something I know because I’ve done I I don’t know. I don’t know how I know that, but I know that strategy.

Okay. I would write it in, put it under place. So it’s super clear to you. Yeah. Even when you get a cold, you’ll always remember what is going on. Right? So that’s my measure, like, if I’m sick or tired.

Will I still be clear on what to do?

Why do you have what was your reasoning for a blog on your own domain?

Like at wright and Maine dot com or something like that. I think because I think because of the I know the it’s not I think because I had started building SEO on it and I had gotten some results from it that I thought, well, if I keep doing it and it’s only a repurpose, like, if I can you easily use AI to turn my video transcript into an SEO optimized blog post.

Why wouldn’t I post some version of it on my blog? I guess that’s why.

Okay.

But sharepoint, maybe it’s not worth the time. Well, and we’ll see because spoiler alert, the next initiative after after everybody’s done with Q1 with filling this in is then you go and you block out your calendar in full. So that’s where you’ll see, do I have time for a blog?

I would recommend pulling back on initiatives rather than adding more. How many of these are you currently doing? Do you have a newsletter right now? No.

Do you have a podcast on YouTube right now? No. Not enough of it. Have a blog on your site or None of it, Joe.

You know none of it other than the I’m listening to those everyone. Right? None of it. Like, the book.

If you have none of those things yet, suddenly starting all of those things is a recipe for disaster largely. Right? So it’s setting yourself up for failure unless something else is changing like like, well, I’ve just hired two people. Then maybe, right?

And this is for everybody. So it’s nice to want to do all the things. Then we have to focus on just the things that we can do that are the best levers to pull. So If you are looking at that now, you’ve got newsletter or podcast that appears on YouTube, medium blog and your own blog.

What would you have to get rid of two of those. What would what would go?

Oh, I well, I’d I’d keep the YouTube videos. Because it’s the main content.

And then I’d probably just start the newsletter.

Cool. So let’s just uncheck.

Blogs, both of them. Okay.

And then you can make the bold move to delete.

That content underneath those columns.

Then that leaves you with something that you might actually be able to do. Potentially. Right? And then you can focus better on those things. Keeping in mind.

Lenny’s newsletter, a few people in Europe talked about it already. Lenny doesn’t have a blog, Lenny has a newsletter, Lenny has a podcast as well. Those are the two things. Lenny doesn’t even have a book. So you don’t have to do everything you just have to do one or two things consistently and like have your point of view, do them really well, keep showing up and doing them.

So yeah, that’s for everybody.

Figure out what that talk is going to be. And does it have to happen in q one? Do you have to start thinking through this in q one? What conference season?

And this is where you’re thinking through for everybody, when you’re thinking through, where do I want to speak on stage? Then you need to go and look at when those events happen. So if you’re like, I want to speak at, social media marketing world or whatever it’s called, well, that happens in February. So Let’s scrap that.

You can work on that on pitching them or getting in front of them in some way. Next fall. They’re gonna be thinking of their speaker lineup.

So think through where you want to talk, and we’ll think through more of this stuff as we go. Don’t worry. It’s not like, oh my gosh, there’s so much to do now, but we’re at the point where we’re starting to put the basic roadmap together. Like, and then we’ll work out some kinks in that. But with that, if you are not planning on doing talks in Q two, or even Q three, like the beginning of it.

Then don’t worry about that as something to work on right now. You can instead move those along to q two and three. So right now you have, I see under column under row twelve, pitch and execute this, seasonal sales offer and, etcetera, etcetera, just cut those paste them in Q2 or Q3. Then you know you have it, but it’s not puttering up. Oh, shit, I have so much to do.

Okay?

You’ve also got under book all of your outline stuff. So maybe put that under book outline instead of under book, and, then you don’t have to worry about the writing of it either. It doesn’t look like I have a job project to do in q one.

And then the product high service, cool, figuring out YouTube, LinkedIn, email list, What’s your thought on the email list? So you have outside of the newsletter, you wanna an email list, you don’t have a core lead magnet under the first block.

So what are you what’s your plan? What’s your future use of the email list?

Well, sorry. So The only reason I checked that after I had attended Purna’s product packages, productized services, and I’m still kind of thinking through this whole package productized service of the seasonal sale and when Printer was talking about she was talking about you know selling your pack just through email. And I was like, oh, that’s a really good point. If I have the newsletter, that’s not really, you know, I’ll need I’ll need automations and sale a sequence around selling that package. So that was that was honestly that was why I checked it at that point. I was like, oh yeah, I need to think about that later.

You’re right. There needs to be other things before we probably even get there. Yeah. Potentially.

Right? So, there’s lots of good ideas. And you have to rank Burna’s package idea, where does it fit? And it might, but is it gonna be a Q1 initiative for you?

I would move email list out. I would cut it, move it down to q two or q three.

Yeah. And then you’ve got guesting on podcasts.

So next to those ones all down in this third block, where it says guesting sponsoring, use the notes column, that big merge, those merge fields right next to it, to tell yourself what it is, and then to tell us too. So, are you are you guessing on podcasts which ones are they, or are you planning on sponsoring them? Because maybe you have more money than you have time.

And so think through that and then put a note there. So you’ve got research, e commerce podcasts, and then pitch them.

Pitch assets to those podcasts? Well, so, yeah, I don’t have, like, the, you know, a lot of times, like, the media kit and all the info that I’ve I know they ask for. So I just put that in as a I need to make sure I have all of the stuff for pitching them.

So you’d have to create unique assets for these podcasts.

Well Is that accurate? Yeah. I mean, I need something. Yeah. If they’re asking for my, you know, my, all the imagery or the info about me, like, all that stuff. I have not put together hack with all that stuff. Oh, so, like, your headshot and your files and, like, links.

Yeah.

But I haven’t done a lot of pitching. So this was literally again. No. That’s okay. It just feels like it’s so it’s like a like, a five minute job.

So I don’t think it belongs on your sheet. Okay. Yeah. It’s just that once you actually do it, and I think it’s a fair thing to talk about. Like, It doesn’t it’s it’ll be.

Jessica Noel is, and then you’ve written it because you can edit it later and just throw your headshot in there.

Call it a press kit, and it’s it’s done. So but it’s good that you have it. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just a little low level for this.

It’d be a nice thing to check off your to do list. It would happen really fast, and you’d be like, cool. I’ve got one done. So that could be a good reason to put it on you if everything feels too big.

But make sure you list out what podcast you want to be on. Put that under the notes field right next to it. Same seeds for YouTube and delivering your core webinar. Cool that you have those noted under begin in other queues.

Just put those over in. Leave these columns blank because this is the more you have in here, the harder it is on your brain. In my experience at least. Okay.

Any additional notes or thoughts or Jessica on q one efforts and efforts overall?

Have some feedback.

I need SOPs so bad. So please. I’ll repeat that chain. It’s, so I’m a bit of a project geek. So I I everyone looks at project management a different bit differently.

How I look at this is there’s, you have your quarters, but there’s actually twelve weeks. So the way I I’ll just tell you how I would approach it each is deliverable. So the book is a is a deliverable.

I would take that book and break it down over twelve weeks and then put the many deliverables within that and focus on Joanna says, like, focus on the twenty percent of the book that’s gonna achieve eighty percent of the result. Right? There’s little things that you’ll you’ll pick up as you you go to publish. Like, you’re not gonna be able to think of everything.

Like, focus on in each week. One would be I’ll share something after as well, like, finish chapter two or finish draft of chapter three. Like, very be very specific and the exact outcome that you wanna accomplish during that time. And another trick is to also make sure that it’s a noun, like, just to anything you put in there as long as it’s a noun, then you can pretty much rest assured that it’s it’s deliverable.

Right? And then when you get into creating tasks and stuff, then ask then add your verb, But be very careful. Like, a book is is a big project. Like, it’s a I’m I’m working on a book now.

But it I you may find it helpful to just to do that, like, take the book, break it down into twelve weeks, then figure, okay, what are you gonna use to, promote that book? Okay. You’re gonna have your podcast. So then how can you connect the two. Okay. You’re gonna need this to do this and then fit that into the twelve weeks somehow, like thinking blocks like that. That’s what I do.

A good tool that uses a, not a mind map. A, yeah, I think it’s a mind. No work breakdown structure. You know, they start at the top.

And then they go down and just use nouns and you should be you should be good to go. I’ll share mine how I did it, and it may help. Oh, it’d be great. Thank you.

Yeah.

Others, you’ve gone through this yourself. Yeah.

Chris? I have a question for Jessica.

Since I thought about it as well, and I came to a decision for mine, but how are you dealing with the newsletter and email list. Do you have two separate ones? So the substack ones and your websites one? Or what?

My plan was to do, yeah, I was gonna do like a subs sub stack and then my, own, my own site website. Yeah.

List. Yeah. Which I need to which I just completely am starting from zero because like I said, I stepped away for about a year and a half. So those that all had to be cleaned. Yeah.

Have you thought I already about how are you using the websites one? So I are you gonna send, I don’t know, like, sales emails?

Or No. You don’t have a lead magnet?

No. No. Based off of what we talked about today, I I yeah. I’m not sure. I have to think that through. I’m gonna take some time to think about that.

Good. And share?

Sure.

Well, thanks, Jessica.

That’s great. So, next steps for you and for everybody will be to start digging and first go through really clean up, what you’ve got there with an eye on, like the reality of it. Focusing only on the most important things to do. And then it’s time to start breaking it down into a way that you can act on it.

I strongly recommend using your calendar, maybe even just creating a separate calendar in Google calendars, that’s like my to do list so that it doesn’t interfere with other things. However, I do my to dos all my project management right in in my main calendar.

So I find it really useful. I find that most of the tools people try to use to manage their time They just, especially as a solopreneur, you just end up going back to your calendar. Like, it’s the single point of, like, it’s everything. It’s your, it’s your life. On the page, so go in and start blocking. And that’s where I know people struggle with theme days.

But you gotta block your time out to get those projects done. If you’re not doing it consistently, you might as well not do it at all. Because it’s just gonna be a big distraction and a waste of time.

So that’s your challenge in time for January one.

K. Can you get that done, Jessica?

Nice. Okay. Cool.

Fantastic.

K. Who wants to go next? We’re only gonna look at one more.

I don’t wanna go, but can I ask one quick question about the book? Yeah. Is that alright?

Yeah, so I have an idea for a book. I’ve I basically wanna do like, the evergreen course formula. So, like, kind of like the product launch formula, but an evergreen version.

But I I would when you said the before about getting it in airports at the top. I was like, yeah, I would quite like that.

But to do that, I I think I I I believe I need some impressive case studies, like, proof that I’ve made people millions if I’m gonna make it like this amazing book. So would you recommend I do a book now that’s kind of smaller fry, but still on day whenever green and hold out for that. Or, yeah, I’m not sure whether I should wait until I’ve got studies or just do something now? This is the the constant question is do I wait? Do you know how many how many people get their shit done by by waiting?

Like, none. Yeah. But if I if I write a book that without those case studies, it won’t be as epic as it would be if I did it later.

Like, I mean, is it just a case if I write a different book and hold out for that one? I mean, I get what you’re saying, and I hear people ask this question all the time, like, do I wait? But The time. But then you also say be patient and think long time. So But it’s all You can also yeah. And on the go ahead, Chris.

I was saying you you you can also update the book. I see a lot of authors, like, write the book and then do the updated or revised edition, right, where you can add those stuff in the case studies.

Yeah. That’s And the feedback is custom here. Right? In most cases, I have and I’ve talked about this in past, like, masterminds. Like, the number of what I would call monsters I have created is hi.

People who run with an idea when they’re not ready for it, and you’re like, whoa, pump the brakes on that. But I would start, and in your case, Abia, do know a good amount. Not a lot about you, but I’ve known you for a little bit now.

Don’t hold yourself.

Back.

There are three fears that people have rejection, which is what you’re talking about, judgment, and success.

If success is a fear for you and if rejection is a fear for you, know that those are fears.

They’re not necessary early real. Now that’s what I’ve been coached on. Those are the three fears that I’ve been coached through.

And I would say, take that to heart. You’re afraid of rejection. Is it real?

Look at all of the books that are published out there that don’t you don’t have to have fifteen studies.

You’ve got one pitch that you’re going to either pitch to, publisher or to self publishing organization like page two. These are the groups that will help you get your book out, and a traditional publisher will get it into airports. So if you wanna go the traditional publisher route, route, you have to then write, and now is the time to write your pitch letter that you would send to an agent. How can you make your book sound awesome? And that’s as far as you really have to go with it.

Is that you have done this before. So you don’t there’s two I find that there’s way too many people who say I’m not ready yet, I’m not ready yet, and then they watch as people who are less ready than they are go flying past them.

That’s me saying that has created monsters before who then slam into a wall when they go running by and it’s like, holy shit, I wasn’t ready for this at all, and like they slam into a wall or they fall off a cliff. That’s a possibility.

It is, but that’s the risk we take as entrepreneurs too that I might fly into a wall or fall off a cliff.

Very rarely does it actually happen, though, especially if you’re conscientious with the way that you’re going about it and even asking the question proves that you are conscientious about this. So I would say Go with the big idea first, go with the big dream first, and then let actual rejection.

Stop you or hold you back or bring you back to a point. And I don’t mean one point of rejection. I mean Holy shit. I’ve been pitching this It’s my six hundred pitch, and I’m still getting rejected. It’s probably time to rethink this, not the first one. Don’t let the fear of rejection.

Stop you. Let someone actually reject you. Then, then you can actually work with that. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. That’s helpful. Thank you. I know it’s scary. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it.

People it’s not scary for it, and they’re doing it.

Yeah.

The fears. The three fears. Alright. Anybody else have a question or something that they wanna share with Abby even?

No.

Cool.

Randall says, so if you are thinking traditional publisher, should we be identifying perspective agents now and quoting them on social media. Potentially, a lot of them have newsletters as well that are really, really useful.

So like go one sub stack and just look for, literary agents, yeah, if you wanna go traditional.

Yeah. And there’s a lot of information out there, out there about going traditional versus not.

April Denver is self published.

Both times. So you don’t you don’t need to go traditional at all. Nobody expects it anymore, but if you wanna be in an airport, Maybe. Maybe.

Okay.

Are we ready? Yeah. Self publishing. Pay two is like sixty grand, I think, to have them help you publish, but that’s a lot of hand holding along the way.

Page two, everybody there comes from a traditional publishing background. So you’re getting all of the benefits, without having to wait two years to publish. And have earned seven percent of this. This way, you earn a hundred percent, and I don’t think you should go into this.

To make money off your book, but it’s an important consideration. When you think of how many books you might actually sell, because you’re gonna be the one doing all the promotional work anyway, whether you go traditional or self publishing, it’s your platform that’s going to sell it. So there’s a lot to be said for self publishing.

Cool.

Who wants to share?

Monique.

Can I ask this is so curious? I have spent some time on this notion of how to publish, and I’m I’m guessing there’s some curiosity around it. So I looked at page two They have a case study where there’s actually an author who gives their article about like their whole process. So it’s really worth, I think, a read to anybody who’s interested.

Nice. Just page page two alone has an interesting resource.

The self publishing route though, can you describe that? Like, I’ve heard a little bit about it. And the idea that you’re just doing it through Kindle and you’re kinda getting it out there, is there a version between page two and self publishing that is a bit of guardrails, you know, to get you and and maybe there’s somebody out there who’s offering a workshop or a course on it.

I’m smiling at Jessica.

So Jessica has we have I worked for copy hackers on contract for a year getting our Rich rider series out the door.

Abbie Ghost wrote most of those, like, two of the three books as well.

So there’s definitely talent in the room that can walk through, like, how to self publish without going the page two route. Those for me when I asked them to work on these projects for us. Those were Lead magnet books, just using Amazon as a search engine, really. So, that was the idea there, like a better qualified searcher finding us on Amazon.

It wasn’t authority building.

It was a different initiative there. But Jessica or and or Abby, do you wanna share anything with Monique, or is this like a separate conversation we might need to have? I think we should. I think it’s a really great conversation.

I would be when I’m sorry. I forgot who was king. I apologize, but whoever was talking about traditional publishing, my question was why why why do you want to go traditional you’re doing all the work. And I don’t know.

So, I definitely think it’s worth a workshop. I know, Abby, you’re has tons of ideas about how to if you wanna talk to somebody about getting a book written, Abby’s your girl. And she she doesn’t I’m so excited, by the way, can I just say, heck? Yeah.

I feel like this is the unlock I need. And I’d even love to dangle this idea about as you’re writing a book, do you release a chapter as a lead magnet? Like, is there that push on some aspects of using chapters as they get written as material. And I just I’d love to throw it out there because it feels so big.

Like, kinda feels like this thing that’s bigger than than it should be, but if it’s broken down and used and played with in different ways, in a in a way that’s a process, it would really change my my calendar that I haven’t quite nailed down just so you know.

I think it’s just works up, Joe, in my opinion. Yeah. We could we should definitely talk about it as we get into the new year for sure.

Because there’s a lot to be said there. Right. Yeah. Everything’s content, release it, release chapters if you want to, release it over time. But but strategically, right? Like, so you’re not just putting your important chapter out to crickets.

So what can you do to really push and make the most of one or more released chapters.

Also, this fear of how big your book has to be, if you go traditional, they make you write an eighty thousand words book, and that’s just it. Eighty thousand words doesn’t matter unless you are seth godin. And, like, otherwise, you’re writing eighty thousand words and good luck getting them to sixty to eighty and good luck getting them to say anything to a thirty thousand word book, which is, again, what, April. April and I have a separate thing that we do together, which is why I talk about her quite a bit and her book publishing and her workshops so, yeah, that’s thirty thousand words for obviously awesome, self published, made thirty thousand words because you can read it in the average four hour flight, which is what her audience does.

So you don’t need a massive book, you don’t need to follow all the old rules, either. Like, traditional publishers, they’re called traditional for a reason. Like, it’s not a flattering word.

You can do a lot on your own. But yeah, let’s let’s talk about those. I did chat out also Tim Gral, who has worked with a lot of traditional, traditionally published authors like Daniel Pink to get them on the best seller list, follow him it’s absolutely worth everything.

Just one insight. One insight is that one unlocked. Right? Stacey?

I just wanted to say there’s someone I know from a a a member group of consultants that I’m in who does that thing, you know, the cut she’s got a traditional publishing background, and she does the sixty to seventy five thousand dollar you know, package to help people do their book. But she also she has a a a newer service that’s, I think, in the maybe fifteen hundred dollar range, where she kind of gets you all teed up. So you get kind of the benefit of all the goodness of her background and knowledge, and and a map of a of, you know, the the game plan for you to do. I think that I’m gonna do that for my, my next book, but she’s somebody, you know, she may be willing to, you know, do a visit in talk to us or something like that.

If there’s a if there’s enough interest, I’d be happy to, check into that or whatever. Yeah. That’s cool. I think that’s a it sounds like it’s an in between option that’s, you know, giving you the benefit of her expertise, but without the, without the high price tag of the, you know, do it for you route.

Yeah. I’m also curious what the people who, yourself, included Stacy, people who are using AI to help generate ideas and, like, find gaps and ways in, would say about, like, just the getting started too, not the not the help with writing necessarily, but, thank you. I’d I’d be happy to to share information about that at some point in this session if you want to. I did a challenge, maybe, I don’t know, three years ago, to write a book in seven days with AI, and then I did.

Brode and published a book on Amazon in seven days.

Not much of a book. It’s kind of a bar book, but it’s but it but I did it. So Yeah. Yeah.

I know, like, writing the book is a different thing and not recommended for AI, but, like, the starting stuff. Totally. Cool. Okay.

Awesome. So we’ve only got ten minutes left.

Who would like to quickly share their sheet.

What they’ve got? Right. Thanks, Christopher.

Right. Sharing.

Can you see my screen? Mhmm.

Oh. Okay.

I will own message market for a B2B SaaS by end of twenty twenty five, so I can make, two hundred thousand with thirty k of it and passive. So hundred and seventy in services and thirty k in, okay, product course sales and pay for my living expenses course sales while setting myself up to reach one million per year by twenty twenty six. My target of market managers, heads of growth, product marketing and founders will see my name. Two times a week every week because Yeah. Actually, one thing wrong here is that the two two hundred k is actually by end of twenty twenty four. But I will own message market fit by end of twenty twenty five.

Change it. Yeah. That’s because I don’t think I can own it by end of twenty twenty four, but I can reach to another k. I think you own it now. Sorry. What’s the, yeah, like is it I I am so curious about deadlines.

I I like a realistic anything. I like real.

But at the same time, like, there’s also the why not now question? Like, why not? Like, I saw that you had posted that someone said did you invent the term message market fit or something like that?

Yeah. I don’t know. So there’s, like, a signal.

I see some people using it in d to c.

Few maybe fewer in b to b, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that I still haven’t haven’t got, like, a clear idea of how to structure my processes, and it’s something that I’m gonna work on, like, the beginning of the year. I don’t know, maybe as I started working on it, then I see, like, a clear value prop that I can offer.

Maybe I get more confident.

Right now, maybe I don’t feel as confident, but maybe just a temporary thing.

Yeah. Confidence is weird that way. You will build the train and the tracks at the same time. In business. So you are building your authority while also coming up with your authority in a lot of cases. Like, what’s your IP?

And, you have to own it immediately, which is tricky, but just know that it’s not unnatural. It’s what everybody does unless you’re in academia, in which case, oh lord.

Okay. So we have the marketing manager’s heads of growth product marketers and founders. It’s a lot of people.

They are. Let’s see where you think they are.

Can you scroll down so we can see more, just to the bottom section, the very bottom one?

Oh, you have okay. So you wanna get in front of these people. I don’t see anywhere on your sheet.

Where those people are.

I mean, I’m using I think they mostly are LinkedIn and Twitter.

But I added Instagram and YouTube just because I’m doing the podcast as the starting thing for all my content. Basically, So podcast, then I’m gonna repurpose us to YouTube videos, and then I’m gonna repurpose all of the content on LinkedIn and Twitter mostly. Which I think we can swear those people are mostly LinkedIn and Twitter as well. Maybe second to Harry.

Where do you have a list of where those people are?

Well, what do you mean a list? Like a social list? Or just Yeah. Like, what does your what does the head of growth at intercom.

Where do they consume content that’s tied to master market fit? Yeah. I’m seeing most of the on LinkedIn.

Definitely. LinkedIn and newsletters of other people in b two b. Okay. So newsletters of other people. Yeah.

How do you know?

How do you know they’re on LinkedIn or the reading other newsletters?

Just been even just in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been doing outreach for the podcast, so I have nine people booked. And I’ve been looking at a lot a lot of posts. I see a lot of, Yeah. I’ve been basically filtering LinkedIn for these roles, and I’ve been reaching out and seeing them comment on other people’s posts.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. So these are people that you want to hire you Yeah. Who are on LinkedIn.

Yeah. Exactly. Cool. When it comes to newsletters, what newsletters are they reading?

Yeah. So probably stuff Lennie’s newsletter.

April done for his positioning newsletter.

I follow this other one. It’s called growth waves, even though it’s a bit more d to c.

But there are a couple of newsletters, mostly on sub stack, beehive, yes. Some people have their own, unconvert kit.

Can’t can’t come up with the names now. But I’m seeing some of them.

Okay. It sounds really gassy. And, like, that’s sort of the stage we’re in, but This is also something that everybody needs to be thinking through. There’s no point in just randomly doing stuff.

Right? So if your objective here is to get in front of let’s narrow it down to heads of growth at B2B SaaS. So if they’re ahead of growth, I would also indicate in your before you say B2B SaaS, like, or or along with that, how big they are? Are they a hundred million a year?

Are they ten a year? Are they early stage or series B? Where are they? Put it in there because that will dictate where you go.

And with that, if their heads are gross, there are Slack communities that have that are filled with women’s CROs, special Slack groups just for them. With three hundred women’s CROs in there, just sharing with each other how they do things. So I want you to think more about where your prospect really is. I’m saying this to you, Christopher, but that’s for everybody.

Mhmm.

Randomly putting stuff out there.

It’s hard. It’s a hard play. It’s it’s time consuming it’s exhausting when it doesn’t work.

So So you so you would have slack in under, like, under these. Right? And that’s just a great time. That’s an example.

This is the part where you go, oh, I didn’t know they were on Slack. I wonder where else they are. And then you go make a list. Of all the places they are.

I chatted out. You sparktoro.

That’ll help you find people who are influencing your audience. It’s what? Forty nine dollars a month to find out where your people are at so you can go pitch them.

So, yeah, there’s communities galore when it comes to SAS. There are private communities, goal. It’s something that it’s something that I can also ask sneakily in my podcast, like, at the end, I’m I’m just gonna ask, tell tell our audience where do you like to go to for some content to read stuff. Totally.

Yeah. Because Lenny’s newsletter, you can’t pitch. You can’t get there. He invites a very select group of people in.

So but who’d where does Lenny go? Who who does Lenny like watch? These are the kinds of things that you need to go out and do. And then he needs, of course, ignore Lenny because he’s like, possibly because it’s so difficult, to get on there. There’s other ways to grow your authority. So we have to choose really good one. And I know you didn’t say Lenny’s newsletter, but it’s an example that comes a lot up a lot in B2B SaaS and in tech in general.

So that’s homework for you. Where are your people at? Where are the people who influence your people at? How do you get into that network?

And faster.

If you you can own message market fit, you can own it faster.

And then you really need to be clear on, I think, what might clutter things up a bit for you is you’ve got, you want to do course sales while also doing services.

I don’t know what percentage is what when it comes to your one million a year for twenty twenty six? Is it still gonna be? Course sales are like is that fifteen percent of your total income, twelve percent, something like that, or are you ramping up more at time in which case you need to work on growing your email list now. You need to work on mastering Instagram so that you can use many chat and other tools to sell on Instagram and DMs and things.

Right? So this is the kind of stuff to start thinking through. And just like I said, this is different feedback than what I gave Jessica By the way, we were focusing on something else for Jessica. We’re focusing on something else for you.

Everybody in the room has to focus on all of these things and more.

But you’ve got a lot loaded up in q one just like Jessica did. So don’t because you don’t have any of these things. You’ve got your podcast. Right? That’s good. You’re working on that. That’s great.

But all the other stuff glad that you have your book, etcetera, down in q two and three. Your book outline though, unless do you plan on writing a book, Chris?

Yeah. It’s something I I right now, maybe not, but also maybe because I’m a bit still unclear on Like the whole plan.

Yeah. Choose.

You have to decide. Is it happening in twenty twenty four or not? And it’s la you’re allowed to say no. But then you have to have something else that you work on as hard as you would work on a book.

Yeah. Probably, then I would say right now, if I had to say now, I will probably say no to the book in twenty twenty four. Good. Then uncheck it right now.

Boom.

Oh, maybe the talk, the talk, maybe not even the talk.

Okay. Stuff already. So uncheck those next to them so that they’re no longer Yeah. Extraction.

Yes. Cool. So then we have your newsletter and your podcast sound like the big swings for content you are making, then you’ll have content that you are creating with other people, which you have down below. So get really clear on what authority you’re borrowing, like whose authority you’re borrowing, and the only way to know that is to go do some research.

Yeah. I hear you right here. Basically, I’m gonna do the research in January, basically.

Yeah.

I mean, Yeah. To me, that seems like a really minor thing. Like, you could get a VA to go research this for you. And, like, here’s twenty five dollars.

Like, my that’s it. It’s done. Right? So, be careful what you’re spending your time on.

Yeah. I mean, I I also added here, like, research just because I know this is gonna be quite a light activity.

Just because I have a lot of other stuff that I’m doing. There’s a lot. Your your first month is a lot of thinking.

So making lists, doing research, defining a value prop, adapting a process brainstorming.

There’s a lot of thinking there, and you’re you’re not gonna feel like you’re making a lot of progress. So just like go in and just like Shane was saying put nouns in place if that helps you better express to yourself that you’re going to be working on a thing, because there’s just there’s too much thinking there.

For somebody who’s the only doer in their organization.

Yeah. Actually, something that I mess up. It’s which is the podcast I’ve already booked. I know, like, eight episodes for for January. So this needs to be updated.

What’s the value for the podcast? Like, why do people listen to your podcast?

Let me let me look it up. Where do we have it?

Here, I have a document. Is it interview style?

Yes. Interview with, basically, marketers, founders, product marketing people.

I ask a question, Joanna, while you’re I love what you were saying about finding them in communities.

And this is one of the things that I’ve been noticing.

Like, Saster community, I offer it. It’s, with Jason Lemnick. He I’m kidding. It’s amazing, but I’ve never felt the ability to, like, reach out or to showcase Yeah. Experience or insights. So I don’t know if there’s a POV at some point on that.

You know, once you get in and or how you get and then not burning yourself in that moment where you’re, like, trying to find your people slowly, but quickly enough that you’re kinda creating opportunity. So Yeah. I mean, I think a good thing about a Slack community when you get invited into it. So make sure you’re in there for the right reasons.

It’s it’s the like new forum where in the past you could be part of a forum or like a more public online community and get a lot more out of it.

This way you’re just in there sharing value with other people, and then they hire you. And that’s like or and then they say like, wow, you know that. How did you know that? Can you teach our group about this? Can you run this?

So One, it’s, yeah, getting allowed into these groups, but there are so many of them. There’s so many of them. West has product led growth as a free Slack community.

And they’re not all good. Don’t get me wrong, but some are a really great place. To spend your time and add value, and then it comes back afterward. Yeah.

So just There’s lots. Dan, Dan Martel has another one. Like, there’s lots out there. Just again, if you don’t want to do the research, hire a VA to look up where these where these are.

