Life Coach Business Building Podcast, The Business Building Boutique
Welcome to the Life Coach Business Building Podcast. Join Business Growth & Life Coach Debbie Shadid as she teaches you simple (organic) strategies to gain more paid clients in your life coaching business. Debbie's coaching style is unique. She focuses on the specific actions you need to take to market your life health, career, and weight loss coaching business to your ideal client. Debbie teaches life coaches how to design, price, and sell their coaching offers. She helps you craft an impactful marketing message. Building your coaching business is easier than you think when you know what to do. So, if you're ready to be a well-respected life coach with paid clients, this podcast is for you! Debbie will inspire you to take simple, consistent action to grow your coaching business.
Life Coach Business Building Podcast, The Business Building Boutique
Ep 197 - Exclusive Access to a VIP Coaching Experience
Today's podcast is going to be completely different than anything I have ever done -- I’m going to share a sneak peek on how it looks like to have coaching with me inside the VIP program!
In this episode, you’ll get the chance to take a look inside what my coaching is all about. So I'm going to be sharing a business training that I did at the first of this year with my VIP clients, and it's all about tracking your numbers. I recommend that you watch this podcast on YouTube so that you can actually follow along with the workshop slides that I present to my clients. Join us and you'll get to learn a little bit more about what we do in the Business Building Boutique. Let’s dive in!
Welcome to the Life Coach Business Building Podcast! Join me as I teach you simple (organic) marketing strategies to gain more paid clients in your life coaching business. Plus, I’ll share proven processes for designing your offer, pricing your coaching, and selling your coaching offers, I have it all covered. My goal is to inspire you to take simple, consistent action to grow your coaching business. So, if you're ready to be a well-respected life coach with paid clients, this podcast is for you!
👉 Learn more about the Business Building Boutique through the Sneak Peek!
https://debbieshadid.com/sneakpeek
👉 Don’t forget to save your seat for the FREE workshop!
https://coaching.debbieshadid.com/workshop
👉 Create a profitable business that looks good and sets you up to be respected through the Fast Track Business Building Boutique Program
https://coaching.debbieshadid.com/business-building-boutique
👉 Check out my FREE Canva Workshop and learn how to create stunning graphics for your coaching business!
https://coaching.debbieshadid.com/canva
Let’s Connect!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbieshadid/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debbieshadid
Your monthly marketing is super important. How many emails did you send? How many posts did you do? How many networking events? That's important, whatever it is. You can literally have a spreadsheet at the end of the month like five emails sent. You know six stories, whatever. However you want to break it down, just track it so we know what's creating the results that you have. Again, email list growth. How did you get it? When it comes to your offers not just how many did you sell, but assessing every month how you feel about your offer Do you have clarity? Do you have that? Hell, yes, confidence.
Speaker 2:Hello, I'm Debbie Shaddett, the host of the Life Coach Business Building Podcast. If you are ready to have more clients in your life coach business, then you're in the right spot. This week, I'm going to teach you super simple strategies to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and without spending money on paid ads. Now, if that sounds interesting, stick around and let's get started. Hi there, I hope you're having an amazing day.
Speaker 2:I'm excited today to introduce you to really what we do inside of our business training in the business building boutique. So, each week, our VIP clients are able to attend a business training that I host, where I talk to them about a concept that will help them gain momentum in their business. In this training, I shared with them how to track numbers and what numbers were important to track. Chances are you're tracking your revenue and your number of clients, but there are many other numbers to look at on a weekly basis and on a monthly basis, so I talked to them about how to do that and why those numbers were important. Plus, in this episode, I share the details to some of the things that I did to reach my goal in 2023. So I'm excited to share this with you. If you happen to follow us on YouTube, I'd highly recommend that you go over there and watch this, because I'm actually sharing the training, the presentation slides, just like I do for my clients, so you might be able to follow along and watch it as well as listen to it, in addition to what we're doing today. That's new and different.
