4 Things to Focus on IF You Want Sales Success

INTRO: After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you're in the right place. Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to marketing and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you're You can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life. Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast. And here's your host, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, I am. I'm super stoked for this week's episode and cannot wait to dive in [00:01:00] because I've been having a lot of conversations in the direct messages DMs over on Instagram with people that are just starting out in business, um, aren't really sure maybe even what their offers are and they're asking me questions like where should I focus my energy or what should I be doing in my business right now in order to really maximize the effort that I'm putting in so that I don't get six, eight, one year down the line.

Um, and see that I've put in a ton of effort, but I'm not really seeing the results in my business. And so I wanted to take this opportunity today to record this, probably going to be a short one, I say that now, but I do obviously love to talk. And when I get going, it's hard to stop me sometimes. But I wanted to put together this like really quick episode for you, where I'm going to share with you what I would do if I was starting a new business today, tomorrow, the next day.

If I had a new idea pop in and I wanted to get that idea off the ground, I'm going to break down exactly what I would do in a very [00:02:00] simple way for you. Because what I'm witnessing and what I'm seeing is, is that when I ask people, what are you doing right now? Right? When someone says to me, where should I focus my energy?

I need to really understand where they're focusing their energy to begin with, so that I'm not saying, go do this, do this, do this. And they're like, I'm already doing that. I want to understand where they're coming from. And I want to share with you some of the patterns or the themes that I'm seeing come through the DMs that to me are not going to support you in moving the needle, but they're also going to probably result in you putting in a ton of effort in your business, getting to a point of it and not seeing the results and going, things aren't working.

I can't keep doing this. This isn't sustainable. And the reason I can spot these patterns or there's, Themes is because I've done some of them in the online business. Um, I know I've said this a lot, but I walked into like this vortex. It's like I forgot who I was. It's like I forgot any of the education training that I had, but also forgot that I had started a brick and mortar business, and I [00:03:00] did very well at starting that, getting it off the ground and getting sales through the door.

Very quickly, you know, on day one, when we opened, we had 40 sales come through that door. Um, and it was pretty amazing to witness when we didn't really do any marketing up front. Like we didn't do really any promotion. We started a Facebook page and we started an Insta like we would, but we weren't really promoting or, or pushing it out there in any way, shape or form.

And we had 40. 40 people come through the doors on that first day and buy, and so I wanna reverse engineer this for you because how I would do this now tomorrow, like I said, are the same really key four ingredients in my opinion, or four things that I would focus on first and foremost because like I said, when I came in.

Hey, I'm Kathryn Thompson, Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast, and I'm here to talk about how I started in sort of [00:04:00] a backwards way because I wasn't under pressure. I didn't need to make sales right out of the gate. But what I'm seeing is again, these patterns and these seams of things that people are focusing their energy on, like, Pattern number one is starting an Insta or Facebook account, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever it is, whatever social platform you're on, and really just starting to put content out there to start to build an audience, uh, to grow a following, to get the word out there of maybe what you do, that sort of thing.

And why this is a pattern that can often lead to you putting in a ton of effort and not releasing results is because oftentimes when we start here, we start to put our message out there. We don't actually even know what it is that we're going to offer. And I say that because these are questions I ask people, like, what are you actually working on?

And they'll tell me I'm growing a following on Insta and I'll say, okay, so do you have an offer? Do you have [00:05:00] offerings? Not yet. And that's usually the response I get. Not yet. I don't really know yet what I want to offer. I just need to get known first. I need people to know that I'm here and I'm going to share with you why this is a problem.

But what I ended up doing was is I spent six or eight months doing this and then when it was time to go to sell, I didn't have anybody to sell to because I had built an audience of people that I didn't know. May or may not have been in alignment with the offers I put out there. And it actually showed that.

I had built an email list same way. I had put out a freebie that wasn't really in alignment with my offer. And I built an audience of people that weren't going to ultimately be ready or in alignment for the offer I put down the line. And so I had ended up spending all of this time and energy building an audience.

That would never buy from me and I want to help you avoid that because that's pattern number one that I see pattern number two is I see lots of people putting out things for free. I'm going to create this thing for free in order to get known, get liked, all of that. And I'm not talking about a beta offer.

