Transcript of Ep 72 - The Best Remedy For ‘Help! My Business Is Struggling!’

Welcome to the Mothers of Enterprise podcast. I'm your host, Susie 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, it's another intro after the intro, but this one is a little public service announcement to tell you that we. I say we. There's no we. There's me. Me. I am taking a break from the podcast, so this episode is going to be the last one for a little while. To be quite honest, I started the podcast with a full intention of it being seasonal because that's kind of how my brain works. Like to go all in on things and I'm like, stop and regroup and assess and then go back in fresh. But I never really felt the need to take a pause from the podcast. I just loved it and I just kept going with it. And it's been a beautiful experience having a podcast.

And I hope that for you, it's been so filled with value and you found it incredibly useful for your business and your life and your mindset. But now life is kind of dishing me the orders slightly to take a little rest. Mainly because we are moving house end of July. And then two weeks after we move house, my wonderful husband is deploying until the end of the year. And so, with that in mind, with the journey that lies ahead of me, I have chosen to simplify the business as much as possible and just make life as easy as possible for myself. So even though I say all that, even though this podcast doesn't take that much time for me, I'm blessed with an amazing podcast team.

So a huge thank you to Hazel and Peter and the team for making this podcast happen over the last, what, 1516 months, ladies. I literally press a record button and I talk into the mic, and then I send them the file and write some show notes. And that's literally all I do between my amazing podcast team and amazing business team. They take care of everything else, and I magically see it appear in emails and on social media and in stories and reels a couple of weeks later. So a huge thank you to everyone who's been involved in making this podcast happen. I genuinely, from bottom of my heart, appreciate you all so much. But obviously it's still bound within my brain to think of the topics and to physically sit down and record.

So I am, as I say, simplifying my life as much as possible. I'm hoping to return back in October time once I've gotten into the groove of being a full time single mama for a few months. That being said, as you listen to these podcast episodes again and again, I hear DMs. I read dms. Sometimes I hear them too. They voice notes that so many of you go back and you relisten. So I'm going to encourage you to do that over the next couple of months. And then my team is going to keep sharing the podcast episodes on our socials and our emails. So I hope they still serve you and they are still providing that impact and that actionable wisdom to help you grow your thriving business and your thriving life. So that's it from me.

I just wanted to say a huge thank you for being a part of this podcast journey phase one, and I'm really looking forward to being back with you with the fresh content and hopefully a rested and tranquil calm life to go along with it later in the year, hopefully October. As you listen to this podcast, obviously you know the title, that's why you're listening to it. If you're thinking, okay, cool, I hear what you're saying, but I'm still not sure. Beautiful soul. That is exactly why my time and money boost coaching calls exist. They're completely free. You have me on a call for 20 minutes to pick my brains on all things your wonderful business.

So listen to this episode, get some aha moments from it, make some notes, and then get yourself on a call with me and we can talk it over and make sure you are focusing in the right areas. So the purpose of this episode is really to address what I keep seeing in the online space right now and all the various Facebook groups and the small business groups and things with businesses going like I'm having to close my doors or sales are down 75% or I can't afford my kids ballet lessons anymore. And it's just this doom and gloom vibe that's happening in the online space for small businesses. And listen, I get it. I'm not completely ignorant as to the current economic situation that the world is in. I am not immune to the energy prices that are soaring.

I have clients that were paying 2000 for their energy bills are now paying 5000 for their energy bills, obviously the clients that have physical locations. So I am faced with what is happening in this world every day through my clients, through my own life. But this is what I want to rant on a little bit and it's that we are not powerless, you are not powerless in what's happening in today's world. Businesses thrive in all economic environments. In fact, some businesses absolutely explode when the times are at the absolute toughest. So I just wanted to kind of start with a very minor little rant there basically to saying I fully realize and I am not blind to what's going on in the world.