And that’s their job. Yeah. I love it. Cool. Yay.

Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. So what did you wanna show us here, Chris? Just to see my screen here. Yep.

Okay. Yeah. So the podcast, by by position. So, basically, interviewing b2B as founders, operators in marketing, growth, and product, we dive into deep into their messaging strategies from how to do research, implement and test their copy, The goal is to help B2B pros understand their customers and turn their knowledge, plus their own expertise into powerful high converting copy that resonates.

Yeah, and basically I’m gonna do this. This is this interview segment that I’m doing to start.

Combination of interviews and casual chats with b to b as leaders discussing their company’s messaging strategy approach to research and copy writing, I see peak creation internal alignment on voice positioning anymore.

So this is kind of the idea for now.

This is the document that I’ve been sending people, like, super rough just to to book these interviews.

Mhmm. Anybody have any notes for Chris?

And probably, I definitely need a clearer and more, like, personalized value proposition for sure.

I just think you need to make sure that what you’re doing is going to light you up enough that you can promote it. Really well. You’re creating a product here. That’s what it is. It’s a content product.

You need to spend a lot of time promoting it.

So just make sure it’s the podcast you would stop everything to listen to. I know that sounds like, oh, man, that’s so big. You can do it. That’s your if that’s your job, tell yourself that’s my job to make this the best freaking podcast.

What what do I love about a podcast? You to find that out, you put your headphones in and you go for a walk listening to your favorite podcast, and then you like steal all the ideas for how they run it. Right? Of them are higher production value and cost a lot of money.

So you have to figure out, are you willing to invest money in this? Are you willing to sell to thirty thousand dollar projects and spend that money on an incredible podcast production company or not. Right? You don’t have to do that, but that’s your objective is to say what product am I building here?

And how do I make it the product that when I promote it, I will love talking about it. That’s where you need to get. And if this is it, cool. Done.

Solved. And if you think, well, that’s not what I’m doing it for, I just wanna, like, get get stuff out there. Just know that there are a lot of podcasts, just like there are a lot of newsletters and a lot of blogs and a lot of YouTube channels that people put content on, but nobody shows up for. This isn’t for you, Chris.

This is for everybody.

So whatever you’re creating, make sure you have a clear value prop and it does inspire you. It does light you up. Okay?

Mhmm.

K. Let’s look at your sheet. I have my my reasons and, yeah, yeah, I see points.

Cool.

Okay.

Any other notes for Chris on this?

I guess I was just gonna say, because I I to build off of what Joe said to you about all the podcasts out there, I’ve been noticing that I kind of have gotten sick of a lot of the podcasts. I used to like when podcasts were just kind of coming out and They all take that interview style and that’s what my old podcast was like too and I I was just curious have you seen the the, YouTube channel, the hot wings, hot, whatever where they interview celebrities while eating hot wings. Have you seen that? Oh, yeah.

I think it’s all the media. Yeah. Good. Okay. So the thought I had as you were talking about it was, I was like, messaging is such an abstract thing that of people like hire a brand voice for and then they never implement and no one it’s so abstract.

And I was like, I wonder what the hot wing’s version of a messaging thing would be. Like if you had to do that same kind of a hook where it’s not just interviews, there’s some sort of unique twist on it. I don’t know. I was just curious what your podcast would be like if you had to come up with something that was a little bit out of the box and diff does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Because I feel like I don’t know. For me, I’m just not hooked the way I used to be in podcasts.

And I feel like it’s You have an opportunity because your topic is I think for a lot of people, so I don’t know. Hard to grasp. At least is for me. So I don’t know.

I was just was curious if I put that challenge to you of what would your hot wings version of your podcast be like. Yeah. What would you do with that? You know?

That’s great. Yeah. That’s great. Thank you. And and and it’s one thing that I’ve been thinking about as I as I’m building this thing.

I’m super curious about, like, these people learning, like, the insights from the company. So I think that’s motivating for me, but also I want to make want to make this thing kind of unique and, yeah, I’ve been thinking about some stuff. I have nothing, like, defined yet, but this is a great idea. I I will definitely keep in mind.

Yeah. Finding that hook. Exactly. Like, the interesting or funny or expected thing.

Does anybody have any ideas? Nope.

Anyway, I think it’d be really fun to play with what you can do.

Doesn’t have to be that difficult either.

Yeah. Cool. Do have an idea. And this is Chris. Like, you have, messaging market fit.

Remind me. Right? Yeah. Message market fit. Yep. Yeah. You may wanna because there’s product market fit.

There’s all those other great, you know, you may wanna I love this idea of picking a fight with one, you know, in sort of bringing people on who stand for each of them and, like, you’re kinda in a lot of ways growing each other’s opportunity to define.

Just much like I’ve I’ve kinda created value creation as an area, but like value led growth is the area that I’m ultimately wanting to grow towards and there’s customer led growth, there’s product led growth, you know, and so it’s kinda I’ve been debating. Do I you know, gently and kindly and have a, like, a fun debate about, like, what’s what happens first and why, you know, what the opinions on customer led growth versus product led growth versus value led growth is. And that’s sort of the area that I’ve been behind value propositions and value creation been really thinking about.

So find your cousins. I guess put them in a room together. It’s like that fun Yeah. Yeah. So far into, like, the stuff that I’ve been looking into, there’s definitely product market fit. So a lot of people are discussing which one two goes first.

I see a lot of people saying it should get product market it should validate product market fit.

First showing, like, draft messages, then you get the problem market fit, then you test message market fit again. It’s like a back and forth. Yeah, there’s a lot of, things that I could use.

Yeah.

You gotta win those those listeners.

Yeah. Problem solution fit. Yes, Stacy just said. Exactly. All the all of them. It’s great.

Cool.

Dig it. Chris, thank you for sharing. Thank you, guys. Thanks. Next steps for everybody. Refine what you’ve put together and, simplify it for q one. You can’t do everything in q one.

I think we also have learned, like, also don’t focus on just thinking in that time in q one or in January, make sure there’s some doing going on so that you’re making progress. It’s good to think first, but there’s gotta be something that you can start acting on, good to get those wheels in motion.

Organize this in your calendar or your your task management solution, whatever, work for you right now for managing your time, use it to put this, that you’ve just graded together, so you actually get it done. And if you feel uncertain about something or if it’s like, oh, this feels hard or you’re avoiding it for some reason, bring it to the group.

Avoidance usually means like you should just work through it because it might just be something to stop doing or to do differently.

So so bring it Monique? Yeah. You wanna share your oh, wait. In the new year, you wanna share it?

Or I I could do it now. I mean, I I loved FYI, I have a young family. So I found like some of the sessions are when I’m shuttling kids around. So I haven’t been able to maybe throw myself in the hot seat, and I have listened to all the chats and the sessions and loved everyone’s feedback. So I don’t wanna take the space now if, others are playing for, but I’d love to just put it out there to know, share what I have been thinking and get everyone’s collective thoughts on it because I know I’ve been doing a lot of slacking less talking.

What is out there right now? And then I know everybody is dropping off because we’re over time, but what is it? Just tell us the thing, and then you can, like, name it and claim it. So I have been claiming value propositions, for tech companies.

And then as I’ve worked through it, and I know there’s been some discussion around, and I forget what universe of like DMs or not is value creation has really come out of that for me in a bigger sense, but it’s more strategy than it is, a singular focus. So what I’ve been really thinking about is product led growth, as it is sort of the catch phrase du jour, I would say. But it’s around really being I always look at it if there’s vision statements, there’s mission statements, there’s brand positioning statements, and where in my world of previously, like, the value proposition is where the work of creating aha moments for what you’re solving for for the user is it’s where everything comes together from under underneath it.

Benefits and features kinda all get distilled. Like Dropbox was as we all probably know was cloud storage, but it really created this point of differentiation around syncing storage and documents across all your devices as the value prop.

So that’s the work I’m doing and I have frameworks and I have work I’ve developed That’s a little bit different than, because I am link Canvas certified as a with Ash. I’ve done that work with him. And, and see the value of it, but I’m in strategizer. I’m familiar and used it a lot, but the value prop canvas, I kinda go a little bit in a slightly different direction but not entirely off mark. So I have experience.

Sometimes it’s capturing that.

Either through IP and frameworks that I create or just leveraging tools that already exist and taking my experience of getting really hard work done of being tight on value props. It’s really hard for technical founders.

And I’ve been consulting and helping founders and they’re really struggling with their value props. And so from the technical stand standpoint, they need help.

And that is the work that I’m doing.

I would love thoughts. Is value props for tech companies enough? Like is there enough work to be done out there or is the value creation or the value led growth?

Something that feels like is some, you know, a bigger platform for me to live in and that’s in a nutshell.

Where I’m at?

I have given you my thoughts on that previously.

So I stand by my original note for you, Monique.

But yeah, I know we’re at the end of our time, and I know Stacy, do you want to comment on this, or is it something unrelated to what Monique is saying? Oh, no. I was gonna I didn’t realize we were out of time. I was gonna show my, my spreadsheet.

Oh, okay. I mean, I can stay who I have a hard stop twelve minutes, but I can stay on, for those of us that would be awesome if if I can get, like, a couple minutes, that’d be great. Sure. Absolutely.

Yeah. Anybody have any notes for Monique about value propositions for tech company value? What was the other one? Value creation for tech companies? Mhmm. Yeah.

For value led growth? May maybe the only thought that I have if you use value led growth would be probably to clarify the distinction between product led growth and value led growth because I’m not I’m not sure, like, would people understand what the difference is and Yeah. I mean, product is value as well. So what kind of value are you talking about? Specifically, maybe There may be there’s a different way of saying it or you can preface it or add something after that makes it clear.

Just the that’s the only result that I have.

Yeah. Mhmm. Good. Okay. Let’s discuss over in Slack too, Monique, but thank you for sharing it.

I still get value propositions for tech is perfect. But Okay. Yep. I think April’s built something huge on positioning, which sounds small out of the gate.

And then you’re like, oh, no. It’s massive, the need. And I think the same is true for value proposition, massive need.

Okay. Cool. Stacy, please share, and we’ll wrap up in ten.

If everybody if anybody has to go, cool beans, got it. Thank you for staying on. If you can stay, that’s great, and give some notes to Stacy and maybe take some for yourself.

And, yeah, then I’ll follow-up in Slack with next steps.

Alright. Okay. So I My thing is not necessarily to build my own authority, but to to build the authority for my my one thing is my product. So it’s establishing the the product, Sassy, as the ultimate AI sidekick for marketing professionals.

And the hot minute is my, super short, podcast where Sassy is actually the host of the podcast. And it does a little, promo. It’s, you know, be become a smarter marketer in a minute a day.

And then So I have that starting going through the cycle of the letters of the alphabet. Season one would be twenty episodes. So there’s like a is for whatever, b is for whatever. That’s what the daily episodes are. That would, start January second.

I’m not sure if five days a week is the right thing if I should do it two times a week or three times or seven or whatever. So I’d love thoughts on that.

My website I’m working on now launching that by the end of December, including an explainer video. I have a a customer story project in process as well. And then I also have, an email series that’s like an evergreen educational thing called Sassy Sharp’s Secret LanguageLab Lab that goes through one literary device and in a in every email and explains the literary device and gives examples of it. These are all things that the, the software can do, like, if you want, you know, anaphora headlines or something like that. So so there’s that. That’s a one hundred email sequence.

And then narrative campaigns are story based campaigns for each different market segment. So I have all all these different segments that use my software, fractional CMOs, copywriters, messaging strategist, brand strategist, I have different, different messaging sort of dialed in for each one of those.

And then as far as the, channels, what I wanna do is take op minute and syndicate it everywhere since it’s short form, I can can launch it as a podcast, but also put it on all the socials as well.

And then my main promotion is a dark social syndicating the podcast, and then I’m just gonna get a publicist because that’s easier, and I don’t have time to futz with all that stuff myself.

Love, getting the podcast, getting the, publicist.

Any notes? I’ve been doing a lot of talking. Who would like to share?

I would just like to say Stacy. I’m in awe of how quickly you act on everything I feel like we’re on opposite ends of a spectrum. So, yeah, just my note being, like, love the ambition of the, like, the hundred email sequence and the daily publication.

Yeah.

And also the decisiveness with which you said get a publicist.

Thank you.

Agree. I think what you are able to accomplish in a short period of time is a lesson in making action and just going with it and testing.

I think you asked a question about how often frequency podcast frequency. Yes. Yeah. I I feel like do what you’ve like, it seems like you can do things really quick and and if it’s easy for you to do it? Why not? Because once you got them created, you can probably just keep using them. Right?

So twenty six.

Once those are done I figure I can do a season, and then I can, you know, release that, and then I can probably have a little bit of a pause in between, and and re promote, you know, sort of like the way a television season does reruns.

Repromote the existing ones, on social.

But, so it’s it’s like if I do, you know, if I do four days a week, I can stretch it out for to be six and a half weeks worth of promotion. If I do five days a week, it’s gonna be, you know, five days five weeks worth. So, I I was thinking, you know, seven days a week would just be too much.

You know, I don’t I’m I’m more interested in, like, if if something is good and it only takes two minutes to listen to, would you listen to it every day, or is that too much?

What’s that NPR has every morning? They have like a five minute podcast that goes out. What’s it called? Don’t remember.

Because I don’t listen to podcast, but listen to NPR, and they always say it, and they’ve been saying, like, advertising this thing for couple years now, so I doubt it’s not working.

I do like the idea of daily.

In a season, of course. So you’re not committed to life in doing this. It’s it’s do you think seven days a week instead of just five? It I’m really making it actually daily.

I was thinking five since it’s a business podcast. I don’t know. And when do people in business list in two podcasts. So, like, that’s kind of when does it fit into their routine?

Where is it? And so if it’s like, I only listen to podcasts when I on the treadmill.

And I go on the treadmill three days a week, then we can’t plan our, like, then we have, you know, you can. Guess at what day they’re on the treadmill and when. Right. Well, and also if if the episodes are really short, they’ll probably listen to two of them back to back Oh, yeah.

You’ll just Binge. And you might wait a long time though for them to stack up. Like, most of us do with, like, series on net Flicks. Like, I won’t watch it until there are six episodes.

We’re also just gonna be annoyed. So you might wait longer. But I don’t know. It depends on how sophisticated your podcast listener is.

Do they have these routines established that you’re trying to fit into?

Two minutes sounds like because also with it being, like, syndicated on social, they could also listen to it in their instafeed or, you know, on tip talk or whatever, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Which is interesting. If I can get the same content on Instagram, Anyway, there’s, I think, something to think through there.

When do you listen to your podcasts?

I don’t listen to podcasts.

Well, I think that’s interesting. I don’t. I don’t. That that that’s why I made this so short. Like, I don’t have time to listen to people talking for an hour to get one nugget. I want just the nugget.

That’s the that’s kind of the philosophy behind this. That’s what’s funny is just so also on PR. There was a whole episode last week about, podcasts and why people listen to podcasts. And the the interviewer asked that question. Like, why do you? And someone called in and was like, I don’t because it doesn’t make sense for you to, I just read the newspaper.

And what the these these guests were all saying was, that’s why I like podcasts. They force you to sit quietly and just listen to something for a while. So the medium itself, it creates fans out of people who just want to than listen for a while. So that doesn’t mean people won’t want a two minute podcast every day, but it’s it’s worth considering, especially if you’re not somebody who listens to podcasts.

So you’re it’s like writing a book when you don’t read books. You’re probably not gonna go about it the right way without doing a bunch of research on it and then starting to read too. So probably worth doing. Listen to a bunch of podcasts, see what is cool about them, like the ones that you do like, the ones that are top rated out there.

And then if two minutes a day is still your hook, then I would think through when should a person slot this into their day is it walking into the office? When do they already have their earbuds in and they’re listening that you can then stack on top of that experience that they already have. Does that make sense? Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it’s such a natural fit for, like, while you’re making your coffee first thing in the morning, like, and the hot goss. I just feel like you could be, like, while you’re waiting for the Nespresso machine to heat up, yeah, you just put your airpods in and listen to this like, perfect length of time.

Yeah. It takes two minutes to brew carbon espresso.

Yeah. So maybe it’s not called the hot minute. Maybe it’s something that’s more directly tied to having to the time that you’re standing in front of the coffee machine. It forces a habit on people. I’ve already recorded a bunch of the episodes in its hot minutes. So I don’t know if I wanna go back if we do everything.

That’s fair. But I would maybe position it in your marketing around. So help people know when to listen to. Right.

Yeah. I think that, yeah, kinda giving him a hint of, like, of of of watching it. I even talk about a coffee and tea in the, in the in the little intro blur, but changes every day. So it’s like, you know, it mentions mentions hot beverages.

Oh, that’s good. Right? So there’s, like, there’s a thing there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I know we’re at the end of our time. Okay. Thank you so much. Oh, this is great.

Yeah, I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk more about it, but cool. Exciting. And I love how clean and slimmed down. It is.

That doesn’t mean everybody needs to do it that way if you’re watching the recording. It doesn’t have to look like Stacy’s. Don’t worry, but this is good.

Okay. I’m an animalist.

That’s good.

Thank you. Thanks everybody for staying on too. And, then I’ll follow-up Slack. So we’ll see you over in Slack afterward. Okay. Thanks y’all. Bye.

Transcript

Well, we’re gonna dive, like, right in. Right in. Right in. And for those who are just joining CSP, perhaps you haven’t, done, obviously, your q one goals with us, but maybe you had them yourself and have had a bit of time to reflect on what you had set forth for yourself and where things have landed, what essentially has gone according to plan, not according to plan, better than plan, kind of, what the heck just happened.

This was never part of the plan plan. But, really, this is an opportunity to to share, and I’d really encourage everyone to take some space on this on this session. Right? We could go square by square and just hear about your reflections from q one, what your takeaways are, what you’ve assimilated and digested and taken away from it, or maybe even if you need a little bit of conversation reflection to get that from the group as well.

Cool. Has everyone taken at least some moment even if it was a passing casual moment, to reflect on their q one?

Sweet.

Cool. We’ll we’ll open it up, like, right away. Like, who feels ready to go and just share about what those reflections have uncovered. And, yeah, floor is yours.

I’ll start off since I’m a newbie, and I don’t know what to expect.

But I did have a meeting last week, and one of the things I learned was that I am on track to hit last year’s revenue goal, but that’s not my goal. My goal is to double last year’s revenue goal. So I’ve got some work to do, but it’s good to know that the business is trending in the right direction since last year was my highest revenue year. And, we did have a rocky start, meaning, a lot of work to do in January for different clients, and they were doing challenges.

And the economy was economying, so some buyers were not buying in the speed that they normally did. But we finished, March strong because we had our highest, revenue month, for the month of March for one of my clients who I’m on a base pay plus commissions sched structure. And this was our first month on that structure. Actually, January and February, we were testing it, and I did not hit the revenue goals that I wanted.

And then this month hit it out the park. So I was able to apply some of the lessons learned, and now I need to multiply those results. Mhmm.

But those are the two reflections that I have just from talking to Joanne last week.

Mhmm. Amazing. So would you say that, like, the March you just had, right, if that continues if that trend line continues, does that get you towards that doubling your revenue goal?

It can. Yes. But I need to do that with probably two more clients, to really solidify it. But at least I have an idea on what it takes.

The problem is I need two more of me, to really do that because I’m tired.

I’m, like, still in my pajamas, because I’m so exhausted.

And yesterday, I was sick, and I still had to do work. So I need to figure out something else because I can’t do March over and over again and then expect to be healthy. It’s just not gonna be it’s not gonna happen.

Yeah. Do you mind, like, just since it’s your first call, just giving us, like, a little bit of an overview? Like, what’s your agenda?

Alright. So I’m Aquania Esquarnet, the one bold enough to show up on a meeting with my mom.

And and I am the creator and founder of the Purpose of Money, a platform that teaches, women how to build wealth one dollar at a time through life insurance, real estate, and investing.

However, my email marketing business is actually my secret six figure business. I started in twenty twenty, and I did it because a client who I interviewed for online magazine and I wrote blogs for asked me to write emails to launch his digital book, which became a digital course, which became his million dollar business.

And then he referred me to all his friends. So I’ve built a email marketing business with no website, no public really announcement that I do this, but referral only, which means I’m also limited to the income that people refer to me. Right?

So last year, I made a decision to do a eighty twenty. So twenty percent of my revenue, I would like to continue to come from financial coaching and life insurance and real estate investing. And I want the other eighty percent to come from email marketing because when I looked at my numbers last year, I saw that most of my revenue was from email marketing.

With that said, I don’t really have I’m I my brands as the email strategist is ghostwriter for IG influencers, mostly people of color who talk about taxes, financial literacy, taxes and financial literacy for the most part, and a couple of coaching clients. They have digital products and digital coaching programs.

And, I do storytelling based email marketing.

So the reason I joined this program specifically is because I’m not really a sell, sell, sell, email person. I like to tell a story, hook you to the story, introduce the product.

But I do have a desire to become a stronger sales copy person. And so another one of my goals is to improve my sales copy so I can get to the sale conversion faster and then, scale my business so that I don’t have to do all the writing.

Mhmm.

Amazing. Got it.

And reflecting back on, like, what went really well in March. Right? Obviously, that revenue share, that base plus percentage.

What was the thing you delivered, right, and kind of the strategy behind it?

Yeah. So the thing that I delivered well was automations.

Not just setting them up, but creating emails in advance. I am a a habitual procrastinator.

So I like to do things in real time. I get ideas on emails in real time. So sometimes it does behoove me to write them in real time because something on the news might inspire a trend that does really well. But there are some of my clients who their lives planned out way more than mine, and they could just have everything set up and go. So my life was a little easier for the set up and go automated emails, but I still have room to pivot if the automated emails weren’t working.

That happened this past weekend. We had a challenge for a client. It started on Monday, and I was eight tickets away from my goal to pass the last challenge. And the fancy HubSpot automation was not converting.

So I I knew it wasn’t the or I suspected it wasn’t the copy. I suspected it was HubSpot and the fact that it’s a new URL domain.

So I took those emails out of HubSpot, put them in our old platform MailerLite, excluded the people who already opened the email, and I made, like, fourteen sales in a day. So I realized, you know, in real time, sometimes it’s not the copy, sometimes it’s the tech, and I have to be available to pivot. But that’s what I also did well in March is I pivoted. I I set it up, but then I watched it, and I monitored, and I changed.

Mhmm.

So yeah. So that went well. What didn’t go well is some of my clients, also pivoted their strategies, and I’m kinda grateful I didn’t do all the emails because then I would have just been doing double the work. Mhmm.

I think what didn’t go well is the VA that I have that I have draft some things that I’m comfortable with her writing.

The copy was not spot on, so I ended up having to rewrite all of it. And it was surprising because she’s been with me over a year, and her quality of work used to be better.

Mhmm.

So I’m I am contemplating, finding a replacement, or at least someone who’s a dedicated writer and not just an admin support role.

Mhmm.

And so those are the biggest things that I can mention.

Very cool. So it sounds like heading into q two, the two things that you are desiring the most, right, is, like, leverage since you can’t replicate it yourself month after month. Right? Mhmm.

And that leverage, right, can come through people. It can come through systems. Right? I’m not sure if AI is applicable in your case or if you found a way to integrate it yet.

Yeah. Mhmm.

Yeah. I do use chat GPT. I pay for it. I train it, and it has helped produce faster. There’s some stuff I still say is crap and I throw it out, but, I started as a base and then I make it better.

Mhmm.

That’s the extent that I use AI. Now if there are other ways to use AI, please tell me. Because I do wanna remain relevant, and I don’t like when people read stuff and they know it’s AI. So, like, what’s that balance? How do you still look like a human writing for a human?

Mhmm. Certainly. Yeah. There’s ways to dial in the output for sure. And, obviously, that’s worth practicing and refining, right, because of what it saves you in terms of, you know, your own personal time as well as potentially hiring and then chiefing and reviewing.

Correct? Mhmm. So there’s that aspect, and then there’s the whole systems aspect, right, and all the other things you could do to create leverage. And I’m not sure if you’ve connected with Shane yet.

He’s our, coach inside CSP who is, like, the master of all things AI. Right? So I definitely encourage you to show up to his sessions and, like, just tell him how it is. Right?

Like, this is what’s going on. Right? How do I create a system for this? Or where’s what’s something I’m not yet seeing because I don’t know what I don’t know in terms of AI capabilities?

But in terms of creating leverage, it sounds like that might be one of the quicker opportunities. And then the other one, which you’ll likely encounter over and over again in CSP, is essentially refining what your signature offer is. Right? Like, really getting it down to something that’s replicable from client to client to client so that there’s less customization, less reinventing the wheel in terms of how you get clients to how your sales process is to how you deliver it. Right? If all three of these things can be fairly standardized with, like, eighty eighty percent standardization between them all, that’s gonna save you a lot of time, and you could get more efficient in all those processes. Does that make sense?

Yes. And I never thought about that.

Sweet. Cool. Well, there’s gonna be a lot to think about, and I don’t wanna overwhelm you on the first call. I’m just grateful to have you here and have you set the standard that’s showing up for PJs. It’s totally cool, and I might follow that I might follow that lead next time.

But I will get dressed. I have a webinar later, so I will get dressed. But today, I just wanna focus on the work and not the look.

Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks so much for, leading us up. Appreciate you. Cool. Who wants to step in next?

I get Caitlin, do you want to or me?

You go ahead. You spoke first. I’ll go I’ll go after.

Okay. So I just did some reflection on my q one, and I had big goals for q one, that I don’t think were realistic or sustainable.

So looking back at that, I was like, okay. Because, you know, there’s a lot of things I wanna do. Get start writing my book.

I was I had a big goals for prospecting, which I did some of it, but then I ended up selling one of my standardized offers, which was really cool.

Mhmm.

And so I got busy with that. And then I was like, oh, no. Since I have to do this, like, I’m I’m starting to see the cracks and everything, and I’m like, okay. I need to optimize some things.

Right? So I’m working with Shane, and we are gonna create some systems and optimize the offer, which is a little bit nerve wracking because, you know, Joanna was like, it needs to be able to be done in, like, five to six days, and that’s not gonna happen with what we’re creating. But Mhmm. It’s okay.

But yeah. So I did at least hit my goal for closing at least one, standardized offer. And, yeah, I don’t really have a lot to say.

Amazing. And the offer the standardized offer that you did close, is that one completed yet? Like, fully delivered?

Yes. They are setting everything up right now to test it, and I can’t wait. So that’ll be awesome.

Yeah. Very cool.

And then the one you’re kind of, like, refining right now, is that essentially It’s like the it’s a yeah.

It’s just adding on to this because right now, I’m writing advertorials and sales pages. But then we’re gonna add in the ads, the checkout page, like a nurture sequence, and then figure out, like, what metric I can map to each one of those so that we can prove that we’re increasing revenue with everything that I do.

Very cool. And, like, I know I know delivering it in five days sounds like a stretch, but, like, based on what you’ve analyzed so far, like, what is the conservative goal of, like, delivery?

Well, it depends on what I all take on. So for this project, since I really wanted a case study, and, hopefully, that’s what we get out of this, I stretched myself more than I should have, and I was like, I’ll do the design too because I have a background in design. So I did the design, and that ended up taking really, really long.

So if I were to, like, take that off the plate and have the systems built, I think that it could probably be done within, I would say, two weeks. I’m being, you know, maybe Yeah. Conservative there. But, yeah, two weeks.

But, yeah, we’ll see how it goes. Mhmm.

Amazing. Cool. And right now, you have, like, everything you need for building the systems and testing, you know, different kind of, I’m not sure if you’ve integrated AI into it. I’m sure you are if Shane’s involved.

But We haven’t got that far yet.

We’re just, like Mhmm. Kinda just seeing what we got, and then we’re gonna start building the system. So the dust hasn’t quite settled yet, but it’s going to.

Amazing. Cool. Well, keep us posted on that. And I guess, like, what is, like, the one thing in q two that would define it as a success? Like, a fully back on track like that.

I guess just having knowing that the system is ready to go and that, you know, it’s I can I can launch it because I I’m also doing my SQL? Right? Because I realized during the audit that I didn’t really have one. So I’m doing two things for q q two. So, the way that I’ll know that I’m successful for q two is to have those two systems built, the SQL funnel, and optimizing my offer and the positioning of it and then just mapping everything out for the next client.

Sweet.

So those are two big rocks, in terms of, like QL, is your sales qualified lead funnel.

Somebody asked in the chat. I just saw it pop up. But yeah. So Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think if you know those two things, right, that could really set you up for an epic q three and q four.

But Exactly.

Did you feel like you need and want to attach a revenue goal to this quarter, or is it really about playing more the mid curve in?

Right now, it’s just the system that I want built.

Then after I see how that’s functioning, then I can Yep. More accurately attach that goal to it. Awesome. Yeah.

Very cool. Is there, like, one thing you’d want any of us to hold you accountable to this quarter, like, on any kind of check-in or just make sure you’re on track?

Just that I get those two things done, I guess. I mean, that’s yeah. That’s my goal.

Awesome. Yep. Thanks, Cody.

And we got Katie who is enduring the ice storm in solidarity with me. I just saw your email that went out, and I’m like, it’s not just me. Someone else is enduring it.

I know. Right?

Yeah. We’ve had legit ice storms here in Quebec. And, because it’s April, right, and q two, and you don’t expect ice storms in q two, I totally ran out of, like, driveway salt to, like, de ice things, and I have, like, a big, long, slopey thing because I’m in the mountains.

