8. How To Scale Your Business Stress Free-Guest April Beach

On this episode, of the Wake Up & Be Wealthy show, Nellie is talking about How To Scale Your Business Stress Free with guest April Beach of The Sweet Life Company.
This episode touches on:

• How to understand the difference between growth and scaling
• How to extract your genius to give others results
• How to develop your leading method
• How to create a product that creates transformation
• How to run your business with a business model based on the time you have to give
• How to generate leads

If you'd like to connect with April:
@aprilbeachlife on IG
April's website
Check out April's Podcast TheSweetLifeEntrepreneur
April Beach on FB

We hope you've enjoyed this episode, because you totally deserve it. We are hear cheering you on and hope to have you back tomorrow for another fresh and juicy episode! Don't forget to subscribe, follow and leave a five-star review wherever you are listening. Make it a great day!!

Transcript

Unknown: 1:23

OMG, the doors to the sales and social media mastery program are officially open. If you are ready to shine and thrive online and most importantly, have a huge cash injection in your business, this program is for you. It is time to master your sales once and for all. And this program is absolutely going to support you with that. But sign up before the spots are gone because we are only taking on 100 businesses. I cannot wait to support you. This is going to be a massive game game changer for you in 2023. So check out the link sign up. If you have any questions just let us know and we will see you on the inside. And it is time to become an amazing sales queen. All righty. We'll see you on the inside love you!!!! Welcome back to the Wake Up and be wealthy show. We are talking how to scale your business without the stress stress with one of my friends April Beach. I'm so glad that you're here. I secretly have just been stalking you. Ever since I heard a training from you, at my coaches mastermind you are just like a brilliant woman. And I'm just excited for our audience to learn from you today. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I love teaching. It's I get on it. So it's my favorite. Yes, you're so good at it. So scaling a business was like talk to us like it we this is like this episode is perfect for somebody that has had some traction, maybe they've made, you know, 10k months 100k in a year. But they're like I I've maxed out my time. I'm really struggling with getting this to 200k, 500k. seven figures like, I just don't think it's possible April, like what would you say? It's it's so possible, I would first say anything that we can imagine we can do. So first of all, you know, it literally even if somebody has never done it the way you were doing it before it's never been created. As matter of fact, the majority of people I work with are doing things nobody's ever done before they haven't done them in a way that that this person wants to do it. It is possible, I think the first place to start is with an understanding between the difference between growth and scaling. A lot of people don't understand that. And then the online coaching space scale is kind of like a buzzword, you know, scale scale scale, right. But what does that actually mean? So the difference between growth and scaling is growth is when we have a certain revenue that we're generating. But our cost is also increasing. And a lot of people don't understand that, that part of the process. So as we are increasing our sales, we're also increasing our output. So we're hiring teams, you know, we're delegating, we're increasing our ad spend or whatever it may be. And so that is a period of time we actually have to go through before we can even talk about scaling. And then scaling is where we've reached that threshold of where things are running like a lot, I don't want to say a well oiled machine, because that would be a lie. Because it's never act actually like, it's always gonna be like a machine that like we were like a little bit over on an oil change. That's the reality of, of entrepreneurship, but it's running right in our systems are running and we're functioning and whether you are still just you or you have a team of you know, 1215 people, it's running. And so we've hit the threshold of what we're going to pay out for the operation expenses of our business, and then we can scale, which means we increase our profit without increasing our expenditures without an increase in our costs. So I think there is a difference. So a lot of people, they we have to go through that growth process first. But when we really talk about scaling, like true scaling, is, which I'm really excited about today, if we can even start the processes of engineering somebody's business to truly scale and we can have the benefits of true scaling. While we're still technically in the gross growth phase. I love defining those two because I have been in the growth phase and it can be painful and like, oh my gosh, I have all of these responsibilities and these expenses and like, there were mornings where like I even like Vox to bar and I'm like, I don't know if I can do this. Like this is like I'm putting out $25,000 a month right now like, this is so heavy, like this is so stressful. And he's like it's the hockey stick. Like you've got this I know you do like so I love that you described those two levels because that that feels motivating to even me building, you know, the wealthy Queen movement and like growing that of like, we have locked down our expenses. So thank you for that. Right of course. I mean we can have multimillion dollar businesses and still be in the growth phase. It's not like we have to wait to make millions to be out of the ground. With phase like, that's not true at all. But, you know, when we talk about true scaling, it's really exponential results without doing more work. Yes. So how do we get there? So getting more results that like spill the tea, like, tell us how to do. So you know, so the one thing, especially with an online coaching space is that we talk a lot about marketing and sales and marketing and sales. And yes, all of those processes have to be in order, we need to own our space, we need to share important messages with the right people that need to hear either the problem that we're solving or the desire that we're fulfilling all of that. However, nothing matters. All the marketing in the world can't save somebody, if they don't have a product or a program that's transformational, that's going to change people's businesses or lives. So really comes back to the engineering of their signature offer of the actual program itself and the design of that program. In doing that, well, do