Speaker 2:I also want to invite you to join our next workshop on February 23rd. If you head over to our Instagram account, if you're following us there at Debbie Shaddard, there's a link in the bio that has all of our various trainings that we do. Plus, there's a link to our sneak peek. So this week's workshop that I'm inviting you to, on February 23rd, is going to be all about elevating your online coaching brand. Now, why is this important? Well, there's a lot of competition. Number one and number two. You only have one chance, one very quick chance, as somebody is scrolling by you on Instagram or wherever you are, to make that lasting impression. I'm going to talk to you about what to do to shift and elevate your brand so that you can attract more of your ideal clients. Plus, I'm going to talk to you about some places that you can be found online that chances are you are not featured. All right, so there's a lot to do there. And then, finally, I mentioned that sneak peek each Monday, at 2pm, central standard time, we are hosting an inside look at what really happens in the business building boutique.
Speaker 2:Plus, we are giving complimentary coaching. This is the magic to what we do in the business building boutique. We meet with our clients and we give them answers, we give them direction, we give them next steps, all based on their niche, week after week after week. So we want to open up that opportunity to you. If you are interested in learning what we do in the business building boutique. Come and get coached from us for free, and then we'll share all the details about how we can support you the pricing, the payments, the dates, all of that. Again, head over to Instagram. Debbie Shadid follow me there. In the bio is a link to all of these things.
Speaker 2:All right, let's get started with today's episode. Let's talk about tracking your numbers. So, to have success for this year, I want you to be accountable to yourself. How can you create accountability for yourself? Now? I really think that it does have something to do with anchoring yourself in your goal, and I do think it has something to do with finding a goal that feels like possible. So I want you to figure out a way so that you can make yourself do this, the work that we're going to do. I'm going to talk to you today about tracking numbers. I think sometimes in the beginning, we're not even tracking anything because we think it kind of didn't matter, but all the numbers really do matter. I want you to make decisions and keep them.
Speaker 2:I have said over and over, the fastest way to grow your business is to be a good decision maker. Make decisions and keep them. I'm sure that you all can relate. We've been caught in this mindset of like, is my business name the right name and is my program name the right name? Like that does matter, but not really so let's just make a decision and move on with it.
Speaker 2:And then, working on your mindset, you know, I literally spent like two weeks thinking about the year and what did I do? And one thing I did was I got coached a lot and I really looked at my own mindset to figure out what am I thinking that's getting in my way. And when I got coached, I didn't just settle for what my coach told me or come up with an answer that I thought was the right answer, and let that be. As y'all know, I had a struggle with time, thinking I didn't have enough time. You know I couldn't have bought into any idea anybody gave me along the way. I was coached on that from March through November. So a lot of coaching on how I thought about time and I could have just taken somebody else's idea. But the problem was I didn't really believe I hadn't gotten it worked out yet myself. So when it comes to mindset work like, I didn't feel bad that I kept coming back and going all right, this still isn't clicking. I get it, I get what I can do, but I'm still not there. I kept coming back with the same thing.
Speaker 2:So how do you have success really? As you do the work even when you don't want to. That's doing the work, even when you're not certain, even when you're not sure, even when you think it's crappy, even when you don't have clarity around it. I mean, we're here to get all that, but this is how you have success. You do the work anyway. You know, when I thought about what has created the most success for me in my personality, the way that I think auction was for sure the thing that caused me to win. I don't have to have my mindset right. I'm committed to doing action and my belief is that I can do the action and let my mindset or belief catch up with me. So for me, that's what works, but that's gonna be different for each one of you.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's why it's so important for you to know yourself Right. If I am only taking actions like, I will be seriously throwing spaghetti on a wall, doing absolutely nothing, but only after I realize that that's how I work. So, for me personally, I need to have a good mindset Before I get on a call. I need to take like a couple of deep breaths right After I finish my day. I need to close my computer and say something nice to myself. It's like okay, you're achieving the goal, like you're doing this, like writing my gradates. I personally need to have the mindset so I can achieve the goal, so I can take the actions that would, you know, be clear and direct towards where I'm going.
Speaker 1:So it was kind of interesting when Debra was saying that like, oh, I take actions without the belief and I'm like, oh, that's so interesting how we can have different perspectives and the same thing. But that's why I really do believe the journaling, the mindset, is so important, because that's how you get to know yourself before you start taking the actions, before you start doing everything you need to do With. That being said, that can be lost on actions and doing several different things and becoming very overwhelmed and burned out, and, for me, I'm rarely burned out because it's so much more in my mind when, like I think so much more, I have a lot more ideas. That's why, again, it's important for you to know yourself before you start taking all the actions or doing all the things. Just that self-awareness is so important.