But what really motivated this episode is me getting frustrated that it doesn't have to be this hard and hanging out in Facebook groups with a whole bunch of other small businesses going like, my business is suffering too and I can't afford this and it's just not doing anything for you. Yeah, I get misery loves company and I get that it's sometimes a bit reassuring to know that not something specifically wrong with you, that everyone's feeling it. I really do understand, but it doesn't have to be that way. I launched a luxury personal training and physiotherapy company in the 2008 2009 recession. I was the most expensive personal trainer in my area and within months I was fully booked and I had a team working for me.

I launched high ticket coaching in March, April, May, roughly 2020, just as the practically entire world was going into lockdown, people were being furloughed, losing their jobs and I was booked out within weeks. Really. So I just wanted to kind of call BS on kind of it's the worst time for business. It's a really hard time. I shouldn't be launching things, I shouldn't be doing high ticket, I should lower my prices. All that BS that's going around on the Internet. This episode is kind of a little here's your power back episode because you do have power in this. You do have control over your business and I want you to realize that. So I'm going to dive into things that you can look at in your business to work out what the hell's going on. Why has sales dipped so significantly?

And more importantly, what the hell can you do about it instead of going into Facebook groups or going onto Instagram and moaning about it? I mean, if you know me, you might know the very first thing I'm going to mention that is mindset, but it's not going to be in the way you're probably expecting it's not going to be. I want you to get a growth mindset back and I want you to look at the positives in your life and I want you to write a list of three things that you are grateful for. Whilst those are all beautiful things that will only provide goodness for your life.

I want to challenge you a little bit here because what I see happening a lot is, and I'm guilty of this as well, to a certain degree, I have become way better in recent years in that when business is going well, that's all I knew. Amazing. Business is going well. Enjoy the income. Sales are coming in, I'm booking clients happy. And then when things start going a little bit less happy, we go, oh, crap, what's going on? Why is this happening? Oh, let me dive into mindset work again. Suddenly we're affirming and we meditating and we're visualizing and we doing all the things and we're journaling and we're treating our mindset practice. And this is the words of my beautiful coach, not mine. Like medicine versus a daily vitamin. Vitamin.

However you want to say it, because obviously you take your daily vitamin every single day because you want it to keep you healthy and maintain health and prevent illness. And prevent disease. Whereas we take medicine to treat something that's already gone wrong in our bodies and we treat mindset work so similar in the fact that when everything's going right, we kind of just ignore it. It's fine, I've got it. I'm happy. I'm healthy. But oh, no, we've got symptoms of illness, disease, so to speak, in our business. Oh, now we'll dive into mindset work. So I want to challenge you a little bit here and be like, freaking commit to mindset practice. I realize, I feel like I'm saying that in a really mean tone, but just do it. Do the freaking work. Because that's ultimately what's going to see you through tough times.

And then also when things are going a bit crap in your business, you're like, well, I know it's not because I've completely ducked out of mindset work. I've completely ducked out of kind of stepping into that next identity of mine and normalizing wealth and grounding in that success level and all the things that we do a mindset practice for. Then, you know, okay, something in the business and you can go even deeper into your mindset work because you know how supportive it is and you don't feel like crap. That's a really big thing.

I want to bark on about really quickly is that when you're doing the mindset work, when your soul is filled up, when you are happy and feeling connected, like, for me, I always say that's to God because I am a christian and using terms like universe and things doesn't align, for me, it feels icky. But that's true for you. You do, you boo. But when I know that my faith is grounded in something higher than me, bigger than me, and spiritually, like soul level, I feel filled up and my self worth is in that and my identity is in that and my purpose is in that, then when things grow a bit, like, less than ideal in the business, it doesn't affect me emotionally. I mean, yeah, I'm not going to lie.