you mean that well, from the beginning, that is how we work through the process to scale companies. So we can scale systems, obviously, if you get us out of the system. But true scaling is going to happen when we have a great game changing offer in in Windows, and we're trying to go from six to seven, and then seven to eight. And there's a whole bunch of different things as leaders we actually need to do in, in based on where we are in that. But it also comes back to our offers, and which is our product. So with what we do in our space. It's not a physical product, it's our brain, like we are our product is our genius. And it's easy for a company that has a physical product, even a subscription box, we have plants that have some subscription boxes, and it's easy for a company to say, Okay, here's a cost of goods sold. And here's the thing we're gonna engineer and am I actually own two companies, my husband owns three, so collectively on five, and he owns three physical products, two physical products, companies. And it's totally a different ballgame. Right? When, when we in the expert, thought leader, coaching and consulting service base phase or engineering a product, we are extracting our own genius to develop our I call it our method to millions, and putting it into a framework that is guaranteed to give other people predictable, transformational measurable results. And that is a harder process than people than people think. So it really comes down to scaling comes down to how well we've engineered our offers based on our own genius. Wow. How that feels like a lot, which I'm sure it is what you do so like, give us some like starting points, like where yeah, how do we start with that? Yeah, so I love teaching on this seriously, thank you so much for having me, if I could just like stand, if I could just stand on a mountain and be like, if you just knew this, it's so powerful, just do these things. And so we actually have a process, which is called your method to millions. But it's not just millions of dollars. It's also your method to reach millions of people. And so your method to millions is based on that engineering, right? But I have to say that, everybody and you and I, you and I chat about this, you know, offline to like everybody wants something different. Your all your people listening might not want a business, it reaches a million people that just might not even work for them. I mean, it didn't I didn't want that business for the first 15 years I was in business, right? So you don't have to have some huge bass thing, right? In order in order to do this well. So before I say I'm what I'm gonna say, I just want anybody listening to know that, you know, like you do you like you engineer your offer model, we'll talk about offer moderate modeling, delivering things like that, like, but you engineer it the way you want to do it, not because you're copying somebody else, not because somebody else is doing it. And they told you to, and certainly not because you're in some course that teacher taught you how to create a course or something, and you're just copying what somebody else is doing. And frankly, in most cases, they're just copying some of what somebody else was doing. It's really it's like this weird incestuous MLM thing that's happening in the coaching space. And it's not helping individual leaders develop their own genius and brain so before I have to say anybody listening, just promise me that I want you to rethink the way that you've ever thought about creating your offers. Before I say what I'm gonna say, okay, so I really cross my fingers. Okay, April. Promise, I think cross our fingers like that means we're lying. Okay, we're not lying. Anyway. What we're gonna do is it first starts with developing your leading method. This is so powerful. So there's a difference between a method and a framework, which I'm not going to go off on a tangent on those things right now and I am not going to Do that. And I don't know why my phone was just ringing on my laptop. But I'm not gonna go off on a tangent and do that, because I don't want people to get stuck in the weeds. But your method is usually a start to finish process that is extracted from your brain, the way you've done things and gotten people results in the past, your opinions, your strategies, your expertise, any experience that you bring from other programs you've created. And we actually engineer your leading method, this is what I call your method to millions. And so I want people to picture like a sun in the middle of the solar system, right, so the sun is the method. And we do have really, really well and we engineer your method, then all of the planets that we would rotate off of it are stemmed from that the book you want to write comes from that your signature offer is engineered from that your upsells and down cells and cross cells are engineered from that your signature talk is engineered from that every single thing that you become known for is know is being known as a person that has a reliable method that's been tested to give predictable, transformational measurable results. And so first, it comes with establishing an engineering your method. And a method is like a process. Some people will say, Okay, well, I can just like outline my start to finish process, there is more to it than that, especially because we need to make it yours, we need to make it your intellectual property which nobody else can steal, or copy ever, once you do this correctly, you'll never have to worry about somebody else ripping off your business, because they actually can't because it's truly derived from your genius. And it can't be duplicated without being obvious. So it starts with engineering that method. And then we take that method, and we go through a process of understanding. What do you want things to look like three to five years from now? And that's a hard question for some people. But if we don't share this, steer the ship in the right direction. We are never getting there. And so what we do is we it's a process that I take our clients through, it's called engineering moonshots. And moonshots are crazy. Like, they're things that you wouldn't say unless it was talking on like this podcast or with like minded people, because people would be like, Oh, sure, whatever you want to be the next Oprah, you know, people think you're people that aren't like, go getters. They're like, Okay, have fun with that. And then then they like, Go, whatever they're going to do with their meeting mediocre life, but that makes them happy, right? So we engineer the moonshot. And we say, Okay, what does this look like? What does this business model look like? You know, what is the collection of offers, it always comes down to