Speaker 2:So, again, that's the work that you're gonna do with this Assess and Plan. When I look at myself as the action taker, the type A person who's not the TICE isn't type A, but I mean I just do the actions, no matter what. What has been very useful for me and what I need to build into my year is time to reflect. That's what I'm not doing, because I do think we all have the answers, are all within us and I think our intuition tells us what to do.
Speaker 2:Even while you're here learning sort of the how-to part, I still think a lot of times we really know what to do. So figure out what it is for you. But again, I wanna emphasize, you can do the journaling and you can do that and I'm finding so much value in it for myself. But if you are not taking the action, I mean that's another thing that TICE and I were talking about the difference in where that gets me, because I'm willing to do that without having the mindset, without doing the deep thinking around it, I just do it. So I think there needs to be a balance so that you make sure you are taking the action.
Speaker 1:I think that's the key, debbie. What I told Debbie was like well, now you see why someone has close to a half a million dollar business and someone has a hundred thousand dollar business, right? Maybe that's the difference. It's like no, it's not to say that what I'm doing is not an offering, it's not good, or what you are doing is not good, no, but to see that what really gives you the results you're looking for is the action.
Speaker 1:That's why I have some kind of trouble and when you get coached with me, you will see, like, I love the love attraction and I don't as much, because it's so easy for you to just be like are you attract the best clients? Are you attract the best business, and yet you have to put your face out there so someone can see you and be attracted to it, right? So that's where the action is really what causes you the results. But having actions from a good, healthy mindset and good health emotions right, that's what will drive you to actually enjoy in the process of achieving your goals. So I do think it's both. I think it's almost 50-50. Like, you do need to take your actions and have a plan for the actions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, if you don't have business or enough business, you still need to track your tasks and your marketing. We're gonna do it, we're gonna talk about that for sure. But I'm just saying, if you're sitting here saying, well, she can talk about tracking numbers and I don't have anything to track or I don't have enough to track, I'm gonna tell you what you can track, because there's plenty, plenty to track along the way. So pricing needs to be tracked. Marketing needs to be tracked. You're selling process, you're selling results. All that needs to be tracked. You're planning, like what kind of plan you made and if you kept your plan needs to be tracked. So all of that stuff needs to be tracked. And I don't care how you do, I don't care. I mean, tais loves a journal. I talk about grabbing a piece of paper and she's like no, get a pretty journal. And I'm like I would never write in a journal. I typed everything. So whatever it is that works for you, I don't care. But you do need to look at your calendar. You have to look at your if you have a Q&A to your calendar. You have to look at your bank records. You have to look at social media insights. It doesn't have to take a long time. Now I will say we're working on assessing my 2023, but I mean, like, I wrote hundreds of emails, not just a hundred, hundreds of emails, so we're assessing something. It's a little bit bigger than this, but it really only takes a few minutes to sit down and say, huh, that's interesting. I wonder what happened with my social media or what happened with my email. Just even to grab averages and see, kind of look and see what emails were opened, which ones weren't, what buttons were clicked, what social media posts seem to get Remember, on social media we're not going to have comments and likes, so what social media posts seem to get in front of more people?
Speaker 2:You website traffic there's a high chance that all of you have not even ever looked at your website traffic, or, if you have, you know it's like there's only 12 visitors, and let me just say to you again 12 visitors is 12 visitors. It's like we're thinking that's terrible and I want to say congratulations because 12 people found your website. Do you see what a different thinking that is when you think about millions and millions and I don't know how many websites there are in the world a lot, a lot to have 12 people find your website and click on it and look at it. It's pretty remarkable. So of course, we want to have hundreds and thousands of people, but I'm just saying like, let's be real, getting anybody to go there right now is pretty cool. So obviously you're spending.
Speaker 2:Y'all have listened to, or, if you haven't, there's a podcast about what software you need for your business. I know that everybody's kind of using something differently, but basically equals $77.89 the software that you use for your business. So that zoom, that's Canva, calendly, your website, your Google domain based email and flow desk email marketing. Those together average over a year's time $77.89, at least at the time that I put together that price.