I'm not going to be like, oh, look, sales have plummeted 90% and I feel wonderful because that's just weird. But I don't spiral. I think a couple of years ago, before I kind of really found my faith, I spiraled. I don't think full stop, I spiraled. And I would have not would have. I remember having a launch which didn't go as well. I was expecting like a 20 grand. No, I was expecting 20 grand launch. That's a lie. I was expecting, like, a ten grand launch and I think I did 500 pounds. This is like five years ago. And went to Cape Town for our annual trip home, literally the day after the launch closed. And I just remember feeling utterly depressed for our entire three weeks there, which is a complete waste because Cape Town is my happiest place in the whole world.

I love it and adore it, but, yeah, I remember that just low feeling of total failure and misery, and I felt like nothing. I felt like absolute crap. And that doesn't happen anymore. Now when a launch doesn't hit my big, ideal goals, I'm like, okay, cool, what lesson do I need to learn here? How can I regroup from this and come back stronger or whatever the thing is now, genuinely, I don't sound like an overzealous, over optimistic cheerleader, but now it's like, cool, how can we come back from this? It doesn't faze me, to be quite honest. It doesn't faze me as much as it used to. And so that's the purpose of your mindset works even when there's downturn in your business, you're not all like, whoa, is me.

Let me go, moaning Facebook groups, because that isn't where your identity and that isn't where you get filled up. And that isn't where you kind of get the things that make you feel good, because that stuff's always seen, too, anyway, regardless of what's happening in your business. Okay, so that's my little rant about mindset. I do want to kind of go for the other arm of mindset in which you need to be doing mindset practice right now if your business is just not doing what you want it to be doing. I've seen it over and over again with clients. I bark about this all the time. There we go.

That if I've had so many clients in the past that we've not touched their business, like, not touched their website or their messaging or their sales process or their offers and pricing, et cetera, and we've just worked on mindset, we've just worked on their identity, we've just worked on their self belief, on their confidence, on their ability to kind of step into this next version of themselves. Who has achieved all the success that they've ever dreamt of. And that has been their thing. It's actually unlocked their business. They've increased sales, they've attracted clients, they've attracted opportunities just by changing how they feel about themselves. So please do the mindset work. Go deep on this and allow yourself to commit to it and get disciplined around.

There's a quote I absolutely love by Carl Jung, which is until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate, which is what I feel like is happening in the small business world right now. I've got no control. It's just fate. It's just what's happening to me. But actually, there's some unconscious BS programming that is running the show for you. And until you make the unconscious conscious, which you can only do through mindset work, through therapy, through counseling, through meditation, through journaling, through self reflection, it is going to rule your life and you're going to feel like you are powerless to it, but you are not. You are in full control of it. You just have to do the work to feel the power around it. Okay? Mindset, shelving it, full stop.

Let's move into your beautiful business. Okay, so you've got this business. It's not performing as you want it to perform. Let's make believe here. Obviously, I'm coaching to hundreds of people right now. Let's make believe your business has done well. We've had a few good months, a few good years, and now things are feeling a bit crap. Now sales have dropped off the face of the earth. And you're going, what the hell? Where's my business gone? Where my clients gone? Where are the sales now? There are so many, I don't want to give a precise number. So many different things we can look at. Now, if were on a call together, I would pull up everything to do with your business.

I would have your Instagram up, your Facebook group, your LinkedIn, your websites, your TikToks, your clubhouses, your podcast, your youtubes, whatever you have for your business. And I would look at some things which I feel can be addressed quite quickly to create some change. So if this is kind of sounding like you right now, I would do that. Pull up everything to do with your business and then pull up any data you have for your business. Now, I hope if you listen to my podcast that you have some sort of spreadsheet somewhere that has all the metrics for your business on. I hope somewhere that you've got a spreadsheet which tells your website visitors, your conversion rates, your bounce rates, your cart abandoned rates, your calls booked, your conversion for calls, your lead magnet downloads the traffic to your lead magnet page.