your offers your offers or your product? So does that look like speaking retreats, writing mastermind, you know, on demand courses? What is that? What is the call it a business ecosystem? What is the business ecosystem of that moonshot look like? We get a good picture that is clear as we can. Some people are like, gosh, I just can't even see that. And that's fine. But how far out? Can we see based on and here's the key. What significance do you want to have in your space? When I say the world, it could be like your block in your neighborhood? It doesn't have to be super huge and big. But what's, how do you? How do you want to be significant and significant doesn't mean that we want everybody in the world to know our name. But all of us as teachers and leaders, we just want to be significant in creating positive change in the businesses or in the lives of somebody else. So what do you want the person listening? Like? What do you guys want your significance to look like? What does that moonshot look like. And so we have this picture. And again, it's just like a boat, right? Like we're steering the ship in the right direction, we might not necessarily know the exact course we're going to get there yet. But we're going to secure it steer the ship in the right direction. And we have this collection of amazing things we want to engineer. We look at it. And then I take people through a process, which is breaking those into what I call a phase based plan. So going from three years from now to 18 months from now to 12 months from now to nine months from now to the next sprint, what are we doing these next six weeks? And how are we sure that the work that we're doing is going to lead there, but it all comes down to because there's a whole bunch that happens in business, everything from marketing and sales. What drives the focus of that particular phase based growth is always the offer. It is always the product. And I really think that people totally jack that up when it comes to the online coaching and leadership space because it's so marketing heavy. And there are tons of great marketers out there with the worst courses and programs. They're totally not qualified to teach ever. And all of us have spent money on those things. And it's very, very difficult, right? So our job as as that leader is we need to make sure those programs that we engineer are completely transformational, but we need to do Have them one at a time and we need to become known for them and get testing and attraction on them one at a time. So, big picture. And if you're watching the video, I'm like throwing my hands up in the air. I wouldn't be whiteboarding here, like my, my whiteboard sketch pad on your, on your on your YouTube videos, you'd be like drawing these examples what I usually do, but we start with that method number, it's the sun. And then we decide what planets are going to spin around that all of those planets are the makeup of your moonshot all of the things you want to do. And then we look Okay, which one are we going to build first? And what is that look like? And it always comes back to engineering, their first signature offer and program. And the thing about this is that especially so I've had a master class called your signature offer for over five years. And it first when we named it that it was like really unique and everything. But now obviously I've seen people and so I feel like it's important to speak to I'm seeing people saying well launcher signature offer. So let's like talk about what actually is a signature offer versus what's not a signature offer, right. So a signature offer is not the thing that's most popular, it is not the thing that you know, everybody in your industry just happens to have. So it's like the most prominent, it's not the it's not something, it doesn't have to be super expensive. And it's also not super cheap. It is engineered uniquely to you a signature offer is based on your thumbprint, it's taking the initial method that we outlined, and like totally tripping it out like massive amount of information in there that delivers a predictable, measurable transformation. And it only comes from your intellectual property, you have to have measurable results in each benchmark through the signature offer. And it has to be scalable. And so those are the things that it's very basic, there's like 29 components to a true signature offer. But when you're looking at a signature offer, it's just not the one that's most popular. It's not necessarily could be, it's not the one that everybody's necessarily buying. It's not even necessarily one that if we're looking at a suite of offers that everybody is actually in, you could have a downsell offer, you have 2000 people in a signature for them and holds 50. You know, it doesn't really matter what matters is it to your thumbprint. And nobody else can duplicate it. And the way we engineer transformation, both tangible transformation, and psychological transformation, which is very important and in curriculum design and business engineering now, is that we use scientific learning, we use what we know from science and the way people learn, and they apply what they're learning to how we engineer your offers, in such a way that it is guaranteed to deliver a transformation. So it doesn't necessarily matter how big it is or how small it is. It does not matter if it's a course or a mastermind or a retreat or a one on one or a VIP day, the business model always comes last the business model was what creates the lifestyle. And I know you and I talked about lifestyle a lot, the business model always comes last. But first we have to engineer the IP and the intellectual property. And that's what makes us millions of dollars. I feel like that's where the least amount of energy is going though. People are spending so much time on Tiktok and reels and on sales calls and on building their funnel and we're not spending enough time on the offer creation. Would you agree with that, like 100%? Yeah, it's always what's happening. And that's what we buy. You know, we have a we have a woman that is, is one of our clients. And she bought a course a couple years back, it was a course on how to create online courses. And she said guy was just so amazing. On the marketing side of it, it was so good. But they didn't teach me how to extract my own brain. They didn't teach me how to actually engineer my content in my program, other than just giving me an outline to do it and expecting that I would actually know the process of extracting my thoughts. And what happens, especially for those of us that have been in business for so long, is we're on the inside of the bottle. And when we've already created so many things, we have to stop. First of all, we need