Speaker 2:The other thing I just want to say is you should plan on having a coach forever. I mean, honestly, we sell coaching, but we should also plan on having a coach forever. When it comes to business, it's basically like having a business partner and I'm not selling you my coaching forever. I'm just saying this is just part of when I looked over the growth of me in this niche since June of 2021, the results are directly tied. Directly tied to when I was getting coached and the results are directly tied to what I was doing with that coach. I mean it sounds crazy to say that, but having direction and accountability and answers, question and your mindset cleaned up and all that.
Speaker 2:Look, we're working our businesses like on a remote island by ourselves, we're there by ourselves and nobody gets it. I mean, I love and adore my husband and he really kind of gets it, but he doesn't. He's not up here every day. It's always like the common question that you all get to like did you get a client today? It's like, oh, I didn't, that's what I did today. Anyway, you know that's always the end result how much money did you make? It's like there's so much more that people don't understand.
Speaker 2:So you want to track all of these things and don't hide from any of it. It's just information. Just approach it neutrally. That's all it is is information. You know we have this life that we desire, which is part of what we want to do in the goal planning, and I know that we desire a life without a hassle and without a hustle. But the thing is we're in charge of that. We get to decide, number one, if we want to approach our life feeling hustled or if we're going to approach it like everything is a big hassle.
Speaker 2:We get to decide that my whole problem with time wasn't actually about time. It was about me being present. You know, while I was coaching you guys, I was thinking about something else. I wasn't present with anyone, so time wasn't even actually the issue, and it took me six months to figure that out. So you get to decide how you want to do it.
Speaker 2:You know freedom in your schedule. I want to tell you too, that's up to you. Starting today, you don't need to work seven days a week in your business. I mean, I'm telling you the reason why I overworked is because it was my worth. I didn't need to overwork to get to where I'm at today. I thought it was great to brag about overwork. There's no volume and you don't actually have to work that much.
Speaker 2:You need to understand where you want to invest your money and what the benefit is going to be and when you need to pull the trigger to invest in certain things, right? So I know that everybody wants to work class and make more, and that is 100% up to you, all right? So again, don't bury your head in the sand on this stuff. You do not have to complicate things, and we love to do that Again. I just had so much coaching in the last month. It's so funny to see my own list of ways that I complicated my business, and you all can probably sit down too, like not allowing yourself to have niche clarity, not just picking an offer and making an offer. Not. There's ways that I could name for all of you guys that you've allowed yourself to complicate things, because really, the answers are simple. So again, you can stop working, and you do that by managing your schedule. You do that by managing your tasks of what you're going to do. Focus on one offer.
Speaker 2:It's like we just need to get one thing good, just the one thing. You know, when I switched to just only coaching coaches although I had been coaching in business for a long time all I did was sell private coaching. I was like I got to get really good at selling private coaching first, and I have to get good at selling private coaching to strangers. Then it was like I have to get good at selling coaching for $4,000 instead of $3,000, and then $6,000 instead. I had to get good at those things. I had to get good at managing with that one offer.
Speaker 2:How do you manage 26 private clients and you pull your hair out. Let me tell you that's a lot of people. So you have to get good at that. One thing, and you know, fully booked is only fully booked to you. You'll find out that fully booked is much fewer clients than it's. 26 is insanity. It sounds so easy to say, well, I'm going to work 40 hours and I'm going to have 40 clients. It's like no, you cannot do that. 26 clients is not 26 hours, it's probably double that in client time. So figure out what fully booked is. I can tell you from everybody that I've worked with coaches, it gets to about nine or 10 private clients and that's sort of the breaking point where everybody's like uh-uh, I am not doing any more private clients. I have to figure out how to go to group, because nine or 10 feels like a lot and if you think about a 40 hour work week, that's 25% of your time. So it's not really that much, but it's a lot. It really is a lot.
Speaker 2:You have to market more than you think you want to and more than you think you should. I just cannot express that enough. Marketing is the only path to clients. Marketing, whether you're talking to people about it at your nail shop or whether you're sending an email, it's all the same thing. You have to be talking about your business all the time.
Speaker 2:You have to do B minus work. That's a concept from the life school, life coach school, and that's just, like you know to better put it, half-ass work. That's what you have to do, because if you are a perfectionist, you will never and I know a lot of you guys here are and I like work things to be professional. And you know, when I do these slides, I immediately start seeing mistakes on them. I'm like, oh, I have to quiet my own mind because it's like I see a typo or I see something I've done wrong. It's like it's better for me to put the work out there. I can go back and fix it later. So just do B minus work. We don't know, in all that we create, if it's the right thing. So B minus work would be much better. Like just figure out how to get a course and then focus on figuring out how to get some people that you could talk to about the course the 50-50, that's another life coach school concept and it's just that half the time things are amazing and half the time things aren't. And it's so fascinating.