But one thing I learned today is that if you don’t have salt, you can use fireplace ash, and you feel extra witchy when you use fireplace ash. So yeah. Exactly. Right? I feel witchy today. That’s my mood.

And it worked. So there we go.

Oh, gosh. You had tornadoes, Cody.

Yeah. I live in Kansas. So, it’s like in in April, we get tornadoes, and, they’re all over the place. There was, like, three or four of them in the state within, like, two hours of time.

And my daughter is terrified of tornadoes because we actually had one a couple years ago in our city, and we could see it from our porch. And I took pictures of it in video, and that was huge. You know? And ever since then, she’s been really scared of it. So now, like, it’s a big you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t blame her. Like, tornadoes are freaking scary.

Right? They are. Yeah. Yeah.

Cool. Well, I mean, hopefully, these ice storms and tornadoes and all forms of natural disasters chill out in q two. That’d be nice.

Cool.

Who’s up next?

I’ll go. Yeah.

Yeah. Hello.

And welcome, Aquania and Myrna.

I think those are our two new ones. Nice to see you.

So, q one.

So I have, like, a a course side of my business, and, you know, then I’ve got the clients. And so with my workload, I just wanted to get consistent on Instagram.

Mhmm. And I did that. And that is, like, all I needed to to do in q one. So it’s like that layer is in there.

We did also do stuff, like, built out, like, a robust testimonial, like, video testimonial, collecting system.

I used the one inside copy school.

So that felt good and just like other SOPs, SOPs and stuff are always happening over there.

So did that.

Over on the client side of things, I’m actually excited because it really was the bare minimum that I had to do. Like so the CRO stuff, like, the standardized offer and then the news retainer.

I did I wanted both of my copywriting clients, my main ones, to transition over into that, but one did. So Mhmm.

That was kind of all I wanted there.

I did want to do more market research for my standardized offer, and so I kinda need I did a little bit, but this coming quarter, I wanna do more.

So yeah. So, I mean, that that was q one. It was just getting through the workload and getting consistent on Instagram and the bare minimum for setting the foundation of starting to layer in the standardized offer.

And now I’m so happy because quarter two, one of my retainer clients, we parted ways. And that is, like, the best thing that I think could happen because now I’m like, I have space now I to build up the standardized offer, and that’s, like, my conversion rate optimization offer. Yeah. And that is what I want to sell from here on out.

So, yeah, my first q two goal is just to get my SQL up. Like, I was purposely not even working on that because it just wasn’t a focus. I just needed this, like, course stuff. So get my SQL stuff just in nine grid or something on Instagram, just some initial information.

I don’t have the bandwidth yet to create content, for that side of my business. I have a separate Instagram account for my CRO stuff. So just nine grid SQL because I have some networking stuff coming up this month.

And I’m launching my course, doing a live launch. So I wanna just keep it at that. And then if I could maybe have, like, one more baby step with my CRO stuff, like like, maybe towards the end of the quarter, find the bandwidth to also properly be, like, building an audience around that.

Okay.

And I did yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s it. I I did buy, like, a a course the other day from Latisse Hudson of, like, just setting up Facebook and Instagram ads.

So maybe if I do, like, just a really even if it’s just audience building Yep.

I like her promise of, like, just three or five dollar in ad spend a day. Mhmm.

So I think maybe playing with that, doing the beginnings of that for the course side of things for next quarter.

Yeah. That’s a superpower if you can acquire that skill. It takes so much pressure off. But I love that. I love how you’ve, obviously, like, let go of one of those retainer clients and feel amazing about it.

I definitely resonate with the relief when you let go of something that was taking up a bunch of bandwidth that isn’t the thing. Right? Isn’t the thing now. Is it isn’t the thing later, and it just liberates that energy.

So, yeah, I love that.

In full transparency, they let go me.

No.

We’re we’re we’re gonna phrase it the other way around.

Yeah. But they were, like, they were very easy to work with for, like, over a year, but they did there’s lots of stuff, like, a couple little, like, red flag things. Like, we would sell out their launch every time we live launched. Like, I made her so much money.

We just had another not I made her. I was a part in making that. But they were the type where, you know, we’d make, like, one twenty five, one fifty sales in a launch, and then they’d be like, alright. They they would just wanna randomly double it for the next launch instead of Yep.

Instead of mapping the math. And I would try to so I I they were always disappointed. And I’m like, you had a multi six figure launch, like, again, and we had to, like, stop sending the sales emails again because you sold out of your seats. So it’s all good.

So the client that I do still have, she is, like, my dream client. I am, like, fully in control of their marketing in all their back end. They trust me with everything. But yeah.

So Cool.

Yeah. Clients are gonna client. That’s, like, the one thing that has been true for the last ten years that I’ve been doing this at least.

I have I have, like, a similar case, like, a client that, like, the last launch I did for them, like, just absolutely crushed. It was one of their most successful. And, like, now it just delivered everything for the next one, and it’s, like, sabotage city. Right? It’s like, where did this come from? And it’s like, I took in a client. So Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

But that’s awesome. I think, like, if I could just, like, add one thing. Like, I’ve been having so much fun just, like, testing and playing around with Instagram ads. Like, the cost per lead on that and, like, high quality leads from boosted carousels to webinars has been crazy good.

So if you can have if you can have carousels that feel like organic content Yeah.

But yet slide into, obviously, the thing thing.

Yeah. The cost per lead on that has been amazing on US based audiences.

All you’re doing is just boosting here and there, or do you also have So I’m boosting every carousel, essentially.

I haven’t been testing with boosting reels, like, one piece one style at a time.

But carousels, especially if you can master the art of the first slide having a really compelling hook while also still being hyper relevant to your audience. Right? You don’t wanna make the mistake of, like, a crazy good hook that’s going to resonate with too many people that just ain’t it. Yeah.

But if you can master that balance, yeah, I’d be so curious to see what your cost per lead is. Right? I think the the one challenge I’m seeing, right, is, like, obviously, people going from Instagram straight into, you know, another ecosystem, like, where they’re not in a buying state. They’re in, like, a dopamine scrolling state.

But if you can capture the email on that next thing, do. Right? You can also test that with, ManyChat instead. But, yeah, different ways to go about it, but definitely seeing positive indicators on the Instagram side.

And Awesome.

It so beats, like, posting four times a day to try to grow organically. So yes.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Thanks for that. And I’m glad those are working out for you. That’s I’m happy for you. That is awesome.

Cool. So, like, what’s one thing that would really make q two, like, an epic, this worked quarter for you?

Having the SQL funnel done and starting to create content, on that side of things, just the beginning of things, Having a sec somehow without having that set up, still, like, getting a client. I I am there’s a couple cool things happening this month in person.

Mhmm.

So if I could turn a relationship there into a CRO client, that would be an epic win. And then if my launch did decently, just somewhat decently, that would be an epic win.

And yeah.

Awesome. Cool. Well, we will be following up on all of the above.

Okay. Cool.

Awesome. Thanks, Caitlin.

Thanks, Ray. About to ask questions.

Go for it. Kayla, are you up for a receiving question?

So your client who because I have this issue with one of mine, but we normally combat it with data. Right? Like, hey. Last time you did this, and so based on the leads, the conversion rate, like, the most you’re going to make is this. And then the the low goal is this, which you proved they made. Right? So are they basing their their feelings on data, or do you think they just wanted to work with someone else?

I think so. The for the first thing, like, they do claim to be doing a lot of stuff, like, in terms of data.

Mhmm.

But, they, like, kinda keep me at an arm’s length. Like, I’m so and I kinda haven’t pushed it. But with, like, their goals, I would kinda question it and be like, hey. You’re, like, you’re you’re doubling your sales goal without doubling your email list or, like, close to doubling your email list. Like, that is certainly a stretch, but they would be like, we’re confident we know, like, based on how their Facebook ads are doing, based on how x y and z. They’re like, we we’re confident we know that we can get there. And it would be like a mystery of, like, how they could get there.

But, you know, with your second question, yeah, I think there also is, like, a level of they said they wanna bring it in house. They want to be able to pivot quickly.

They said that, like, they didn’t always have and their one valid thing is I’m terrible with deadlines. Like, I will be the first one to tell people that I struggle.

And and it’s just because my workload is too big that I couldn’t let anyone go because financially, I’m like, no.

So I know that that hindered me. Like, so if anything for me to, like, review and look back on, I’m like, I know that. But I would, like, unabashedly just be like, I’m late. You’re getting it when you’re getting it. So that did kinda knit me and kick me in the butt this time. But, yeah, I I for, like, I I don’t know. Like, I don’t know if it is a performance thing or if they just wanna in house, they just wanna take over, they just think that they can do better.

I don’t know.

That’s really good, and it’s actually really helpful for me. So some I have one client who also is taking their email marketing in house, but to save money. And I couldn’t take the in house job because it was too much of a cut for me. And then the other thing that you said that, so I can definitely relate to that, and that is happening with some people.

But, yeah, I do try to focus on data, and I try to keep my own stats as much as possible.

But I understand what you’re saying, and I think you’ll be happier.

So Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Awesome. Who wants to jump in?

I’m happy to go.

Yeah. You’re up, Katie.

Okay. So I opened my goal setting doc and then got kind of overwhelmed with frustration, so I didn’t read the whole thing.

I think maybe, Cody, this is similar to what you said, but, like, my my key one goals were very ambitious and perhaps, you know, written from that belief that, like, I will become a new person in the new year who has different habits and and, like, a different relationship with time management.

So the goal that was accomplished was that I closed my first ever client for my signature offer.

So that’s great. That’s a huge win, especially since I have been marketing it since, like, September.

And this was the first one I feel I’m like, life habit of mine is that I always go to the biggest, most complex thing and then just keep going with that versus starting with an easy sell and then working up to the big complex thing. Mhmm.

But this is the second time I have proven that if you wait long enough, it will eventually work. So it’s not the fastest way, but it did work.

But that has obviously unlocked all these other challenges of per my goals.

Like, what I what I did read was twenty twenty five will be a success if at the end of the year, I employ five people and I’m generating four hundred k in revenue.

And that was based on I would really like to be hiring copywriters because I like strategy and marketing and sales, and I don’t really like delivery.

Like Mhmm. I just all of my really, like, excitement about the project kind of goes up in smoke, like, once the project’s closed.

Mhmm.

So in this ideal world, I’m hiring a copywriter.

Also, I’m you know, we’ve got the optimization retainer on the back end. So I’m I’ve got this one project sold, then we’re going into the optimization retainer.

I would like to hire and train and keep selling.

And yet, in the real world, never delivered this offer before. So, like, zero SOPs exist. I’m very much making like, not that I’m making up as I go along because I have been refining the framework, but I’m applying the framework for the first time.

I’m kind of figuring out, like, do these hypotheses actually Mhmm.

Work. Right.

So that I’m like, the the this this will go live mid May.

Retainer kicks in June first.

And you know what? I’m still marketing, but I also like, do I even have the bandwidth to sell another one right now?

Like, I could book a call. I mean, I’ve I’ve said that I only wanna sell one signature offer a month, so, like, they would be starting in May.

But I still don’t even know that I have the capacity on my own to be, like, you know, on calls with people, like, doing the doing the sales qualifying stuff.

So I don’t know if it’s that I need a reality check or that I need, like, some systems in place to help with that. But, yeah, I’m, like, celebrating the win while also kind of looking forward for this quarter being like, what is a realistic expectation, and how can I get that get the realistic expectation as close to my ideal as possible?

For sure. What’s the price point on your offer again?

Twenty k.

Right.

So if you did close one tomorrow at twenty k, would you be able to figure it out, like, between maybe getting like, a second one?

Yep. If you sold a second one tomorrow, like, would that excite you, and would you be able to, like, get the help you need to deliver it, or it would put you into panic mode?

It would probably put me in panic mode, but I tend to do well ish in panic mode. Like yeah. I feel like yeah. Go ahead.

So so you’ve created like, you’ve already done the work for the one you sold. Right?

Like, it’s being deployed in May No.

It’s so I did they bought the audit. I broke off the the research phase as an audit. They bought that. So that has been delivered. And now, just on Tuesday, we had the kickoff call for, like, the copy like, the actual execution and implementation. So the writing and the implementation is happening over the next four to six weeks.

Got it. Cool. So that’s gonna be your opportunity, right, to systematize it even, like, minimum viable SOPs for it. Right? Like, don’t get, like, the perfectionist mindset here and feel they need to be, like, beautifully and perfectly documented.

Okay.

But but just gauntlet thrown.

Okay.

Like I’ve seen this a lot.

But, like, simply, like totally. Like, document your process of delivery, right, from, like, what am I thinking about? What am I doing? What am I delivering? Right? And you could definitely use AI systems to turn that into a checklist. Right?

And then, right, once you’ve done that, you’ll either have some SOPs, right, to ideally maybe partner with somebody, right, who is already fairly competent. It’s probably not gonna be refined enough to take somebody who’s never in copy before, right, and have them deliver, like, up to your standard.

Or perhaps you’ll have the confidence of, like, next time I do this, perhaps I could do it in half the time, right, where your dollar per hour literally doubles. Right? And I think that’s an ideal place to get to first.

One thing I’ve noticed with standardized offers is, like, you know, the efficiency scale. Right? Like, from project to project to project. Right?

I get better. I get faster. I get more confident, and my systems get tighter. Right?

So, ideally, right, you can get to a place of confidence following this one where almost you’re like, I want to do the next one. And just like, I love the goal of seeing how much I can make per hour. Right? Like, I’m like, you know, make the sale for ten grand, fifteen grand, and, like, how many hours can I do this and then still deliver up to my standard? Right?

And I would challenge you to do that. Right? Like, calculate how many hours it takes, create the SOPs, and then, like, get excited about slashing the time to deliver the same quality in half. Right?

And see if we can I like that?

My ADHD likes the gamification of that. It’s like, normally, I hate time tracking, but I’m like, I like the idea of challenging myself to be better.

Yeah. It’s so much fun. Like, I mean, at least I geek out on it. Because this wasn’t a game that I was able to, like, play with myself, like, two years ago.

Right? Like, without AI, without a standardized offer, this game doesn’t exist. Mhmm. But with those two yeah.

Like, it is within the realm of possibility to cut delivery time in half the second time you do something, which I think is really fascinating and really cool to lean into.

So, yeah, I’d, I’d encourage you to bring some joy in that gamification if that’s how your brain kind of aligns with it.

And once you’ve done that, I’d say, like, once you’ve delivered the second one or the third one at a level of efficiency that, like, you know, gives you confidence to sell more of these things, that’s when maybe you can consider, like, getting some help. And maybe at that point, like, you’re so freaking efficient with this thing that you just feel amazing making twenty grand in five days because that’s what you could do. Right? And I don’t think anyone would really complain about making twenty grand in five days of work. So, yeah, see where that lands. But in the meantime, if, like, your funnel is, like, obviously working and up to speed, like, I’m guessing that’s where this client came from, like, from your workshop funnel?

Or no.

This came from a a direct pitch.

Okay. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Is that something that you’re gonna be replicating, like, in your marketing process?

Or Yes.

But, yeah, I have kind of gone into this. I’m, like, potentially success sabotaging mode of being like, okay. Now pull back all pull back all marketing in case somebody else reaches out and you can’t handle it. But, yeah, I do think that pitching works really well just because the offer is contingent on their existing offer suite and ecosystem.

It helps for me to hand select.

Right. Very cool. I love it. Get out of self sabotage mode. I think it’s the ice storm that’s messing with your brain.

Right? No one want like, I definitely didn’t wanna do work today. Like, I saw that and, like, I’m gonna self sabotage every opportunity I ever have because I just wanna stay in bed. But no.

You got this.

I think it’s I did work in the dark with a candle burning, and it was really cozy, so I thought I want the witchy vibe.

Because you lost power or you wanted the witchy vibe?

I just wanted the witchy vibes.

Right? Nothing wrong with that. Cool.

I think. Right.

Yeah. Congrats on that sale. I think it validates it. Your marketing works. Your sales works. And now, obviously, you’re refining delivery, and that’s gonna give you confidence through q two. So, yeah, keep us posted.

Thanks, Katie.

Alright.

Anyone else wanting to share their q one, their q two, their own version of their own witchy vibes?

Or I guess I’ll go.

Alright. You’re right.

Let’s just say that, my q one went to shit in a very quickly.

Went to shit in February. I got really, really sick. So February was lost, half of March.

So now I’m basically starting over.

But, really, it’s q two is about being consistent with the newsletter, actually creating a newsletter, and then getting my SQL funnel built up.

So really getting that authority and then the funnel going.

Cool. Which one has, like, priority for you?

Like, obviously, we’re gonna get Priority for me priority for me is gonna be the newsletter, really building that authority Mhmm.

For my standardized offer.

Yep. Sweet. What do you see as, like, the connection between the newsletter and selling your standardized offer?

Really, the newsletter is gonna be around, my standardized offer is, lead gen and sales funnels.

Mhmm.

So, it’s really kind of everything to do with funnels, emails, ads, CRO, just kind of building my authority that way.

I do have a project I’m working on right now. So, hopefully, I’ll have well, according I I did see Cody. I did see Shane’s deal the last month. Mhmm. Oh, you lucky duck you.

Yeah.

Nobody’s sure what they mean. And then all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, hey.

Let me help with that.

That’s like, yay.

But I liked his idea of you don’t need the the case studies is, like, you need to show the metrics and the ROI of what you can offer the company.

And since I don’t have any case studies right now, it’s like, oh, I like that idea. That, I could sell.

Yeah. I I thought that was very eye opening too.

Yeah.

So it’s like, okay. I don’t need to worry about a case study. I just need to get these get the newsletter consistent, get the funnel built, and then, really, when I get somebody in, you know, pitch them with the ROI calculator and show them what I can make them.

Yeah.

So that’s kind of where I’m going for q two.

Oh, so by the end of q two, we have a newsletter that is up and running. Is it a weekly newsletter?

Or biweekly.

Biweekly. So twice per week or once every two weeks?

Once every two weeks.

Is there a standard of what biweekly means, or am I right task which one it is? Because I’ve been confused my entire life.

Biweekly is you usually once every two weeks.

Okay. So what would be twice per week?

Or wait. No. Biweekly. Not weekly. Monthly. God.

Bi monthly.

Not enough coffee this morning. Sorry.

Not enough.

Alright. We gotta reload. It’s both. Right? You could anyway.

It’s both. Yeah. No. Biweekly is bullshit. Yeah. That would be way too much. Yeah.

Yeah.

I remember, like Oh, bimonthly.

So once every two weeks. So two newsletters a month.

Very cool.

So never promise a month.

Let’s just leave it.

There you go. Never promise your clients biweekly calls because they’re definitely gonna expect one and you’re gonna deliver the other.

So Yeah. So Cool.

Sweet. So we look forward to seeing newsletter established biweekly and your SQL funnel. Correct?

Yep. Yep.

Sweet. Awesome. Cool. Alright. Who has not shared yet? I’ll go. Perfect. You’re not.

Do, and separately, since I since I’m just starting all this, I had already made, kind of a a year’s plan, and I realized that that’s probably the problem.

I shouldn’t be doing a yearly plan. I should really just be doing right now now a quarterly plan. So, the quarterly plan that I put together, it just it didn’t even happen. It it’s and and I listened to all of you talk, and I wrote down a lot of notes because I was like, well, why are my goals not realistic and sustainable? Why does everything feel so overwhelming?

I think part of it is that I didn’t know what I was committing to. I wasn’t sure if the path that I’m on is even the right one. So it felt like I’m writing these goals, and I and I was still developing my vision of what I want out of all of this.

It’s kinda why I’m here. And Mhmm. But I didn’t really know, like, you know, I’m I’m I was starting to do things before I’d actually thought through things. Mhmm.

And I realized also that I do everything myself, and I don’t have enough time to execute everything. You know? I’m I’ve got a a three day a week client retainer project for the rest of the year that I am working on that does take up time.

I have this little client that I just cannot seem to just offload and get done.

I’ve got a personal I’ve got a major move happening.

So I’m like, oh my god. This is all you know, it’s all taken all of this out. But at the same time, I know, you know, it’s partly my own standard of work is too high. I do I don’t have necessarily a standardized offer system, and and that’s something we’re actually working on right now.

And and I also feel like some of it is a mindset problem. It’s my inability to focus on one thing instead of trying to do all of the things at once, which is a big panic. Right? It’s, I feel like I’m constantly on a hamster wheel and panicking about what I haven’t done versus just getting something done. Mhmm.

So if I ask myself, well, what do I wanna get done in q two?

I I think the answer is that I need to do something that revolves around systems and creating systems and not revenue goals because I’d Yep. Because I do have a revenue, you know, revenue coming in no matter what with this other client that covers what I need.

Perfect.

Yep.

So that that’s first.

You know, I think that, you know, there’s a lot of things I could be doing first. Clearly, I could be doing things like, you know, working on my visibility, my authority. I could be billing I have, like, zero email list because I usually I don’t get clients that way. Mhmm. But that’s not gonna work for what I wanna do. And so or do I focus on defining and building that standardized offer that I need to be building along with really developing this framework that I’ve been creating?

Yeah.

So yeah. Or should I be testing it on an actual real client? And I’m worried that if I test it out on a real client at this point, because it’s not really done yet, is that it will dis distract me from actually building up the system.

Mhmm. Right. Well, you touched upon, like, one thing that is, like, super relevant to everyone, and it resonates with me. Right?

That, like, capacity is always gonna be a constraint. And when I make goals, I overestimate capacity. Like, just guilty of it. Right?

For some reason, I think that my business exists outside of me as a human being with biology. Right? And, you know, doesn’t quite work that way. Right?

Like, you know, kids get sick. People get sick. Right? People get tired. Ice storms happen.

I slip on ice. Tail bones break. All these things happen.

And sometimes you just don’t wanna, and then you do wanna. Right?

So, yeah, it’s like capacity as a constraint could be a limiting factor, could be a beautiful thing. I think once you get real really honest with it, right, like, it just cuts away so many of the things that you could be doing, but it just doesn’t crack the list. Right? Like, from everything you just said, there are a few things that serve you, like, long term, right, with where you wanna go.

Right? I think, like, systems, a standardized offer is part of a system. Right? And I think if your financial needs are covered in the interim, that’s like a beautiful place to start.

Right? Like, you can create leverage from this position you’ve already earned. Right? You can leverage all the stuff you’ve already done, all the financial resource you already have and have ongoingly, and use this period to set yourself up for the next chapter of your business.

And I think that’s a great place to be, and it just begins with acknowledging capacity. Right? You just said it. Like, I have two days per week, right, to really dial this in.

Right? That’s, like, how many hours per week realistically. Right? Because I don’t know if you can hit eight hour days.

I can’t hit them, and I’m Yep.

Like No.

Not right now. I’m in that one. Yep. Now with the correct today even trying to move and all that stuff. Yeah. I’m lucky if I get four hours a day of solid work right now.

Totally. And magic can happen with four hours a day if they’re being properly applied. Right? Yeah.

So it’s like there’s so much danger in overestimating how many hours you have and then running into the reality of, like, oh, shit. I don’t have that. That’s where overwhelm comes into play. That’s where self defeat comes into play.

Right? But it’s, like, eight hours a day. How are you going to, you know, apply those to really be a pivotal turning point?

It it’s, it’s burnout. I mean, you know, I’m coming off of two years of of severe burnout with Mhmm. This client that I let go in January.

Right.

And I’ve shifted to a client that is much more appreciative, much more the work is much more strategic. It’s not just a shit ton of copy and, you know, like like, I was doing an entire launch in on in three weeks. Everything being designed, copy, and everything. And I just I was doing that for three years, and I can’t do it anymore. And Yep.

I think I’m still getting used to the idea of space Mhmm.

And what it what space does mean and and, you know, and what does it mean to be not burned out. But I think it’s also about trying to do something consistently that will restore the confidence that I have in my abilities. Because right now, I think that that client has just trashed my confidence.

Mhmm. And we were doing consistent six figure launches. It’s it’s crazy. You know? And and but we were doing, like, ten launches a year, and I can’t Mhmm. You know? I I I need to focus that energy on myself, and and that’s a really hard shift right now.

Yeah. And you’re just coming out of that. Right? You said that that stopped in January?

Yeah. Yeah. And I picked up this other client in February.

So Yeah.

Luckily, this client is just it’s it’s a totally different pace, and they wanna do things right. And it’s it’s just so different, and I’m doing different work.

Yeah.

I’m not really copywriting anything.

I’m doing, like, strategy, and I’m doing wireframes, and I’m doing, you know, helping with that kind of work. And so it isn’t the Mhmm. It’s definitely like Sherbet right now. Mhmm. All very different.

Does your system relax if you assure that it’ll never have to do that shit again and run through that? Like, does it mean when you say that?

Yeah. It’s interesting. I hadn’t really thought of it that way. But yeah. Yes. I mean, the day that I quit, I was like Yeah.

Being on air, and there was a different palatable release, I guess, that happened. Yeah.

You know?

Just yeah. It it is.

It’s it but I think my nervous system is still, like Mhmm.

It makes sense. Right? It’s been running on that for a while.

I think It’s a lot it’s a lot of PTSD from being there.

Yeah. What might be useful and, like, take it as an invitation, not as a hard recommendation. But from this place that you’re in right now, you get to set your own standards, right, for what this chapter of your business and career look like. Right? And it could be, like, three to five things that you’re available for and not available for. Right?

And just repeat them and just assure your system that, like, these standards are nonnegotiable. Right? We’re not gonna settle for this kind of dynamic where we’re on a constant creation cycle, right, without Yeah. The ability to take a breath, right, where your new standard might be working with clients who appreciate you.

Right? That’s not a standard for every copywriter. Some copywriters will just, like, do the job if that’s the job and the relations are what they are. Right?

But, like, you do set that standard for yourself. And I think coming from a place of burnout, that would probably help you a lot.

It it does. And that and that actually was the standard for working with new clients at this point. Mhmm. It’s a it’s a very different standard because I’m, you know, I took a cut in in what I’m bringing home in revenue, and that’s okay for now. Yeah. But I see it as a necessary reset in order to you know, I made this I made this expert a lot of money over the last five years.

And Mhmm.

You know, her her parting words to me were basically like, well, I wasted all this money on marketing over the last Oh, gosh.

And I was like, oh my god.

You know? And and coming from that sort of abusive feeling, it’s I just will I’ve learned a lot to never put myself in that position again.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m sorry that lesson was so harsh, but I’m happy to see that you are translating those into pretty fierce boundaries. And, hopefully, over the coming weeks and months, your system will continue to relax, and you’ll feel essentially, the new chapter that you’re leaning into from it.

But, yeah, it’s it’s crazy. Client clients will climb. Right? We said it earlier. Right? Like, I’ve had clients too in the past, right, where, you know, I’ve tried to convince them with data and beliefs can be rigid.

Right? What they want is rigid. Right? And, obviously, data and calculators and ROI improving all this is super helpful and necessary.

Like yeah. Some arguments, some battles, some dynamics just aren’t meant to sustain is what I realized. And I think that when you have confidence in your abilities and your skills and your who you are, right, it’s like there’s no such thing as, like, you know, losing a client. They’re scanning the opportunity.

Like, what you can do with cleared up bandwidth and cleared up mental space and cleared up energy, like, it’s probably far more valuable than what we settle for in suboptimal situations. So, yeah, I think that’s something to proceed with confidence on. And I could just keep yapping for two more minutes to, like, fill the space, but I wanna know if there’s any, like, closing thoughts, reflections from anyone here. And, yeah, floor is yours.

Hey, Roy. Can I just quick share mine?

Yep. Oh, of course. Sorry.

No. No. No. You’re cool. I first quarter, I just let myself off the hook with all things authority. I didn’t have to worry a ton luckily about client stuff because I was booked.

Mhmm. So and this is gonna sound insane, but second quarter, I’m not letting myself off the hook with authority. I’m figuring it out, but I think it’ll match. My number one target is I kind of have three core offers that I really need to decide what’s the standardized offer and what’s really either needs to be cut or maybe further down the line as I develop the book agency stuff. It’s at the different stages of writing, publication, and ongoing.

So, anyway, so the target is to sell at least one of each of those offers in this quarter for all sorts of other reasons. Right? It’ll I have to build my authority to get those in. I have to do cold, warm, all that kind of stuff. And then also the SOPs and all that will continue to get better as I do it. So, yeah, that’s basically it.

Yeah. And do you feel like you have, like, a clear pathway for selling all three offers?

Like, do they have similar marketing or a similar avatar?

Similar in that yes. Just different stages because, obviously, they’re different stages of the process. But, yes, I think so. Prana and I walked through, how I could do it. So I have kind of a thirty day challenge. She’s kinda a gauntlet she threw down for me. So I have, content marketing kind of cold pitching, all the things, basically.

And I’m guessing you’re already a few days into the thirty day challenge?

I am. Alright.

So when should we be following up with you?

Let’s see. Well, I it ends officially on April thirtieth, so May first. And the only thing I might need accountability on is I did get a project in closed yesterday, but it wasn’t one of the three. It was, like, a pre project to prove value to my standardized offer, and I tend to do that. I instead of holding to my guns or really figuring out the sales call or what I need to do to convince them on the standardized offer, I’ll adjust and you know? Does that make sense? And so I kinda created another freaking offer, and I it’s I don’t wanna do this, but it might convince them to invest in the standardized offer after this project.

But Is it is it profitable for you to prove yourself in that way?

Like, it’s a next question out of rhetorical one.

No. Yeah. I figured it out, and it’s it is profitable. It’s something I can quick turn around. And, I mean, I always love I don’t like turning turning away good decent money. So, for me, it gets me excited anyway.