to take what's called an asset inventory of all the things we've done, we need to ask the tough questions about whether or not those assets, the programs and the videos and everything we've already created. You know, it's a lot of it. And a lot of cases like at one point in time, we had 56 online courses in my in one of my companies, we shut down in 2018 because it didn't necessarily follow the future where we wanted to go, we have to take a look at that. And we have to do that asset inventory. And we have to take a really hard look. But that really comes down to the lack of processes, which is what I teach is this process and I think I'm the only person I know that actually teaches this. But it's it's the non sexy stuff. It's honestly really hard work. It's the stopping and thinking and extracting your brain and then re engineering it in a way that actually is guaranteed to deliver a transformation. While and I hear it takes time, it takes focus, it takes patience. So for that busy woman that has kids and maybe a day job, and she or she's already busy with clients, and she's like, I want to scale April, but like, I just don't feel like I have the time. Like, I hear what you're saying, like, what's your, what's your coaching around that? Yeah, I love that. I love that you said that. Okay, so I will say so my boys now are 2017 and 15. But I, you would never know this by going to my website. So this is like a little side note thing. So I'm actually the creator of the parent coaching industry. So I created the parent coaching retreat back in 2006. When I had three babies, boys at home under the age of four, and my youngest had like the worst severe food allergies, he didn't go to school for years, and I had no childcare, nobody could he couldn't ride anybody else's car. I mean, it was just me, and these kids and diapers, and it was ugly. And I was literally building a whole new industry. And how I did that was by following a framework to make sure I was creating programs that delivered a transformation. And so the first thing you want to do is you want to look at your offers, in the actual transformation you're delivering to people within it, first of all, to make sure you're doing a really good job, make sure people aren't dropping out falling out quitting, make sure that how you're engineering, the experience of working with you, in addition to the content, is getting people results. So step number one is taking a look at your current offers and making sure they're great. We don't do that because we create stuff. And then we go to the next stuff, hoping this good, you actually have to be disciplined and stop and make sure that that initial minimum viable product is still leading the industry in the space. So take the time to do it, block it off on your calendar actually do that. The second process of that is truly asking yourself, what you want your time. It's not even want what your time can actually look like. And I get it especially, especially with young kids, there are phases of business development. So there's like certain business models that we can do when kids are in preschool. And then you get to your kids or your kids gets in elementary school. And it's like you have from nine to three every day. And it's like a new world. Oh my gosh, well, preschool doesn't even count because they go for three hours. I was like a joke. I was like, barely able to go to the grocery store. But at least I got five minutes to myself, but Elementary School Officers like we have six hours, yes, like, what am I going to do, I'm going to middle school, and just so you guys know, because I'm ahead of all you guys, you know, just so you guys know, middle school, they still need you but differently. And so how we engineer your offers is different, because they need you at night, they no longer need you for the everyday care, but when they really want to talk to you is at 10 o'clock at night after everything's settled down. And they want to talk about the hard things in their day. And that's all the way through high school. And that's still the way they are in college. And they want to talk to you at 1011 12 o'clock at night. So what does that tell us is women tells us that the offers that we're in, and by the way, you don't want anybody else to be there for these for those conversations. They are the best, hardest and most important conversations that you will ever have in parenting. And they are they're bittersweet. So we got to be there, right. So how we engineer the offers to actually make sure that you know, we are physically able to be there, our brain capacity can be there, and we're making money and that we can do that is going to totally depend on each person's life. And so for example, launches, let's take launches, I don't do any launches, we have done launches in years, I freaking hate launches. But people that do launches, it could work for them, they love them. For me, it just didn't work with my life because I travel too much. And so if you're doing a launch business model, you need to be aware of the fact that five months leading up to that launch, it's going to grow up like a scale here is going to be really really planning and planning, you got to be really organized hard work. You've nailed the marking, and we do all the things. And then the delivery is is really a nice kind of downslope on the other side of that when we engineer the offer, right, but you have to be able to be ready to scale that way. So just because a launch strategy could be a great strategy, and a lot of people are making money on it. Ask yourself as a mother, if that would actually work for you for you to literally, physically kill yourself for a couple of weeks, if not six weeks before launch, because that's what it doesn't even matter how I've done parts of huge launch teams. So like Lewis Howes and Tony Robbins and it doesn't matter. They have huge teams we don't have I don't have that team, you know, so it's me, right? It's me part of this process. So ask yourself the actual model of how you launch your programs, how you deliver your programs should be dictated by what you're teaching and what your students need. But also for sure, first has to be dictated by the time that you have to actually pull it off. Does that make sense? Or is that too high level Whoa, okay, no, I love that because I feel like we're not asking those questions like, we're not looking at our calendar, we're just saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, she's launching over here. So I should be launching. It's like, what it's always like what the other person is doing. And then we think that that's what we should be doing. But I love how you say, to stop and to assess not only assess your assets, but