Speaker 2:When I looked over my business in 2022 and I haven't done the 23 numbers yet, but when I looked in 2022, I pulled out my calendar and I looked over the whole year. I could look and see where I was inspired, where I was burned out, where I was tired, whatever those things were, where I didn't get results Whether it was results in like list growth or attendance to my workshops, or like when I did workshops and I didn't get good results. Maybe it was because I could see that I had done too much and I was, you know, not showing up as my best self. So the thing about doing the 50-50, if you look at it again, if you just know it's not going to be 100% of a home run all the time, then it's like you give yourself a break. It's like, oh, that's so interesting.
Speaker 2:I could reframe, you know, the year 2022 and say isn't that interesting? Six months it kind of sucked and six months it was kind of amazing and that's exactly how it should have been. That's the idea is that you do this every month and you see, one month at a time, you know when Ty says your assessments with you and you're like huh, instead of me saying, you know in my own mind, kind of like you suck, you didn't do anything. Again you can be like no way. Actually, in two weeks in the month, I was really on it. In two weeks it was so-so, and that's exactly the way it should be.
Speaker 2:All right To make your business successful, don't change your niche. Your niche is never the problem. It really isn't. Now we do want to communicate clearly about it and I would say maybe we're going to narrow it, but what happens is we go to this thought of right away that we're going to change our niche, because that's what the problem is. That's never the problem. It's how we communicated, or for marketing effectively.
Speaker 2:So, and then, as I mentioned about being an action taker, work when you feel terrible. Anyway, it doesn't matter whether you're sick or whatever is going on, just do the stuff that you need to get done. For this week, I set myself up for success by picking three things to do, only three, and my three are not like build a website and launch it. That's about a 20-step project. I pick three things to do and then I get it planned on my week what I'm going to do, and then, when I don't get it done. I finish it on Sunday, because I don't work on Sunday and so on Sunday it's like I'm going to catch up. I'm not going to leave those things unfinished, I'm going to finish them on Sunday. So set yourself up for success so that you can get to where you want to go, to All right, your numbers, the key numbers that I want you to be thinking about for the year are things like leads.
Speaker 2:I really want to impress upon you that you do not need tons of leads to make a lot of money. You really don't. In fact, when you have tons of leads and I do have a lot of leads now because I run Facebook ads they're just a lot of bad leads, and I'm so happy because there was a few good ones and y'all are here. I'm so grateful for that. But when there's large numbers of leads, most of them are bad. So when you have a small list, it can be a mighty list. When you have a small list that you have, almost sort of hand, curated yourself, it can be such a good list. You know, I know that there's always a tendency when I share my results, that your brain immediately goes to well, she's a business coach, so it's different. So I don't know how you want to start changing that thought, because your results could be exactly like mine.
Speaker 2:But when I switched to coaching coaches in June of 2021, my email list was zero. I did not know one single coach, except for the nine other people I went to life coach school with. That's it. So my email list was zero and I grew an email list in six months to a hundred, and I did that by doing free workshops, offering free coaching, literally finding people to talk to about coaching. I was offering free help and I made $75,000 in six months with a hundred people. It does not take very many people to create the results that you want.
Speaker 2:All right, prospects, you have leads and then you have prospects and you guys can name it whatever you want to name it. But for me, prospects are people that I call. They're already in my pipeline and I know for a lot of you guys it's like, oh, this sounds like so much like sales and it's like, well, that's what you're in the business of selling coaching. So prospects is like somebody who's now engaged with you, whether that be that you know you've had a couple of conversations with you or maybe they're actually opening your emails, because it depends on what you're doing with your marketing. Prospects, for me, might be the people who come to a workshop. A prospect might be somebody that you had a consultation with and they didn't say yes. That doesn't mean they're a no, by the way, and actually they could say no and they're still not a no. Let me just tell you. So, prospects, how many prospects do you have?
