Episode# 039: Live Behind the Scenes Business Coaching Session - Scaling from 6 to 7 Figures
We are doing something totally different today. I like to keep you on the edge of your seat and keep bringing you new content that I think you'll really appreciate. So recently something really cool happened and episode number 34 we had Stefanie Gass on the show and you guys loved having her on. She's such a sweetheart, has incredible energy. It's totally infectious and you loved her message about stepping into your God led-calling, building a business and all those incredible pieces of her story. So, Stef had me on her podcast and right before we were about to start recording, Stef threw me a curve ball talking about keeping someone on the edge of their seat or maybe on their toes. Stefanie did that to me, so she's like, okay. Instead of talking about leadership today, which was the topic we were going to talk about leadership and business and personal growth and all of that. She said, all right, well since what you do for a living is help people scale, they're already successful growing businesses to that seven figure level.
Like you help people kind of walk through that process of monetizing their ideas and scaling what they already have and taking it totally next level by having these mental emotional breakthroughs, but also strategically planning in their business. What do you think about doing a live coaching session with me? For my business? She was asking me this, so she wanted me to come on off the cuff and just kind of talk about what I saw her doing in her business and the gaps I saw, the potential I saw and how I would coach her through a session. Like I would one of my one-on-one high level high achieving coaching sessions and I said, yes, I have this one superpower. I can take someone's idea or current business and look at it and I can see those gaps and I can figure out exactly how we can monetize it and scale it for three things, a greater impact.
So how can we serve the world at a higher level, more income so that you can be creating that generational wealth in your life and most importantly more independence. What's that way you can create a business that creates more freedom in your life and doesn't make you a slave to whatever it is you're building. This is what I've been doing for brands and businesses and business owners and creatives and influencers for years now, and it's something I am fiercely passionate about because I know people can find success in business. I know that you could watch all the trainings and do all the things to figure out how to build a business, even a successful business that brings in a lot of income, but what if when you do that, you're not living the life you could've imagined or what if you keep plateauing or what if you're dollars for hours or what if your kids hardly know you or your spouse feels like they don't see you anymore because you're constantly on your phone trying to build this business?
What if you could do it in a way that makes massive impact as a leader in your industry while you're building true wealth in your life but without having to give up all of your time? That's what I want. I want families together as individuals build epic businesses. A lot of you guys asked me what exactly is it that you do and this is a big part of it. Taking people to that next level through my masterminds, by One-on-one Business Strategy, coaching, my full immersion experiences and retreats, my courses, all of that because I spent years you guys, I spent years and so much money trying to learn from all the incredible different resources available to me. Books, seminars, videos, online courses. But it was when I finally made that decision that I was really ready to scale up and I brought on a business coach.
STEFANIE: Hey boss, I'm so excited. I have a super special treat for you today. I am on with Elizabeth Hartke and she is going to be helping me with some live coaching on my business. How cool is that? Oh my gosh. So I'm super excited that she's willing to help me today and we are doing this for all of you because it's interesting for me to hear people where I'm trying to get to where I'm as her podcast is called scaling up towards. So I thought it would be cool for you guys to hear me and her have a conversation about how I can scale up my business. So thank you Elizabeth and welcome to the show.
ELIZABETH: Thanks for having me Stef. I am so excited to be here and I'm like pretty pumped to do this! Scaling up episodes, live real-time. Let's do it. I want to help you scale your business.
STEFANIE: Boom. I'm excited. Well, looking at your life now, I always tell my community, wherever you are today, there are people two steps behind you, right? And so you always should feel worthy. Even if you're just starting, there's still someone that hasn't started and they want to be where you are. Well when I'm looking at Elizabeth, you are steps ahead of me. And so my goal is to scale to a size and a lifestyle where you are. So I've kind of shared with Elizabeth and I'll share with all of you so that you have the background and then I'll tell, tell you guys what, what Elizabeth is going to help me with. So right now in the business, I've been doing this coaching side of this business for about two years, two and a half years where I out of network marketing. Y'all heard me talk about that mini life crisis I went through for a year, get got myself together, lost the 60 pounds.