assess your schedule, and really be real with yourself on what can you truly take on and what feels good to you. Because that's important. It is important, I will also say, so I do I do this practice, I started in 2013, where every end of the year, I would lay out my whole entire next year in advance. And in, I do it in a very certain way. So the very first thing I do is I block off kid time, and travel time. So the very first thing off my calendar in my kids are older now. But still, my middle son was a professional hip hop dancer in LA. So we lived in LA, a week, a month, and my my other two boys play lacrosse on the East Coast. And so I literally travel five months a year, it's totally, it's always around my kids, that's just where I am in life right now, I wouldn't have it any other way. So I'll go and I'll map out all their things that they do. And so depending on your kids age, they might not be and all this stuff yet, but as soon as I get passionate about something, especially as entrepreneur parents were like, yes, we're gonna own you're gonna be the best at that, right? Because we're so action takers. And so Mark all of that time off, okay? And then you're gonna look at your calendar, and you're gonna be like, dude, how am I ever gonna make any money, like, I can't work it all. And so that's why I stopped doing launches way back in 2013 Makes me sound so old in the online business space, because I'm like, I can't do that. And I'm not also interested in putting all my eggs in one basket of the launch. And then that's the truth part of it. And then if that doesn't really sell, then you know, I'm screwed. And so and that happens to a lot of my clients who don't have great launch teams behind them. But so Barkoff the year when you're going to travel, the second thing to do is mark off personal development time. So mark off that time when you're going to write that book. So usually, for me, it's a month of July. So any sort of I'm also an environmental nonprofit founder. So any sort of nonprofit work, like environmental actual activism work that I do any writing anything else is always the month of July. So I already know, I'm on the road as my kids, I'm not selling anything, I'm only doing my own stuff. So I have these chunks of the year that I really focus my work. But that means that five months a year is really what I'm left with, because December doesn't really count. And in frankly, if we're being really honest, like the middle of May to like July, that doesn't count at all, either, because my kids are getting out of school, and it's Fourth of July, and we're at concerts. Now that's a fun thing you can do when your kids get older, we can't be in and concerts and all these fun things to do, right? I'm not I'm not even ramped. But that means that my model, my business model, in the in our programs have to make sure that I am generating enough revenue and enough new leads into our programs for the other five months a year, in order to be able to live the life that I want. So how I deliver those programs, how I work with my clients, how I meet with my clients, is completely dictated by my lifestyle first. And that's what I that's what I if anything at the end of this podcast, if you're if I just couldn't get through to your listeners to say, literally sit down and write it on paper, what do you want it to look like. And then we build the custom model to meet it. We don't copy anybody else's cookie cutter model in join their cookie cutter course to launch a cookie cutter product that's just like a cookie cutter. Like we literally as long as we have a method that's engineered to give a transformation, predictably guarantee transformation. We can engineer any business model to meet the profit math that we want to do that. I'm just like in heaven right now. I just love this so much. And I think this gets to be talked about more. So if they're not launching because they're like, yes, April, I want this type of lifestyle that you have like That sounds so juicy and delicious to me, how do we generate the leads and a very powerful, irresistible way to still get massive results? Yeah. So let's let's first of all, kind of get a list of what type of business models that are just standard again, I want you to customize it. But what standard business models currently work with not launching. We have a business model, and it's a newer business model that we engineer good and it's customed to us, but we're helping our clients and engineers called an MRR, which is not necessarily a membership model. It's a hybrid custom model. That is usually an ongoing program, and that it meets throughout the year and so the cadence and the curriculum within that and the transformations that people receive in that is more of a long term. So your listeners that are established entrepreneurs, this is a great business model to engineer because you already have an established following. And what we want to do is we want to engineer a journey through your offers where your clients can come back to you. years after years, after years, we have clients that have coached with my business for over 12 years, literally businesses that coach others back that come back, as our company grows, we have different ways to help them keep growing. And it's very, very important that it's not only starting with this first offer, but the ongoing journey, we're always developing the next level in bringing those people with us. As we grow, they grow. And it's just a win win for everybody. It's a very, very cool thing. And so and people will always say, Well, what about evergreen courses? Hey, we're going to talk about the elephant of the room with Evergreen courses. Right now I have to say this I would not be doing what I feel is my duty to the online courses space. Evergreen courses are not selling to business to businesses, okay? Evergreen courses are failing. Evergreen courses have a 98% failure rate. We launched probably the first course ever teaching entrepreneurs on how to launch online courses back in 2008. Before it was a thing, if we look at the history of and they were great than you guys, they were like, it was like you could just set it and this button and people would come and all this she was just awesome, right? And then what started happening was too, too many courses are launching right. And there isn't any interaction or coaching. It's just evergreen, none of us really want to just sit there and listen to somebody tell us what to do with no motivation and then have to go do especially programs that are really hard work. So it's not necessarily the the program started being engineered incorrectly. But on top of that, of what happened is we had programs that were way too much content taking way too much