Speaker 2:And then it's really interesting to think about the number of interactions it takes to move somebody from just a lead to a prospect to potentially a consultation and client. That's good to look at that and to just start noticing that sometimes it's going to be on the first interaction you meet somebody and they're like, oh, my goodness, I need your help and they're going to be a yes, but you might find out that somebody needs to be hanging out with you for about a year or six months before they actually convert to be your client, and when you know this then it's not a problem. That's the whole thing again, like information empowers you, the cost to inquire a client. It might be time, effort, contacts. The one thing I really want to point out is the number of consultations. If you think about yourself and the fact that you want to have clarity, and if you were going to work with somebody, you would want all your questions answered. So the cost, the time to acquire a client, the effort, the emails, the like how many more times do I have to tell this person it's not a problem? Just, I can think of times when I was like I need more answers to the questions.
Speaker 2:So gross income for those of you guys who don't know, it is the total amount of income that comes in. Net income is minus your expenses. All right, those are some basic things that a lot of people don't know, but gross expenses, the total amount of expenses that you have. What I like to do is sort of look at your total expenses for the year and right now this is going to be a guess. Let's say, in the situation that you guys are in, you were spending $1,000 a month on coaching, just to make things rounded up, and you were spending $200 a month on business expenses or, rounded up, let's just say 500. So your monthly expenses were $1,500 a month. We know that's $18,000 a year. So it's like, okay, that's a good number to know, because to actually break even in my business I actually have to sell $18,000 for the coaching. That's again, that's just good information for you to know and I want to impress upon you guys.
Speaker 2:When I went to my business fully online and no more consulting in my state of Oklahoma, because my business was built on in-person coaching the first three years I made very little money. In fact, I think two of the three years I need to look back goes from 2017 to 2020, at least one of those years I made zero. I sold between $50,000 and $80,000 the first three years and I made zero. I had one year and I mean the next two years were not enough that I had to worry about too much. So but that's also not a problem, because if you ask the SBA how long they expect for you to plan to make money in your business, it's three years. So, interestingly enough, as I looked at my numbers over the last month, it was like that's interesting. It really did take me three years before I was really making money in my business. So if you know your expenses, that will help Lifetime customer value.
Speaker 2:A fancy thing just to say is somebody going to renew with you? What kind of coaching do you offer and will they renew? What is the lifetime value of your customer. I think for most of you guys, again, your coaching is going to be more than one round of coaching, probably All right. So knowing these numbers helps you figure out what you need to do. I mean, that's the simple part. Okay, income when you track your numbers, you can figure out your income. Right, you can figure out that's the only way you have a business is income.
Speaker 2:And I hate to say this and you hear it all the time like do you have a hobby or do you have a business? But it's true and you know we can continue to work on like learning how to coach and taking another certification and educating, and I'm not downplaying all that, but we might as well call that a hobby. We have a coach that Tice and I have worked with for a couple years and she's actually a summit speaker who I had a call with this week who said you know what I decided I quit, and she's quit from such a clean place. She's like I'll be in business. What I actually love is coaching. I told my husband I just want to learn and hire coaches. I don't want to be in business. I don't really want to do that, and she's worked with us two times and she like did it from a place of no regret. She was here twice, she worked on it. She actually sold quite a bit of coaching too and she was really good, a really good coach, and she had a talk ready for the summit. She's like I just decided I'm not going to do it in 2024.
Speaker 2:So really face up to the fact. Am I treating this like a hobby or am I treating it like a business so you can sell your coaching at any price? And starting this month, I highly recommend, like let's just make some sales. I know that I teach you how to figure out pricing and all that kind of stuff and figure out what you should sell your coaching at. I just want you to sell coaching. I do not care what price you sell it at my hell yes, price is the way I say it. Just pick a price that is so ridiculously good that you can tell somebody with conviction you would be crazy not to work with me.
Speaker 2:Like I had this thought and I don't do life coaching. But after I went to the life coach school I had this thought of like if I sold life coaching, I would be telling people like this went to Harvard, spent $18,000 on coaching, and that is the Harvard of the life coach school places Like you should want to work with me. So, whatever thought you have to have figure out what that is. If you're already selling coaching, then let's figure out how to multiply or increase your, you know, increase your bottom line, all right. So, monthly and weekly, you're going to obviously track sales and dollars, and the only reason why I say sales and dollars are different is like some of your people might be making payments, some of them might not.