Figured out, I have this dream of helping women on female entrepreneurs claim their best life. I have the podcast now. I have a great online community. We just passed around a hundred thousand collectively and I have six courses. It is amazing. It's just so surreal and I'm really happy with where I am right now. But I feel like there's, it's time. It's time to kind of take maybe some next steps. And so for all of you listening, I'm roughly early six figures and have six courses. I have these courses that probably make up 60%-70% of my revenue. The rest of it is private coaching. That's you know, hourly clients. I have a couple exclusive clients that I'll meet with like once a month as well. That's the revenue stream. The way I am growing my platform is on my podcast, first and foremost. Secondly is Instagram. And then lastly is Pinterest. And my website really grow quickly. So that's my business in a nutshell. So Elizabeth is going to help me kind of break this down. How can I grow, how can I scale what needs to be streamlined or fixed? And so that way you guys have the background as well. So yeah, Elizabeth coach me, girl like I am open-hearted, open ears ready to learn from you.
ELIZABETH: Awesome. Well first I want to celebrate you for your transparency and your vulnerability of sharing numbers. I know that's a really hard thing, but you are killing it.
So, before I can coach you on anything, this is the first step with anyone that I work with, no matter what level they're at. I need to know your heart stuff. I need to know what is that original dream like? Picture the day down to what you can smell in the air. What you feel brushing across your skin, like what you're wearing, how your day plays out. I get goosebumps even to saying this to you because it's so, I want it to be so tangible. What does that day look like and what is the dream of the impact you're making? The mission…in a world where nothing could hold you back in a vacuum where you create exactly what God put on your heart, what is that thing?
STEFANIE: Sure! I love that because I call that a vision statement. And so I do those every single year. And the craziest thing is that almost every year they are achieved, which is crazy, but I haven't done it like for the ideal angle. I think the way that this would be is in that day, I'm still in the home that I'm in, but it's completely paid off. Every single thing in our lives are debt free. I am making right at seven figures and the reason that I want to be making seven figures is because I can do infinitely more good on this world. So I don't want the stress of finances. I want to be able to buy a new car for my cleaning lady because her car, the hood doesn't work. I want to be able to tithe in at an extreme level. I want to be able to pour into children that need help and these, you know, nonprofits that I, that I want to give to you and charity and I want to be able to do that without blinking.
And I know that seven figures will make that a reality. I want to create amazing, stable jobs for a team of people. And right now I can only help freelancers less than a handful of freelancers and my business. I want to crate full-time jobs where I am pouring into other people and they can learn from me and be part of a team that grows with me and I want to pay them really exceptionally well. I want to surprise them with a trip to Praia da Yarta, the all-inclusive for a week and that's how we go in team build. So I want that in that kind of picture of my life. I just want all of those things financially and I still want my lifestyle that it is today. And this is where I struggle. Maybe this is my fear, is that I want to be able to have all of that without having to travel 24 hours, all the time, without all the sudden mommy's really successful.
So now she's not here anymore without my husband and I fighting because I'm not present or he feels left behind or any of those things. I still want to like live as if I am today, but scale that big and I think that's why I'm so stuck on these courses growing exponentially. For me, that's the end goal. And the reason the impact is to touch millions of women with my podcast, with my heart, showing them that they can be successful as mothers, as female entrepreneurs, they can create online businesses that are in their own voice and that they can be successful in any dream that God has planted in their heart.
