Transcript of EP69: PART 2 - The Journey From Inconsistent To Reliable Income MINUS The Overwhelm - Client Case Study

Welcome to the Mothers of Enterprise podcast. I'm your host, Suzy Olivier, mama of three, military wife and successful serial entrepreneur of 15 years, now turned business mentor and mindset coach for women who want it all, minus the hustle and the overwhelm. This show is for the woman who wants to build a wildly successful, high profit, heart centred business and thriving lifestyle, all while raising a family. It's time to harness your feminine superpowers and join me as we dive into all things mindset, business strategy, wealth creation and motherhood to support you in building the business and life of your dreams. Welcome to the Mothers of Enterprise podcast.

Hello. Hello. Yes, another little post intro, pre session intro I guess we can call it. So this is going to be a similar one to last week. So I've taken a live stream that is a part of the journey to achieving consistent and reliable income minus the overwhelm, and decided to share it here in the podcast because I think the conversations I think I know are so needed and so packed with value that quite frankly, it needs to be in more ears. So this episode is me talking about a beautiful client who very generously of her, gave me permission to talk about her and her business and her journey. So this is a case study of everything that she's been through in her coaching experience and the results that she's achieved and more importantly, what she's actually done to achieve those results.

So again, this was a live stream on Facebook, so it might sound a little different to my usual one. So just wanted to mention that. But I hope that you walk away from this episode with some beautiful, empowering inspiration as to just how quickly business can change with the right support and when you are in the right environment, and that in six months’ time, you could have your beautiful business staring back at you with reliable and consistent income. Okay, I'll let you enjoy this week's episode. Okay, wonderful. We are going to dive in. I am fully aware that because I am not doing my lives when I normally do lives, that so many of you are catching the replays to this. So let me know if you're watching replay later. Let me know what your takeaways are.

Let me know what your aha moments are. This was a very impromptu decision to run this series. I usually kind of like all the bells and whistles when it comes to running challenges or any kind of live training, but I just keep seeing over and over again this demise of what feels like the micro business right now and everyone's just struggling and businesses are closing and there's such a kind of disempowering mindset going around that we feel like we have to be doing all the things in our business right now to be successful because it's feeling harder. Not a cool thing to say, not a sexy thing to say. But I think right now business is feeling harder than it has for a really long time. We no longer have social media working as well as it once did.

And there are new businesses popping up and new competitors popping up by the hour in some cases. And so, yes, it is not necessarily harder. I should probably rephrase that. It is just different and we have to learn to adapt. So the purpose of this little miniseries, like I said yesterday, is just to show you some real life examples of people who are doing really damn well right now and share not just really vague, overarching things like we worked on their branding, but what that actually means and why we did it and what that looked like in practical steps. So yesterday I had the lovely Natalie from elevate her join me as we spoke about her journey from sort of being in business for four years and having super inconsistent income, really unreliable results, really unreliable clients coming in.

It was kind of feast and famine. Some months would be zero, some months would be 1000 to now having two to three discovery calls reliably every single week and converting them. And even as we spoke about having the discernment now to be like, actually, you're not the right client for me, and turning clients away because she knows she's got clients coming in. It is such a beautiful, freeing feeling when you get these different elements of your business working for you. So you aren't going, oh my goodness, where the sales coming in? Why are the sales dropped off? Why is non booking discovery calls? Why am I not finding any clients? Oh, where's my next client coming from? It's a really crappy place to be in and I don't want small businesses existing there.

Thinking that's business today is also going to be a client case study. Unfortunately, I'm not joined by said client because she's on holiday, which I freaking love, because a lot of the reason why she wanted to work with me in the first place was because her business consumed her and required her. Now, she did say, I can mention her name and I can mention her business, but it feels really weird talking someone when they're not here. So, client, if you are watching this, you are welcome to be like, hey, it's me. Otherwise I will just call her wonderful, loving client. So this lovely client started working with me. My goodness I'm entirely sure.

When it was 21 and she was expecting baby number two, she had a toddler and she had a business which very heavily required her in order for it to run and be managed. And it was a business that was successful, but it was an absolute disarray and chaos. One of those businesses that kind of, like, just grow legs and ran with her a little bit because it was in demand and it's a brilliant business. And so she felt like she had no grip on the systems in her business. She had no grip on the organization, the management, the cash flow all her time.