Speaker 2:You want to track your list growth. Is your list growth or new leads happening from somebody opting into something? Or did you meet them in a networking unit? This sounds obvious, but I mean you want to do this because you want to find out is networking really paying off? Is it worth me to do the networking? What networking events actually pay off? I think sometimes we get in the mode of like I'm not working all the time. It's like okay, again, there's no badge of honor and saying a network all the time, what really is creating a result for you? Because if you're going to networking events and if you are talking to people and you're really got your message correct and you're able to say who you help and how you help them and you're confidently showing up, then if you're not getting results from that networking meeting, then don't go back. If you are going to networking and you are not showing up confidently and you are not delivering with conviction who you help and how you do it, then the networking event is not the problem. How you're showing up is the problem.
Speaker 2:I have never used a client management system. I have used a spreadsheet to keep track of. I have tried all of them. I have used many different variations over the years. What I have found is that for me, a spreadsheet is easier to use. If you have one that you are using or want to use or are curious about, you can talk to me about it and I can tell you about it. But for me, we all have different levels of detail. I am not a detailed person. I am trying to learn how to use click-ups and do click-ups for my team. It is just a challenge for me because that is not the way that I think. I have to learn how to do it so everybody else can be successful. That works for me. I have been doing a spreadsheet too. I am always just saying there are better ideas out there. I would love to hear, I would say stick with this spreadsheet if that is good for you. Alit is someone who could be a client for TIEs.
Speaker 1:I learned to look for leads when I hired you as my coach. You shared somewhat of this class with me. I was like, oh my goodness, I should be tracking people that are talking to me about my business. I was very impressed with how many zeros I had because I was not talking to people. I had no idea what it needed to do to actually get one client. I was very surprised when Alie asked that question. I didn't used to track that. When you start tracking, your brain is wired to see what you are looking for. I started looking for more opportunities to find leads when I started tracking them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good point. Also, there is always this I like to imagine, and I want you guys to get to the place where you imagine that you have this little list of people that are always warm. There was so much comfort for me is I just kept thinking okay, if I just go meet somebody and I sort of move them from, we're just connected and now I've talked to him enough, then I always have this list of warm people In the beginning of my business. You're kind of making independent deals. It's like you're not necessarily selling this one thing at this price and it's a fixed package or fixed offer. You're sort of just trying to get business however you can and just work with people. I could look at that list and think of, like, okay, if I just wanted to do three for three you guys are hearing me talk about three sessions for $300, who could I sell that to off of that list? It got me thinking differently when I had those leads kind of divided up by categories, or what could I do to reconnect with the people sort of in this category? All right, so you can do weekly or monthly tracking.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I would say is readiness. This is a key. When you think about your marketing, readiness is a key. So what do I mean? It's just like already, are they to buy? How ready is your person my person to spend as much money as you guys spent with me? What did it require for them to get that ready Right? Frequently asked questions. So I'm not talking about the frequently asked questions on your website which, by the way, for those of you who haven't done a website, we have those questions that we can give to you to put on your website. I'm talking about what are the questions that you keep getting? Because if they're not ready and you're getting the same question, then you need to solve that question by giving them the information that they need in the process of getting ready to buy from you.
Speaker 2:Also, what opt-ins are they coming from? You know, are they your ideal client? If not, why not? You know, if you guys were on a recent training, somebody was talking about being a plant-based coach and a plant-based dietitian or something like that, and she was saying like everybody I talk to is broke and I'm like well then, everything you're saying is calling in broke people. You're not talking to the right people. Attracting broke people has to do with your confidence. It's because you're not quite ready either. But there is this mix between you getting ready to talk to the right people and also you learning how to talk to the right people. So consults, this is just in general.