ELIZABETH: That's beautiful. And I'm, I feel like privileged to get to see that heart. And it's so funny I had this moment when you were talking where I literally flash back to a conversation I had with my husband a few years ago that I can hardly even say it. Like without getting teary-eyed. I said to him, I don't know where this is coming from cause I'm not motivated by money. I did this exercise where I sat down and I wrote out like just pour out what you want onto that paper. And I literally wrote the words, I want stupid amounts of money. Not so I can change a single thing in my own life, but I can change everyone else's. And you just said it and it's such a like people like your gift to the world because you don't need more stuff, bigger things, but having that ability to do things with the phrase that I said to my husband without batting an eye. So that's beautiful. So I want to challenge you for a second. You started to talk about a fear of like mommy not being here, not being a present wife. Let's say vacuum for a quick sec, none of that is a reality. What are you doing? Are you speaking on stages? Are you doing book tours? Are you like, what are the things that you're a little afraid of? Like going there because you're afraid of those things. You just talk.
STEFANIE: Okay, funny you say book tour. I've, since I was little, my mom would say, what do you want to be when you grow up and author an author. My first vision board I ever made was me standing on a platform. I actually pasted my face on someone else. Obviously I'm standing on the stage holding up my bestselling book. Okay. That, I haven't written that I don't know what it's going to be about. But there's always been this vision. So it's funny you say book because I'm a million percent going to do that in the next five years of my life. And so, you know, I'm afraid it's the travel piece and I think that goes back to network marketing. We had to do these events and I had to go as a leader, sit in the front row and I had to be there for seven full days instead of three days like everyone else.
And I felt so much resentment towards that, like being forced to travel when I didn't want to or when I felt guilty. And the only time that my husband ever has any pushback with me is travel. Oh, you're going again, you have this other thing again. And I hate confrontations. I'm like, if I just avoid travel cause I don't care. I don't need to travel to be excited and excited in my life, but I know that to impact millions of women, I'm going to have to show up in different places. And I think I am scared of that.
ELIZABETH: What if Stef, you were at a level where people came to you?
STEFANIE: Well yeah, that'd be amazing!
ELIZABETH: And what if you were at a level where your husband made me that fear or that confrontation between you and your husband when you have to travel? Is it coming from a place that he, this guy is grinding it in his corporate job every day working. He wants his wife when he comes home. But if you're jet setting, he doesn't get you on those weekends if he didn't have that stress of that job and the life where he has to leave his family every day. But he had you guys all the time and then you traveled as a family to those events and there are front and center cheering their mother on. Is that a different ballgame do you think?
STEFANIE: Yeah, that makes me so emotional because I never thought about that.
ELIZABETH: Cause you never let yourself go big enough.
STEFANIE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH: Yeah. Never for a second let that, you just have to think outside the box. Don't let those fears and limited thinking stop you from pouring into the world what the Lord, literally it's your birth, right Stefanie.
STEFANIE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH: So you just have to, you haven't dreamt big enough yet.
STEFANIE: Oh man, whoa. I had never even considered that before. But when I picture that like that is the right picture. It's the kids that are with me, it's them like traveling and maybe grandma comes to and everybody's part of it instead of this is me alone. Lonely and leaving them behind. Like I think that that's so important for me. That vision that you just created, the pulling them with me on that, on that journey and maybe creating that maybe less work for him or part time or, and he may want to still work, but he could still travel with me. Like why did I never even consider that as an option?
ELIZABETH: Cause we put ceilings on ourselves and we don't even know it. Like it's this, it's a subconscious thing and you've made it really far. So you're thinking just next step. And I actually think, and I do this with a lot of my clients now, that one year goals I find to be limiting, we do like three, five to 10 because that one year it's, that's a flash in the pan.
You know that you have kids, you see how quick things change, right? You've got to go bigger and give yourself that gift to let your mind wander to those crazy places cause they're not that crazy. And the cool thing is, so let's talk about the book for a sec because the is going to happen. You're going to get off this call and be like, oh, why did I do that? That book don't fear the book tour. Like don't fear the work that we'll have to go into that book. You get to create what it all looks like. You get to say to your, first of all, you don't need a publisher. You can self-publish if you don't want to be bossed around.