And that's a really crappy position to be in, obviously, when you're about to give birth and you want to be around, hopefully for baby number two and the toddler and like life and yourself and your husband, and it's also military staff. So she came into my five academy, which is my six month one to one coaching program, and we worked together to kind of get the website upgraded, get her offers upgraded, get some mindset in there. Don't ever think you escape that with me. Get her kind of prioritizing her again and focusing on her well-being rather than just like business, mum, wife, life, get a team in place and just get her business kind of operating like a well-oiled machine. She had baby, I had a baby.

And then we've come back together again in the blissful business mastermind, where we meet twice a week. So on Mondays, we meet together at twelve for a 1520 minutes mindset, get set, call, and then we meet together on a Wednesday, which is our big mastermind session with all our beautiful master minders, can we call them that? Where everyone gets support, coaching, cheering, butt kicking, whatever's required going forward. So we started together end of October, right before Black Friday. And in the last six months, this beautiful woman has built her business to the point that where she can go on holiday for a week now and her business still runs. She was snowboarding a couple of weeks ago as well, and her business still runs and she can have, like, childcare fall through, but her business still runs.

And so she's built this business which really caters for the life that she wants to lead. Now. Not saying it's perfect, I'm not saying I think she'll be the first person to be like, I forgot things to work on. But ultimately she's moving in the direction that she actually wants to go in life. And so I've listed out what, 123-4567 things, seven things that we've kind of focused on the last six months, which kind of did stem from a one to one work together that has really allowed her to go on holiday for a week and chill out, but have money coming in because the business is running. And so again, it's mindset, ladies. You know, I'm going to talk about it. I don't think there's going to be a day where I'm like, the route to success can be paved without doing mindset work.

And so, yeah, getting her really thinking about her business from an excitement perspective, from a growth perspective, has been crucial. That was a big chunk of work that we did in our one to one coaching. This next kind of iteration of the business that we have worked on in the last six months was just kind of upgrading everything. So getting a new website built, the first website we actually worked on, kind of the first upgrade, I guess, mini upgrade, diy upgrade during a one to one time together. But it was time to get this professionally done. It was time to kind of stop trying to make it work and have a less than optimal user experience.

I talk about this a lot, but like your customer experience of when they see you to when they can buy from you, work with you, book whatever the call to action is so vitally important to kind of loop right back to what I said in the beginning with like competitors popping up by the second. If someone wants to work with you but they have to go jump through 1001 hoops or your website is really confusing to navigate and they can't find the right link or that link is broken, you're going to lose them because they can just go jump ship and go to one of the competitors who has got a beautiful user experience, who can book a call with them in four clicks or check out in two clicks or whatever the thing is.

And so the decision to go professional and get a beautiful website built was kind of the next logical step in the business. So that happened. Obviously, our lovely mastermind ladies were on hand to give feedback and review and give their thoughts on things, which is obviously extremely valuable. One of the biggest reasons why I love being in a business community, because even though I've got my one to one coach who I meet with weekly, and I'll never give her up for anything in the whole world, having other people who know you and love you, see your work and be able to give feedback is genuinely invaluable and also getting some clarity around her office.

So this particular client has got a lot of options in her business and she can cater for a lot of different audiences in a lot of different ways in a lot of different capacities. I feel like it makes so much more sense if I actually share the business. But it's a farm. Shall we just say that? And then people who know me and know my network will know who it is. So, yeah, she can do a lot of things with the animals, shall we say? And so really honing in on those office what they are, making them concise, because, again, you're going to confuse people, you're going to lose people. And even though it's a farm, you've not like a life coach and you're one of a million. It's local. She's kind of got her target location.

There are still other people doing what she does. And so we have to make sure that the experience of someone seeing her on Instagram or finding her through SEO on Google, or finding her through someone sharing a photo on Facebook is a really seamless experience. So they find her, they know what offer they want. The offers are clear and well explained and they made sense. And so us ladies in the mastermind, me as a coach going through, we read the stuff for her, made sure it felt like it made sense and that it was really easy to navigate. And that was kind of the big website overhaul as well as like a mini rebrand for one of her kind of sub products of the business.