time with way too little personal attention and q&a and support. And so evergreen courses, not b2c. So we have clients that have amazing evergreen courses are launching to the consumer space. But if you're in business, and you're selling evergreen courses and and, and you just want to have that like quick button, they are not selling the way they used to. So again, that 90 is 97 to 98% failure rate in the sale of online evergreen courses actually fell by 6.4%, when this was the last number we pulled, which was back in 2018, which is$13.8 billion. And so they are not as shiny and wonderful is everybody says so I just have to say that. Do we have clients with courses that are killing it? Yeah. But it's because they're being engineered in a certain way. So I just had to, I just hate seeing people fall into a trap. Because building a course is a lot of hard work. And they go and they work their ass off and they build a course and then they turn it on, and nobody buys it. And it's just heartbreaking. So if I can just save anybody from doing that, under that perception, then then let me let me do that. With that being said, these MRR engineering plans are incredible. So these ongoing models that we're delivering without the launch is absolutely incredible. But it doesn't also work for everybody. So back to your question, when we're talking about lead gen and marketing. There are four ways to generate leads. And that's it, there's only four. And so to simplify this, and they all don't work for everybody, there is no magic sauce that works for everybody. So the first one is organic posting. It's our social media posting social media content. It is the sort of what I call sweat equity. Everybody has to do it. But it's not necessarily where our clients find us, usually social media posting is where they might have seen us somewhere else. And they come back to make sure we're legit, to make sure we're like real people that are authentic and not totally full of it. Right. And to see if they want to connect with us more. I mean, yes, it depends on your size of your following. But in a lot of cases, just organic posting, especially for newer businesses, we have to do it. It's part of the relationship we build with our audience, but it's not going to be like we're just going to post and all of a sudden, it's not like if you build it, they will come that just doesn't happen. Okay, so that's the first way. The second way is running ads, ads. Ads are the fastest way we can get people into your business. You know, when we do ad strategy, right, and we do it well, we get amazing eyes on your business of, you know, ideally, after testing and traction, you know, great people that are disqualified and pre qualified. We want to schedule ads, we want to pull out program ads to disqualify the wrong people. We don't want everybody we do not want everybody. We want to make sure they're disqualifying qualifying at the same time as their pre qualifying people. And so the second way is ads. And that would even go as far as traditional social media ads, or, you know, Google AdWords and other ways we can we can do ads. The third way is PR and that's earned media. A couple things about PR that I want to say, I feel like I see so many things that are just not so popular. People either lie. No, no, no, we're all about being real here. All of this press, okay? Like, I'm like people either really like me or they're like, oh, okay, okay. Okay thing about earned media, and PR media is an amazing way. So being featured and in really reputable, higher profile media, you know, being featured in magazines, all those things, earned media, there's a bunch of different strategies we could do, we could do a whole podcast on how to get earned media, but there's no media. What I'm gonna say to you all, is all of those DMS that we all receive from Instagram saying, Hey, would you like to be featured in like the top 20 business coaches of 2023, that's all can occur on your podcast. Like that, that's all bullshit. Okay. They don't do any vetting to make sure those people were the top coaches, or the top, this is a money making scheme. Okay, that is not earned media, those people that are featured in those, and I've had honestly a lot of clients that didn't know any better, and they're like, Wow, it's a great opportunity pay for play. And I'm not even saying it's not a great opportunity. But those of us who are established leaders, and experts in the industry know that you didn't earn that because your work was good, or because you're actually a good coach, or because you have amazing intellectual property that deters, delivers people transformation, we know you bought that. And it doesn't mean shit to us. And so, but most people don't know that. And so all those pitches that people get on Instagram, have, you know, hey, do you want to be featured in this and the dentist did not. And they're like, that'd be $350, please, it's like, no, that will actually be overall detrimental to your brand, please don't buy that. I will teach you we will teach you, you can, you can go go to harrow.com. Help a Reporter Out, sign up for that. And you can become a source for media in you based on your work and your words can earn media attention. That's how I was featured on The Today Show and on MSNBC, and in Patagonia magazine, all these places, because the work I was doing was important to the story, not because I paid my way there. And so unless you're working with a really well established publicist or two, we have great publicist that that we work with and there's amazing publicists out there. That's, that's different. That's not what I'm talking about. Having a great publicist is great. This is just all these crappy, low level things. So please don't do that. Because I would hate for businesses to finally grow your brand and get your brand in that might mean something to a certain audience that doesn't know any better. But when you want to scale your business to seven and eight figures, you're serving an audience that knows better. And so we need to make sure that your brand is is on the level of the people that we want to attract to you. And so that's just, that's my earned media tangents. So again, let me get back on track here we have organic posting sucks, but we have to do it. We have paid ads, doesn't work for everybody. We don't run paid ads in my company. But my clients do paid ads works great. Number three is earned media. And the fourth one are affiliates and partners and affiliates and partners this way, the fastest way to grow your business is to borrow someone else's audience just like me here like Nelly and I are hanging out, right? Like you guys are now part of my audience because I got to be on her podcast and