If you want to be able to say no, there is no book tour except here in my town where I live or my major city near me, I show up and I do signings or when we have a family vacation that we go all together, we do a book signing in that city. You get to paint that picture. So don't take away the dream because of like you think the path to get there is set in stone. It's certainly not. You get to dictate what that looks like.
STEFANIE: I love that. I love that.
ELIZABETH: So let's talk a little bit more because you've, you've given us a good idea. You are right into that six-figure mark. That's awesome. You have courses, you said that's about 60% of your, your revenue right now and we don't need to do this on the call, but one thing I would recommend is making sure you're really securing your numbers and knowing them.
ELIZABETH: Know what's net. No, what's gross. Because those two numbers are very different and the they are very different things. And there's overhead even in running an online business. So you can get really, you know, you don't know how much you're spending on ads and what the return on investment is. And we use, one of the greatest things that we've done for our family is we have a financial advisor who is neck deep in our lives. Like sure he knows all the things. He literally just came out to Wisconsin like two weeks ago and spent a long with our family. He's become like family because he is a big reason that our family is able to do the things that we're doing and work towards the dreams that we have. So make sure that you're really well versed on those things.
STEFANIE: Okay. And when did you get to that level?
Because I guess the thing with us that's hard is that my husband's accountant, I'm an accountant and so we have the capacity to do numbers and taxes and all of these things. And so the question becomes when is that crossroad to pay for those services? When you can do that yourself. Like is that now, do you think that that's now for us at this point?
ELIZABETH: It's now because a couple of reasons. One, advisors do things differently so some have an upfront cost but others don't. So you can find what will fit for your family. But it's really about the big picture and the big plan. I'll make sure that I get you the link to the episode I did with my financial advisor cause when he was here I'm like, you're coming to my closet. We're doing a podcast episode.
You know it's, it's such a powerful thing to be planning financially for those dreams too because as much as you can say like I can see the vision, I'm up on stage, my kids are coming out with me on the stage and my husband's right there too. There's a number that it costs to do those things, but you want to make sure that you're mapping out that plan. So I don't think, I think now's a great time, especially because you have the gift of your husband's income as well. Now is a really good time to be mapping it out because what we did was we started back at least five years ago, maybe more six years ago, working with him and my husband was still working in corporate at the time. And what we were able to do, it was kind of like cast the vision for when he was going to be able to leave.
You know, cause we said like, okay, if we get our business to this point, we don't need that anymore. And not saying that that that might not be what your husband or you want to do, but that's just an idea. Like you've got to be planning those things financially too. So I think that's a really important thing and it'll make you feel empowered. It'll make you feel like I'm running a real deal business that's providing for my family and these goals in the next five years are going to happen cause we're mapping it out properly. So of those six courses which is the most two are the most profitable for you?
STEFANIE: And these two are the brunt of that 60% so one is called passionately profitable. And this course helps people identify their God-led calling a brand around it, how to beat the money blocks and the mindset blocks to start making money in that new business. And then the time, the last piece of it is we start to touch on how we can monetize it. So it was a six week group coaching. I loved it, but it had played its course for me doing group coaching. So I packaged it up and that course does really well.
And then the second course is a new course for me, which is podcast pro university. And it's teaching people how to create scale, monetize, grow a podcast, like maybe their first six months as a podcaster, as a platform, as a way to scale an organic community.
ELIZABETH: Awesome. So the other four, are you spending money on those now, running ads, that kind of thing?
STEFANIE: Nope, they hang out. I do casually mention them. If I have like a podcast episode about Instagram, I'm like, oh I had an Instagram course here it is. Like I'll casually mention it as the call to action if it resonates with my topic but no money. It's sitting in teachable, which I already pay for my other courses.
ELIZABETH: Do you think there's potential in any of those for?
STEFANIE: No other than value add to someone, but I'm not passionate about them anymore.