It's kind of a business within the business and getting that looking really professional as well, because it's a really big mover for her and cash maker for her. The next level of it was the team. And this needed to happen on multiple fronts. We needed team, we need support in the farm, we needed support running events, we needed support in the business, we needed support with finances. And so realizing this beautiful soul cannot be all the places, cannot do all the things, as well as being mum of two, as well as sleep at some point, maybe.

So it was about making really strategic decisions about who's going to step into kind of her 2.0, her two IC for my military folk, and be her hands and be her when she doesn't want to be there, or she can't be there for every reason, and then making those decisions and putting the training in place and putting whatever needs to happen in order for those souls, those team members, to step into those positions. And so that happened, which was really exciting because it meant that events could happen. And Victoria didn't have to physically be driving the van. Oh, I just said her name. Victoria from Mucky Bucket Farm. There we go. Sorry, you did say I could say your name and I don't know why I feel so awkward about it because she's not here.

But, yeah, I'll link her in the comments and you can go have a look at her beautiful Instagram. So, yeah, this is Victoria from Monkey Bucket Farm as it's just lifted up my mouth. Yeah, Victoria didn't have to be there on weekends. She could have people driving her vans because obviously you need a different license to drive vans. And so it was putting all these things in place to allow for her team members to step into the roles they ultimately wanted to be in as well.

With that as well, it's kind of like the mindset with team, and I'm going through this now with two other clients, that when you've been running your show, your business show, all by yourself for all however many years and months, and suddenly you've got other people supporting you in your business, it can feel a little bit like, WTF? And they can feel a bit disjointed, and your team can feel a bit uncertain about themselves, and you can feel a bit frustrated because they aren't doing things the way you need. And so there's two things that have to come in here, and that's systems, and that is leadership. And the systems bit is kind of the easy bit. Like, just get a good Trello board going, get Asana mapped out, whatever you want to do for mapping out your systems.

But the stepping into a leadership role is a whole different ballgame when you are realizing that you are now the visionary and you are the CEO and you are the director, and it's your job to keep these beautiful souls here happy, aligned, working on the right things, working as efficiently as possible, feeling supported in their role. It's a lot. It's an identity shift. And so that's something that I've definitely seen lovely Victoria go through over the last year or so, is just stepping into their place going, okay, this isn't like a cool, fun thing I'm doing anymore. I mean, it's still fun, but that kind of small thinking of, like, this is just my small little farm. It's my small little animals. I'm doing small events going, actually, I'm building an enterprise here. I'm building an empire here.

And this needs support, and this needs more people really stepping into their leadership roles, which means I've got to step into my leadership role. It's a massive identity shift, and it's crucial. It's absolutely crucial. Otherwise, growing your team is just going to feel like an absolute headache. And you're going to feel like you are just constantly paying invoices or constantly paying salaries, and you are constantly cleaning up messes and you're constantly cleaning up drama or disgruntled team members or whatever the case might be. It'll be negative experience from both sides. So it's really, you do the work personally and you get the support personally to create that mindset shift, to create that identity shift, to step into the role of leader in your business. Now, the other arm that I mentioned is systems. Beautiful souls.

I don't care if it's just you and your business. You need to have systems. I say to all my ladies, especially my dream business school. Before that, before Dream Business school became Dream Business school was the six figure academy. And the five k academy is, I don't care if it's just you in the business. If you want to have a six figure business, if you want to have a five k a month business, you have to build your business with the systems that can support the business you want to go into. Like, you're not going to get to five k months, you're not going to get to ten k months, 50k months, whatever your goal is, and then go, oh, now I'll build the systems. Now I'll get organized. You have to prepare for that business now.

So build six figure systems if you want a six figure business. And what that looks like for me, it's Trello. I talk about this all the time, but I freaking love Trello. I've tried Asana, I've tried basecamp, I've tried ClickUp, I've tried Monday, I've tried just having it on Google Docs. Trello works for me. I've got my social media systems board. I've got my social media library board. I've got my just like all systems board, which covers the blog writing system, the podcast promotional system, the podcast outreach system, email marketing system, client management systems. It's all mapped out there. So at any point I get a new VA or my OBM leads or something like, crazy like that happens, I can be like, here we go. It's all there.