Mhmm. And I love the person. So yeah, the I think it’ll be okay, but I could be sing singing a different tune in a few weeks. Who knows?

Alright. I think it’s a good test. Right? But, ultimately, like, you know, with three and a half offers, that could get complex pretty quick.

Yes.

And I’m sure by the end of the month, you’ll have greater clarity on what stays and what goes.

Exactly. That’s what I’m that’s all I want is just clarity.

So Very cool.

Awesome. And sorry if I’m missing you.

I was looking at, like No.

No. No.

It number squares. Thank you.

Yeah.

I appreciate the time.

Awesome. Beautiful. Well, any, closing thoughts or reflections?

Is there time for a question?

Yeah. Totally. If anyone doesn’t need to jump off, definitely feel free. But, yeah, I’m, I’m not in a rush, so go for it.

Okay. Thank you.

So totally switching gears.

I’m working on so this is the first time I’m in my client’s tech, and we set up a split test of their evergreen sequence. So we’ve got the control, and then we’ve got the new sequence.

And I realized yesterday, I might have made a mistake.

In the automation, should I have so the the old sequence, it has, like, the thousands of people who went through it before. So when I just do quick glance looking at, like, open and click rates, it’s the the thousands of people. And then, obviously, the new one is, like, the sixty people who came in yesterday.

Mhmm.

Did I mess up? Like, I because I’m thinking, like, I should have just duplicated the old sequence, like, started everything at zero.

Mhmm.

So my question is, should I just go to the client and try to make this change now, or is there a workaround I could do for April and then make that change in May to, like What’s it? Figure out the What what system are they in?

Kit.

Kit. Are you able to just kind of, like, track the monthly of the old ones so that you’re not seeing all the old data?

I haven’t figured that out easily. I I haven’t.

Maybe. I don’t think so, though, because there’s no filters to to customize, like, date range when I’m looking at the reports of a sequence.

Right. I would double check just to see if there’s any ways to filter the data to only get a snapshot of the last seven days, fourteen days. Right? Because you you definitely want to have a comparable side by side time period of both. Right?

Because, like Yeah.

Those thousands of people who’ve been through that sequence before, I’m guessing that’s been over the last year or two.

Or Yeah.

Yeah. Right? Mhmm.

So different context. Right? You know, different exposure. You definitely wanna compare, like, leads now versus leads now, right, to get a true accurate snapshot.

So, yes, if that’s not possible via, filtering, if at all possible, yes, to, like, duplicate it right and, yeah, get it clear. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Is anyone more techie than I am have any, feedback on that? Yep. I think just like oh, go ahead.

I was gonna say, yeah, Caitlin, your your gut is right. You should have duplicated and then set that against your new.

Yeah. I’m not familiar with kits, so there has to be a way to filter date filter, or there should be.

Yeah. I’ll ask their support team.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I there was so much other stuff. I was, like, figuring it out, and it was taking all so long.

And then I’m like, shoot. What, like, an obvious oversight? Like, how did I do that? But okay.

Cool. Thank you, everyone.

It’s easy to do. I’ve done that before.

Now you know. Lesson learned. But, yeah, you definitely don’t wanna have your funnel go up against results from a different context, right, and people who’ve experienced different things. So yeah.

Cool.

Alright. Well, hopefully, no more natural disasters.

And, yeah, I’m still here for the witchy stuff. So keep that up, spreading ashes, lighting candles, and doing all the things. But, yeah, have an amazing day to everyone, and definitely keep in touch on the chats and reach out on any follow ups from anything today or even just things you’re looking on that you feel I could help with. I’m here for it. So welcome to the new folks. Thanks for showing up and sharing so bravely and awesomely, and, talk to you guys soon. Bye for now.

How I Plan My Week, My Quarter, My Year and My Next 5 Years​

How I Plan My Week, My Quarter, My Year and My Next 5 Years​

Transcript

I am so excited about today’s training because, hey, we are going to be continuing with the awesome twenty twenty five goal setting workbook, and I will be walking y’all through how we’d be approaching this and, you know, just putting your purpose statement together and putting your plan there because by now, all of you have your vision in place. I had lots of fun listening to all of those arranged ideas in the right section as well. So that was very cool.

But now we wanna kind of bring everything together.

Put a plan in place so you can start looking at what is it that you would be focusing on and also looking at twenty twenty four and how how that’s done. Right? So without further ado, I am going to share screen and walk you all through my version of the workbook.

Okay. Got it.

Mhmm.

Let’s see.

Y’all should be able to see the workbook, but I’m gonna blow it up.

Cool. So, okay, let me kind of give you a little bit of context here. So these numbers are, of course I don’t know. Like, the blocks are all kind of wonky.

But, basically, this December, we put it together together. Mike and I sat down, we did this together. Our financial year, however, is from April to March. Right?

But for the purpose of this training, we looked at our numbers from January to December so y’all will have, like, kind of more context and things like that. So, this is what I would love for you all to pull up, and we’re gonna take a few minutes. And after I walk you through, I would love for you to do it for yourself. You don’t have to share it.

If you don’t want it, that’s cool. But it will be great for you to do, like, a quick check-in on twenty twenty four and put your CEO purpose statement. Fill fill this in if you haven’t already done it. So I’m gonna start with revenue generated.

This year was a really good year for us. We’re at four hundred seventy five k.

This is the salary where we both, you know, both of us are in the business, and give ourselves a sweet little bonus. This is the profit we have in our bank.

These were our key expenses. We also have a section separately for taxes.

We don’t put them into expense. We have a separate section for taxes and legal fees, which is essentially getting our taxes done and all that. So you won’t see it in your worksheet. I added it in here, but I also wanted you to, like, you know, wanted you to keep in mind that you could go ahead and do that, you know, if you wanna keep both your expenses and your taxes separate total quote. We worked with thirty seven clients, which has been awesome.

We did lose two clients.

One was a retainer client, did not continue, and we, there’s a one long one long term copy client. We’ve done, like, multiple projects, but this year, you know, they’ve kind of decided to take more things. In house, we’ve also had a few payment defaults this year. So these are, like, our actual numbers here. So, this is how you wanna kinda look at your business and put together why because it gives you a lot of perspective because it’s very easy to kind of just look at either things that happened in the recent past or maybe, you know, just kind of take everything and plug it together and feel like the your wasn’t all that great or, you know, whatever. But looking at your numbers gives you a really good reality check and also shows you what’s possible.

We had sixty three projects, which I feel is wild.

So these clients are we they’ll all seem to know we have a program, which is the one we talked about here, and we also have a coaching container where where we work with service providers to the one. So this includes everything, but this is essentially, you know, a lot of copy projects.

Our goal for twenty one five is essentially just increasing it to about, what, five hundred and fifty k, especially since we’re expanding the potentially profitable brand, which is the the business coaching side of the, the business. We wanna kind of grow that more.

All of these numbers will kind of be filled in depending on that.

So this is, like, a very easy, very fun exercise. Highly recommend if you haven’t done it already, take a few minutes to do it. Jot down any thoughts that come to you. Jot down any questions you may have, like, things you may wanna revisit, things that you probably feel like, okay.

You know, especially things like clients lost, you wanna look at, okay, what could I have done differently?

Or did I do everything the way it was meant to be done? And maybe this the client was ready to move on because that will happen in certain cases, which is which is fine. So this exercise, if you’re tuning to a number, it should basically should basically take you, like, about ten minutes tops, five, seven minutes. Like, this is basically what Mike has put together.

He’s the CFO. I’m just the messenger here. So I would say five minutes and plug in those numbers. Let me know if you’ve got any questions in the chat.

I’m going to with myself, give you all some quiet time, and, yeah, check-in continue after five minutes.

Alright. We have about a minute to go, but let me know if y’all have been able to pull your numbers and populate the associate especially for twenty twenty four.

Drop down in the chat when you’re done, and we can move forward when most of you are done.

Cool.

How are we doing?

Are you all done?

Yeah. I can see Abby nodding. Awesome.

Oh, Claire. Caitlin.

Hazel.

That’s okay. You if you don’t have all the brochure, that’s okay.

But something to take from this is it will be great if you start twenty twenty five by keeping, a revenue and expense tracker.

And Sorry.

I have a quick question on that because, you’re also operating in two different countries. Right?

Yes.

The reason why mine is so complicated is because I’m operating in two current countries and two current so sometimes even three currencies.

Mhmm.

So so I can’t actually find software to work with all the different bank accounts. And the way that I’ve, like, pulled it all together because South Africa is not like for example, Stripe won’t support South African rand.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I have to do it in pounds, which is I have to use a different bank account, which means that I can’t pull it in using an automatic app.

I have to do it manually. So I built this thing, an Airtable, to resolve this for myself. It’s far from perfect, and I would love to not do it. But I haven’t found any other solution. Do you what do you guys do?

Okay.

So like I said, it’s really not my area of, you know, I just like to know.

Literally, Mike and I will have the money meetings where we will sit down, and I will say, okay. Where are we for this month? How are we doing? What’s our forecast for the quarter?

Like, just give me the numbers. Like, don’t however, that said, I do know that he has his system set up in good old fashioned Excel. Like, yeah. So, yeah, you you know, you’ve got a terrible he’s got Excel.

Like, he for all, you know, all the technology that we work with, he is still very, very like, this is like I keep telling him, like, you know, Google Sheets could do so much more with this. Or, you know, like, there’s there’s, like, really cool motion database. Like, our entire business is on some pretty much a mission. Right?

But no. When it comes to his numbers, he’s, like, got this job spreadsheet thing and, like, all the records. That’s what he does.

That said, Claire, we do operate in different countries, but it seems all our payments come indoors, and they just get converted into rupees when they get transferred into our bank account. So it’s not, you know, as complex probably as yours is, because we get everything pretty much. Sometimes, you know, there’ll be times we who are, like, in the UK, and we wanna kind of give them that like, give them a a non fluctuation price kind of a pain, in which case, it would be just in pounds or in Canada, Canadian dollars. But for the most part, it’s, like, all in dollars. So it makes sense.

Pay, like, like, subscriptions and stuff like that, do you pay them in groupings?

In dollars?

In dollars.

Yeah. Got it. And same with with contractors and things like that. All our payment because except for one contractor, all our contractors are in the in the US. They all get paid in dollars or in Canada. Yeah.

Is your business registered in the US? Or sorry.

If this is, like, personal, feel free to tell me.

No. Okay. Cool. No. No. No. No. Yeah. No. We are registered in India. Yeah.

In India. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I’m still, like, technically a a freelancer because that’s just we’re a sole proprietor to use the language here.

So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

About opening a business, but then it creates more problems.

Cool. Thank you.

You are so welcome.

Okay. Good. I am glad that Aaron’s had numbers. Like, okay. First things first. And this is something coming from how I approach numbers. Like I said, Michael, give me all these numbers.

What I want you to do is I want you to look at them and think about, okay. How do I feel about these numbers?

That’s, like, really important for me to feel, like, I really need to kind of connect with how do I feel about these numbers for me to kind of then move forward with the next phase of planning.

So real quick.

Yeah. They showed me that I I relied on, like, one client this year. So even though, like, I did I’m pleased with my revenue, it’ll have one client, and that client then went and took their marketing team in house. So, yeah, there’s a less than that.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s really, really interesting to look at numbers and just kind of see what they’re what they’re telling you. I I love that insight field, and it kind of said, now this insight guides the marketing you do, the time you sign, the products you bring on.

It yeah. It’s just lovely. Anyone else? Wanna share what how the number’s making you feel?

Okay. Cool.

Alright. Let’s move on to the next phase of planning, which is seeing what your target end goal is for twenty twenty five. Is my screen okay or should I, like, kind of blow it up and present it? Is it fine?

Yeah? Okay. Thanks, Abby.

So for instance, for us now here’s the other thing. You wanna kind of get laser focused on what your big target is. For us, the client side of our business, honestly, like, touchless is really good. We’re pretty much always at capacity.

We’re working with great clients. We are generally booked out a few months ahead of time. We do a like, we have an eighty nine percent with the project rate, which is awesome. I think that’s really great.

Our big target for our business and expand the business coaching side and increasing enrollments in our program in ready to sell.

So, again, I want you up to take five minutes. Go back up. Look at what your vision and your big ideas are for the year and think about what would you wanna do.

What would you want your big one key focus to be like the domino that’s gonna get all the dominoes moving? So I want you to think about that. Take a few minutes.

Revisit the sheets. You if you haven’t filled them out, like, this is a great time to start kind of thinking about it.

But top of mind, what would you say would your biggest target would be? Because only then would you be able to look at what you need to do to kind of get there by the end of the year.

And, again, take a few minutes. Like, I think five should be fine because if you have everything ready, you just need to kinda pull that one big domino.

As you have questions, ask a while.

So do the people who got your biggest target for the year, let me know.

Alright. Jessica, do you wanna share?

Sure. Can you hear me okay?

Yep. Okay.

I’ve so according to AI, the thing that would help me move all the other goals is building my personal brand authority.

So that Yep. Focus.

Does that sound right? Completely agree. Okay. Great. Yep.

Knowing that I know and AI do my thinking.

Yeah. But knowing what I know about you, that’s, yeah, pretty much on the money. Yeah. Wonderful.

Awesome.

Anyone else wanna share?

Yep. Go ahead, Don.

So I’m I’m in line too with building my authority, but also, obviously, expanding my client base and building system capacity. Because for my goals, it’s twelve clients per quarter. I had a million dollar goal for my first year.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Awesome. That sounds great. Okay. Cool. I love that you all have these clear targets because that’s, like, the next part where we’re gonna kinda put, like, a plan together on a page.

Great. Okay.

Liesel Liesel. Am I saying your name right?

Okay. Yes. You are.

So I can’t decide I don’t know if my big goal my big goal is to get to a million by the end of the annual recurring revenue by the end of this year. I don’t know if I should have, like, a deeper one, like, get the foundation of my business, hire the first, you know, five people, like, if that should be the goal and then the million comes as a result or if the million comes first.

Now so what would help you get to the million? Like Don said, you know, right before you, like, he’s realized, like, I need to get twelve clients per quarter if I wanna get to about a million by the end of the year.

What does a million look like for you?

Like, what that million happened.

Right. So I had AI break it down before, and it was, by the end of the second quarter, secure the first five retainer clients.

And then establish thought leadership content strategy in q three so that I can continue to pull them in, and get two big clients in every month, and then hopefully convert one of those to retainer each month.

Okay. So I’m gonna kind of go back a little. So get five clients was the first thing. You know, you wanna get five clients for okay. What’s gonna help you get those five clients?

Right now, it’s getting outreach on LinkedIn and setting myself up as an authority in the SaaS market.

Okay.

Okay.

So what I’m hearing is, again, outreach, yes, but people are only gonna respond to outreach if they’re, like, kind of know who you are. So, again, your big domino is what?

I’m not sure. I’m leveraging, network right now. I have two potential clients in the funnel.

So Mhmm.

That’s what I’m doing right now via LinkedIn. It’s just leveraging who I have.

Yeah.

But at the end twenty twenty five, for you to reach that million dollars, for you to get these consistent clients, like, five at, like, five clients and then have, like, two clients in your pipeline.

Yes. What would be the one big thing that would make that happen?

Probably establishing myself as an authority in the SaaS space and separating myself. Yeah.

There you go. Yeah. Exactly.

That is your big target then is that that is what you wanna work towards because that is the domino that would that fall, getting those clients, getting that visibility, getting everything else. How you do the top leadership is what we’ve kind of been working on that next. So that is what you wanna kind of focus on. That is what is gonna make the million dollars happen.

Yeah. Because what happens is we all, like, kinda look at the number and go, okay. I wanna make a million dollars, or I wanna make, you know, half a million dollars or whatever. But what’s gonna get us to that, that’s the goal here.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you for that clarification.

You’re welcome. Okay. Caitlin? Sorry. Yeah. Donna, I’ll come back to you. Caitlin, you said you have.

Right?

Yes. Okay. So and, also, what you just shared with Liesl is very helpful for me too. So my biggest targets for twenty twenty five, I’m gonna be rolling out my standard that is to offer for the first time. So just booking one per month in the beginning of Feb and then booking one to two retainer per month beginning in March and then increasing the number I have a course, so increasing the number of copywriter igniter students.

So I had, like, what needs to so it’s it’s I had it what needs to happen in, like, both of those buckets because they’re completely different things, and I do realize that I need to establish myself as two different authorities in two different places, but I have ideas for, like, what would those places would be.

So I’ve got a list about, like, pitching prospects, twenty podcasts, major media, like, one article, blah blah blah. But what you’re just said to Liesl, so should I just work on, like, for all of q one, not even worrying about a client and maybe just, like, get on twenty podcasts, get consistent on LinkedIn, try to land a media article, and have that be what I do.

Would that move the oh, like, in Liesl’s case or in Jessica’s case, right, and in Dom’s case, like, would would that move the needle for your goals? Do you see that happening?

You mean do I see doing those actions happening or getting the outcome?

The doing the actions Getting the outcome.

Oh. Yeah. Getting the outcome by doing those actions.

I feel like I’m, like, laying foundation to get that outcome because, initially, my thought was, like and I got this number from Cody. I’m, like, pitch three hundred prospects. Like, that was gonna be my first thing.

Yeah.

So what would your recommendation be? Like, maybe just, like, fifty like like, have a pitching, habit, but then also be really focusing, like, sixty percent of my effort into that leadership.

Yeah.

Just getting some clarity around that would be helpful.

Yeah. What’s your goal with top leadership?

So it’s looking like the topic of my standardized offer is gonna be about the mid cart slump. So being an authority on the mid cart slump.

Mhmm.

Okay. Particularly for, hopefully, course creators unless the audience changes.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course. So no. Absolutely. Yeah. So then thought leadership is what will help you kinda stand out, share that point of view, and then, of course, get people curious about your standard offer and get them in.

At the same time, the jink is what would get money in the bank right away. The stock leadership does have a tendency to take its sweet time, to kind of pay off. So that said, one of the things and, again, I, yeah, I’m speaking from experience here, but, you know, may not be for everybody. One of the things I feel all of you kinda need to get really, really comfortable with is marketing your business every day.

So to your point, pitching marketing, it’s definitely the habit. Like, you need to do it every day in some shape or form. Like, that’s what’s really, really helped us to kind of always have a full pipeline.

Mhmm. Okay.

So yeah. So to answer your question, Caitlin, I feel you would need to look at what’s the big outcome you’re going for, and then what are the what’s the one thing you can do to kind of get closer to the outcome as fast as possible. So the big outcome you’re going for is to establish yourself as the go to person for mid card slums, then most of your focus, of course, would need to be on the on getting in front of people who matter and speaking about that mid card slump. So, but then we at the same time, you will wanna kind of devote energy regardless to pitching those clients.

Cool. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. Don.

So, I I know I mentioned three things, but I wanted to get into specifics with you just for a minute.

Mhmm.

One of the specifics is I wanna speak in health care organizations to position myself as an expert in communications both internally and externally. So internally, I could say I can enhance the morale and the productivity of internal teams.

Externally, it’s through email marketing, through patient engagement, or, you know, promotion of of that health care organization.

Mhmm. Years ago, they interviewed the number one girl scout salesperson in the world. She’s, like, twelve years old.

And they asked her what was the secret to your success, and she said, I talked to everybody.

Exactly.

Yeah. I can even show you my goal from this sheet, and I can share this sheet with you if you want. I want a hundred touches a day, whether it’s through phone or email or through LinkedIn.

I want Yeah. Conversations either through email or through voice with two things that move the needle forward, whether it’s a discovery call or a speaking engagement or whatever I do. You know, I’m measuring it every single day, and I’m holding my feet to the fire to this.

Every successful that’s really, really good.

Yeah.

Savvy successful person I’ve seen. And for me, for the million dollar goal, I need to get I gotta go out and take massive action. The The second thing is to expand my client base, I’m gonna have strategic contracts with at least five national health care organizations and then develop referral partnerships. And then finally, to build up my my team, I have a very good friend of mine who was involved in selection. That was his career.

And so he’s already said he’ll come on board and help me with the selection process so I don’t make a lot of mistakes. I already also have a great, article that I shared with Cody on how to select the best VA for your organization. I can share that out on the Slack as well. And, and upscaling the team.

You know? So I already hired a copywriter that I worked with a few years ago.

So I’m already setting the things in place so that once it scales very quickly, I’m already prepared.

I’m not Okay.

Once things once things are building.

So Yeah.

Yeah. No. I think that’s a really, really great way of approaching. That’s something that we do in our business is, like, we have, like, a marketing habit tracker that I have I because I like I said, I treat marketing as a habit.

So I would crack, like, podcast pitches, collab calls, you know, share even sharing a lead magnet, reaching out to some speaking gigs. So you need to get really, really intentional about it and measure it every month and come back to it and see, like, okay. What is happening? Because it’s always easy to think.

I post it on social media, so I’m marketing my business, but, no, that is not it. So yeah. So you’d wanna kind of get way more intentional and more granular about it.

Awesome. Great, Don. Thank you for sharing. Okay. Cool. Anyone else wanna share, or we can move on to the next part, which is putting your plan together on one page.

Cool. Okay. Let’s move on. So let me there’s my share gone.

So this one’s like so this is very similar to what Don was talking about. It’s your you you know, like, you wanna get really granular about what skills you wanna develop, what where do you wanna, you know, build on, any offers you wanna launch, what are you gonna leverage in terms of people, systems, etcetera.

Before that, though, you also wanna look at what needs to happen together by December thirty first. Now here’s the thing. This is how this is where we do this a little differently. You all can, you know, plan all quarters.

Something about Meinke and Me is that we always run our business in a way where we wanna work very few hours in the business. We, we’ve always worked not be not always, but for the last so many years, we’ve worked anywhere between four to five hours, not more than that.

And we wanna keep it that way. We travel a lot, and we people are.

So we very rarely would plan out our quarters in great detail. What we will plan out, we plan quarter by quarter. So the first quarter, we know exactly what we wanna be doing, and we let that guide what we wanna be doing in the second quarter. So you may not wanna do that.

That’s totally cool. You can go ahead and plug in the big stones you wanna move in, you know, all these different quarters, which is great. For us, I just like to know what am I going to be doing when focusing my energy on in q one besides client work, of course. So like I said, that’s our focus is to launch Intentionally Profitable in January, February, or our energy is gonna be dedicated towards that.

Once you’ve done this, you wanna come back and put your twenty twenty five plan on the page.

My question, I can see them comments come up in the chat for y’all is, do you know what you would be doing in q one to meet that big target?

I know Don does. I wanna know about the others. Do you know what you would be doing to get your get closer to that big target. So for thought leadership, for instance, Jessica, what would you be doing in q one? What would you be focusing your energy on? Same for lethal.

Yeah.

No. Did you have a question?

Like I said, another thing I’m doing too is I’m creating short videos, but I don’t wanna create too many videos out there where I’m just always I wanna make it about quality rather than quantity.

But I also, if I’m creating a intro video about who I am and what I do for, like, a minute or so, I’ve already created one so that if I’m prospecting and someone’s like, well, who is this guy? I can send that video, and it’s a big leap forward in terms of my presence. Right?

I just need Yeah.

Who I am or whatever. But if they see me present, they’ll say, well, okay. I mean, this guy would be worth having in our organization, and that would get that would get things going.

So I think that’s a good idea.

Yeah.

Alright. Do you all have what you would be doing in q one to get closer to that big target segment?

Do you wanna share?

Sure.

So q one, finalize my standardized offer and retainer offer for January.

Mhmm. Start pitching prospects, like, a hundred fifty per month in February, March. Is that a good number?

Okay. You would only know when you test it out. Yeah. Go for it. That’s how you set benchmarks. Right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Pitch fifty podcasts per month to talk about mid cart slump, and I’d go ahead and start that in January.

Mhmm. Start posting to LinkedIn consistently January, February, March, and then get in front of two groups of people per month and present something on mid cart.

Okay.

Do you think any of those numbers should be higher or, like do you think?

Podcast number is great. The picture is great.

Like, those can be you know, like, use those to set your benchmarks.

You you set your future baselines. Right? Let’s, like, kind of a, I, and c. And that’ll kinda also help you see the apply the whole ten x’s either than two x thing and see which ones kind of go for the big thing rather than just focusing on the busy work.

Just to know about the LinkedIn thing, is that, like, post on LinkedIn consistently? Yeah. That’s what I was gonna even ask you because I’ve never, like, even used LinkedIn to market my stuff.

So this was just gonna be a place that I go.

I mean, I usually, I say consistent is whatever I can keep up with as a habit and not fail, and therefore, I can do it consistently. So Mhmm. To begin, like, two times a week, which I know is probably low.

But, yeah, I think two times a week to begin.

Again, one time could possibly one of the be one of those things that could either be a a ten x or it could be a two x. So it’s so cute only, though. For some, I know it’s definitely one of those two ex activities that they should stop doing.

Right. But then there are others who I know who you know, for them, it’s definitely, a great multiplier. So, you would you know, when you test it out. But, yeah, go for two, and then you can always come back, reevaluate, look at how January went, and then that’s the whole idea, though. Right? You set these goals, but then you also wanna come back to me because it which is why tracking them is so important.

Cool. Anyone else wanna share? Welcome. What their q one is going to be focused on?

I have some some ideas. Sure.

So January is gonna be really quiet for me work wise, so it’s gonna be, like, my content month.

I Excellent.

Am struggling to find a medium or authority, like, section of social media that works with me, but I think I’m slowly, like, landing and settling on video, long form video, like YouTube. Mhmm.

So what I was thinking could be wise is to create lots of YouTube videos that form, like, a mini course.

Then that mini course can be repurposed into a playbook that I don’t have to write. Someone else can write it because they’ll have the course.

Mhmm.

And then that could also be filtered down hopefully into whatever needs to be for the rest of the quarter. If I get everything done in Jan, perhaps someone could help me repurpose it to platforms.

That would help you move closer to your big target in q one? Like, by end of it, would you feel like, okay. I’ve, like, knocked off one I’m, like, one fourth way through to meeting that big big goal.

I feel like that target is gonna help me move towards my, like, q three goals, but not necessarily, like, instantly. I also wanted to do cold outreach, so I’ve been trying to get my shit together, essentially, to call the outreach and emails and and such for the last six months. And somehow I still have been struggling. But now I think I have reached enough saturation and enough noise, and I’m just going to do it in January.

So I also wanted to get that down. And I I think that call cold email outreach might produce faster results than Mhmm.

What I’m currently doing because I’m getting some traction on LinkedIn. Like, I am slowly figuring it out. One of my greatest, realizations if I don’t know if this is the same for everyone else, but LinkedIn is not a text social media. It is an image and video of social media. Everything that does well online is either has an image or a video attached to it.

Sorry. That was my They’re all linked to it. Yeah. All my sales.

From yeah.

Yeah. So I somehow feel that, yes, the call outreach is what would help you get, like, faster results, especially if your big target is to sign more clients.

Like I shared earlier, thought leadership is great. Highly, highly recommend all of you should be doing it, like, not just the people who feel like it’s gonna be the big domino to move things, but everybody.

But it’s it can sometimes take time. I’m not saying it always take time, but sometimes it can. So yeah.

Could I should I a while ago. So one of I’ve had many tried and failed projects this year, but, one of the other ones was to set up, a live webinar and run ads to it. I have very little experience in doing those things.

I obviously hit, like, a million blockers in that, but I don’t think I can do both. So I I’m pretty sure I can do the call outreach stuff because I’m getting close there. But with authority, should I try run ads, or should I try do organic YouTube stuff?

Or should you get to the webinar that you’re planning to do in front of groups where your clients are already there?

By asking. By Oh, both touching.

Yeah. By just kind of, you know, like, also tapping your network, finding out who knows who usually. Like, I feel like before can you run ads to a webinar and get in front of more people? Sure.

But I would wanna validate that webinar first before pouring money into it and see whether it’s even converting. Like, what’s the purpose of that webinar? If it’s to find clients, why not actually test it out with a room for all of your ideal prospects first? So think about, like, where would your ideal people be hanging out?

Or what would they be using and use that? Like, I know I think Katie is doing one for Deadline Funnel, which is great because that’s like a, Katie, you’re doing one for Deadline Funnel. Right? Cool. Yeah. So that’s great because her audience, of course, creators would be using Deadline Funnel.

Great way to get in front of them. So, yeah, add me too. Awesome. So I would say think about that. Like, validate your ideas first. And like Abby said, organic YouTube with paid ads on videos at the phone bill. Exactly.

Test out your content to see what’s landing before putting money into it.

That makes sense. Okay. I’ve yeah. I’ve been trying to start small with the webinar thing, but I haven’t found many I haven’t found, like, network, I suppose, of people. Yeah.

For Okay.

So maybe just share why why don’t you do it in the group share who who are the kind of people you’re kind of, you know, in Slack, drop a note, let us know who are the people you’re trying to get in front of. Yeah. Let all of us do some brainstorming for where could you present.

Okay. Alright. Cool. You’re welcome. Thank you.

Awesome.

Great. Cool. So okay. We’ve got what you’ll be doing in q one If you feel excited, go ahead and do the other quarters as well. I mean, there’s no hard and fast rule there. Katie.

Hi, Berna.

So I feel like my reflection on this has been impacted by like, I feel like I was full throttle with my signature offer in the fall, but now the response has okay. And I am my my fee for twenty twenty five is, like, acting faster and, like, doing more of everything. So I know that, like, while I have been doing direct outreach, I it has been like a trickle where it needs to be more of a, like, fire hose.