Cause it was Facebook marketing course for network marketers. That's how I started the Instagram one. I don't want to keep updating it all the time because it changes too much. I don't like constantly like I'm just not excited about that. And then I have a Facebook ads, which is just a how to run a campaign. It's a one hour mini course and that's great. And that someone needs that one. Wonderful. And then the other one is a Facebook group course. How to get a Facebook group that's really engaged. But again, I'm not like, oh I'm so obsessed with this topic.
ELIZABETH: So is there a topic you are (passionate about), because I know you mentioned wanting to bring more courses into the mix, big for that residual or passive income. Is there one that's on your heart?
STEF: The podcast one and the passionately profitable!
STEF: I am so obsessed with them because the podcast changed my entire business. And I know that people like, oh, podcasting has played out. I'm like, no, it's not like it's the same as oh all of a sudden I'm going to show up on youtube live or Facebook live. Oh all of a sudden we started a youtube channel. So I feel like, no, like if you start a podcast and you follow my exact roadmap and I give you not just start a podcast click here, it's like the psychology behind it of how to lay out the episode, how I made you know, 98% more revenue in six months because I use this method of selling within the show where it's not salesy, quote unquote that one. Like I'm just lit up about it and I'm so excited and people are loving it too. Like I'm getting feedback from the students like, oh my Gosh Stefanie, like this has changed my life and I was, I would never have been able to get to this point without your course and all of that. So I know that I'm getting that confirmation back as well.
ELIZABETH: Are there any other courses that you've been wanting to create that there's something a block holding you back from making them?
STEFANIE: No, I don't think so. I think where I'm struggling is I want to scale that. I want to scale that one and I know it will be so successful, but now I feel like everyone else is coming out of the podcast course and now I feel weird about pushing it because I feel like, well now all these other people have these courses too and like should I just go back to mentioning you can work with me, come take a course and make it more casual again. Like do I just need to keep pounding on that one specific course?
ELIZABETH: You answered your own question.
STEFANIE: Why did, what did I say?
ELIZABETH: You said two things. I saw your whole body language change. You are passionate about that podcasting course.
STEFANIE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH: It lights you up.
STEFANIE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH: And then the second thing you said is that other people are doing this too. Should I ever change what's on your heart and what you know you need to be doing because of what other people are doing?
STEFANIE: Right.
ELIZABETH: We're never going to create something new. Of course there are people creating podcasting courses, but I saw like I would buy yours, right? Because I saw your face like I know the value that has to be in it because you believe in it so much and you know you're making an impact with it. So yeah, pour into the ones that light you up. Those are the ones you need to scale and you have to take a beat and do some exercises to work through those limiting beliefs that you have on. Do I have the courage to put this out into the world in a bigger way? Because I know so-and-so's created one. He has a bigger following than me or so and so's made one and they have a bigger list than me. Like I think you can, you don't need to can the other courses.
But I wouldn't even like I would not put them on my website in the same size and space as the other two main ones. Like I would make those two main ones, focal points of your business. So this leads me into, well do you have any questions about that? Does that make sense?
STEFANIE: And that makes perfect sense. And I've got past that for a minute. I was like, okay, I'm not going to talk about it cause I just don't know. And I went through that whole thing and then I got over that. But then I still felt like, well maybe I should just generalize it again because maybe somebody doesn't need that course. Maybe they would just rather take this one. And so then I started feeling weird about if I'm only pushing one course, am I losing sales because somebody doesn't want that course because I feel like my biggest platform to sell is my podcast. And should I talk about that course every single time?
ELIZABETH: Yeah. You should at least test it for a month. Like you put enough content out there that you, you would get a good dataset that if you had a prerecorded something at the beginning of this podcasting, you know, for those of you interested in podcasting, I have this, but this kind of funnels me right into what is your lead generation strategy? Are you building your list and how are you doing it?