We [00:06:00] see this often. where we put together a beta or a new offer and it's like I'll get people through for testimonials. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about creating something for free just to sort of get known and it really isn't the offer or offerings that you want to put out there. It might be there might be similarity to it, or there's like this umbrella idea there, but it ultimately isn't the thing.

It's an idea that you have. It's something you want to get known for, but it's not going to be the offers that you put out there. Um, so that's pattern number two is like, not really sure what the offers are. So you're putting a bunch of things out for free, um, trying to get people into your world. And this is different again than a freebie, right?

Or this could be a freebie. It could be a free mini course or masterclass or whatnot, But if you're not, again, really certain on the offer or offerings that you're going to put out there, you're, you're starting to create work for yourself. You've created the free thing, which takes time and effort, and you're creating that to then build an audience of [00:07:00] potentially not the right people or people that would ultimately buy the offer that you're putting out there.

And you're probably seeing a theme here, right? The offer piece. You're probably seeing a theme here of where people sort of kind of go sideways. Another pattern I see is, is trying to get their house in order. So that looks like. I've got to have my branding down, I've got to have a logo, I've got to do a photo shoot, I've got to have pictures of myself, I've got to have a website up and running, I have to have, um, all of the things, right?

I've got to get a platform for where maybe I'm going to put my course and material, what platform should I put it on? We're in the, like, details of what is the right software to use, what isn't the right software to use. Before, again, we even have an offer or before we even really know what it is that we're going to say or what we want to say, um, this is huge, right?

Because as you're going to hear that the way in which we communicate and what we communicate is the thing that's going to ultimately attract people into your [00:08:00] world. And so if you're building assets in your business that require you to communicate what you do, And you don't even know what you do, or you do know what you want to do, but you're struggling to articulate it.

Can you see how you've kind of done like a backwards approach here where you're building these assets without understanding or without having an idea or without really knowing how to articulate and put into words what you do? Um, which again becomes a big, huge, effort waste, or time suck, because what ends up happening, and I see this often, people create a website, they start to build a social media following, they start to come up with their IG bio, and that gets changed a hundred times because we actually haven't spent the time to do it.

So we're ticking off these things off our list that are getting things done, absolutely, so we feel productive, we feel like we're moving ahead, we feel like we're progressing, but then, like I said, when it comes time to actually sell, which Is [00:09:00] what you do if you're a business owner. You have, there has to be something here to sell.

Um, and so when it comes time to sell, it's hard to do that because we haven't either cultivated an audience of the right people. We don't even have an audience. Let's just say we don't have an email list, we don't have a social following really. Um, and now we're going, okay, oh crap, I've now spent, you know, four, five, six months, weeks.

I don't know what the timeline is, but we spent a lot of time doing all of these sort of behind the scenes things in our business that have distracted us away from ultimately what it is that we need to be doing. And so if I was starting my business over again today, or had a new idea, There's four things that I would get, I would focus on first and foremost before I focused on anything else.

And the first piece of this puzzle, or the first step of this journey, is the offer. What am I offering? How is it different? Who am I here to serve? [00:10:00] Who's gonna buy this, right? How, how am I positioning myself in the industry that I'm in that's different than everybody else? What is going on in the industry?

How can I come into the industry differently? Why am I doing this? Why this? What's my years of mastery? What is my level of knowledge and education? What is, what do I do? And how can I bring this in a different way, a more impactful way to the people that I want to serve? What is my purpose behind this?

What is that why story? The End. That is driving me to do this work in the first place. And when we can really start to articulate the value of the offer, why should someone care? Why should someone want to buy it? Right? Why this offer? What, what is the offer? What is it offering? If it's a product, then it's, This tangible product.

When I had my brick and mortar wine business, it wasn't just wine I was selling, right? We had an all natural wine with pure [00:11:00] juice that we're using. It didn't have a lot of the chemicals that you would see that would have long shelf life in a, you know, a retail store, wine retail store. Right. It was, it was fresh juice.

It was a hundred percent juice. The way in which we're making it was different than any other store that in the city that was making it. So it's not just about here's my product. It's also understanding the story of the product or service for that matter, right? Why this offer, if you're supporting women through a holistic journey through fertility, or you're helping women lose weight loss in a holistic way.