sit in here and jam with you guys. So so we're part of a circle. Now. We we've created those relationships through having conversations. So if you can teach in somebody else's mastermind, if you can't speak on somebody else's podcast, if you can show up in even teaching local events in your area, even if you're an online business, don't underestimate teaching locally in your city. They are powerful ways to grow your online business. And so those are the four ways we are in traffic and and they're different. Everybody has their own lead gen recipe for scaling. No, I love that. So in the in the five months that you are working your business, do you just double down since you don't run ads? Are you focused more on that organic reach and those partnerships? Yeah, yeah. So um, so let me let me clarify that. So I actually work year round. I just travel five months and when I travel, I don't work as much. Yeah, like I'm always coaching my clients. So I would I mean, I don't know I think I would be miserable. If I actually took five months off a year my brain is way too ADHD that I bet would not be fun for me at all. So I make sure I just travel five months a year, um, but I do usually take you know, at least a solid month off collectively through my time during the year. So for us my podcast and so I'm the host of this week life entrepreneur podcast and we've been producing for over five years, and my podcast is just constantly a lead generator fresh. That's why I'm such a big advocate for podcasting. Because like people know you they know your voice they feel like they do hanging out with you all the time, especially the way you're doing the show is so rad. It's so good. I'm so excited for you. And so the podcast for sure is a constantly generator. On top of that it's speaking and teaching, I do a lot of speaking and a lot of teaching and other people's programs. People are gonna say, Okay, I want to do that, here's how you do that. Going back to what we talked about the beginning, you have to have a method that you teach, like, for us, it's signature offer engineering. So that's why it's so what I can speak on pairs really well, with outstanding sales leaders and marketing leaders like you, right? It's when you have something you can teach on and speak on, that makes that other person you're speaking for makes their services even better and more magnified. That's how we use those sorts of relationships. It's, it's not just each on anything, it's what you're teaching has to level up, and almost like add a rocket booster to what the leader is already teaching. So it's not just teaching anything. So that's, that's really our strategy. And in friends and referrals, I've just, I have two different international business consulting firms, and everything has been referral based, since that initial media. I mean, obviously, the the whole wave of media initially was was great, but that was like a long time ago. So we do affiliates. I love that all roads lead back to the method. That's what I'm hearing all roads will always lead back to the method and a transformational signature offer. So if someone wanted to just be like, can you just make this easier APR for me? Like, how can they get plugged into your ecosystem? Yeah, so first of all, my podcast seriously is a gold mine. It's just like yours that somebody actually listened to my podcasts like all five years, they would be able to get for free what I charge and like half of my business programs. I'm all about that, right? Like, seriously, dude, like, if you just listen to these episodes, I mean, I don't hold anything back in the show. I'm definitely not for next level scaling entrepreneurs, because there's so much custom strategy for people that are just starting out their business, we have a business launch program, but overall, it's it's just getting back to understanding the value that they bring. How can we make it easier definitely listening to the sweet life entrepreneur podcast is a great way we actually have downloads, we actually have free master classes that we give with episodes, so episodes have like crazy, insane. bonuses, we like to say it's free podcast trainings that other coaches will charge you 1000s For so it's actually it's our tagline. So it's actually not a joke, go there. But for businesses that are really looking to engineer their next level, you know, leaders who have been entrepreneurs for a while they've had offers, they've had programs, they just aren't in love with what they're doing, or they aren't being as significant as they want to be, or they aren't heading in the right direction, or most of them have copied what somebody else told them to do. And finally, they're to this place where like, wow, I really feel like now, I want to engineer my blueprint for my business and my profit plan in my life. Those are the clients that we really dive deep and work with and developing their signature programs and their signature offers. And so that would be the way that we would be able to help them do that. I love that is that your ongoing program then that they get. So our ongoing program, it's an application only program, which is why I didn't really drop the name you either you have to apply, you have to be applied to you have to apply to be approved, or you have to be invited by one of our members, and why it's so good. It's called wave makers. And it's actually it's actually a three year business growth ecosystem, but that businesses agree to do a year at a time. And what's so powerful this is the one thing I was telling you before that I didn't even know if I was going to drop this in there. Because sometimes when you say too much, people just get so jumped tracked with information they don't know what to walk away with. So I'm gonna say one more thing to you guys, just to open up a door for those of you who might not have thought about this before, but I work with businesses and three different levels in that wave maker program launch, which is getting to those first consistent 10k months, which are not a lot of our clients primarily at scale. And that's where we're reaching, you know, 40 50k months and getting them from that up to a million dollars. But then the third level is called amplify. And amplify is as long as we've done a good job in scale engineering transformational offers. It's where I teach entrepreneurs how to license their content to other companies or corporations, and I teach them how to create it's either or businesses or different things. So it's either licensing their content, or creating their own certification program based on their own methodology. So when we do a good job, it always comes back to the method when we do a good job Engineer. In the method, that method to millions, your