But, I’m wondering, like, if I’m if I’m still not sure if I have, like, message market fits. Like, if I’m, you know, I just Mhmm. I know I’m not talking to the right people because my audience is not like, the people currently following me on social media are not the people my offer is for, same with my email list. Like so my step one goal for twenty twenty five is really, like, dialing in that messaging and getting in front of the people who can pay and desire this offer.

I’m wondering because it it doesn’t seem like thought leadership is the place to start if I’m still not sure about the message.

So direct outreach, I guess, will give me that feedback, like, which which emails get a response. But I was just wondering, like Yeah. What would you what deeper would you focus on pulling first if I’m really trying to make sure I’m talking to the right people with the right framing.

Good question. Okay. So what I would pull would definitely be like, I’m look I’m gonna reference the sheet that, you know, we have in the in the goal setting report.

When you look at the twenty twenty five plan on a page thing, I would definitely definitely pull on authority.

I know that sounds big on leadership, but it’s not really. What I would do is for message market set, essentially, to make sure that I’m, like, I’m saying the things that people wanna hear, a, and, b, I have an offer that people wanna buy.

Besides direct outreach, I would want to actually speak to prospects and not sell, but just kind of get, like, direct feedback on whether or not this is an offer that they would even consider buying.

A good way to do that, if you have past clients who are a great fit for this, like, that would be my first port of call. But if not, I would, like, reach out to past mentors. I would reach out to a podcast host, that I’ve been listening to. I will reach out to, like, you know, people who I know would have the budget and the courses and the offers to benefit from it and just get, like, brutally honest feedback, there. And then see whether or not, you know is it a is it a messaging thing? Is it an author positioning thing?

Or is it an audience thing?

Which is part of positioning essentially, but yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I I’m getting feedback from my current audience that is very clear and they, like, that they understand what it is and all of that. But, yeah, I definitely think it needs to be, like, interviews with those real ideal clients.

Yeah. That is who I would speak with. Like, that’s what we did when we were working on our back end retailer offer.

It’s just kind of, like, so that we could fine tune it to fit our clients needs perfectly. Yeah. That was really helpful for us.

Okay. Thank you.

You’re welcome. Patty?

Hey. Yeah. So, part of my million dollar years is gonna be closing, like, a product to fifty a month and then stacking the retainers.

My question so, like, from where I’ve done quite a full cost this year, I am getting, like, a lot of leads, like, a couple a week and but they’re all, like, five to ten k leads. Like, I none of them could afford, like, fifty k. And I don’t know what to do with them because, like, where I’m supposed to the million dollar years, like, I know selling, like, a five k, like, sales page or audit isn’t gonna help me get to a million dollars.

But also yeah. I don’t wanna just turn away. So I’m just wondering if you have any ideas of where I could monetize those.

And the yeah. The other thing I consider is because my my partner, when he finishes his PhD, I want him to, like, write copy for me. So I’ve got I’ve got him, but I also don’t wanna cannibalize my kind of high ticket offer by offering, like, smaller offers for this audience. So, yeah, I’d love your your thoughts around that.

Mine are a little different in the sense that okay.

And why they’re different is mainly because we have, like, a really good repeat project rate.

I would take the ten k project and turn it into a hundred k project, which is pretty much what we’ve done. Like, even this year, our, like, fifty k project, we already booked in for another fifty k next year. So that’s gonna be, like, a hundred k client in any case. So I do understand that, yes, you wanna close a fifty k client, every month, but I won’t let that hold you back from closing the ten k clients and then turning them into hundred k or even two hundred k clients.

It just it feels like a gamble, like, working with kind of this they sit they’re six figure course creators who, like, they sold that offer, but it’s it’s kind of different than working with, like, someone like Joe who’s got a proven offer.

It’s can’t afford Yeah.

The Yeah. That, I comp I completely agree.

That is always a gamble. And that you could consider having the junior copywriter and subcontracting it with, like, a sixty forty kind of a split.

But I personally feel like then you’re doing more cheating work and more, you know, like, badger work. So a good option then is essentially to let them know that, hey. Then maybe they’re not the right fit for you. A lot of designers do that, Abby. Like, you just need to get comfortable with saying no.

You know? Yeah. But yeah. A lot I mean, I like, there are so many designers I know who will not take a website design project under fifty k or under thirty k, and I think that is so important.

And especially if this is your goal and if this is what you’re really drawn, that, okay, I wanna sign on, like, a fifty k client every year every month. What you wanna do is because the thing with yes. But the thing with the smaller clients is definitely, yes. They will you will be blocking capacity, and then you need to be prepared for that.

So that is something to keep in mind. I’m a big fan of turning the one off projects into the big project. That’s what that worked really well for us, but I can see what you’re saying as well. So I would say that they’re just kind of, like, really comfortable with saying no, and being very clear on your website with your project minimums.

So, you know, you’re not also you’re you’re, a, you’re owning the right positioning. You’re, like, getting that right message about and then also speaking to the clients will be perfect fit for you.

Mhmm. Alright. Thanks, Brenna.

You’re welcome.

Awesome. Great. Cool. Let’s look at the last page. We’ve got a couple minutes. This one is a really easy one.

What you wanna do is you wanna put what your twenty twenty five goal for this year here, and you wanna put, you know, what the goal is gonna be, like, the specific number goal for q one on this side, which is, like, easy. Like, once you’ve done this, this is really easy. What you want to focus on, which is where I would love to see if for those of you who are going to share in Slack later on, I would love to see this.

And just so that, you know, as someone who will be seeing you, implement this, I am in the loop of what are the skills you’re looking to build? What’s the authority that you’ll be working on?

How would you be bringing the money into your business? What would you be leveraging? And what’s your mindset going to be like? So for me, for the for the mindset part, this is something I have worked on a lot over the last few years. This is something I’m gonna keep focusing on is a focus on the gain, not the gap.

I think I’ve already recommended the gap in the gain book. You probably see it behind me in the bookshelf as well. I really recommend those of you who tend to kind of look, feel like you’re not doing enough.

Really recommend that. And, of course, ten x is easier than two x, both by the same author, coincidentally.

But, yeah, highly, highly recommend. But think about what your mindset’s gonna be, so that you can accomplish these. But this is what you should be focusing on. So what are the skills you’d be selling?

Like, for us, what we wanna really sell this this your essentially, profit engineering for service businesses, profit engineering process improvements for our period of time’s, authority.

I’ve enjoyed speaking at international events. I tried it two a year. I would wanna keep doing two a year because international travel feels like a lot to me. But I yeah. So, so just kinda get really, really clear on what that would look like, for you, quarterly launches, what would you be leveraging. For us, we have a great team already of contractors, so we don’t really need to you know, we’re not, like, kind of looking to bring in more people, but we do wanna, you know, add in more AI agents, integrate AI into our workflows, continue doing that.

Just kind of think about what are the skills, what’s the authority, especially for those of you looking at thought leadership. What does it even look like? Like, which events would you wanna speak at or which events would you want to do a workshop at? Do you wanna do an in person client workshop? Like, one of the things I did this year that worked out really well was a VIP half day workshop with the client in Chicago while I was speaking at an event there, and I definitely wanna do more of that. So think about all those things have worked out really well from an authority perspective.

So this section, I would print it out and keep it in for me. And, like, once I’ve obviously, like, filled it out properly.

But for all of you, I would like to see what this looks like for you so I could hold you accountable.

If you wanna take a few minutes and fill it in now, that’s great. But I know, like, you’re overtime. If you wanna do it on your own time and share it with me in Slack, that would be great too.

Okay. Lizzo, great question. When do I wanna see it Thursday night for me all? So, yeah, anytime next week would be great. Take the weekend, sit with it, think about it, and drop it, and tag me in Slack. I would love to take a look at it.

Cool.

Okay. Great.

This was fun. Thank you so much, everybody, for being here. I’m gonna wait to see your plans and your goals and work. Bye. Thank you, Lisa.

Bye.

Transcript

I am so excited about today’s training because, hey, we are going to be continuing with the awesome twenty twenty five goal setting workbook, and I will be walking y’all through how we’d be approaching this and, you know, just putting your purpose statement together and putting your plan there because by now, all of you have your vision in place. I had lots of fun listening to all of those arranged ideas in the right section as well. So that was very cool.

But now we wanna kind of bring everything together.

Put a plan in place so you can start looking at what is it that you would be focusing on and also looking at twenty twenty four and how how that’s done. Right? So without further ado, I am going to share screen and walk you all through my version of the workbook.

Okay. Got it.

Mhmm.

Let’s see.

Y’all should be able to see the workbook, but I’m gonna blow it up.

Cool. So, okay, let me kind of give you a little bit of context here. So these numbers are, of course I don’t know. Like, the blocks are all kind of wonky.

But, basically, this December, we put it together together. Mike and I sat down, we did this together. Our financial year, however, is from April to March. Right?

But for the purpose of this training, we looked at our numbers from January to December so y’all will have, like, kind of more context and things like that. So, this is what I would love for you all to pull up, and we’re gonna take a few minutes. And after I walk you through, I would love for you to do it for yourself. You don’t have to share it.

If you don’t want it, that’s cool. But it will be great for you to do, like, a quick check-in on twenty twenty four and put your CEO purpose statement. Fill fill this in if you haven’t already done it. So I’m gonna start with revenue generated.

This year was a really good year for us. We’re at four hundred seventy five k.

This is the salary where we both, you know, both of us are in the business, and give ourselves a sweet little bonus. This is the profit we have in our bank.

These were our key expenses. We also have a section separately for taxes.

We don’t put them into expense. We have a separate section for taxes and legal fees, which is essentially getting our taxes done and all that. So you won’t see it in your worksheet. I added it in here, but I also wanted you to, like, you know, wanted you to keep in mind that you could go ahead and do that, you know, if you wanna keep both your expenses and your taxes separate total quote. We worked with thirty seven clients, which has been awesome.

We did lose two clients.

One was a retainer client, did not continue, and we, there’s a one long one long term copy client. We’ve done, like, multiple projects, but this year, you know, they’ve kind of decided to take more things. In house, we’ve also had a few payment defaults this year. So these are, like, our actual numbers here. So, this is how you wanna kinda look at your business and put together why because it gives you a lot of perspective because it’s very easy to kind of just look at either things that happened in the recent past or maybe, you know, just kind of take everything and plug it together and feel like the your wasn’t all that great or, you know, whatever. But looking at your numbers gives you a really good reality check and also shows you what’s possible.

We had sixty three projects, which I feel is wild.

So these clients are we they’ll all seem to know we have a program, which is the one we talked about here, and we also have a coaching container where where we work with service providers to the one. So this includes everything, but this is essentially, you know, a lot of copy projects.

Our goal for twenty one five is essentially just increasing it to about, what, five hundred and fifty k, especially since we’re expanding the potentially profitable brand, which is the the business coaching side of the, the business. We wanna kind of grow that more.

All of these numbers will kind of be filled in depending on that.

So this is, like, a very easy, very fun exercise. Highly recommend if you haven’t done it already, take a few minutes to do it. Jot down any thoughts that come to you. Jot down any questions you may have, like, things you may wanna revisit, things that you probably feel like, okay.

You know, especially things like clients lost, you wanna look at, okay, what could I have done differently?

Or did I do everything the way it was meant to be done? And maybe this the client was ready to move on because that will happen in certain cases, which is which is fine. So this exercise, if you’re tuning to a number, it should basically should basically take you, like, about ten minutes tops, five, seven minutes. Like, this is basically what Mike has put together.

He’s the CFO. I’m just the messenger here. So I would say five minutes and plug in those numbers. Let me know if you’ve got any questions in the chat.

I’m going to with myself, give you all some quiet time, and, yeah, check-in continue after five minutes.

Alright. We have about a minute to go, but let me know if y’all have been able to pull your numbers and populate the associate especially for twenty twenty four.

Drop down in the chat when you’re done, and we can move forward when most of you are done.

Cool.

How are we doing?

Are you all done?

Yeah. I can see Abby nodding. Awesome.

Oh, Claire. Caitlin.

Hazel.

That’s okay. You if you don’t have all the brochure, that’s okay.

But something to take from this is it will be great if you start twenty twenty five by keeping, a revenue and expense tracker.

And Sorry.

I have a quick question on that because, you’re also operating in two different countries. Right?

Yes.

The reason why mine is so complicated is because I’m operating in two current countries and two current so sometimes even three currencies.

Mhmm.

So so I can’t actually find software to work with all the different bank accounts. And the way that I’ve, like, pulled it all together because South Africa is not like for example, Stripe won’t support South African rand.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I have to do it in pounds, which is I have to use a different bank account, which means that I can’t pull it in using an automatic app.

I have to do it manually. So I built this thing, an Airtable, to resolve this for myself. It’s far from perfect, and I would love to not do it. But I haven’t found any other solution. Do you what do you guys do?

Okay.

So like I said, it’s really not my area of, you know, I just like to know.

Literally, Mike and I will have the money meetings where we will sit down, and I will say, okay. Where are we for this month? How are we doing? What’s our forecast for the quarter?

Like, just give me the numbers. Like, don’t however, that said, I do know that he has his system set up in good old fashioned Excel. Like, yeah. So, yeah, you you know, you’ve got a terrible he’s got Excel.

Like, he for all, you know, all the technology that we work with, he is still very, very like, this is like I keep telling him, like, you know, Google Sheets could do so much more with this. Or, you know, like, there’s there’s, like, really cool motion database. Like, our entire business is on some pretty much a mission. Right?

But no. When it comes to his numbers, he’s, like, got this job spreadsheet thing and, like, all the records. That’s what he does.

That said, Claire, we do operate in different countries, but it seems all our payments come indoors, and they just get converted into rupees when they get transferred into our bank account. So it’s not, you know, as complex probably as yours is, because we get everything pretty much. Sometimes, you know, there’ll be times we who are, like, in the UK, and we wanna kind of give them that like, give them a a non fluctuation price kind of a pain, in which case, it would be just in pounds or in Canada, Canadian dollars. But for the most part, it’s, like, all in dollars. So it makes sense.

Pay, like, like, subscriptions and stuff like that, do you pay them in groupings?

In dollars?

In dollars.

Yeah. Got it. And same with with contractors and things like that. All our payment because except for one contractor, all our contractors are in the in the US. They all get paid in dollars or in Canada. Yeah.

Is your business registered in the US? Or sorry.

If this is, like, personal, feel free to tell me.

No. Okay. Cool. No. No. No. No. Yeah. No. We are registered in India. Yeah.

In India. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I’m still, like, technically a a freelancer because that’s just we’re a sole proprietor to use the language here.

So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

About opening a business, but then it creates more problems.

Cool. Thank you.

You are so welcome.

Okay. Good. I am glad that Aaron’s had numbers. Like, okay. First things first. And this is something coming from how I approach numbers. Like I said, Michael, give me all these numbers.

What I want you to do is I want you to look at them and think about, okay. How do I feel about these numbers?

That’s, like, really important for me to feel, like, I really need to kind of connect with how do I feel about these numbers for me to kind of then move forward with the next phase of planning.

So real quick.

Yeah. They showed me that I I relied on, like, one client this year. So even though, like, I did I’m pleased with my revenue, it’ll have one client, and that client then went and took their marketing team in house. So, yeah, there’s a less than that.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s really, really interesting to look at numbers and just kind of see what they’re what they’re telling you. I I love that insight field, and it kind of said, now this insight guides the marketing you do, the time you sign, the products you bring on.

It yeah. It’s just lovely. Anyone else? Wanna share what how the number’s making you feel?

Okay. Cool.

Alright. Let’s move on to the next phase of planning, which is seeing what your target end goal is for twenty twenty five. Is my screen okay or should I, like, kind of blow it up and present it? Is it fine?

Yeah? Okay. Thanks, Abby.

So for instance, for us now here’s the other thing. You wanna kind of get laser focused on what your big target is. For us, the client side of our business, honestly, like, touchless is really good. We’re pretty much always at capacity.

We’re working with great clients. We are generally booked out a few months ahead of time. We do a like, we have an eighty nine percent with the project rate, which is awesome. I think that’s really great.

Our big target for our business and expand the business coaching side and increasing enrollments in our program in ready to sell.

So, again, I want you up to take five minutes. Go back up. Look at what your vision and your big ideas are for the year and think about what would you wanna do.

What would you want your big one key focus to be like the domino that’s gonna get all the dominoes moving? So I want you to think about that. Take a few minutes.

Revisit the sheets. You if you haven’t filled them out, like, this is a great time to start kind of thinking about it.

But top of mind, what would you say would your biggest target would be? Because only then would you be able to look at what you need to do to kind of get there by the end of the year.

And, again, take a few minutes. Like, I think five should be fine because if you have everything ready, you just need to kinda pull that one big domino.

As you have questions, ask a while.

So do the people who got your biggest target for the year, let me know.

Alright. Jessica, do you wanna share?

Sure. Can you hear me okay?

Yep. Okay.

I’ve so according to AI, the thing that would help me move all the other goals is building my personal brand authority.

So that Yep. Focus.

Does that sound right? Completely agree. Okay. Great. Yep.

Knowing that I know and AI do my thinking.

Yeah. But knowing what I know about you, that’s, yeah, pretty much on the money. Yeah. Wonderful.

Awesome.

Anyone else wanna share?

Yep. Go ahead, Don.

So I’m I’m in line too with building my authority, but also, obviously, expanding my client base and building system capacity. Because for my goals, it’s twelve clients per quarter. I had a million dollar goal for my first year.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Awesome. That sounds great. Okay. Cool. I love that you all have these clear targets because that’s, like, the next part where we’re gonna kinda put, like, a plan together on a page.

Great. Okay.

Liesel Liesel. Am I saying your name right?

Okay. Yes. You are.

So I can’t decide I don’t know if my big goal my big goal is to get to a million by the end of the annual recurring revenue by the end of this year. I don’t know if I should have, like, a deeper one, like, get the foundation of my business, hire the first, you know, five people, like, if that should be the goal and then the million comes as a result or if the million comes first.

Now so what would help you get to the million? Like Don said, you know, right before you, like, he’s realized, like, I need to get twelve clients per quarter if I wanna get to about a million by the end of the year.

What does a million look like for you?

Like, what that million happened.

Right. So I had AI break it down before, and it was, by the end of the second quarter, secure the first five retainer clients.

And then establish thought leadership content strategy in q three so that I can continue to pull them in, and get two big clients in every month, and then hopefully convert one of those to retainer each month.

Okay. So I’m gonna kind of go back a little. So get five clients was the first thing. You know, you wanna get five clients for okay. What’s gonna help you get those five clients?

Right now, it’s getting outreach on LinkedIn and setting myself up as an authority in the SaaS market.

Okay.

Okay.

So what I’m hearing is, again, outreach, yes, but people are only gonna respond to outreach if they’re, like, kind of know who you are. So, again, your big domino is what?

I’m not sure. I’m leveraging, network right now. I have two potential clients in the funnel.

So Mhmm.

That’s what I’m doing right now via LinkedIn. It’s just leveraging who I have.

Yeah.

But at the end twenty twenty five, for you to reach that million dollars, for you to get these consistent clients, like, five at, like, five clients and then have, like, two clients in your pipeline.

Yes. What would be the one big thing that would make that happen?

Probably establishing myself as an authority in the SaaS space and separating myself. Yeah.

There you go. Yeah. Exactly.

That is your big target then is that that is what you wanna work towards because that is the domino that would that fall, getting those clients, getting that visibility, getting everything else. How you do the top leadership is what we’ve kind of been working on that next. So that is what you wanna kind of focus on. That is what is gonna make the million dollars happen.

Yeah. Because what happens is we all, like, kinda look at the number and go, okay. I wanna make a million dollars, or I wanna make, you know, half a million dollars or whatever. But what’s gonna get us to that, that’s the goal here.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you for that clarification.

You’re welcome. Okay. Caitlin? Sorry. Yeah. Donna, I’ll come back to you. Caitlin, you said you have.

Right?

Yes. Okay. So and, also, what you just shared with Liesl is very helpful for me too. So my biggest targets for twenty twenty five, I’m gonna be rolling out my standard that is to offer for the first time. So just booking one per month in the beginning of Feb and then booking one to two retainer per month beginning in March and then increasing the number I have a course, so increasing the number of copywriter igniter students.

So I had, like, what needs to so it’s it’s I had it what needs to happen in, like, both of those buckets because they’re completely different things, and I do realize that I need to establish myself as two different authorities in two different places, but I have ideas for, like, what would those places would be.

So I’ve got a list about, like, pitching prospects, twenty podcasts, major media, like, one article, blah blah blah. But what you’re just said to Liesl, so should I just work on, like, for all of q one, not even worrying about a client and maybe just, like, get on twenty podcasts, get consistent on LinkedIn, try to land a media article, and have that be what I do.

Would that move the oh, like, in Liesl’s case or in Jessica’s case, right, and in Dom’s case, like, would would that move the needle for your goals? Do you see that happening?

You mean do I see doing those actions happening or getting the outcome?

The doing the actions Getting the outcome.

Oh. Yeah. Getting the outcome by doing those actions.

I feel like I’m, like, laying foundation to get that outcome because, initially, my thought was, like and I got this number from Cody. I’m, like, pitch three hundred prospects. Like, that was gonna be my first thing.

Yeah.

So what would your recommendation be? Like, maybe just, like, fifty like like, have a pitching, habit, but then also be really focusing, like, sixty percent of my effort into that leadership.

Yeah.

Just getting some clarity around that would be helpful.

Yeah. What’s your goal with top leadership?

So it’s looking like the topic of my standardized offer is gonna be about the mid cart slump. So being an authority on the mid cart slump.

Mhmm.

Okay. Particularly for, hopefully, course creators unless the audience changes.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course. So no. Absolutely. Yeah. So then thought leadership is what will help you kinda stand out, share that point of view, and then, of course, get people curious about your standard offer and get them in.

At the same time, the jink is what would get money in the bank right away. The stock leadership does have a tendency to take its sweet time, to kind of pay off. So that said, one of the things and, again, I, yeah, I’m speaking from experience here, but, you know, may not be for everybody. One of the things I feel all of you kinda need to get really, really comfortable with is marketing your business every day.

So to your point, pitching marketing, it’s definitely the habit. Like, you need to do it every day in some shape or form. Like, that’s what’s really, really helped us to kind of always have a full pipeline.

Mhmm. Okay.

So yeah. So to answer your question, Caitlin, I feel you would need to look at what’s the big outcome you’re going for, and then what are the what’s the one thing you can do to kind of get closer to the outcome as fast as possible. So the big outcome you’re going for is to establish yourself as the go to person for mid card slums, then most of your focus, of course, would need to be on the on getting in front of people who matter and speaking about that mid card slump. So, but then we at the same time, you will wanna kind of devote energy regardless to pitching those clients.

Cool. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. Don.

So, I I know I mentioned three things, but I wanted to get into specifics with you just for a minute.

Mhmm.

One of the specifics is I wanna speak in health care organizations to position myself as an expert in communications both internally and externally. So internally, I could say I can enhance the morale and the productivity of internal teams.

Externally, it’s through email marketing, through patient engagement, or, you know, promotion of of that health care organization.

Mhmm. Years ago, they interviewed the number one girl scout salesperson in the world. She’s, like, twelve years old.

And they asked her what was the secret to your success, and she said, I talked to everybody.

Exactly.

Yeah. I can even show you my goal from this sheet, and I can share this sheet with you if you want. I want a hundred touches a day, whether it’s through phone or email or through LinkedIn.

I want Yeah. Conversations either through email or through voice with two things that move the needle forward, whether it’s a discovery call or a speaking engagement or whatever I do. You know, I’m measuring it every single day, and I’m holding my feet to the fire to this.

Every successful that’s really, really good.

Yeah.

Savvy successful person I’ve seen. And for me, for the million dollar goal, I need to get I gotta go out and take massive action. The The second thing is to expand my client base, I’m gonna have strategic contracts with at least five national health care organizations and then develop referral partnerships. And then finally, to build up my my team, I have a very good friend of mine who was involved in selection. That was his career.

And so he’s already said he’ll come on board and help me with the selection process so I don’t make a lot of mistakes. I already also have a great, article that I shared with Cody on how to select the best VA for your organization. I can share that out on the Slack as well. And, and upscaling the team.

You know? So I already hired a copywriter that I worked with a few years ago.

So I’m already setting the things in place so that once it scales very quickly, I’m already prepared.

I’m not Okay.

Once things once things are building.

So Yeah.

Yeah. No. I think that’s a really, really great way of approaching. That’s something that we do in our business is, like, we have, like, a marketing habit tracker that I have I because I like I said, I treat marketing as a habit.

So I would crack, like, podcast pitches, collab calls, you know, share even sharing a lead magnet, reaching out to some speaking gigs. So you need to get really, really intentional about it and measure it every month and come back to it and see, like, okay. What is happening? Because it’s always easy to think.

I post it on social media, so I’m marketing my business, but, no, that is not it. So yeah. So you’d wanna kind of get way more intentional and more granular about it.

Awesome. Great, Don. Thank you for sharing. Okay. Cool. Anyone else wanna share, or we can move on to the next part, which is putting your plan together on one page.

Cool. Okay. Let’s move on. So let me there’s my share gone.

So this one’s like so this is very similar to what Don was talking about. It’s your you you know, like, you wanna get really granular about what skills you wanna develop, what where do you wanna, you know, build on, any offers you wanna launch, what are you gonna leverage in terms of people, systems, etcetera.

Before that, though, you also wanna look at what needs to happen together by December thirty first. Now here’s the thing. This is how this is where we do this a little differently. You all can, you know, plan all quarters.

Something about Meinke and Me is that we always run our business in a way where we wanna work very few hours in the business. We, we’ve always worked not be not always, but for the last so many years, we’ve worked anywhere between four to five hours, not more than that.

And we wanna keep it that way. We travel a lot, and we people are.

So we very rarely would plan out our quarters in great detail. What we will plan out, we plan quarter by quarter. So the first quarter, we know exactly what we wanna be doing, and we let that guide what we wanna be doing in the second quarter. So you may not wanna do that.

That’s totally cool. You can go ahead and plug in the big stones you wanna move in, you know, all these different quarters, which is great. For us, I just like to know what am I going to be doing when focusing my energy on in q one besides client work, of course. So like I said, that’s our focus is to launch Intentionally Profitable in January, February, or our energy is gonna be dedicated towards that.

Once you’ve done this, you wanna come back and put your twenty twenty five plan on the page.

My question, I can see them comments come up in the chat for y’all is, do you know what you would be doing in q one to meet that big target?

I know Don does. I wanna know about the others. Do you know what you would be doing to get your get closer to that big target. So for thought leadership, for instance, Jessica, what would you be doing in q one? What would you be focusing your energy on? Same for lethal.

Yeah.

No. Did you have a question?

Like I said, another thing I’m doing too is I’m creating short videos, but I don’t wanna create too many videos out there where I’m just always I wanna make it about quality rather than quantity.

But I also, if I’m creating a intro video about who I am and what I do for, like, a minute or so, I’ve already created one so that if I’m prospecting and someone’s like, well, who is this guy? I can send that video, and it’s a big leap forward in terms of my presence. Right?

I just need Yeah.

Who I am or whatever. But if they see me present, they’ll say, well, okay. I mean, this guy would be worth having in our organization, and that would get that would get things going.

So I think that’s a good idea.

Yeah.

Alright. Do you all have what you would be doing in q one to get closer to that big target segment?

Do you wanna share?

Sure.

So q one, finalize my standardized offer and retainer offer for January.

Mhmm. Start pitching prospects, like, a hundred fifty per month in February, March. Is that a good number?

Okay. You would only know when you test it out. Yeah. Go for it. That’s how you set benchmarks. Right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Pitch fifty podcasts per month to talk about mid cart slump, and I’d go ahead and start that in January.

Mhmm. Start posting to LinkedIn consistently January, February, March, and then get in front of two groups of people per month and present something on mid cart.

Okay.

Do you think any of those numbers should be higher or, like do you think?

Podcast number is great. The picture is great.

Like, those can be you know, like, use those to set your benchmarks.

You you set your future baselines. Right? Let’s, like, kind of a, I, and c. And that’ll kinda also help you see the apply the whole ten x’s either than two x thing and see which ones kind of go for the big thing rather than just focusing on the busy work.

Just to know about the LinkedIn thing, is that, like, post on LinkedIn consistently? Yeah. That’s what I was gonna even ask you because I’ve never, like, even used LinkedIn to market my stuff.

So this was just gonna be a place that I go.

I mean, I usually, I say consistent is whatever I can keep up with as a habit and not fail, and therefore, I can do it consistently. So Mhmm. To begin, like, two times a week, which I know is probably low.

But, yeah, I think two times a week to begin.

Again, one time could possibly one of the be one of those things that could either be a a ten x or it could be a two x. So it’s so cute only, though. For some, I know it’s definitely one of those two ex activities that they should stop doing.

Right. But then there are others who I know who you know, for them, it’s definitely, a great multiplier. So, you would you know, when you test it out. But, yeah, go for two, and then you can always come back, reevaluate, look at how January went, and then that’s the whole idea, though. Right? You set these goals, but then you also wanna come back to me because it which is why tracking them is so important.

Cool. Anyone else wanna share? Welcome. What their q one is going to be focused on?

I have some some ideas. Sure.

So January is gonna be really quiet for me work wise, so it’s gonna be, like, my content month.

I Excellent.

Am struggling to find a medium or authority, like, section of social media that works with me, but I think I’m slowly, like, landing and settling on video, long form video, like YouTube. Mhmm.

So what I was thinking could be wise is to create lots of YouTube videos that form, like, a mini course.

Then that mini course can be repurposed into a playbook that I don’t have to write. Someone else can write it because they’ll have the course.

Mhmm.