What part of that is different than what everybody else is doing? And these are the questions you need to ask yourself, which is why people sort of end up skirt tailing around this because it takes time, right? It takes time to put that out there. And in my podcast, um, program, The Offer Architect, I walk you through these enrollment igniters, right?

Because I walk you through the different [00:12:00] angles that you need to come up with in terms of the offer and be able to communicate to see what your audience is actually resonating with. And if you don't have an audience sitting in front of you and you're sitting in your house going, I'm putting together this offer and I'm struggling to articulate it, there's a reason for that.

And the reason is, is because the offer, in a lot of ways, we want to create in relation with the audience. I'm not saying that we want to appease the audience and just do what the audience says, but we've got to have an understanding of why we're doing it. Why us? Why this offer? Why it's different than others?

But we also want to communicate with our people and put that offer in front of them, the right people I'm talking, to see their response to it. And if they don't respond in the way that we hoped for, and they're, you know, we don't have hundreds of sales walking through the door on day one, or 40 sales coming through the door on day one, that's okay.

Because the whole part of this [00:13:00] next piece of the puzzle is to really understand and master the articulation of connecting with your people, right? So the messaging around the offer, how you're going to sell it, how you're going to market it. And that's why in my program, The Offer Architect, I talk about enrollment igniters because they're the 20 or 50, 15 to 20 different ways that you're going to talk about your offer so that It starts to ignite people in your audience or people in your world that go, Ooh, I need that.

And it's more of the nuance, right? A lot of the messaging we see around offers is usually that big program promise. And it's usually very grandiose, like how to make 10 K in 10 days or how to lose 50 pounds. So, The problem with that style of messaging and offer messaging is it doesn't really tell me anything about the offer.

Doesn't tell me how it's different, doesn't tell me why you, doesn't tell me even really kind of who it's for. I guess it kind of says [00:14:00] it's for, you know, somebody who wants to make 10k I guess in 10 days or someone who wants to lose 50 pounds. But, when I think about. you know, really connecting with an audience, which is part of this whole mixture.

When I talk about connecting with an audience where an audience goes, that's me. I feel so understood. I feel so seen. I need that now. Or you, or you get me. So I know I want to buy from you. That is part of moving people from cold to sold faster, right? Because they're going to look at you and go, she really gets me, or he really gets me.

And therefore, they've cultivated this trust almost instantaneously with you. That connection piece is huge, right? And so that's why these like surface level messaging is actually just continuing to keep people like blending in, right? So when people come to me and they say they have this offer, let's just say, and they're like, okay, now where do I find it?

Focus. I'm like, we've gotta get really nuanced with the messaging. And that's what those enrollment igniters do because they are more [00:15:00] nuanced angles of how you support someone. So for example, if you're supporting someone through a fertility journey or a weight loss journey, like how are you actually doing that?

And if it's different than everybody else. or it's a different approach, a unique approach that you take. What is that approach? And then we start to find, tease out these enrollment igniters to speak to the variable ways in which you support people. That is the nuance, right? Because it's, it's no longer surface level and it gets to sort of the nuanced pieces of why people would A, want to invest in you, but potentially why people Look at you and go, that's different.

But also go, you know what? I've tried all these other things and they're not working, but I can see here that I haven't tried these nuanced things that you're talking about. So the first place I would start is the offer articulation. What is it I'm offering? Why am I different? Who am I serving? What is the offer?

What's the transformation? What's the [00:16:00] benefits? What are the features as well? I know lots of people say don't talk about the features always, but I like to come at this with a holistic approach. Like, what is the value that someone's gonna get when they walk away? What's the price? You know, who am I serving?

These are all, this is all around the offer. And I'm talking the offer. I'm not necessarily talking brand messaging. Like, yes, this is a component of brand messaging, the who, the what, the why, all of that. But I'm talking about the offer. When you're first starting out in business, The thing you need to do is make sales.

If you want to sustain and keep your doors open. Right? If I started my brick and mortar and I had started going, oh I think I'm just gonna buy a store and then I'm gonna go stand in it for a while and I'm gonna start to like, put stuff on social media to like, start to get known, our doors would be shut because we had, we had massive overhead when running that company.