Therefore the conversion rate to do with your lead magnet as well. Your Instagram reach, your Facebook reach, your most popular post. All the things. All the things. I will link a episode that I've done talking about why knowing your numbers can literally be the make or break of your business. Because when you aren't tracking those metrics and you haven't got that data, you are making guesswork here. So yes, you can have a high level look at all the things in your business, which obviously I recommend you do. But ultimately you are guessing as to what's having the impact on your crappy sales and whatever else is not going to plan in your business right now. And that's a really disempowering position to be in. And it's a really confusing one because I'm going to fix my Instagram. I'm going to start posting more.

But actually, your Instagram posting frequency has nothing to do with your lack of conversion right now. Actually, if we look at the data, your website traffic hasn't dropped at all, but your conversion. So how many people actually come onto your website and actually buy from you that's dropped? Something's happening on that website. There is a speed problem, there's a messaging problem, there's a customer experience problem, there's a checkout problem, there's a product description problem. Or maybe if my online service providers, my fellow coaches, maybe it's a problem with how they get onto your website and book a call with you or how they are able to self identify that they're in the right place. Because when you confuse, you lose in marketing, if someone's getting onto your website going like, I don't really know if I'm in the right place. Are you for me?

Do you solve the thing I need solving? Do you provide the thing that I need providing? Am I your target audience? I don't know. Oh, well, I'm not going to put the work in to go to your about page and go to your services page and scroll, scroll until I find something that I can use to identify that I'm in the right place. Let me just close this annoying, hardworking website down and go to the next person who calls out exactly who they are for exactly what they do and exactly how they can help. So I can help identify within seconds and go, oh, excellent. Yep, clearly she's for me, he's for me. That's just an example. And I see it all the time. I see new clients come in going like, oh, this is really dropped off.

So I'm posting on Instagram more, or I'm posting in Facebook groups more, and you're like, okay, well, that's great, but that's not even the problem here. The problem is something's happening on your website. Or maybe we can. Look, if you're a product based business, I always say I speak both languages, product based and service based, because that is my background. Let's look at your abandoned cart rate. Are people actually getting onto your website, scrolling your products, adding them to a basket to their cart, and then buggering off? We've got a problem there. What is that problem? Is it the shipping? Is it the process? What is making people go, oh, no, I'm out? Is it too complicated? Is it your payment options are too limited? There are so many things that you can ask yourself once you know where the problem is.

Obviously, if you are looking at your data and your Instagram reaches down 60% or has been consistently down for the last couple of months, roughly since your sales dropped off, then hang on a second. Something is happening on Instagram. Your messaging is no longer on point or your branding isn't doing its job anymore or whatever. The style of your content isn't landing with your ideal clients and customers anymore. Okay, brilliant. Let's look at your messaging and your content. Let's deep dive there and work out how we can tweak that. Let's rethink about who you are serving ultimately and what they need to hear from you, what do they need to understand? What do they need to feel? What do we need them to know about who you are, what you stand for, what you provide? That's all messaging.

And so we know we do a deep dive into that. We do a few tweaks and ta da, hopefully Instagram reaches up and the orders and sales come flooding in. If you've got a podcast and you are so used to people listening to your podcast and booking calls with you, let's say you're a coach, and suddenly that stops. Okay, well, then we know it. Something happened in your podcast that has stopped people booking calls with you. In fact, I had this with a client recently, and she was doing a whole analysis over the style of a podcast episodes and how she's wording the titles. And obviously people respond better to slightly longer titles who have pain points in. And so I went in, had a look, and actually the link was broken. It broke like seven episodes ago to book a call with her.

She changed the link. Her podcast team didn't change in the show notes, and people were just physically unable to book calls with her. And again, you aren't going to get people necessarily. Some cases you will, who are willing to put in all the effort to go and scroll and scroll and dm you to find the correct link. They're going to go, oh, yeah, I want to book a call with you. They're going to go into the show notes where this particular client was saying the link is just like I do. The link was taking them to a 404 error page and they're going, oh, I'm sure many of them went, okay, I'll dm her, or I'll try and find it later. But they don't because we're busy and we're distracted and we don't come back to these things. And so that was a thing.