And then that could also be filtered down hopefully into whatever needs to be for the rest of the quarter. If I get everything done in Jan, perhaps someone could help me repurpose it to platforms.

That would help you move closer to your big target in q one? Like, by end of it, would you feel like, okay. I’ve, like, knocked off one I’m, like, one fourth way through to meeting that big big goal.

I feel like that target is gonna help me move towards my, like, q three goals, but not necessarily, like, instantly. I also wanted to do cold outreach, so I’ve been trying to get my shit together, essentially, to call the outreach and emails and and such for the last six months. And somehow I still have been struggling. But now I think I have reached enough saturation and enough noise, and I’m just going to do it in January.

So I also wanted to get that down. And I I think that call cold email outreach might produce faster results than Mhmm.

What I’m currently doing because I’m getting some traction on LinkedIn. Like, I am slowly figuring it out. One of my greatest, realizations if I don’t know if this is the same for everyone else, but LinkedIn is not a text social media. It is an image and video of social media. Everything that does well online is either has an image or a video attached to it.

Sorry. That was my They’re all linked to it. Yeah. All my sales.

From yeah.

Yeah. So I somehow feel that, yes, the call outreach is what would help you get, like, faster results, especially if your big target is to sign more clients.

Like I shared earlier, thought leadership is great. Highly, highly recommend all of you should be doing it, like, not just the people who feel like it’s gonna be the big domino to move things, but everybody.

But it’s it can sometimes take time. I’m not saying it always take time, but sometimes it can. So yeah.

Could I should I a while ago. So one of I’ve had many tried and failed projects this year, but, one of the other ones was to set up, a live webinar and run ads to it. I have very little experience in doing those things.

I obviously hit, like, a million blockers in that, but I don’t think I can do both. So I I’m pretty sure I can do the call outreach stuff because I’m getting close there. But with authority, should I try run ads, or should I try do organic YouTube stuff?

Or should you get to the webinar that you’re planning to do in front of groups where your clients are already there?

By asking. By Oh, both touching.

Yeah. By just kind of, you know, like, also tapping your network, finding out who knows who usually. Like, I feel like before can you run ads to a webinar and get in front of more people? Sure.

But I would wanna validate that webinar first before pouring money into it and see whether it’s even converting. Like, what’s the purpose of that webinar? If it’s to find clients, why not actually test it out with a room for all of your ideal prospects first? So think about, like, where would your ideal people be hanging out?

Or what would they be using and use that? Like, I know I think Katie is doing one for Deadline Funnel, which is great because that’s like a, Katie, you’re doing one for Deadline Funnel. Right? Cool. Yeah. So that’s great because her audience, of course, creators would be using Deadline Funnel.

Great way to get in front of them. So, yeah, add me too. Awesome. So I would say think about that. Like, validate your ideas first. And like Abby said, organic YouTube with paid ads on videos at the phone bill. Exactly.

Test out your content to see what’s landing before putting money into it.

That makes sense. Okay. I’ve yeah. I’ve been trying to start small with the webinar thing, but I haven’t found many I haven’t found, like, network, I suppose, of people. Yeah.

For Okay.

So maybe just share why why don’t you do it in the group share who who are the kind of people you’re kind of, you know, in Slack, drop a note, let us know who are the people you’re trying to get in front of. Yeah. Let all of us do some brainstorming for where could you present.

Okay. Alright. Cool. You’re welcome. Thank you.

Awesome.

Great. Cool. So okay. We’ve got what you’ll be doing in q one If you feel excited, go ahead and do the other quarters as well. I mean, there’s no hard and fast rule there. Katie.

Hi, Berna.

So I feel like my reflection on this has been impacted by like, I feel like I was full throttle with my signature offer in the fall, but now the response has okay. And I am my my fee for twenty twenty five is, like, acting faster and, like, doing more of everything. So I know that, like, while I have been doing direct outreach, I it has been like a trickle where it needs to be more of a, like, fire hose.

But, I’m wondering, like, if I’m if I’m still not sure if I have, like, message market fits. Like, if I’m, you know, I just Mhmm. I know I’m not talking to the right people because my audience is not like, the people currently following me on social media are not the people my offer is for, same with my email list. Like so my step one goal for twenty twenty five is really, like, dialing in that messaging and getting in front of the people who can pay and desire this offer.

I’m wondering because it it doesn’t seem like thought leadership is the place to start if I’m still not sure about the message.

So direct outreach, I guess, will give me that feedback, like, which which emails get a response. But I was just wondering, like Yeah. What would you what deeper would you focus on pulling first if I’m really trying to make sure I’m talking to the right people with the right framing.

Good question. Okay. So what I would pull would definitely be like, I’m look I’m gonna reference the sheet that, you know, we have in the in the goal setting report.

When you look at the twenty twenty five plan on a page thing, I would definitely definitely pull on authority.

I know that sounds big on leadership, but it’s not really. What I would do is for message market set, essentially, to make sure that I’m, like, I’m saying the things that people wanna hear, a, and, b, I have an offer that people wanna buy.

Besides direct outreach, I would want to actually speak to prospects and not sell, but just kind of get, like, direct feedback on whether or not this is an offer that they would even consider buying.

A good way to do that, if you have past clients who are a great fit for this, like, that would be my first port of call. But if not, I would, like, reach out to past mentors. I would reach out to a podcast host, that I’ve been listening to. I will reach out to, like, you know, people who I know would have the budget and the courses and the offers to benefit from it and just get, like, brutally honest feedback, there. And then see whether or not, you know is it a is it a messaging thing? Is it an author positioning thing?

Or is it an audience thing?

Which is part of positioning essentially, but yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I I’m getting feedback from my current audience that is very clear and they, like, that they understand what it is and all of that. But, yeah, I definitely think it needs to be, like, interviews with those real ideal clients.

Yeah. That is who I would speak with. Like, that’s what we did when we were working on our back end retailer offer.

It’s just kind of, like, so that we could fine tune it to fit our clients needs perfectly. Yeah. That was really helpful for us.

Okay. Thank you.

You’re welcome. Patty?

Hey. Yeah. So, part of my million dollar years is gonna be closing, like, a product to fifty a month and then stacking the retainers.

My question so, like, from where I’ve done quite a full cost this year, I am getting, like, a lot of leads, like, a couple a week and but they’re all, like, five to ten k leads. Like, I none of them could afford, like, fifty k. And I don’t know what to do with them because, like, where I’m supposed to the million dollar years, like, I know selling, like, a five k, like, sales page or audit isn’t gonna help me get to a million dollars.

But also yeah. I don’t wanna just turn away. So I’m just wondering if you have any ideas of where I could monetize those.

And the yeah. The other thing I consider is because my my partner, when he finishes his PhD, I want him to, like, write copy for me. So I’ve got I’ve got him, but I also don’t wanna cannibalize my kind of high ticket offer by offering, like, smaller offers for this audience. So, yeah, I’d love your your thoughts around that.

Mine are a little different in the sense that okay.

And why they’re different is mainly because we have, like, a really good repeat project rate.

I would take the ten k project and turn it into a hundred k project, which is pretty much what we’ve done. Like, even this year, our, like, fifty k project, we already booked in for another fifty k next year. So that’s gonna be, like, a hundred k client in any case. So I do understand that, yes, you wanna close a fifty k client, every month, but I won’t let that hold you back from closing the ten k clients and then turning them into hundred k or even two hundred k clients.

It just it feels like a gamble, like, working with kind of this they sit they’re six figure course creators who, like, they sold that offer, but it’s it’s kind of different than working with, like, someone like Joe who’s got a proven offer.

It’s can’t afford Yeah.

The Yeah. That, I comp I completely agree.

That is always a gamble. And that you could consider having the junior copywriter and subcontracting it with, like, a sixty forty kind of a split.

But I personally feel like then you’re doing more cheating work and more, you know, like, badger work. So a good option then is essentially to let them know that, hey. Then maybe they’re not the right fit for you. A lot of designers do that, Abby. Like, you just need to get comfortable with saying no.

You know? Yeah. But yeah. A lot I mean, I like, there are so many designers I know who will not take a website design project under fifty k or under thirty k, and I think that is so important.

And especially if this is your goal and if this is what you’re really drawn, that, okay, I wanna sign on, like, a fifty k client every year every month. What you wanna do is because the thing with yes. But the thing with the smaller clients is definitely, yes. They will you will be blocking capacity, and then you need to be prepared for that.

So that is something to keep in mind. I’m a big fan of turning the one off projects into the big project. That’s what that worked really well for us, but I can see what you’re saying as well. So I would say that they’re just kind of, like, really comfortable with saying no, and being very clear on your website with your project minimums.

So, you know, you’re not also you’re you’re, a, you’re owning the right positioning. You’re, like, getting that right message about and then also speaking to the clients will be perfect fit for you.

Mhmm. Alright. Thanks, Brenna.

You’re welcome.

Awesome. Great. Cool. Let’s look at the last page. We’ve got a couple minutes. This one is a really easy one.

What you wanna do is you wanna put what your twenty twenty five goal for this year here, and you wanna put, you know, what the goal is gonna be, like, the specific number goal for q one on this side, which is, like, easy. Like, once you’ve done this, this is really easy. What you want to focus on, which is where I would love to see if for those of you who are going to share in Slack later on, I would love to see this.

And just so that, you know, as someone who will be seeing you, implement this, I am in the loop of what are the skills you’re looking to build? What’s the authority that you’ll be working on?

How would you be bringing the money into your business? What would you be leveraging? And what’s your mindset going to be like? So for me, for the for the mindset part, this is something I have worked on a lot over the last few years. This is something I’m gonna keep focusing on is a focus on the gain, not the gap.

I think I’ve already recommended the gap in the gain book. You probably see it behind me in the bookshelf as well. I really recommend those of you who tend to kind of look, feel like you’re not doing enough.

Really recommend that. And, of course, ten x is easier than two x, both by the same author, coincidentally.

But, yeah, highly, highly recommend. But think about what your mindset’s gonna be, so that you can accomplish these. But this is what you should be focusing on. So what are the skills you’d be selling?

Like, for us, what we wanna really sell this this your essentially, profit engineering for service businesses, profit engineering process improvements for our period of time’s, authority.

I’ve enjoyed speaking at international events. I tried it two a year. I would wanna keep doing two a year because international travel feels like a lot to me. But I yeah. So, so just kinda get really, really clear on what that would look like, for you, quarterly launches, what would you be leveraging. For us, we have a great team already of contractors, so we don’t really need to you know, we’re not, like, kind of looking to bring in more people, but we do wanna, you know, add in more AI agents, integrate AI into our workflows, continue doing that.

Just kind of think about what are the skills, what’s the authority, especially for those of you looking at thought leadership. What does it even look like? Like, which events would you wanna speak at or which events would you want to do a workshop at? Do you wanna do an in person client workshop? Like, one of the things I did this year that worked out really well was a VIP half day workshop with the client in Chicago while I was speaking at an event there, and I definitely wanna do more of that. So think about all those things have worked out really well from an authority perspective.

So this section, I would print it out and keep it in for me. And, like, once I’ve obviously, like, filled it out properly.

But for all of you, I would like to see what this looks like for you so I could hold you accountable.

If you wanna take a few minutes and fill it in now, that’s great. But I know, like, you’re overtime. If you wanna do it on your own time and share it with me in Slack, that would be great too.

Okay. Lizzo, great question. When do I wanna see it Thursday night for me all? So, yeah, anytime next week would be great. Take the weekend, sit with it, think about it, and drop it, and tag me in Slack. I would love to take a look at it.

Cool.

Okay. Great.

This was fun. Thank you so much, everybody, for being here. I’m gonna wait to see your plans and your goals and work. Bye. Thank you, Lisa.

Bye.

Q1 Goal Setting

Q1 Goal Setting

Transcript

Uum, alright we’re gonna dive in. I’m going to share the delightful, beautiful workbook, which I duplicated so that I could put my own unhinged thoughts on it without disturbing the master workbook.

So let’s do that.

Cool. Cool.

There we go. There we go.

Sweet.

Alright. Unhinged time.

This reminded me of, like, literally my first copywriting project ever in, like, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and I had to write for this, like, fundraiser event that was, like, based on Mad Men.

And I needed to, like, write copy for this local event fundraiser.

And, I think, like, my tagline was something like, going mad never felt so good and something, like, really funny like that.

So going unhinged never felt so good. That doesn’t have the same ring to it. But y’all get the idea. So thirteen years later, we’re going mad. So big unhinged ideas.

I love these two books, and they synergize so well. Synergy. Synergy. Synergy. There’s a weird ass get on the word synergy.

But to go well together, vivid vision really encapsulates a lot of what, I had been doing unconsciously for a while. So I was, like, the master of a lifeless goals. Like, I started setting goals, like, a while ago, and they’d be on Google Doc, and they would be the things that I thought would have meaning. There would be missions and visions on there that I thought had meaning, and there was no, like, juice to it.

So, yeah, I think a mission and a vision must connect to a series, a multitude of real and enjoyable, fully charged moments that are trackable, realizable, real, and you could reflect back and say, holy fuck. That happened, and this felt amazing. And I really want you to be able to think about what those moments are in copy. I call those moments of heightened pleasure.

Right? These are real observable moments when the thing you want to achieve is achieved. Right?

And it’s not just this check mark, but this, oh, like, heart expanding, like, body vibrating holy fuck moment.

And I want y’all to be available to those holy fuck moments, and that may mean being less available for your holy fuck moments.

I know I still have somehow holy fuck no moments in my life, and it was very uncomfortable, initially setting boundaries on those fuck no moments. But, yeah, setting boundaries on your fuck no moment will appeal you to those fuck yeah moments.

So, one thing I will encourage you to lean into are what o what are those textures, those data points, and feeling points of that vivid vision manifested? What is actually happening in your reality? What are you going on the wind channel in Slack and being like, oh, I’m you’ll never guess what just happened, dot dot dot, and let us celebrate you in that with all these emojis, the raising emojis.

Income goals. Right? So I was initially the king of not caring about money until this. Right?

I’d be like, I’m good. I just enjoy my Starbucks and my apartment, and that’s enough. Right? So I was the king of saying, well, as long as I have enough or decent living, I’m good.

Right? And then I started connecting income goals to actual lifestyle moments that they would empower, and I’m gonna talk about those in a second.

And, yeah, I made myself available for those just by leaning into what those income goals actually represented. So, bonus points. I found a lot of similarities between Vivid Vision and this old school book from, like, I don’t know, like, the fifties or sixties, one of those, like, initial manifesting books, Feelings the Secret by Neville Goddard.

Not inventory reading. Just a little side note. It’s written in very antiquated language, but some really good stuff about seeing that end result, not just, like, in your mind, but actually feeling it. What does it feel like in your body when that thing happens?

How does that actually feel in your body when you get an email from Tony Robbins saying, do you wanna speak on my stage? And you’re like, no. I don’t, but I really do.

How does that feel? So lean into those realities as if they are already happening. Make yourself available for it. Make your nervous system available to it.

Train your nervous nervous system for these ten x moments that may initially have some contraction. Right? It may initially be an edge, but begin attuning you to what’s possible and leaning on the support here. Right?

And in your own, yeah, in your own daily life to get that support to expand. Because I think this container is about expanding and not about the play it safe goals. These are about the unhinged, slightly scary. Yes.

They’re initially gonna create contraction and fever in the body, and that is expected, and we could work with that. Those types of goals. Cool?

Sweet.

Ten x is easier than two x. Another one I’ve loved.

Big takeaways here is just, like, being in that fierce protection and advocacy of your vivid vision. You choose ten x, you are excluding so much bullshit. Right? And this is something that was so uncomfortable as a recovering people pleaser.

I remember my first year full time freelancing probably made somewhere around, like, I don’t know, forty to fifty k working with the local piano repair shop, the local massage studio. Right? All these local people that became friends. Right?

And then in my own ten x year, literal ten x year. Oh, gosh. It required so many noes. Like, nope.

Sorry. I don’t do that anymore. Right? Can’t do it. Right? Can’t make that exception.

So, yeah, I think being in fierce protection, right, of your vivid vision, like, falling in love with that vivid vision, treating it as you would a child or a pet or a dog or a cat or just something you really love and making it less personal. Right? Not not just your personal boundaries, but, like, go to bat for this vision that you get to nurture and bridge into reality. So fierce protect of it.

Awkward convos are always going to feel better than self betrayal when you give a yes, and then you essentially have that stinging, sensation in your gut of, like, did I say yes? Right? And you’re begrudgingly doing something you don’t wanna do. Yeah.

Let’s just not do those anymore. Let’s just, like, get rid of all of those in your life.

And, yeah, to me, that’s required for that ten x.

Ten x innovation. So this is such a dear topic to me. I feel like, yeah, I feel like a big part of my career has been on the innovation side. Essentially, right from the beginning, having that question of, like, what is the five minute mile for what I’m doing?

What is the five minute mile for, an email launch sequence? What is the five minute mile for a SaaS onboarding? What is the five minute mile for, an ecom product page being launched to market for the first time? Right?

So what are these moonshots? What are these five minute miles in the thing you do, and what can you do in your thing, right, with every new project that I call paid r and d? Right? What needs to be true for you to literally set the standard for what that thing looks like in your space.

Right? And that’s gonna require some testing. So I call that paid r and d, at least one thing you’re doing on every new project to try to push that needle a little bit further. So I’m gonna have more to share about this in twenty twenty five.

It’s a concept I’m still practicing. Literally just wrote, an ecom supplement product page that I strategically tried just two new things, two new things that I’ve never done before, never seen done before. So take all the best practices, you add one or two things with a clear hypothesis of this might work. Right?

Let’s test this out in this scenario.

So I’m gonna share more on that because this page I just wrote is converting at, like, thirteen percent, like, thirteen percent conversion, and that’s not on, like, an insignificant amount of clicks. So really exciting stuff to share there. But in your own projects, just test one new thing. Like, what is one new thing that if this works, I have something that no one else has.

Right? There’s the innovation piece. You’re either competing on innovation, like having a thing, a proven method, or extreme per tease is the other side of it. Like, being just so freaking good.

Right? Like, that that is what allows you to charge ten x. Right? But I think it’s a lot easier, predictable, and faster of a path to innovate in your space.

So, those are my little quick book summaries. I think, like, the little last motivating line is, like, so much can change in a year if you Right? Like, I’ve had years of massive growth, and then I’ve had years of just, like, hold forward and integrate what happened and optimize it. But those, like, explosive, like, eight to ten x years, gosh. Those aren’t the ones I look back on right now and be like, that year changed freaking everything. Like, these are life trajectory changing years, and we get to create if we’re ready for them, if we’re available for them. So that is my little recap there.

The can you imagine exercise, I’d love for us to be able to spend some time here. Right? This tracks back to what are these tangible moments, right, where this vision, where this ten x vision comes to life when you could be like, damn. That just happened.

When you could go on that Slack channel, that wind channel, and be like, this just happened. Right? So for me, right, like, my big thing, when I ten x wasn’t about income goals. I couldn’t just say I won half a million dollars a year for the hell of it.

I had to connect those to things that mattered, and these matterful things happened, and they were amazing. Right? So it was like, for me, that time I was at the Scandinavian Spa in the middle of the day, right, when it’s empty except for retirees, like, talking about retiree shit, and just making one k, right, from an automated course sale, like, it’s another day and it’s no big deal. Right?

Like, that was one of my, like, nervous system exhale. Right? This is what I want to be living. That’s what my ten x lifestyle looked like at the time in, I guess this was, like, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen.

Twenty fifteen, I almost died from a stroke. So that was my year of, like, no. I’m just gonna radically chill, right, and enjoy that and enjoy what this big bump in income empowers me to do.

Another fun income goal that turned into a tangible reality that actually had a lot of, like, excitement in it. I don’t know why this motivated it, motivated me the way it did.

But one of my goals was to have enough cash saved up in reserve in my business checking account that just having it in a I think it was, like, a five percent high interest account could pay my monthly expenses. Like, how cool is that when your, interest on what is in your biz account could pay expenses. And granted, I wasn’t in a crazy scale mode. Right? That was, like, with a VA and some software, but still, like, that just made my life feel so light and exciting.

So that is an income goal baked into a tangible thing that just feels really light on my system.

What else? Right? So I was never a big, event person.

You know, typical introvert, extreme introvert. Right? But what I loved to do was, like, I loved to go deep with the clients I had. Right?

So that meant traveling. It meant getting on location. It meant doing VIP days. It meant, visiting their teams and then extending those trips for two to three days for chill time.

Right? So that might look like hikes and going to the beach. And I remember one year, I was in, like, Encinitas or Carlsbad, like, three times that year. Right?

And, like, there’s these gardens by a place called Swami Beach. Right? So it’s like the Yogananda Gardens or something and just beautiful gardens overlooking the ocean. And I’m like, I found my up there on the for the third time that year, and that was one of my, like, ah, I made it moments.

Right? This is becoming routine. Like, just taking a chill decompressing day after a client VIP day and staring up in the ocean.

So, and then you get to also have, like, guilt free, like, pride in some of your goals. Right? So, like, one of my, like, kinks when I first ten x was, like, walking into the bank. Right?

Like, I didn’t even have Stripe in my first year. Like, I would literally ask clients to send checks in the mail. Right? And I would show up to the bank teller with, like, these five figure checks, and they would have no freaking idea what I did.

And, Brendon, that’s kind of just, like, enjoyable sense of weird pride in that.

So, yeah, I’d love for us all to just take some time right now, like, lean into what these vivid ten x moments look like for you. Right? They are undoubtedly connected to growth goals, and especially growth and income and growth in mindset and within your capacity to lean into that because there is going to be some edge. So this is your time to write a few of these down.

Right? Maybe even just, like, one really clear, oof, I don’t know if I should say that goal. Right? One that kinda scares you to say out loud, and then maybe we’ll say it out loud because that’s what we do.

So I’m gonna stop my share.

Any questions about this exercise before we get going, or should I, like, queue up some music that y’all may or may not enjoy while we take a few minutes?

Get unhinged.

Oh, I was not expecting espresso for some reason. I thought I made something else. That hit me harder. Cool.

Alright. I’m gonna play some music. I’ve never been known as, like, the best party DJ. I’ve always been the person, like, they replace after one song, but that’s all good.

And we’ll give it about five minutes. And then how many people are on this call? We got close to twenty.

So, yeah, I think that’s gonna be enough time for at least one minute one minute each to declare that out loud. So we’re gonna do five minutes now, and then everyone gets to share and declare their big, unhinged, wild, feels scary to say aloud goal, or the year.

Cool.

Alright.

Cool. Welcome back, everyone.

So, I would love to hear everybody’s unhinged goal. Right? And I think it would be amazing for everyone to hear everyone’s unhinged goal.

That way, a, we know what it is. And, b, if you wanna add a little extra flavor, a little extra juice to it as someone is sharing it, I dare you, right, to just see them fully in that success, see them as fully capable, see them as fully in the realization of that, and celebrate them in that. Right? I think that would be an enjoyable, fun, and lovely thing to do. So, first one up, I think we’ve got about sixty to ninety seconds, each. So yeah.

Cool. Cody, you’re up.

Alright. So this year, I will, write and publish a best selling book, that will lead to speaking gigs, high profile collaborations, and media features.

My book will be the go to manual for growth marketers and ecom leaders, when it comes to scaling their business, with a funnel for specifically cold traffic, and it will establish me as a top authority in the space.

Love it. What is one defining moment where you will know you’re in the achievement of that?

I would say when the book is published because then I know that I actually followed through what I said I was gonna do.

Okay. Love it. Thanks for sharing, Cody. Next person up.

Okay. I’ll go.

Mine is I host a Greek vacation for ten days with my entire family in the UK and in South Africa.

We’ve got a yacht moored outside, private shifts, and plenty of exciting activities planned like hiking, snorkeling, and, of course, eating.

Love it. What are you eating?

Oh my god. Like, everything.

I I’ve never been to Greece, so whatever they eat.

Beautiful. Cool. Well, taste those flavors and taste the entire moment. Love it. Cool. Next up.

My moment is I’m on a Teams meeting with my bookkeeper who I think thinks I’m a little bit crazy, and he’s telling me that he has never seen a client’s finances transform as dramatically as mine have in the last twelve months, and then point out that I should probably buy a company car or something because, otherwise, I’m gonna have to be in a different tax bracket.

That is amazing. Yes.

And that car the car is a little, Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible.

Oh, so good. Yeah. I love it.

Like, you least unhinged car you could buy.

I mean, I’ve I’ve had it on my vision board since I was, like, seventeen.

So Oh, okay.

Alright. Fair enough.

Yeah.

I mean, it was like the cool dream car.

Love it.

Is Andrew up?

Is that me?

I think so.

Cool.

My moment is when the prospect says yes to my proposal for a ten thousand dollar monthly consulting retainer, and I and I almost feel kind of, like, guilty because it’s like it feels like, oh, that’s not enough. Like, I’m not let me just read what I wrote instead of trying to improvise. I can’t believe how little work I’ll actually have to do relative to the amount that I’m getting paid because they’re paying for my thinking, not for my time or effort. And I guess, a moment in that might be, like, telling my wife about, like, you know, that I got that signed and, like, oh my god. I’m not gonna have to do nearly as much work as I’ve done to make, you know, half that money in the past or something.

I love that. What I love about what you just shared is, like, you included feeling guilty in your vision and your goal, which is true to what that would look like for you right now. Right? So I think so I think, like, that’s amazing.

Like, lean into that. Lean into moments that, right now, feel like they might induce a little bit of, like, guilt. Right? So cool.

Awesome. Okay. So mine is finding the perfect home for my family, and being able to call up our real estate agent when we, like, signed it and just put an offer in right away and close within, like, a month.

And it’s, like, the perfect house for a family, so it’s in the city, which is more pricey than we would otherwise or normally choose, I guess.

And it’s, like, in a great school district.

It’s near family. It’s got everything for the kids, and then it’s just also a an amazing house to where we can just set up shop for the foreseeable future.

Mhmm. I love that.

Does that moment feel most realized to you, like, when you sign for the house, when you get the house, or even when you make the decision and, like, reach out to an agent and say, like, I’m available for this now?

But probably, like, when I reach out to the agent and say, k. I can close on it. Like, we can we can put it down today. Like, we’re ready today. And then, like, the final walk through as the papers are, like, being signed.

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Keep, like, inviting, like, the energies from those two moments because they feel, like, really expansive and life giving. Cool.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay.

I actually started this, exercise yesterday. So the ImagineWall is the house that I want in three years.

So it sits, in the mountains of the Blues.

We’re in the Grand Oregon, so we’re right at the base of the Blue Mountains. It’s gonna be lakeside. There is a lake up there.

Five acres of wooded beauty.

Very large pond with a huge wrap around porch.

The back, back porch is really large outdoor living space with its own fireplace looking out over the lake. So it’s a perfect spot for morning coffee or eating wine or whiskey.

Are we invited? Can we have the first IRL there?

We can. Yeah. So but the the goal for this is to pay seventy five percent cash from the business.

Amazing.

Beautiful. Well, I’m officially imagining us sitting around your fire, like, being like, look at all this land. And Yeah. Inevitably someone starts wolf howling because they can and then everyone does.

Yeah. This is a perfect perfect place for it.

Yeah. Who in this group kicks off the wolf howling? Like, who is most likely to initiate wolf howling?

There you go.

Abby put up her hand, and I was gonna say Abby. So I think it’s Abby.

I’m usually the last one to join the wolf howling. I’m like, fine. I’ll do it. Anyway cool. Amazing. Thanks, Michelle.

I guess I’m, I am so inspired by this book. I’ll tell you what.

My my big audacious goal for this year is one million dollars worth of revenue in my, copywriting agency with three copywriters, two VAs with my standardized offer going from ten k to twenty k to thirty k, and then the other half being the monthly retainers.

Amazing. Yeah. What is, like, that moment when that is all realized? Right? Do you see yourself kind of, like, celebrating with that team, have two copywriters, like, sharing that revenue?

As a matter of fact, this weekend, I interviewed my first, copywriter.

Cool. And I don’t even know how I’m gonna get to the million yet, but I’ve already interviewed my first copywriter.

So Amazing.

Beautiful. Well, we’re here for it.

Abby?

I haven’t sat in on a Rise session before, and I find it very uncomfortable to wait for the next person. So my apologies. Right?

I was going to get cold on. Sorry. Yeah.

I read the wolf sweating.

Just waiting for this Lean into that, Joe.

I was like, should I be talking? Yeah. I read the wolf howling because it’s been, like, really stormy. Like and I live by the beach.

I keep going down to the beach, throwing pebbles into the sea and then manifesting and then genuinely, like, howling because it’s so stormy that no one can hear. But, anyway, my visualization would be it. I’m sitting with my friends at the pub, and I’m like, guys, like, I I kind of, like, feel like I just won a lottery because my course has just, like, taken off. And I’ve paid off my mortgage.

I’ve just booked a holiday to Orlando, and I just I I don’t need all this money. Like, does anyone want, like, a their deposit for a house? Because, like, this is I I just don’t need this this much and then just, like, help my friends get houses and go to Orlando.

That’s amazing. Help your friend get help your friends get houses.

Like, that’s a personal It is so expensive in the UK.

Like, it’s so hard to get on the property ladder, and it’s just getting, like, worse and worse. So that’s like, I would love to just get all my friends’, houses.

I love that. Amazing. That is definitely, like, wolf howling worthy. So yeah. You all, like, exit the pub and start howling. Right?

So Why would we need to exit the pub?

That’s true. It is a pub.

Cool. Next up.

No one else has a hand up.

Alright.