Right? We paid 5, 000 in rent. So we had to start making sales like yesterday in order to sustain ourselves. We didn't, we [00:17:00] couldn't sit around on our thumbs going, you know, I'm going to just slowly here grow a following and I'm slowly going to, you know, try to put my name out there. No, we, we had to get really clear on our offer, what we were offering, why we were offering, how it was different and how we were coming into the market, but also how were we going to make those initial sales.

And our strategy really was. leveraging word of mouth. So it was using our network of people to come into the store on day one, day two, day three. And for the first year, or more actually, it was predominantly word of mouth that was sustaining our business. And so if you're sitting in your world right now going, all I rely on is, is word of mouth and that isn't good enough or whatever, I want you to reframe that.

Because word of mouth is a really beautiful way to support you in getting your business off the ground. It's a beautiful way. It's free. You're not spending, you're not, you're not sinking [00:18:00] a ton of money into ads and all of that sort of thing. And so word of mouth isn't bad. Word of mouth is actually a really good indicator that what you do is good because it's not just you promoting it anymore.

It's people that you know that are spreading the word on your behalf and they're vouching for the product or service because they've experienced it. So step number one, really get clear on that offer. It doesn't matter what you call yourself on social media today. Get really clear on the offer because if you don't have an offer to sell, like I said, what you're going to end up doing is you're going to build an audience of people that may or may not ever buy that offer.

Number two is, is then how do we market and message this offer? Like, what is the unique messaging around it? How are we putting that out into the world? What is that actually, like, how are we communicating about it? This isn't necessarily the how am I getting customers in, right? It's about how, how am I talking about what it is that I do?

And can I talk about it with? Confidence and Conviction [00:19:00] that starts to build that like factor within my company, my business, whatever it is, right? So there's the messaging. And then I always love to look at reach. How am I reaching the people that I want to reach? What does that look like? So is that social media?

Is that in person events and networking? Is that getting on other people's podcasts? Is that, you know, connecting with other people in Facebook groups? Is that, you know, putting myself and teaching in other people's communities or groups? What does that look like, right? Is that joining communities in, maybe if you're doing local business, right?

Is like, how am I connecting with people locally? Or how am I, how am I connecting with people to then spread the word of mouth? Like what am I, how am I reaching people with this message? So it's the offer, right? And am I in alignment with the offer that I'm selling? Am I, do I embody it? Am I living the message?

Then it's the messaging, that unique messaging. How am I [00:20:00] communicating what it is that I do? And then it's reach. How am I going to reach these people and, and what am I doing in order to reach them? And then it's audience growth and sales. So coming up with some type of audience growth strategy and a sales strategy.

Now, again, word of mouth could be a sales strategy for you for the first couple That's what we relied on in a lot of ways. We started to dabble in ads. Eventually we did do very expensive ads when we had the brick and mortar to start, but we realized it wasn't making an impact. The word of mouth was the thing that was by far driving customers through our door in my online business.

I started with not ads to begin with. So I started doing organic or free, right? And the way in which I did that was I created a freebie of some sort, a masterclass, a quiz, a downloadable, right? And that downloadable quiz or masterclass was in [00:21:00] direct relation to the offer. So it wasn't like I created a freebie.

Just to grow my audience to then eventually be able to sell to them. No, it was the entire pathway. So what I'm sharing here is, is that entire pathway in a lot of ways of like, what is it that I created and why did I create that freebie, that masterclass or whatnot? All was tied back to the offer. So I started with the offer and then I went to the messaging piece of it.

How am I communicating this? And then how do I plan to reach people? Like, what is it? How do I plan to do this? And that is the masterclass, the freebie, social media, however you want to whatever you want to do there. And then it was like, okay, now how do I create that? Like how do I grow the audience and sell?

Well, I've created that whole pathway just by sharing this with you. And so that thing that I put out there was growing an audience of the right people and putting the offer in front of them at the right time. Cause what we often see now, and this is sort of another, pattern is there's a lot of direct [00:22:00] response selling on social media and a lot of people come to me and go, why can't I just sell in stories all the time?

So if you're selling 80 percent of the time to your audience, there's a bunch of things that are going to go sideways for you. And it's probably why you putting in a ton of effort to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, and you're not seeing the results. One, people don't like to be sold to every single day of their life.

Right. So if you've created and cultivated a community, they don't wanna be sold to all the time. So there has to be other elements of content that continue to build the know, like, and trust. And the reason for that is because people that come into your world may not be ready to buy from you today, but they're just sort of trying to get a sense of who you are.