Speaker 2:You want to know, like once you get out of your small little circle, the small numbers of people that you kind of really know, like it's important for me to know how many people schedule and cancel or are no shows and like what happens. Like I had a lady that was a no show this week and I sent her. She was like I closed out the Zoom link at eight minutes and she just died, sending me a message of oh my gosh, I'm so embarrassed. What a way to start the year. You know, same thing as me. I just got busy and I wasn't. So you want to know are they no shows because they signed up? Because you just offered something free? That used to happen with me a lot I mean probably 50% of my calls were no shows. That's because of the way I was inviting them Come for free coaching instead of come to find out about working with me. I didn't have the confidence to say that directly. So I had a lot of no shows because they were just coming for coaching. So your closing rate until we know what your closing rate is and, by the way, mine in the beginning was one in 20, took a long time to get to one in 10. Now hear me when I say this 20 consultation calls to get one client Now that was through an ad funnel. So those were cold consultation leads. They weren't people that I knew. When I could meet somebody and know who know them and if you know, like kind of nurtured a relationship, it was almost nearly every person I talked to I would sell. So that's the difference between you creating relationships and then telling them coaching or you just bringing them in through like, which is why I don't recommend ads at this stage in the business.
Speaker 2:You want to think about the length of time your consultations, which we have a whole section on selling. But how long does it take you to sell on a consult call? Again, that's probably because you don't have enough questions answered upfront or you don't know what your sales conversations should be like. When you have your consultations too long. You're coaching them, I guarantee you, because I've done it many times, and you are leaving them thinking that they got what they needed from you and all they got was a Band-Aid and they need surgery. All right, so assessing for the 50, we talked about that.
Speaker 2:Your monthly marketing super important. How many emails did you send? How many posts did you do? How many networking events? That's important. Whatever it is, you can literally have a spreadsheet at the end of the month like five emails sent, you know, six stories, whatever. However you want to break it down, just track it so we know what's creating the results that you have. Again, email list growth how did you get it? Why did you get it?
Speaker 2:When it comes to your offers, not just how many did you sell, but assessing every month how you feel about your offer. Do you have clarity? Do you have that hell yes confidence? Was it easy to sell the business building boutique? When I started selling to coaches for the first year that I sold it, oh my goodness, I was having the hardest time trying to explain to everybody what I did. It was so much stuff it was not easy to sell. I had to really work to figure out. How do I make this more concise? So figure out what the problem is with your offer. Or is it just you? Is it your mindset. I mean the lady that's going to join us, I think, next week, that has been working on her course for the last two years. When it really came down to it, she hasn't made any offers because she doesn't know any confidence. So it's good to be honest with yourself.
Speaker 2:Of course, the gross, the key numbers that you want to track, always are gross income, gross expenses and your net income. All right, let me move on through here. It's good to look at these numbers, and I'm only saying this because I wasn't looking at it. I can always own my own. You know what? I didn't want to look at it. I didn't want to look at my debt because I had a big story about that. It was easier to just pay it, not pay attention to it, or pay what I could and not pay attention to it. None of it's a problem, it's just numbers and it's just good to know. All right. So you want to create some kind of habit, create the habit and routine of checking your numbers. Decide how you can make those numbers mean nothing, honestly, just numbers. Decide how you're going to track it. I recommend simple Google spreadsheet. It can be a loose leaf notebook, I don't care.
Speaker 2:You also want to track what's happening with your clients, not just the connection process, but just how are people moving through the work that you do, which is what we're always doing, looking to see where people are getting hung up. So like, for example, the new VIP day that we offered is really just a test to see if we can make that step easier for people. Could we make it easier by getting it done in one day? We'll see how that works, but we're always looking to see you know that's not something that was broken, but how can we make it better and then creating your sales process, which we will do. That is in step 10.
Speaker 2:All right, thank you guys. Office hours in seven minutes. Sorry for being two minutes late. Let's hope I'm not that again. All year long Made it all last year without being late. Thanks for being here. I'll see you very soon.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for joining us today. I hope that you really learned some things and maybe I opened your eyes up about tracking numbers. The details to your business are important and that is what makes a difference in somebody having faster success when you can fine tune what it is that's happening on your sales consultations or in the conversions of your sales call or what's happening on social media and the insights to those things that will make such a big difference in how you approach your business. So take a look at what you need to track, make some decisions and set yourself up for success. All right, I hope to see you on Thursday, february 23rd at our workshop, and I also hope to see you at our sneak peek this next Monday at 2 pm Central Standard Time.
Speaker 2:All right, have an amazing week. Okay, ladies, that is it for today. Before we go, I want to invite you to head over to DebbieShadowcom. I have this incredible Canva training, specifically designed for life coaches, where I'm going to teach you how to use Canva to create beautiful graphics to market your life coaching business. All right, have an amazing week. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye-bye.