Let’s see. Anyone who hasn’t shared yet who is willing and ready and available to be that.

Even if you didn’t even write anything down, like, what comes to mind right now? Something that just feels badass and unhinged.

Right.

I I see Joe scanning the squares. She’s like, who? Who?

I might be the only one with my hand up.

Oh, there it is.

I’ll go.

Sorry. I’m I admit I’m multitasking.

But one thing I would love to do is hire my partner and pay him life changing a life changing salary because he’s also very limited in his skill set and the jobs that are available to him. So that would be awesome. That would mean a lot and pay a very high rate.

Amazing. How about that? Joe, do you wanna go? Joe? Sarah? Do you know?

Mostly because I haven’t got it sorted out Mhmm.

At all. I don’t have a can you imagine? I’m sorry. I don’t.

I’m thinking about it still. I just don’t.

Cool. Well, we got time. So I wanna, like, pose another question for, like, a real rapid fire round.

And this one, I want everybody to be able to say. But, like, what is the fuck no that you are no longer available for? Right? And, like, you could put that in a number of, like, projects under x amount. Right?

That could be work that you’ve been doing just because it’s familiar and safe, or it could be, like, a certain, like, boundary, like, on your health. Like, I no longer do this. Right?

But, yeah, what is, like, when fuck no that you are no longer available for and that you are willing to be seen in your lack of availability for?

Social media management.

Cool. Done with that. Yep.

I’m trying to move out of being, doing, like, big projects that are built around copy and trying to be moved more into, like, CRO consultant kind of things. So in the process of stepping away from some of the projects when people come around and say, hey. We have fifteen pages of web copy that we need to do.

Trying to turn those into consulting, retainers or passing them off to the many talented copywriters I know.

I don’t wanna work with clients who make me cry, and I just wanna work with people who think have amazing and are lucky to have me. Mhmm.

Makes you cry.

This is horrible. Men from Florida.

I thought you were gonna say it.

Every client, every, like, client I work with, he’s a man from Florida. It’s just horrible to me.

I think you’ve identified the trend. So yeah, so, like, you need to have your, like, man from Florida rate and, yeah, just automatically charge a hundred k for men for men from Florida.

Yeah. I could look at that.

And then your goal is to make them cry first. So yeah.

Cool.

Florida man. Make stop copywriter cry.

Is that what that says? Oh, for no good reason.

That’s good, Andrew.

Because that’s like a thing.

Right? If you search Florida, man?

That’s a thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that, and it works.

It’s hilarious.

Right. Does it have to be a work client thing?

Because I do have kind of a money goal wrapped in a thing I won’t do anymore, which is can print.

I do not want to fly in coach ever again ever. I don’t know. And the problem is that I speaking of Florida, I have to fly down to see my daughter a lot to a small airport, and, unfortunately, like, it’s the only option. There is no first class or business class, but at that’s kinda I’m done with coach and flying anything other than business or first class.

Nice. Wow. That.

Love that.

I’m leaning leaning into an edge here and flying coach with a family to Florida next month. So You’re awesome. Wish me luck. Yeah. Yeah.

I am.

Because, I know sometimes you gotta get a little uncomfortable.

That’s my version of a cold plunge.

Let’s keep it going.

I would so rather spend that whole time in a cold plunge than on that plane. Gotcha.

Oh gosh.

But I hate flying, so there’s that.

I like what she said. I have first class travel in my contracts. Boom.

My fuck no is the last minute jobs where the clients or potential clients try to, like, negotiate and price even though you know that it’s going to get them a ton more money and going to cost your weekend.

Mhmm.

No more of that.

For me, no more one on one coaching.

Good. Boundary?

For me, it’s it’s just, like, twelve hour days. Like, I can do a ten hour. That’s fine. But if there’s deadline, it goes over to twelve. It’s just so soul destroying, so be my fuck up. Yeah.

Yeah. How many twelve hour days do you reckon you had this year?

Quite a few year. Yeah. I have this I think I’ve been, like, up and down. So I’m not making up for the downs with, like, a crazy amount of work. And then because I’ve expanded all of my energy for the week in one day, I’m down again.

It’s just but, I’m slowly getting out of it, I think.

Yeah.

That could be a really radical boundary to hold, right, in terms of also the efficiencies you create, and the leverage you create as well.

So, yeah, I’d even like oh, what does Joe have to say here?

K. Oh, I totally do.

That’s fair.

That’s fair.

Alright.

Cool. Who’s that?

Boundaries are fun. Like, anyone can take a second too. Like, like, go for seconds or thirds.

I don’t have a a a fuck now, but my goal is, to create a billion dollar company by myself.

I love it.

I ain’t unhinged. That’s so small.

Love it. Yeah.

It’s so big.

That’s wild.

I mean, I’ve created, like you know, personally, the biggest company is, like, twenty million, and I’ve helped clients get acquired for a hundred million, you know, or or more.

But I wanna do a billion dollar company by myself. Mhmm.

Yeah. What’s the why? Yourself? Why is that an important part of it? Can I ask?

Because it’s just I I just do so many things, and I just wanna show that one person can do all the all the things and that this is possible. And it’s especially possible. I mean, I I’ve one, I’ve been working toward this for a while, but it’s even more possible now with with AI too.

Love it.

What’s, like, the most satisfying part of that achievement to you? Like, is it like, I think Abby mentioned, like, a Forbes article. Like, is it when someone says, how the hell did you do that? Like, can you actually give that spiel, or is it the financial element?

Or No.

I think it’s just I’ve done so much internal work around my goals and things. And my primary motivation that comes down underneath everything is it’s just who I am, and I thought it would be cool. And that’s really why I do pretty much everything that I do. I mean, like, I’ve I Joe always says she does it because she likes she likes sort of winning. She’s her her her motivator is a competition thing, like a personal best. For me, it’s just like, I thought it would be cool. That’s it.

I love that.

I know that’s not you know, there’s no big big motive behind it other than it’s just what I feel like I’m supposed to do.

Very cool.

Yeah. I wanna have to, like, block SamCart from sending me emails because I just, like, keep getting so many sales things. And it’s like, oh my god. It actually is really annoying. That thing, of course, created to say, like, oh, like, I just I have to turn the note based on because it’s so noisy. Like, I want I want to experience that. That’s awesome.

Yeah.

My fuck no is that I’m not gonna overthink things because I have a tendency to do that, and then it, like, slows me down. And then I’m spending a lot more time doing the things that shouldn’t take as long as they are. And so I will be instead just saying this is good enough and rolling with it.

Nice. What’s, like, one area you find yourself overthinking quite a bit?

What was that?

What what’s, like, one area you find yourself overthinking more than others?

Oh, definitely the copy and writing and, like, I get stuck on, like, is this the best way to say this?

You know? And it’s really, it doesn’t have to be that big of a deal. Like, you’re gonna put it out there and you’re gonna test it anyway. Mhmm. And instead of getting stuck on it, you can just refine it later. You know?

Totally. Cool.

Right. I know we still have fifteen minutes left. Do we wanna maybe open the floor for any other questions that are related or unrelated to today’s training?

Most definitely. There. Yeah.

Cool. Cool.

Jessica.

I don’t really I’m struggling for, like, a big goal that I’m envisioning vividly other than and maybe this is just because of Thanksgiving. But we went to the Green Bay Packer game for Thanksgiving. And I like being the person who, when you look at me, you would not expect to be in places like first class or the clubhouse or wherever. So I just basically want more experiences like that where people would not I can totally tell. They just look at me and they’re like, really? You, first class?

Like, something like that. I don’t know why. I don’t really care what other people think, but I find it very amusing, the looks on their faces. So it’s, like, the only money related goal I can really think of that I want more of this year’s, like, going to a football game or a basketball game or a concert or an airplane and having great seats. And you know what I mean?

Yeah. That’s super satisfying too. Right? And I’m glad you can own that without feeling guilty about it. Like, that’s really good.

I have no shame. I don’t care.

That’s shameless cheese head. Yeah.

Pretty much.

Cool. Andrew.

Yeah. Cool.

Okay. Okay. A little vulnerable here for a moment. But, I guess I something that I struggle with a lot is that I have, a lot of inner tension, between, you know, having ambition and and what I, you know, like, the stuff that I wrote down for what, you know, what can I imagine?

And, also, like, a lot of, feelings of kind of, like, avoidance and resistance and dread of, like, not wanting, like, responsive more responsibility, not wanting more complexity, not wanting, you know, more stress, all these things. And some of that has to do with, like, physical and mental health issues that, I that are chronic for me and that I struggle with. But I guess I’m just wondering if you have any kind of tips on how to maybe get out of my own way on this sensor, how to kind of balance the, you know, wanting all these things that we talk about with also, you know, not, I don’t know, with with, yeah, balancing the the laziness with the ambition, I guess, or the openings with the ambition.

Yeah. That’s an awesome question. I’m sure everyone here could give a really rich answer to it. I’ll give mine, and then if anyone cares to chime in, they can.

For me, like and I’ll answer this in a same way similar way like I do with my copy. The best way to overcome is to include. Right? So, like, I used to have a vision that, like, you know, the most successful version of myself has his shit together.

Right? And that there was no room for laziness or procrastination or lack of ambition or these peaks and peaks and valleys. Right? Like, and I still go through peaks and valleys.

Like, there are some weeks when I feel on fire and I make declarations and form relationships where, like, a week later, I’m like, well, fuck. I just wanna chill. I want none of this. Right?

So, there’s space for that, and I think, like, we get to create these visions that are forgiving of our humanness and allowing of them. So I think, like, for me personally, there was this, like, one, like, noticing my trend lines. Right? Noticing that when this happens, I’ll contract, I’ll pull back, or I’ll want to.

Right?

And then when I say yes, sometimes I’ll be like, well, shit. I’m gonna be discovered now or I’m biting off more than I could chew or all these narratives. And that just became inclusive of the process, not something I resisted. And, of course, there’s the inner work where I was doing right on unwinding those. Right? From the mindset work to the emotional clearing work to the what is really kind of like the root of driving this.

But, you know, as far as I’ve been able to observe, no one has totally overhauled their nervous system and belief system and trauma in weeks or months. Right? And I think that there’s a certain permission you give yourself to, like, this is in in my vision of this success. Right? It’s not overcome this and then that. That makes sense?

Definitely. Yes. Thank you. That’s helpful.

Cool. Of course.

I guess it’s my turn. To just to add to what you just said, Ryan, I like to call it emotional margin. You know? Some space for myself for those those peaks and valleys. That’s how that’s how I, handle it. But, quick question. Recommendation on a payment provider.

Recommendation on a payment provider for what specifically?

For any payments, you know, through is it would it be Stripe?

Would it be Apple? And who would it what would it be?

I mean, Stripe is super reliable and easy and integrates with just about everything. And, yeah, like, that’s always an easy default.

The fees could get annoying for sure.

I tend to like Wise, especially being in Canada, working with US clients, getting paid in US. Wise as though it’s been, like, super reliable and doesn’t need up too many fees. So my own stack on that is Stripe and Wise, essentially.

Yeah.

I’m just hearing a lot of negativity about Stripe lately about how they shut down accounts now. They’re not sure about the transactions, and the customer service isn’t what it could be.

There’s definitely yeah. I’ve definitely picked up on the rumblings on that.

I haven’t encountered any issues myself. Knock on wood. I don’t know if this desk is real wood or imitation wood, but I knocked out in any way.

It’s always good to kind of, like, have in the back of your mind what a backup is.

You know, I think, like, one thing that I proactively do on all my payment processors, and I used to do with PayPal, right, is I wouldn’t leave cash in there longer than I need to. Right? So I would move it out, like, right away so that if ever things do go wrong with the pros processor, like, funds aren’t locked in.

But yeah.

Like, what, like, are there any specific concerns around, like, Stripe, sorry, with your particular business? Like, things you’ve observed with, like, other providers in a similar space or yeah.

Well, I’m just looking at, this this deal where they might shut me down because they’re unfamiliar with my transactions.

Transaction, they shut me down until they can investigate. Number two would be the fees.

Mhmm.

Number three would be the lack of customer service.

Right.

Do they have a phone or just do I have to go through a chat?

And Yep.

Joe raises a really good point here. Right? Like, I hate Wes for paying for things.

Hate, right, with a extended AAA, like a triple a hate rating, but love Stripe. Right? So, like, there I mean, that’s one really good reason. Right?

Like, make it easy on client make it easy for clients to pay you. Right? Don’t add friction to getting paid. That’s one of the reasons I’ve background Stripe as well.

I’ll, like, you know, with a little bit of guilt, ask about why sometimes. Do you do you use why it’s right? And, like, just go back to Stripe. But, yeah, make it easy for clients to pay you.

Yes, there are some alternatives to Stripe that a lot of people have been talking about online as well.

Can’t remember the name of it right now, but there is a big exodus from Stripe to another that is, you know, apparently more friendly for those in the online space. But, I could try to find that and ping you, if I could recall that provider.

Cool. We got Abby and Misal.

Hey. Yeah. So this might be a bit of an amateur question, but it’s just a gap in my knowledge.

When you had a call with a prospect and they were interested and then you have to follow-up, should you be, like, re reselling to them, or should you just be like, hey. You haven’t, like, booked that follow-up call yet?

Like Oh, I mean, it all depends on, like, the context of the first call, right, and what we’re following up about.

Yeah.

Like, if they seemed like like it was kind of like a yes, like a soft yes, and then you’re gonna pick up. I’m laughing because Jo knows what I’m talking about. If you’re, like, following up, having a second call to talk about it, but they haven’t put that. Like, should you be, like, reselling or just, like, reminding them?

Yeah.

I mean, my goal is to get, like, some form of commitment on that first call.

Mostly because, like and I’d imagine the same is true for you. Right? When you’re gonna take on a project, you really need to make it within a time line, and you don’t have much time to waste yourself.

I think, like, kind of having that attitude of, like, we gotta get started and move on this, is certainly helpful.

If a second call is necessary, like, it’s usually just to, like, revisit some specific points of the proposal, right, that they wanted to get back to me on. Right? Like, if there was something that they had to double check with someone, but once again, you want decision makers on the call as much as possible.

So there’s, like, an element of objection handling on the first call. Right? Like, if you’re sensing, like, tentativeness, right, there, what I used to do, right, like, is for my to ease my own discomfort, I’d I’d get off the call, right, and try to, you know, push that to another call because I I was uncomfortable myself. Right?

But if I’m sensing hesitation and, you know, everything’s laid out, we’ve gone over the numbers, we’ve gone over the scope, we’ve gone over the outcomes that we’d be seeking. Right? And I’m asking for commitment there. Right? I’m saying that I’m usually saying, like, you know, if y’all can greenlight this right now, I’d love to get started this afternoon or tomorrow with my intake process. Like, I really move the intake and the project kickoff as soon as possible, and then try to get that commitment right away.

So if they want another call, should you try and get them to, like, ideally book it, like, on that first call? Totally. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Absolutely. And it should be ASAP. Like, there shouldn’t there should be as minimal gap between those calls as possible.

So, like, I would certainly like, if there are legit areas to look at, right, and concerns and people to talk to you, whatever, like, I would book that time with them on the spot. Like, pull out your calendar. I’ll pull out mine. I’m I’ll send you an invite.

Right? Like, and get that verbal commitment. Like, does that sound good with you? Yes. Right?

Like, people aren’t gonna ghost on things that they’ve given verbal commitments to most of the time, unless they’re really avoiding you, right, and unless there’s really an objection that they don’t wanna tell you.

But yeah.

Okay. Thank you, Roy.

Of course.

I would add, having very little insight into what’s going on, that if it happens over the Black Friday weekend, they might just be busy with Black Friday sales, maybe, hypothetically speaking.

But what if they also had messaged you to say you shouldn’t have followed up?

Yeah. There’s that. That’s them nudging you. Like, Abby, we closed this.

And then they might have got busy with Black Friday.

Okay. Gotcha. I’m really red.

Cool.

My question is, where do you keep your Can You Imagine wall? Do you, like, read it every day? Like, what do you do with it so that you can keep it fresh in your brain?

Good question. So I used to have, like, a board, like, literal post its with a few of those.

Right now, these because I I’m more digital. I have a doc that I review, but it’s a short doc. Like, it’s got, like, five or six of those moments, and I don’t just read it mentally. Like, I read one, and I immerse myself in that moment.

Right? I actually get as much satisfaction as I can out of it as if it’s real right now without feeling like, gosh. Why isn’t this here yet? So, yeah, I, like, indulge in those moments as if they’re here now, if that makes sense.

You do it daily? Do you have, like, I don’t know, monthly? Like, do you have a ritual for that at all?

I used to do it, like, nightly, back when, like, my nights are more predictable. But, no, I think, like, weekly is better than ninety nine point nine nine percent of the world. Right? So, like, whatever cadence feels available to you without you feeling like, I didn’t do it without it feeling like a chore. Right? Because it should feel like a pleasure to, like, essentially, like, time travel to these realities, right, and experience them, like, in full joy as if they’re here now. So yeah.

And app recommendation, Envision app that Katie is using upon Stacy’s recommendation. Cool.

Can I ask a real quick question? Sorry. I know we’re on time.

Yep. Yeah. Okay.

And if anyone needs to hop off, no worries. But yeah. Totally.

Thank you. So in terms of visualizing and goal setting, when I first opened the goal setting document, I, like, panicked because I set a lot of goals this year that I didn’t achieve. And I’m like, do I really need to set more goals that I’m not going to achieve again next year? And I started writing a post on the mindset Slack group and realized that, no. Actually, it hasn’t been that bad of a year. It’s just that I haven’t achieved the undeniable glittering success that I wanted.

But in terms of, like, visualizing these, amazing goals, I feel kind of apprehensive to give in to, like, the dream, so to speak.

Mhmm.

I I feel like the advice is just to go bravely into that dark, beautiful night, but I’m still scared. So do you have, I guess, any advice for that?

Yeah. So I I feel like I know where you’re coming from on this. Right? And, like, I had goals and dreams and these outcomes that would feel like out of reach and scary and blah blah blah. Right? And, like, one thing I found to be surprisingly effective is, like, having elements of normal within them so they’re not so and only grandiose.

Right? So it’s like maybe wearing the same clothes I’m wearing right now, right, in that vision. So you’re kind of bridging familiar land with adventurous land. Right? So it’s like maybe in that, reality in Greece, right, your hair is still red?

Pink? Pinkish red? Right?

Red on the screen.

Right? Like, get yes. As weird as it sounds. Right? Like, if that pinkish red hair feels safe and you, right, like, bring that with you into that reality. Bring elements of your current reality that feel comfort giving, if that makes sense, so that it’s not an abandonment of all the things that feel safe and lovely, and trading that for crazy big adventures. Like, bring the moments with you.

That’s really helpful. Thank you so much.

Cool.

Awesome. Well, we are three minutes over.

So I think now’s a good time to wrap. Does anyone have anything like burning that they didn’t get to share or ask, or does everyone feel good and complete?

I have one quick question about the workbook.

Do we have a color PDF as well? I got only the black and white PDF, and then the Canva one is view only.

We can get you a downloaded version of the color one for sure. It’s just I’ve I didn’t want to print that off. And then my binder, I’m like, I don’t know.

So no. But we can absolutely get you that, Tina.

Cool. Thank you.

Cool. Happy just got two leads during this call. Look at that.

That’s like thought I’d be manifested it.

Like, what the hell? Girl. You did.

There’s so much talking about manifesting. I love it. Yeah.

And actually, you just checked my email, and I was like, what the hell?

This is a magical portal.

I’m telling y’all, if you sit on this call for another ten hours week.

Yeah. Time very well spent. It’s an ROI. That’s all. Yeah.

Beautiful. Cool. Thanks, Jeff. Go ahead.

Thank you for walking everyone through the first part of the workbook.

We have the second part coming up, this Thursday as well. It’s in the calendar the the days to have, like, like, the pages, to look in. That’s pages nine to nineteen.

That will require some reflection on how twenty twenty four went for you, what worked, what didn’t work, things like that. So I’d spend some time before that session just kind of reflecting on like, for example, Claire, you said you had goals that you made this year and you didn’t hit them, and that makes it difficult to set future goals because, like, I I I feel that, and I hope that that doesn’t continue to get in your way. I I get where you’re coming from, though. But, yeah, just reflect a little bit. So because there’s several pages there, nine to nineteen, it’s gonna be a big undertaking.

The more you arrive with some ideas already filled in, probably, the better. Okay?

Cool. Cool. Well, thank you everybody for sharing so openly, and I feel like I know everyone’s twenty twenty five, a lot better already. So excited to see unhinged goals come to reality and fill that win channel. Right? That win channel is gonna be so freaking cool this year.

Workbook for December

Goal-setting workbook 

 

Transcript

Uum, alright we’re gonna dive in. I’m going to share the delightful, beautiful workbook, which I duplicated so that I could put my own unhinged thoughts on it without disturbing the master workbook.

So let’s do that.

Cool. Cool.

There we go. There we go.

Sweet.

Alright. Unhinged time.

This reminded me of, like, literally my first copywriting project ever in, like, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and I had to write for this, like, fundraiser event that was, like, based on Mad Men.

And I needed to, like, write copy for this local event fundraiser.

And, I think, like, my tagline was something like, going mad never felt so good and something, like, really funny like that.

So going unhinged never felt so good. That doesn’t have the same ring to it. But y’all get the idea. So thirteen years later, we’re going mad. So big unhinged ideas.

I love these two books, and they synergize so well. Synergy. Synergy. Synergy. There’s a weird ass get on the word synergy.

But to go well together, vivid vision really encapsulates a lot of what, I had been doing unconsciously for a while. So I was, like, the master of a lifeless goals. Like, I started setting goals, like, a while ago, and they’d be on Google Doc, and they would be the things that I thought would have meaning. There would be missions and visions on there that I thought had meaning, and there was no, like, juice to it.

So, yeah, I think a mission and a vision must connect to a series, a multitude of real and enjoyable, fully charged moments that are trackable, realizable, real, and you could reflect back and say, holy fuck. That happened, and this felt amazing. And I really want you to be able to think about what those moments are in copy. I call those moments of heightened pleasure.

Right? These are real observable moments when the thing you want to achieve is achieved. Right?

And it’s not just this check mark, but this, oh, like, heart expanding, like, body vibrating holy fuck moment.

And I want y’all to be available to those holy fuck moments, and that may mean being less available for your holy fuck moments.

I know I still have somehow holy fuck no moments in my life, and it was very uncomfortable, initially setting boundaries on those fuck no moments. But, yeah, setting boundaries on your fuck no moment will appeal you to those fuck yeah moments.

So, one thing I will encourage you to lean into are what o what are those textures, those data points, and feeling points of that vivid vision manifested? What is actually happening in your reality? What are you going on the wind channel in Slack and being like, oh, I’m you’ll never guess what just happened, dot dot dot, and let us celebrate you in that with all these emojis, the raising emojis.

Income goals. Right? So I was initially the king of not caring about money until this. Right?

I’d be like, I’m good. I just enjoy my Starbucks and my apartment, and that’s enough. Right? So I was the king of saying, well, as long as I have enough or decent living, I’m good.

Right? And then I started connecting income goals to actual lifestyle moments that they would empower, and I’m gonna talk about those in a second.

And, yeah, I made myself available for those just by leaning into what those income goals actually represented. So, bonus points. I found a lot of similarities between Vivid Vision and this old school book from, like, I don’t know, like, the fifties or sixties, one of those, like, initial manifesting books, Feelings the Secret by Neville Goddard.

Not inventory reading. Just a little side note. It’s written in very antiquated language, but some really good stuff about seeing that end result, not just, like, in your mind, but actually feeling it. What does it feel like in your body when that thing happens?

How does that actually feel in your body when you get an email from Tony Robbins saying, do you wanna speak on my stage? And you’re like, no. I don’t, but I really do.

How does that feel? So lean into those realities as if they are already happening. Make yourself available for it. Make your nervous system available to it.

Train your nervous nervous system for these ten x moments that may initially have some contraction. Right? It may initially be an edge, but begin attuning you to what’s possible and leaning on the support here. Right?

And in your own, yeah, in your own daily life to get that support to expand. Because I think this container is about expanding and not about the play it safe goals. These are about the unhinged, slightly scary. Yes.

They’re initially gonna create contraction and fever in the body, and that is expected, and we could work with that. Those types of goals. Cool?

Sweet.

Ten x is easier than two x. Another one I’ve loved.

Big takeaways here is just, like, being in that fierce protection and advocacy of your vivid vision. You choose ten x, you are excluding so much bullshit. Right? And this is something that was so uncomfortable as a recovering people pleaser.

I remember my first year full time freelancing probably made somewhere around, like, I don’t know, forty to fifty k working with the local piano repair shop, the local massage studio. Right? All these local people that became friends. Right?

And then in my own ten x year, literal ten x year. Oh, gosh. It required so many noes. Like, nope.

Sorry. I don’t do that anymore. Right? Can’t do it. Right? Can’t make that exception.

So, yeah, I think being in fierce protection, right, of your vivid vision, like, falling in love with that vivid vision, treating it as you would a child or a pet or a dog or a cat or just something you really love and making it less personal. Right? Not not just your personal boundaries, but, like, go to bat for this vision that you get to nurture and bridge into reality. So fierce protect of it.

Awkward convos are always going to feel better than self betrayal when you give a yes, and then you essentially have that stinging, sensation in your gut of, like, did I say yes? Right? And you’re begrudgingly doing something you don’t wanna do. Yeah.

Let’s just not do those anymore. Let’s just, like, get rid of all of those in your life.

And, yeah, to me, that’s required for that ten x.

Ten x innovation. So this is such a dear topic to me. I feel like, yeah, I feel like a big part of my career has been on the innovation side. Essentially, right from the beginning, having that question of, like, what is the five minute mile for what I’m doing?

What is the five minute mile for, an email launch sequence? What is the five minute mile for a SaaS onboarding? What is the five minute mile for, an ecom product page being launched to market for the first time? Right?

So what are these moonshots? What are these five minute miles in the thing you do, and what can you do in your thing, right, with every new project that I call paid r and d? Right? What needs to be true for you to literally set the standard for what that thing looks like in your space.

Right? And that’s gonna require some testing. So I call that paid r and d, at least one thing you’re doing on every new project to try to push that needle a little bit further. So I’m gonna have more to share about this in twenty twenty five.

It’s a concept I’m still practicing. Literally just wrote, an ecom supplement product page that I strategically tried just two new things, two new things that I’ve never done before, never seen done before. So take all the best practices, you add one or two things with a clear hypothesis of this might work. Right?

Let’s test this out in this scenario.

So I’m gonna share more on that because this page I just wrote is converting at, like, thirteen percent, like, thirteen percent conversion, and that’s not on, like, an insignificant amount of clicks. So really exciting stuff to share there. But in your own projects, just test one new thing. Like, what is one new thing that if this works, I have something that no one else has.

Right? There’s the innovation piece. You’re either competing on innovation, like having a thing, a proven method, or extreme per tease is the other side of it. Like, being just so freaking good.

Right? Like, that that is what allows you to charge ten x. Right? But I think it’s a lot easier, predictable, and faster of a path to innovate in your space.

So, those are my little quick book summaries. I think, like, the little last motivating line is, like, so much can change in a year if you Right? Like, I’ve had years of massive growth, and then I’ve had years of just, like, hold forward and integrate what happened and optimize it. But those, like, explosive, like, eight to ten x years, gosh. Those aren’t the ones I look back on right now and be like, that year changed freaking everything. Like, these are life trajectory changing years, and we get to create if we’re ready for them, if we’re available for them. So that is my little recap there.

The can you imagine exercise, I’d love for us to be able to spend some time here. Right? This tracks back to what are these tangible moments, right, where this vision, where this ten x vision comes to life when you could be like, damn. That just happened.

When you could go on that Slack channel, that wind channel, and be like, this just happened. Right? So for me, right, like, my big thing, when I ten x wasn’t about income goals. I couldn’t just say I won half a million dollars a year for the hell of it.

I had to connect those to things that mattered, and these matterful things happened, and they were amazing. Right? So it was like, for me, that time I was at the Scandinavian Spa in the middle of the day, right, when it’s empty except for retirees, like, talking about retiree shit, and just making one k, right, from an automated course sale, like, it’s another day and it’s no big deal. Right?

Like, that was one of my, like, nervous system exhale. Right? This is what I want to be living. That’s what my ten x lifestyle looked like at the time in, I guess this was, like, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen.

Twenty fifteen, I almost died from a stroke. So that was my year of, like, no. I’m just gonna radically chill, right, and enjoy that and enjoy what this big bump in income empowers me to do.

Another fun income goal that turned into a tangible reality that actually had a lot of, like, excitement in it. I don’t know why this motivated it, motivated me the way it did.

But one of my goals was to have enough cash saved up in reserve in my business checking account that just having it in a I think it was, like, a five percent high interest account could pay my monthly expenses. Like, how cool is that when your, interest on what is in your biz account could pay expenses. And granted, I wasn’t in a crazy scale mode. Right? That was, like, with a VA and some software, but still, like, that just made my life feel so light and exciting.

So that is an income goal baked into a tangible thing that just feels really light on my system.

What else? Right? So I was never a big, event person.

You know, typical introvert, extreme introvert. Right? But what I loved to do was, like, I loved to go deep with the clients I had. Right?

So that meant traveling. It meant getting on location. It meant doing VIP days. It meant, visiting their teams and then extending those trips for two to three days for chill time.

Right? So that might look like hikes and going to the beach. And I remember one year, I was in, like, Encinitas or Carlsbad, like, three times that year. Right?