And so there're in your world and you're like, buy my thing, buy my thing, buy my thing. And they're going, I don't even know why I wanna buy that thing. I don't know if it's, you wanna wanna work with. or somebody else. I don't know if it's who I want to buy from or somebody else. So you've got to give them more depth through nurture content, through credibility content, [00:23:00] authority content, as I call it, through legacy.

Like, again, why are you different in a lot of ways? Through value added content. There's a whole ecosystem that I teach people inside of Spellbound, which is, um, my, um, Bigger program, six months of working with me where I walk people through creating that ecosystem because the ecosystem is key, right? If you're on social media or you're emailing your list or whatever, but the whole idea of building out this customer journey, which I've just shared with you, but the key components of doing that start and end with the offer.

If you don't have an offer that can sell or it's not well articulated, you're not creating demand and desire for it while also building that new look and trust. you're going to have a hard time selling it. And that's the end. That's the be end all. I will die on a mountain saying that it boils down to the offer.

I was just, um, chatting with my husband. We chat about this often. I watch shark tank. I don't know if anybody else watched a shark tank or dragon's den. And basically it's inventors that go on the show and they sit in front of a panel of investors and they've [00:24:00] got to pitch their idea to them. And every time I'm not surprised, but I'm equally surprised at the simplicity of.

a product that is put in front of somebody. And when a shark is like, how much are you making? And someone says 6 million, my mind is boggled. So for example, this woman went on there and she had swim goggles, but not just any old swim goggles. You know, when you put swim goggles on and they've got those elastic rubber bands and they rip in your hair and they're just really annoying or your hair gets caught in the side of them.

She had reinvented the goggle, right? So she was like, her kids hated them, and she was a stay at home mom, I think, at the time, and she was, she sewed. So she basically took this beautiful material that had patterns on it, and she sewed it. She removed the elastic and sewed it. So it was almost like this beautiful headband, and there was no ripping, no snagging, no tearing, no nothing.

And she had made six million dollars in sales. And basically, didn't spend a lot on marketing. I think it was like out of the six million she sold, she [00:25:00] had spent about 150, 000 in marketing over, I don't know, a six year period or something like that, which is insane for a product to generate that many dollars in sales.

What does this tell you? Right? When we're sitting there watching this, my husband says every time it comes down to the product and the offer. Like if you've got something that people want, they will buy it. And this is where we need to spend our time, in my opinion. Absolutely need to spend our time.

Because where most people are spending their time is, like I said, putting out content on social media with no real direction. No real, like, where, where are you guiding somebody? What can they buy from you? Building an audience for the sake of building an audience is literally a massive waste of time.

Without any sort of direction to a product or service because at the end of the day, you're going to get people in there who likely aren't going to buy from when you go to put that offer in there. And or spending a lot of time in the details of the business. Like what do I call myself and what should my IG bio be?

And [00:26:00] you know, what color should I pick and what website? Like, I get that. That's all fun. I love being in creative mode. I love being able to. Being in Canva. Maybe you don't, but I love to spend time in there, but I also know it's a distraction in a lot of ways because I'm like, is this where I should be spending my time?

No. Most people burn out in their business because they're spending all of their time in areas that really aren't producing the results, and I'm not saying that you don't wanna have fun or whatnot. I love getting into Canva, like I said, and play around, and I love to. Do that sort of stuff. But I also, like I said, really sort of manage my time.

If I have extra time that I just wanna play, sure I'll do that. But if there's other areas that I need to focus on, first and foremost, that's where I'm putting my energy, the offer, how I'm communicating with my audience, and how I'm really connecting with them in a lot of ways. And then how am I growing my audience month over month over month?

And how am I then selling to that audience month over month over month? Cause that's the other thing, right? When we're direct selling all the time and we don't focus on these other [00:27:00] elements like audience growth or any sort of sales or having that offer. You're just putting out a message, and you're not putting that message in front of probably the right people, and so it's gonna feel like you're speaking to the void.

It's gonna feel like you're just being friend zoned in a lot of ways, because there's nothing really to respond to over and over and over again, and if the audience isn't growing, then there's no new people in your world to sort of start to move down that customer buying journey. And I'm not saying that if you have a list of 200 or 300 or whatever, I mean, that's a lot of people, but I'm saying that not everybody in your audience is going to be ready to buy from you right now in this moment.