The link was broken, but she literally was spinning her wheels for two weeks trying to analyze her downloads based on episode length and titles and title length. And actually it was just a broken link. So it's so important, beautiful souls, to know the data in your business. So next part of this is, okay, susie, but I have not been tracking any metrics in my business. I have no freaking clue what's working and what's not working. Beautiful soul, it's time to start. I haven't got any other magic things with you. I wish. I keep saying to my clients, like, one day I'm going to manifest an actual magical wand that can know these things and solve these things for you. But until then, you need to become a business owner. I think it's a really big part of the puzzle here.

We've got so many women, maybe you identify with this, who kind of never set out to be business owners, you never set out to be an entrepreneur. And this path has kind of just found you in life and you have not done the work, mindset, work to really kind of ground into the identity of business owner and dare I say, CEO. Now, I don't use the term CEO very often because I've done market research on this and my people do not identify or align with the term CEO, which I don't think is actually a very good thing. And it's probably my job, actually, it is my job in my messaging to change that and to get you to go, yeah, I am an empowered CEO. I'm a founder, a director, a visionary, a leader of this business.

So therefore, you have to do CEO, visionary, founder, leader, director, take on these big, beautiful titles. You have to do the work of those titles, which is lead your business, be in control of your business. Stop just focusing on the pretty stuff. Stop focusing on what for you is the fun stuff. I got a client who absolutely loves spreadsheets. I got a few who really love spreadsheets. For them, the metric stuff is the fun stuff, which is amazing. And I can almost guarantee you if I look at their success rates, it's slightly faster because they track everything and they can. In fact, I had a client recently say to me, that's my lead magnet. It's just not working. And we tweaked the landing page, we tweaked the headlines, we tweaked the bullet points and the imagery and the layout of the page.

And we ran it for a little bit longer and it just was not converting. And so based on the data, were able to make an informed decision. Okay. Despite us thinking that this lead magnet was a really good idea, it is simply not landing with her people. And so she did a bit more research, but more market research. She spoke to her people. Fancy. They're actually speaking to your audience and asking them what they want and what they think and how they feel. And they came back with some absolute jaw dropping information that we could not have predicted ourselves. I've been in business for now 16 plus years, and I would never have thought the things the audience said would be the case at all.

But it was so flipping valuable because then this beautiful client was able to make an entire new lead magnet, which absolutely blew up the second she launched it and the leads were just coming in. And I think she's gotten so far more leads from this lead magnet in the past, like week than she has from the previous lead magnet over the last eight, nine months, which is just absolutely insane. But the point of that little story is were only able to make that decision because we had the data. So if you are thinking, oh my goodness, I was really hoping to listen to this podcast episode and know exactly what to do. My business to go and fix it. If you haven't been measuring data, you are not going to have that kind of beautiful, helpful, informed decision.

Unfortunately, you're going to have to start tracking. So get onto Google sheets, get onto excel, get onto Mac numbers, wherever you like to get your sheets on, and start tracking every number that your business produces. I mean, I can go deeper into this and tell you specifically what your business needs. Book a time and money call with me if you want that kind of information. But right now, if you're just getting started, go and find the numbers that your business produces on emails, on your website, on your checkouts, on your call booking calendars, on social media, on podcasts, Facebook groups, wherever you get numbers and start measuring them monthly and start making informed decisions based on those numbers. But what I will say, and I do want you to walk away with something of like, practical use.

If you have not been tracking your metrics and you don't really know is go and have a look at your business online. Kind of what I started with. Go and open up everything that you have to do with your business. Podcasts, YouTube websites, Facebook groups, LinkedIn almost said clubhouse. Do people still do clubhouse? Your Instagram everywhere and go and have a look at it. Go and ask yourself, is your messaging clear? Go and ask yourself, are you posting content that your audience really resonates with? They feel aligned with, they feel seen by, they feel understood. Like, are you meeting your audience where they're at and are you actually informing them? Are you teaching them about your product? Are you providing value? Are you sharing who you are? I don't think I know.