And, like, there’s these gardens by a place called Swami Beach. Right? So it’s like the Yogananda Gardens or something and just beautiful gardens overlooking the ocean. And I’m like, I found my up there on the for the third time that year, and that was one of my, like, ah, I made it moments.

Right? This is becoming routine. Like, just taking a chill decompressing day after a client VIP day and staring up in the ocean.

So, and then you get to also have, like, guilt free, like, pride in some of your goals. Right? So, like, one of my, like, kinks when I first ten x was, like, walking into the bank. Right?

Like, I didn’t even have Stripe in my first year. Like, I would literally ask clients to send checks in the mail. Right? And I would show up to the bank teller with, like, these five figure checks, and they would have no freaking idea what I did.

And, Brendon, that’s kind of just, like, enjoyable sense of weird pride in that.

So, yeah, I’d love for us all to just take some time right now, like, lean into what these vivid ten x moments look like for you. Right? They are undoubtedly connected to growth goals, and especially growth and income and growth in mindset and within your capacity to lean into that because there is going to be some edge. So this is your time to write a few of these down.

Right? Maybe even just, like, one really clear, oof, I don’t know if I should say that goal. Right? One that kinda scares you to say out loud, and then maybe we’ll say it out loud because that’s what we do.

So I’m gonna stop my share.

Any questions about this exercise before we get going, or should I, like, queue up some music that y’all may or may not enjoy while we take a few minutes?

Get unhinged.

Oh, I was not expecting espresso for some reason. I thought I made something else. That hit me harder. Cool.

Alright. I’m gonna play some music. I’ve never been known as, like, the best party DJ. I’ve always been the person, like, they replace after one song, but that’s all good.

And we’ll give it about five minutes. And then how many people are on this call? We got close to twenty.

So, yeah, I think that’s gonna be enough time for at least one minute one minute each to declare that out loud. So we’re gonna do five minutes now, and then everyone gets to share and declare their big, unhinged, wild, feels scary to say aloud goal, or the year.

Cool.

Alright.

Cool. Welcome back, everyone.

So, I would love to hear everybody’s unhinged goal. Right? And I think it would be amazing for everyone to hear everyone’s unhinged goal.

That way, a, we know what it is. And, b, if you wanna add a little extra flavor, a little extra juice to it as someone is sharing it, I dare you, right, to just see them fully in that success, see them as fully capable, see them as fully in the realization of that, and celebrate them in that. Right? I think that would be an enjoyable, fun, and lovely thing to do. So, first one up, I think we’ve got about sixty to ninety seconds, each. So yeah.

Cool. Cody, you’re up.

Alright. So this year, I will, write and publish a best selling book, that will lead to speaking gigs, high profile collaborations, and media features.

My book will be the go to manual for growth marketers and ecom leaders, when it comes to scaling their business, with a funnel for specifically cold traffic, and it will establish me as a top authority in the space.

Love it. What is one defining moment where you will know you’re in the achievement of that?

I would say when the book is published because then I know that I actually followed through what I said I was gonna do.

Okay. Love it. Thanks for sharing, Cody. Next person up.

Okay. I’ll go.

Mine is I host a Greek vacation for ten days with my entire family in the UK and in South Africa.

We’ve got a yacht moored outside, private shifts, and plenty of exciting activities planned like hiking, snorkeling, and, of course, eating.

Love it. What are you eating?

Oh my god. Like, everything.

I I’ve never been to Greece, so whatever they eat.

Beautiful. Cool. Well, taste those flavors and taste the entire moment. Love it. Cool. Next up.

My moment is I’m on a Teams meeting with my bookkeeper who I think thinks I’m a little bit crazy, and he’s telling me that he has never seen a client’s finances transform as dramatically as mine have in the last twelve months, and then point out that I should probably buy a company car or something because, otherwise, I’m gonna have to be in a different tax bracket.

That is amazing. Yes.

And that car the car is a little, Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible.

Oh, so good. Yeah. I love it.

Like, you least unhinged car you could buy.

I mean, I’ve I’ve had it on my vision board since I was, like, seventeen.

So Oh, okay.

Alright. Fair enough.

Yeah.

I mean, it was like the cool dream car.

Love it.

Is Andrew up?

Is that me?

I think so.

Cool.

My moment is when the prospect says yes to my proposal for a ten thousand dollar monthly consulting retainer, and I and I almost feel kind of, like, guilty because it’s like it feels like, oh, that’s not enough. Like, I’m not let me just read what I wrote instead of trying to improvise. I can’t believe how little work I’ll actually have to do relative to the amount that I’m getting paid because they’re paying for my thinking, not for my time or effort. And I guess, a moment in that might be, like, telling my wife about, like, you know, that I got that signed and, like, oh my god. I’m not gonna have to do nearly as much work as I’ve done to make, you know, half that money in the past or something.

I love that. What I love about what you just shared is, like, you included feeling guilty in your vision and your goal, which is true to what that would look like for you right now. Right? So I think so I think, like, that’s amazing.

Like, lean into that. Lean into moments that, right now, feel like they might induce a little bit of, like, guilt. Right? So cool.

Awesome. Okay. So mine is finding the perfect home for my family, and being able to call up our real estate agent when we, like, signed it and just put an offer in right away and close within, like, a month.

And it’s, like, the perfect house for a family, so it’s in the city, which is more pricey than we would otherwise or normally choose, I guess.

And it’s, like, in a great school district.

It’s near family. It’s got everything for the kids, and then it’s just also a an amazing house to where we can just set up shop for the foreseeable future.

Mhmm. I love that.

Does that moment feel most realized to you, like, when you sign for the house, when you get the house, or even when you make the decision and, like, reach out to an agent and say, like, I’m available for this now?

But probably, like, when I reach out to the agent and say, k. I can close on it. Like, we can we can put it down today. Like, we’re ready today. And then, like, the final walk through as the papers are, like, being signed.

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Keep, like, inviting, like, the energies from those two moments because they feel, like, really expansive and life giving. Cool.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay.

I actually started this, exercise yesterday. So the ImagineWall is the house that I want in three years.

So it sits, in the mountains of the Blues.

We’re in the Grand Oregon, so we’re right at the base of the Blue Mountains. It’s gonna be lakeside. There is a lake up there.

Five acres of wooded beauty.

Very large pond with a huge wrap around porch.

The back, back porch is really large outdoor living space with its own fireplace looking out over the lake. So it’s a perfect spot for morning coffee or eating wine or whiskey.

Are we invited? Can we have the first IRL there?

We can. Yeah. So but the the goal for this is to pay seventy five percent cash from the business.

Amazing.

Beautiful. Well, I’m officially imagining us sitting around your fire, like, being like, look at all this land. And Yeah. Inevitably someone starts wolf howling because they can and then everyone does.

Yeah. This is a perfect perfect place for it.

Yeah. Who in this group kicks off the wolf howling? Like, who is most likely to initiate wolf howling?

There you go.

Abby put up her hand, and I was gonna say Abby. So I think it’s Abby.

I’m usually the last one to join the wolf howling. I’m like, fine. I’ll do it. Anyway cool. Amazing. Thanks, Michelle.

I guess I’m, I am so inspired by this book. I’ll tell you what.

My my big audacious goal for this year is one million dollars worth of revenue in my, copywriting agency with three copywriters, two VAs with my standardized offer going from ten k to twenty k to thirty k, and then the other half being the monthly retainers.

Amazing. Yeah. What is, like, that moment when that is all realized? Right? Do you see yourself kind of, like, celebrating with that team, have two copywriters, like, sharing that revenue?

As a matter of fact, this weekend, I interviewed my first, copywriter.

Cool. And I don’t even know how I’m gonna get to the million yet, but I’ve already interviewed my first copywriter.

So Amazing.

Beautiful. Well, we’re here for it.

Abby?

I haven’t sat in on a Rise session before, and I find it very uncomfortable to wait for the next person. So my apologies. Right?

I was going to get cold on. Sorry. Yeah.

I read the wolf sweating.

Just waiting for this Lean into that, Joe.

I was like, should I be talking? Yeah. I read the wolf howling because it’s been, like, really stormy. Like and I live by the beach.

I keep going down to the beach, throwing pebbles into the sea and then manifesting and then genuinely, like, howling because it’s so stormy that no one can hear. But, anyway, my visualization would be it. I’m sitting with my friends at the pub, and I’m like, guys, like, I I kind of, like, feel like I just won a lottery because my course has just, like, taken off. And I’ve paid off my mortgage.

I’ve just booked a holiday to Orlando, and I just I I don’t need all this money. Like, does anyone want, like, a their deposit for a house? Because, like, this is I I just don’t need this this much and then just, like, help my friends get houses and go to Orlando.

That’s amazing. Help your friend get help your friends get houses.

Like, that’s a personal It is so expensive in the UK.

Like, it’s so hard to get on the property ladder, and it’s just getting, like, worse and worse. So that’s like, I would love to just get all my friends’, houses.

I love that. Amazing. That is definitely, like, wolf howling worthy. So yeah. You all, like, exit the pub and start howling. Right?

So Why would we need to exit the pub?

That’s true. It is a pub.

Cool. Next up.

No one else has a hand up.

Alright.

Let’s see. Anyone who hasn’t shared yet who is willing and ready and available to be that.

Even if you didn’t even write anything down, like, what comes to mind right now? Something that just feels badass and unhinged.

Right.

I I see Joe scanning the squares. She’s like, who? Who?

I might be the only one with my hand up.

Oh, there it is.

I’ll go.

Sorry. I’m I admit I’m multitasking.

But one thing I would love to do is hire my partner and pay him life changing a life changing salary because he’s also very limited in his skill set and the jobs that are available to him. So that would be awesome. That would mean a lot and pay a very high rate.

Amazing. How about that? Joe, do you wanna go? Joe? Sarah? Do you know?

Mostly because I haven’t got it sorted out Mhmm.

At all. I don’t have a can you imagine? I’m sorry. I don’t.

I’m thinking about it still. I just don’t.

Cool. Well, we got time. So I wanna, like, pose another question for, like, a real rapid fire round.

And this one, I want everybody to be able to say. But, like, what is the fuck no that you are no longer available for? Right? And, like, you could put that in a number of, like, projects under x amount. Right?

That could be work that you’ve been doing just because it’s familiar and safe, or it could be, like, a certain, like, boundary, like, on your health. Like, I no longer do this. Right?

But, yeah, what is, like, when fuck no that you are no longer available for and that you are willing to be seen in your lack of availability for?

Social media management.

Cool. Done with that. Yep.

I’m trying to move out of being, doing, like, big projects that are built around copy and trying to be moved more into, like, CRO consultant kind of things. So in the process of stepping away from some of the projects when people come around and say, hey. We have fifteen pages of web copy that we need to do.

Trying to turn those into consulting, retainers or passing them off to the many talented copywriters I know.

I don’t wanna work with clients who make me cry, and I just wanna work with people who think have amazing and are lucky to have me. Mhmm.

Makes you cry.

This is horrible. Men from Florida.

I thought you were gonna say it.

Every client, every, like, client I work with, he’s a man from Florida. It’s just horrible to me.

I think you’ve identified the trend. So yeah, so, like, you need to have your, like, man from Florida rate and, yeah, just automatically charge a hundred k for men for men from Florida.

Yeah. I could look at that.

And then your goal is to make them cry first. So yeah.

Cool.

Florida man. Make stop copywriter cry.

Is that what that says? Oh, for no good reason.

That’s good, Andrew.

Because that’s like a thing.

Right? If you search Florida, man?

That’s a thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that, and it works.

It’s hilarious.

Right. Does it have to be a work client thing?

Because I do have kind of a money goal wrapped in a thing I won’t do anymore, which is can print.

I do not want to fly in coach ever again ever. I don’t know. And the problem is that I speaking of Florida, I have to fly down to see my daughter a lot to a small airport, and, unfortunately, like, it’s the only option. There is no first class or business class, but at that’s kinda I’m done with coach and flying anything other than business or first class.

Nice. Wow. That.

Love that.

I’m leaning leaning into an edge here and flying coach with a family to Florida next month. So You’re awesome. Wish me luck. Yeah. Yeah.

I am.

Because, I know sometimes you gotta get a little uncomfortable.

That’s my version of a cold plunge.

Let’s keep it going.

I would so rather spend that whole time in a cold plunge than on that plane. Gotcha.

Oh gosh.

But I hate flying, so there’s that.

I like what she said. I have first class travel in my contracts. Boom.

My fuck no is the last minute jobs where the clients or potential clients try to, like, negotiate and price even though you know that it’s going to get them a ton more money and going to cost your weekend.

Mhmm.

No more of that.

For me, no more one on one coaching.

Good. Boundary?

For me, it’s it’s just, like, twelve hour days. Like, I can do a ten hour. That’s fine. But if there’s deadline, it goes over to twelve. It’s just so soul destroying, so be my fuck up. Yeah.

Yeah. How many twelve hour days do you reckon you had this year?

Quite a few year. Yeah. I have this I think I’ve been, like, up and down. So I’m not making up for the downs with, like, a crazy amount of work. And then because I’ve expanded all of my energy for the week in one day, I’m down again.

It’s just but, I’m slowly getting out of it, I think.

Yeah.

That could be a really radical boundary to hold, right, in terms of also the efficiencies you create, and the leverage you create as well.

So, yeah, I’d even like oh, what does Joe have to say here?

K. Oh, I totally do.

That’s fair.

That’s fair.

Alright.

Cool. Who’s that?

Boundaries are fun. Like, anyone can take a second too. Like, like, go for seconds or thirds.

I don’t have a a a fuck now, but my goal is, to create a billion dollar company by myself.

I love it.

I ain’t unhinged. That’s so small.

Love it. Yeah.

It’s so big.

That’s wild.

I mean, I’ve created, like you know, personally, the biggest company is, like, twenty million, and I’ve helped clients get acquired for a hundred million, you know, or or more.

But I wanna do a billion dollar company by myself. Mhmm.

Yeah. What’s the why? Yourself? Why is that an important part of it? Can I ask?

Because it’s just I I just do so many things, and I just wanna show that one person can do all the all the things and that this is possible. And it’s especially possible. I mean, I I’ve one, I’ve been working toward this for a while, but it’s even more possible now with with AI too.

Love it.

What’s, like, the most satisfying part of that achievement to you? Like, is it like, I think Abby mentioned, like, a Forbes article. Like, is it when someone says, how the hell did you do that? Like, can you actually give that spiel, or is it the financial element?

Or No.

I think it’s just I’ve done so much internal work around my goals and things. And my primary motivation that comes down underneath everything is it’s just who I am, and I thought it would be cool. And that’s really why I do pretty much everything that I do. I mean, like, I’ve I Joe always says she does it because she likes she likes sort of winning. She’s her her her motivator is a competition thing, like a personal best. For me, it’s just like, I thought it would be cool. That’s it.

I love that.

I know that’s not you know, there’s no big big motive behind it other than it’s just what I feel like I’m supposed to do.

Very cool.

Yeah. I wanna have to, like, block SamCart from sending me emails because I just, like, keep getting so many sales things. And it’s like, oh my god. It actually is really annoying. That thing, of course, created to say, like, oh, like, I just I have to turn the note based on because it’s so noisy. Like, I want I want to experience that. That’s awesome.

Yeah.

My fuck no is that I’m not gonna overthink things because I have a tendency to do that, and then it, like, slows me down. And then I’m spending a lot more time doing the things that shouldn’t take as long as they are. And so I will be instead just saying this is good enough and rolling with it.

Nice. What’s, like, one area you find yourself overthinking quite a bit?

What was that?

What what’s, like, one area you find yourself overthinking more than others?

Oh, definitely the copy and writing and, like, I get stuck on, like, is this the best way to say this?

You know? And it’s really, it doesn’t have to be that big of a deal. Like, you’re gonna put it out there and you’re gonna test it anyway. Mhmm. And instead of getting stuck on it, you can just refine it later. You know?

Totally. Cool.

Right. I know we still have fifteen minutes left. Do we wanna maybe open the floor for any other questions that are related or unrelated to today’s training?

Most definitely. There. Yeah.

Cool. Cool.

Jessica.

I don’t really I’m struggling for, like, a big goal that I’m envisioning vividly other than and maybe this is just because of Thanksgiving. But we went to the Green Bay Packer game for Thanksgiving. And I like being the person who, when you look at me, you would not expect to be in places like first class or the clubhouse or wherever. So I just basically want more experiences like that where people would not I can totally tell. They just look at me and they’re like, really? You, first class?

Like, something like that. I don’t know why. I don’t really care what other people think, but I find it very amusing, the looks on their faces. So it’s, like, the only money related goal I can really think of that I want more of this year’s, like, going to a football game or a basketball game or a concert or an airplane and having great seats. And you know what I mean?

Yeah. That’s super satisfying too. Right? And I’m glad you can own that without feeling guilty about it. Like, that’s really good.

I have no shame. I don’t care.

That’s shameless cheese head. Yeah.

Pretty much.

Cool. Andrew.

Yeah. Cool.

Okay. Okay. A little vulnerable here for a moment. But, I guess I something that I struggle with a lot is that I have, a lot of inner tension, between, you know, having ambition and and what I, you know, like, the stuff that I wrote down for what, you know, what can I imagine?

And, also, like, a lot of, feelings of kind of, like, avoidance and resistance and dread of, like, not wanting, like, responsive more responsibility, not wanting more complexity, not wanting, you know, more stress, all these things. And some of that has to do with, like, physical and mental health issues that, I that are chronic for me and that I struggle with. But I guess I’m just wondering if you have any kind of tips on how to maybe get out of my own way on this sensor, how to kind of balance the, you know, wanting all these things that we talk about with also, you know, not, I don’t know, with with, yeah, balancing the the laziness with the ambition, I guess, or the openings with the ambition.

Yeah. That’s an awesome question. I’m sure everyone here could give a really rich answer to it. I’ll give mine, and then if anyone cares to chime in, they can.

For me, like and I’ll answer this in a same way similar way like I do with my copy. The best way to overcome is to include. Right? So, like, I used to have a vision that, like, you know, the most successful version of myself has his shit together.

Right? And that there was no room for laziness or procrastination or lack of ambition or these peaks and peaks and valleys. Right? Like, and I still go through peaks and valleys.

Like, there are some weeks when I feel on fire and I make declarations and form relationships where, like, a week later, I’m like, well, fuck. I just wanna chill. I want none of this. Right?

So, there’s space for that, and I think, like, we get to create these visions that are forgiving of our humanness and allowing of them. So I think, like, for me personally, there was this, like, one, like, noticing my trend lines. Right? Noticing that when this happens, I’ll contract, I’ll pull back, or I’ll want to.

Right?

And then when I say yes, sometimes I’ll be like, well, shit. I’m gonna be discovered now or I’m biting off more than I could chew or all these narratives. And that just became inclusive of the process, not something I resisted. And, of course, there’s the inner work where I was doing right on unwinding those. Right? From the mindset work to the emotional clearing work to the what is really kind of like the root of driving this.

But, you know, as far as I’ve been able to observe, no one has totally overhauled their nervous system and belief system and trauma in weeks or months. Right? And I think that there’s a certain permission you give yourself to, like, this is in in my vision of this success. Right? It’s not overcome this and then that. That makes sense?

Definitely. Yes. Thank you. That’s helpful.

Cool. Of course.

I guess it’s my turn. To just to add to what you just said, Ryan, I like to call it emotional margin. You know? Some space for myself for those those peaks and valleys. That’s how that’s how I, handle it. But, quick question. Recommendation on a payment provider.

Recommendation on a payment provider for what specifically?

For any payments, you know, through is it would it be Stripe?

Would it be Apple? And who would it what would it be?

I mean, Stripe is super reliable and easy and integrates with just about everything. And, yeah, like, that’s always an easy default.

The fees could get annoying for sure.

I tend to like Wise, especially being in Canada, working with US clients, getting paid in US. Wise as though it’s been, like, super reliable and doesn’t need up too many fees. So my own stack on that is Stripe and Wise, essentially.

Yeah.

I’m just hearing a lot of negativity about Stripe lately about how they shut down accounts now. They’re not sure about the transactions, and the customer service isn’t what it could be.

There’s definitely yeah. I’ve definitely picked up on the rumblings on that.

I haven’t encountered any issues myself. Knock on wood. I don’t know if this desk is real wood or imitation wood, but I knocked out in any way.

It’s always good to kind of, like, have in the back of your mind what a backup is.

You know, I think, like, one thing that I proactively do on all my payment processors, and I used to do with PayPal, right, is I wouldn’t leave cash in there longer than I need to. Right? So I would move it out, like, right away so that if ever things do go wrong with the pros processor, like, funds aren’t locked in.

But yeah.

Like, what, like, are there any specific concerns around, like, Stripe, sorry, with your particular business? Like, things you’ve observed with, like, other providers in a similar space or yeah.

Well, I’m just looking at, this this deal where they might shut me down because they’re unfamiliar with my transactions.

Transaction, they shut me down until they can investigate. Number two would be the fees.

Mhmm.

Number three would be the lack of customer service.

Right.

Do they have a phone or just do I have to go through a chat?

And Yep.

Joe raises a really good point here. Right? Like, I hate Wes for paying for things.

Hate, right, with a extended AAA, like a triple a hate rating, but love Stripe. Right? So, like, there I mean, that’s one really good reason. Right?

Like, make it easy on client make it easy for clients to pay you. Right? Don’t add friction to getting paid. That’s one of the reasons I’ve background Stripe as well.

I’ll, like, you know, with a little bit of guilt, ask about why sometimes. Do you do you use why it’s right? And, like, just go back to Stripe. But, yeah, make it easy for clients to pay you.

Yes, there are some alternatives to Stripe that a lot of people have been talking about online as well.

Can’t remember the name of it right now, but there is a big exodus from Stripe to another that is, you know, apparently more friendly for those in the online space. But, I could try to find that and ping you, if I could recall that provider.

Cool. We got Abby and Misal.

Hey. Yeah. So this might be a bit of an amateur question, but it’s just a gap in my knowledge.

When you had a call with a prospect and they were interested and then you have to follow-up, should you be, like, re reselling to them, or should you just be like, hey. You haven’t, like, booked that follow-up call yet?

Like Oh, I mean, it all depends on, like, the context of the first call, right, and what we’re following up about.

Yeah.

Like, if they seemed like like it was kind of like a yes, like a soft yes, and then you’re gonna pick up. I’m laughing because Jo knows what I’m talking about. If you’re, like, following up, having a second call to talk about it, but they haven’t put that. Like, should you be, like, reselling or just, like, reminding them?

Yeah.

I mean, my goal is to get, like, some form of commitment on that first call.

Mostly because, like and I’d imagine the same is true for you. Right? When you’re gonna take on a project, you really need to make it within a time line, and you don’t have much time to waste yourself.

I think, like, kind of having that attitude of, like, we gotta get started and move on this, is certainly helpful.

If a second call is necessary, like, it’s usually just to, like, revisit some specific points of the proposal, right, that they wanted to get back to me on. Right? Like, if there was something that they had to double check with someone, but once again, you want decision makers on the call as much as possible.

So there’s, like, an element of objection handling on the first call. Right? Like, if you’re sensing, like, tentativeness, right, there, what I used to do, right, like, is for my to ease my own discomfort, I’d I’d get off the call, right, and try to, you know, push that to another call because I I was uncomfortable myself. Right?

But if I’m sensing hesitation and, you know, everything’s laid out, we’ve gone over the numbers, we’ve gone over the scope, we’ve gone over the outcomes that we’d be seeking. Right? And I’m asking for commitment there. Right? I’m saying that I’m usually saying, like, you know, if y’all can greenlight this right now, I’d love to get started this afternoon or tomorrow with my intake process. Like, I really move the intake and the project kickoff as soon as possible, and then try to get that commitment right away.

So if they want another call, should you try and get them to, like, ideally book it, like, on that first call? Totally. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Absolutely. And it should be ASAP. Like, there shouldn’t there should be as minimal gap between those calls as possible.

So, like, I would certainly like, if there are legit areas to look at, right, and concerns and people to talk to you, whatever, like, I would book that time with them on the spot. Like, pull out your calendar. I’ll pull out mine. I’m I’ll send you an invite.

Right? Like, and get that verbal commitment. Like, does that sound good with you? Yes. Right?

Like, people aren’t gonna ghost on things that they’ve given verbal commitments to most of the time, unless they’re really avoiding you, right, and unless there’s really an objection that they don’t wanna tell you.

But yeah.

Okay. Thank you, Roy.

Of course.

I would add, having very little insight into what’s going on, that if it happens over the Black Friday weekend, they might just be busy with Black Friday sales, maybe, hypothetically speaking.

But what if they also had messaged you to say you shouldn’t have followed up?

Yeah. There’s that. That’s them nudging you. Like, Abby, we closed this.

And then they might have got busy with Black Friday.

Okay. Gotcha. I’m really red.

Cool.

My question is, where do you keep your Can You Imagine wall? Do you, like, read it every day? Like, what do you do with it so that you can keep it fresh in your brain?

Good question. So I used to have, like, a board, like, literal post its with a few of those.

Right now, these because I I’m more digital. I have a doc that I review, but it’s a short doc. Like, it’s got, like, five or six of those moments, and I don’t just read it mentally. Like, I read one, and I immerse myself in that moment.

Right? I actually get as much satisfaction as I can out of it as if it’s real right now without feeling like, gosh. Why isn’t this here yet? So, yeah, I, like, indulge in those moments as if they’re here now, if that makes sense.

You do it daily? Do you have, like, I don’t know, monthly? Like, do you have a ritual for that at all?

I used to do it, like, nightly, back when, like, my nights are more predictable. But, no, I think, like, weekly is better than ninety nine point nine nine percent of the world. Right? So, like, whatever cadence feels available to you without you feeling like, I didn’t do it without it feeling like a chore. Right? Because it should feel like a pleasure to, like, essentially, like, time travel to these realities, right, and experience them, like, in full joy as if they’re here now. So yeah.

And app recommendation, Envision app that Katie is using upon Stacy’s recommendation. Cool.

Can I ask a real quick question? Sorry. I know we’re on time.

Yep. Yeah. Okay.

And if anyone needs to hop off, no worries. But yeah. Totally.

Thank you. So in terms of visualizing and goal setting, when I first opened the goal setting document, I, like, panicked because I set a lot of goals this year that I didn’t achieve. And I’m like, do I really need to set more goals that I’m not going to achieve again next year? And I started writing a post on the mindset Slack group and realized that, no. Actually, it hasn’t been that bad of a year. It’s just that I haven’t achieved the undeniable glittering success that I wanted.

But in terms of, like, visualizing these, amazing goals, I feel kind of apprehensive to give in to, like, the dream, so to speak.

Mhmm.

I I feel like the advice is just to go bravely into that dark, beautiful night, but I’m still scared. So do you have, I guess, any advice for that?

Yeah. So I I feel like I know where you’re coming from on this. Right? And, like, I had goals and dreams and these outcomes that would feel like out of reach and scary and blah blah blah. Right? And, like, one thing I found to be surprisingly effective is, like, having elements of normal within them so they’re not so and only grandiose.

Right? So it’s like maybe wearing the same clothes I’m wearing right now, right, in that vision. So you’re kind of bridging familiar land with adventurous land. Right? So it’s like maybe in that, reality in Greece, right, your hair is still red?

Pink? Pinkish red? Right?

Red on the screen.

Right? Like, get yes. As weird as it sounds. Right? Like, if that pinkish red hair feels safe and you, right, like, bring that with you into that reality. Bring elements of your current reality that feel comfort giving, if that makes sense, so that it’s not an abandonment of all the things that feel safe and lovely, and trading that for crazy big adventures. Like, bring the moments with you.

That’s really helpful. Thank you so much.

Cool.

Awesome. Well, we are three minutes over.

So I think now’s a good time to wrap. Does anyone have anything like burning that they didn’t get to share or ask, or does everyone feel good and complete?

I have one quick question about the workbook.

Do we have a color PDF as well? I got only the black and white PDF, and then the Canva one is view only.

We can get you a downloaded version of the color one for sure. It’s just I’ve I didn’t want to print that off. And then my binder, I’m like, I don’t know.

So no. But we can absolutely get you that, Tina.

Cool. Thank you.

Cool. Happy just got two leads during this call. Look at that.

That’s like thought I’d be manifested it.

Like, what the hell? Girl. You did.

There’s so much talking about manifesting. I love it. Yeah.

And actually, you just checked my email, and I was like, what the hell?

This is a magical portal.

I’m telling y’all, if you sit on this call for another ten hours week.

Yeah. Time very well spent. It’s an ROI. That’s all. Yeah.

Beautiful. Cool. Thanks, Jeff. Go ahead.

Thank you for walking everyone through the first part of the workbook.

We have the second part coming up, this Thursday as well. It’s in the calendar the the days to have, like, like, the pages, to look in. That’s pages nine to nineteen.

That will require some reflection on how twenty twenty four went for you, what worked, what didn’t work, things like that. So I’d spend some time before that session just kind of reflecting on like, for example, Claire, you said you had goals that you made this year and you didn’t hit them, and that makes it difficult to set future goals because, like, I I I feel that, and I hope that that doesn’t continue to get in your way. I I get where you’re coming from, though. But, yeah, just reflect a little bit. So because there’s several pages there, nine to nineteen, it’s gonna be a big undertaking.

The more you arrive with some ideas already filled in, probably, the better. Okay?

Cool. Cool. Well, thank you everybody for sharing so openly, and I feel like I know everyone’s twenty twenty five, a lot better already. So excited to see unhinged goals come to reality and fill that win channel. Right? That win channel is gonna be so freaking cool this year.