All the links, all the to dos, all the steps, all the passwords, all the usernames, all the resources, all the folders, all the files that you need are all there. It's all mapped out. And so when I get a new team member in, they are trained up and know what to do within a couple of days versus me having to. Okay, let me work out exactly what you have to do and let me go and find out how I can do this for you. And it's faffy and end up losing money because you pay them all their time. So build out systems. This has been a big one for lovey Victoria.

In fact, she actually recruited the help of one of our other mastermind ladies, Suzie Stanier from Suzie Stanier Business Solutions, who is like a systems organisation queen and knows Trello really damn well and has a mind that can just map things out in the most beautiful sense making way. And so Victoria and Suzie worked together to get this all mapped out, to get this all working really well, because her team felt really supported as well, because they knew what the hell they were doing. Isn't that nice? You know, what you're doing in your job role? Which allowed Victoria to feel really supported because her team knew what they were doing. So it was just this beautiful pyramid of support and love and goodness. The other arm of those systems was to kind of support the admin support.

So we brought in, or she had an admin lady in the business who we kind of decided to utilize more. I feel like it sounds weird, but make sure that she was happy in her role and give her all the responsibilities that she wanted to have in the business, which also meant, like, social media and more admin and kind of client management, things like that. And so we created systems around all those things so that this beautiful admin lady, again, felt totally supported and knew what she wanted to do. It also for Victoria meant that team coms kind of happened in those specific places, rather than team coms being everywhere and logging into your email in the morning and you got someone talking about social media, someone talking about a cancelled booking, and someone talking about something on the farm. It's overwhelming.

It's just unnecessary as well. So that's something that we got in place. And I say this all the time, but systems are never a one and done thing. Systems are do and work at it and tweak it and evolve it and redo it. My systems are constantly being tweaked and upgraded. As the systems grow, as a business grows, it needs upgraded systems and vice versa. If I want the business to grow, I need to upgrade my system so the business can move into those systems. So, yeah, right now, got great systems in place. They're working for her, but they are going to be a constantly evolving thing. Okay. Another thing we worked, oh, finances a little bit. Finances, finances.

So, Victoria, I'm so mindful that you're not here, and I'm talking about you and I feel so awkward about it, but you won't join your holiday, which is brilliant and perfect for the context of the conversation, but like really understanding your finances. I talk about this a lot. Our beautiful client, Rachel from flourish bookkeeping, who's really passionate about this as well. Also in the mastermind, if you don't know what your numbers are in your business, ladies, if you don't know what money's coming in, money's going out, what the health of the cash flow is in your business, you are not making informed decisions about what you can and can't do in your business. So that's been a big thing as well, focusing on kind of getting to grips on your finances, actually knowing what your bank balance is.

So an exercise that I gave my mastermind, ladies, was these sheets that live here. That's a perfect example. So we've got a money tracker and income celebrator, just kind of like goal tracking things. Because research has proven that if you check your bank balance every single day, with the right mindset, the right intention, the right energy, you actually can transform your financial life just by doing that, which I think is really cool. Never mind having to take big bold action and do massive investments, just having neat pieces of paper with the right mindset practices behind it can actually do some wonders and miracles in your life. So I preach a lot about that within the masterminds.

Knowing your numbers, not just from a financial point of view, but knowing your business from a metrics perspective so that you know what your lead magnet conversion rates are, you know what your website traffic is, you know what your website conversion traffic is, you know what your abandoned cart rate is, you know what your open rates are for your email, what your click through rates are, what social media posts are landing, what's getting the most views, what's getting the most saves, what's getting the most engagement. When you are tracking all those things, you can then make informed decisions about your business. I love it when a client comes to me and says, say I love it.

I'd rather have a client come to me like, Suzie, everything's working and I'm booked up and I'm sold and I'm making all the money I want, but that's just not business all the time. I mean, it's business a lot of the time, but not all the time. And so I'm like, Suzie, I'm halfway through a launch, things aren't working. What the hell? And we will bring up their metrics and we will look at traffic and conversion rates and social media and messaging and all those things. And we'll be able to see your business has constantly given you feedback. I say this all the time, but it genuinely has given you feedback. And so it allows us to go, okay, well, we can see that the traffic to the sales page is really high, but we can also see that people are getting through to checkout.