One of my first podcast episodes was like five content mistakes that are damaging your business. Go back and listen to that and go and work out if you can kind of fix your content a little bit. Go onto your website and almost ask someone who doesn't know your website to go and find a product and go and see how hard it is. I see this with clients all the time, because when you've been tweaking and fiddling and playing and maybe making your own website. You know it so freaking well that when you want to go and find that one specific thing, you can get there in a few clicks. But if someone doesn't know your website, they're like, I don't know how to freaking navigate this maze. This is really hard and complicated. I'm getting bored. I'm getting frustrated. I'm out.

And so many of your potential customers or your potential clients are just bowing out because they just can't be bothered to jump through all the hoops that you've got on your website because the customer experience is so just long winded and frustrating and illogical to other human beings besides your beautiful self. So go and get someone who doesn't know your website to go book a call with you to go through to check out to find a specific product and make sure it's a really helpful, short, efficient, enjoyable experience. If not, work on that. Also work out where you are potentially leaving money in your business or leaving money on the table in your business. There we go. That's the correct term. When was the last time you actually emailed your list with a promotional offer? When was the last time?

And again, I hope you are keeping a list. And by list I mean email list. And you have got email marketing. If not, I think I've got like two episodes now on email marketing. Go back and find them. You do need did in your business. Yeah. When was the last time you really messaged them with a new offer or message them about a new product or a new service or to book a call with you or whatever the thing is, when was the last time you reached out to past customers and past clients? I don't just mean like a short blanket email, like go and reach out to people. People who you know have bought from you or worked with you. Go and reach out to them and just check in with them. How are you? I've got this new thing.

I would love to share it with you. Would you like to hear about it or whatever the case might be. But you just never know where there are pockets of potential sales, potential money, potential growth lying around in your beautiful business. So the summarized version of this episode is commit to the mindset. Work, ladies. Commit to it. It is not a medicine. It's meant to be a vitamin. It's meant to be something you do every single day. It is the thing that is going to keep you in business. It is a thing that's going to keep you feeling good in business. And it is a thing that's going to get you to the next level in business. So don't shortcut it and don't think it's only something that you do when the shit is hitting the fan and things aren't going to plan.

And then the flip side of this is if you are tracking metrics in your business, go and have a look at those metrics, go and have a look at what's dropping, go and have a look at what's not working and make an informed decision around what it's going to look like to fix that and get those numbers up. If you have not been tracking metrics in your business, beautiful soul, go find yourself a spreadsheet and get your spreadsheet on and make it beautiful. Get all the colors on there and get every number that your business produces and put it on there and start tracking it. If you want an instant something to look at.

Now, like I say, get everything to do with your business up in front of you and go and have a look and go and ask yourself some critical questions as to whether what is currently there is as good as it can be and make those improvements. Of course, I will plug it again, book a time and money boost call. These calls will do just that I've spoken about. I will look over everything for you. I will ask you those questions. I will give you the loving critical eye. I will go on your website and work out what needs enhancing, upgrading, fixing there. So the link for that which is not a broken link, thankfully, is in the show notes. Obviously. Any other questions, come over to Instagram at Mothersoft Enterprise and let me know. Otherwise, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening.

I appreciate you so much and I will see you next week.

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. If you know someone who'd love this podcast, I will be so grateful if.

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Because what the world needs more of are mothers stepping into their superpowers and creating amazing success because they're mothers and.

Not in spite of it.

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And as a thank you, we'll be selecting one reviewer each month who will receive a 1 hour business clinic intensive coaching session with me, worth over 500 pounds. Thank you again so much for joining me. I appreciate it more than I can say, and I'll be back with you soon.

In the next episode.