method to millions, and then we put it into transformational programs, we've earned the right because we know they're great to then be able to go and take them to companies and I have clients that they're just like three module, online courses, that we're talking hundreds of 1000s of dollars for a two year contract from corporations for one three module course, where in the business space and scale, we're so you know, we're talking about launch strategy and ad strategy, we're selling a one on one, we can take that same exact course and license it either to other entrepreneurs or corporations and packaged up in a certain way, where you're now getting paid 1050 $250,000. I even have a client we were working with this morning, we're writing proposal for a company, that's$1.2 million for one eight module online course. So this is what we can do. So that's how I really, that's why companies stay with me for three years. And we go through this process, right? Because we engineer their blueprint that matches their life. But what really is down the road is amplified level that when we've gone through the testing and traction to do that, right, then we're in a place where we can amplify that. And we can bring that out to the next level. And our clients have their courses. I mean, these are any courses guys, these are like parent coaching courses, return to work, lactation courses, communication courses, resiliency courses. I mean, they're any health wellness forces, corporations are licensing these as corporate benefits, and their licensing skills courses to level up their employees skills. And so we can take these trainings, and we can license them. And we for all the hard work we do in these launches, trying to sell 100 seats into one of these classes. All of a sudden, we've just sold a license for 500 seats in one sale. That's how we bring that's how I turn entrepreneurs into millionaires. Wow. Mic drop moment right there. So you have been so generous, and one of my favorite questions to ask guests is what does it mean to you to be wealthy? Hmm. Okay, wealth to me. Nobody's ever probably gonna say this wealth to me is being able to walk barefoot on a beach to a little shack I live on on the beach where I had just walked back from the local fishermen and bought my fresh fish. And I can paddle out on my skateboard or my surfboard every single morning and I have an office with open space to work on work in because I need open sky to think clearly. And I don't have to be anywhere that I didn't choose to be I'm not with anybody that I didn't choose to be with and it doesn't matter that I am barefoot probably in my board shorts in a bathing suit. I love my My cheeks hurt from smiling so much do you have been seriously so generous? And taught us so much I know I have so many takeaways and I think your podcasts to your point like go binge listen to like take her up on that if you That's my payment leave share with your friends leave me review. We'll call that payment. Yeah, I know you hang out on Instagram. Is that where you hang out the most? Yes, you guys are totally gonna laugh though so when you see me on Instagram first of all it's April beach life we got hacked on Instagram terrible story so we had to start from scratch so follow me over there so so I feel like people even care when and saying bye but but you guys are totally gonna see behind the scenes of a lifestyle entrepreneur family like I'm like posting pictures of like concerts with my boys it's like as much business is it is totally raw like my dog to in my couch and behind the scenes. I love it. I love that we connect on the level of you don't need a huge audience to make a difference. So just even at the level that you're at now like way further ahead I'm like I'm so glad that someone else like agrees with that because I think there's that huge misconception of like followers followers followers I want to get you know huge on tick tock and then I'll make millions but I know people that are not making millions and have huge followings. Can I tell you one more secret to your listeners? Yes. Okay, so you guys the people that are really actually making the most money aren't hanging out on Instagram. They're not there. They don't have time to be there. They're doing deep work important work. I'll tell you real quick story. Are you familiar with how Elrod he is? Okay so like miracle I think Miracle Morning his book okay. Anyway, so I read his book and that I went to go see him, He was speaking on a stage at a Pete Vargas event anyway saw the guy speak on stage. And I was like, Oh, this is this guy totally love his book. And I went to look him up on Instagram. So shame on me. This is a shame on you April thing went to look him up on Instagram because he said that They set his instagram handle when he was speaking on stage of big audience. And he only had like 900 followers and I was like, Well, that can't be the same guy because he doesn't have all these followers. Well, I'm sure enough it was now he has like, hundreds of 1000s of followers because of the work he did. But in order to get noticed for the work he did, he wasn't hanging out on Instagram, his Instagram look like shit. It was like his kids in like his garden, he needed to plant and stuff. I'm like, dude, this cannot be the same dude that speaking up there on stage. So when you want to attract the right audience, you don't have to have the numbers and you don't have to be unless that is your marketing strategy. For some people. That's how we're doing it. If that's it, totally ignore everything I just said, Right. but you as a leader do not need to be all over social media with with followers, I built my first consulting business to a million dollars a year. Okay, this was back in 2011 and million dollars a year. And I don't remember if I even had an Instagram, that company Instagram still to this day, because I only post on there and that company is still generating revenue on its own through licensing and has like 900 Instagram followers, you guys. So don't buy into that lie. That is not the truth. Unless that's our strategy we're using for you. Yes, I would say I'm trying to put my attention to it. No, but like, nine times out of 10 We don't need a huge following. Like we can make a difference and a lot of money with who we have right in front of us and spend the time on developing our method, like you said, so like, Let's spend time on the right things. 100 true fans, that's all we need. 100 true fans. That's it. You can build a million dollar business with 100 true fans. I can't think of a better way to end today. So thank you again. You're amazing. Thanks for having me. And we'll see you back on the next episode of Wake up and be wealthy! Thank you!