So we've got a really good conversion rate for people landing on the page and going through to checkout, but they're abandoning a checkout. So our problem is lying there. And then we get to have a bit of CEO moment time and CEO questioning time and go, right, what could be happening here? Let's look at it from a physical perspective. Like, is the checkout working? Does everything make sense? Is it slow? Are the links still functioning? Is it explaining the payment plans correctly? Whatever. Or we could think of it as like, hang on, is there a mindset issue here? Are my people going, yes, I love software, yes, I want in. And then seeing the price and going, oh, that's too scary, I'm out. In which case, we need to tweak our messaging to talk about that.

So the point of this law, little teaching point, is know your numbers financially and from metric perspective, because then you can make really informed decisions. And I just recorded the podcast episode. They'll come out in about two or three weeks. Specifically about this. If you aren't tracking anything in your business right now, go and open a Google numbers. Google sheets. Isn't that Google sheets? Mac numbers, Microsoft Excel, wherever you make your spreadsheets, get an air table, everyone into air table these days and start tracking everything to do with your business. Whatever data your business produces, track it. All the numbers, so that you can make informed decisions. I think, dare I say it? I think that might be all I have to talk to you about today.

So in kind of a little summary of kind of Victoria at Mucky Bucket Farm, because apparently I am saying her name now and saying exactly who she is, just in case you are coming in late. She did say I could share who she was. I wasn't comfortable with it, and then I let slip accidentally just rolled up my mouth. Anyway, so went from the business demanding her constantly to run events, demanding her needing her to run, which is tricky when you're a military spouse and you got two kids and one's obviously a baby and a toddler, to the point that she's on holiday right now, hence she's not here on this live stream with me. Her team being able to run events without her.

Her social media, which she didn't love at all, being outsourced, not only outsourced, but actually effectively managed to upgrading the website so it's as user friendly and enjoyable and easy to navigate as possible, to honing the packages. So again, it's easy to understand, it's easy to make decisions, to sorting out her booking system. So that's really easy for her to manage and for other people to manage and to track everything. So I think the overarching theme has been like bringing as much simplicity and organization into the business as possible so that Victoria can show up in her business as and when she wants, and she can show up in her family as and when she wants and she can show up for herself but do cool things for herself as and when she wants. And yeah, keep moving in that direction.

So I hope that has been really helpful for you. If you would like to know anything more about the blissful business mastermind, we are currently open for applications for the first time ever. So this actually launched back in October, but completely behind the scenes. It wasn't a public launch and we booked out, sold out, which is really exciting. So I'm really excited to kind of bring this mastermind out into the public a little bit. I know I have been mentioning it like loosely in podcast episodes and live streams over the last few months, but it is officially out there and available so it is by application because I do need to make sure that you are the right fit and that we are right fit for you. So just as a little recap, we meet every Monday for the mindset get set session.

It's only 1520 minutes and then we meet on Wednesdays for our big masterminding session. Maximum five to six ladies on a call. Obviously if you ever get more joining then we just divide the calls up so that we have kind of multiple calls in a week so that you get plenty of support and coaching around wherever you're at in your business. So this isn't a module based program and a lot of masterminds masquerade is like group coaching program. This is not it. There is no modules, there is no content vault, there is no 5962 things for you to catch up on or get in and consume. We meet you exactly where you're at in your business.

You have access to amazing industry experts like copywriters and SEO strategists and funnel strategists, as well as access to other master minders who are all incredible, amazing, experienced women in their field and their advice is genuinely invaluable. So if you would like to know more, please I will pop the application link below. Go and fill that application or if you've got any questions, head to Instagram and send me a DM and let me know. There are a few offers which I almost forgot to mention, so if you join now, you will get a discount. So the usual price is seven seven a month. It's currently a six four six a month and you will get two completely free private coaching sessions with me as well. So lots of extra little exciting things thrown in if you join in April or May.

Okay, beautiful souls, I will love you and leave you on this beautiful Thursday. Please let me know if you have any questions about what I've shared with Victoria's journey or about the mastermind. I'm happy to answer them for you. Otherwise, I wish you all a beautiful rest of your Thursday and a beautiful weekend ahead, and I'll see you on Tuesday for a deeper dive into some of the things we've discussed today and yesterday. Okay ladies, thank you for joining me. Bye.

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