And so if you're constantly slamming that 300 over 6 months, and you're hitting them over and over and over with sales messaging and they're not buying, something isn't working, right? Because 4, 5, 6, 8 months constantly messaging somebody and they're not responding, [00:28:00] I'm like, I'm not going to continue to message to them.

It's like talking to a wall in a lot of ways. Right? And the reason for that is, is, like I said, I always go back to sort of the diagnostic with my clients. If they come to me and they say, well, my stuff isn't selling. Okay. How often are you growing your audience? Oh, I stopped kind of doing that. There, there's probably a reason there.

You know, um, have you changed anything when it comes to the offer and the way in which you're communicating it? And are you really focusing your energy on building the know and trust element, right? And so this is a big one, and I could record a whole episode on this, but if you are doing something that requires trust in order to be built, in order to work with you, because they're sharing their deepest, darkest secrets with you.

then we need to put our energy and time here, right? And so if you were, lots of times what ends up happening is we spend a lot of time building awareness, like who am I and what I do? Great. That's awesome. But then we go and sell right away. And so [00:29:00] we haven't built that know and trust element of it. And so what ends up happening when we're constantly direct selling to people is that people don't know, like, do I want to work with you?

Do I want to work with somebody else? Like, When somebody comes in in the awareness phase, they're just shopping around. They're looking for what's the right fit for them. And if we hit them with a sale and they need that know and trust element to buy, we're missing that whole opportunity to cultivate that.

And so that is huge. And then the other thing about this is that, you know, if we're not, like I said, focusing on the offer first and foremost, we build that audience of people that may or may not buy. And you might be thinking, Well, Kathryn, I'm talking about fertility, or I'm talking about weight, weight loss, or holistic weight loss.

Like, I have that as my brand message. That's the message I want to put out there. And that's how I'm growing my audience right now. And that's great. But there's so many different factors that go into fertility support. There's so many different things that women might look for [00:30:00] in terms of weight loss, right?

And so if they, come into your world and you're building this world around your brand message, so to speak, and you're not building it around an offer, what ends up happening is, is that if you build an audience full of people that are looking for fertility support, for example, and then they get into your world and really you're an acupuncturist or you do fertility yoga and they're like, I already have an acupuncturist.

I already do fertility yoga. I was looking for supplements. Right. Or support or Chinese medicine type of stuff or whatnot, or the psycho spiritual or whatever. Right. I mean, there's so many different ways that women can get support through fertility. And so it's like, maybe they're looking for a very specific type of fertility support, and you're not communicating that upfront.

Cause you're talking about helping women through fertility holistically, let's just say, or naturally, or whatever you want to say from a brand messaging perspective, if you don't have an offer that specifically supports them in a way that they want, Then you're talking to the wrong audience, which ends up happening.

And I see this more and more, right? I'm putting my offer out there, [00:31:00] Kathryn. I'm hearing crickets. And I'm going, there's one of two things that are happening. Either the offer isn't being well articulated and you're putting it in front of the audience, but it's not hitting, like it's not landing with the audience.

Or you're putting that offer in front of the wrong audience of people who actually don't want this particular offer or a combination of the both. And when I see that happening in someone's business, I know for a fact that they are Probably didn't start with cultivating that offer and really getting clear on what it is, but also putting it in front of people to get a response.

Right? They were putting maybe a message or a piece of content, but I'm talking about putting the offer in front of people to get a response. Yes, this is something that I want. No, it isn't. And the way in which I know this is happening is because we've created a sales process for somebody, right? So it's either through a sales page and we have people buying or landing on that page and interacting with that page, asking questions, that sort of thing.

There's [00:32:00] conversation happening around it. Or we've got sales calls and they're coming in and we're having conversations or we're having conversations in the DMs. That's how I know when, when people are resonating with an offer. But again, if we're, if we haven't even cultivated that pathway, that audience and growth strategy that I talked about and sales, then we don't know.

And so these to me are the key pieces that I would ultimately spend my attention on. And You're in the days of meddling with a website or just trying to get known for who you are. I really, really invite you to go back to the offer stage of it because I can almost guarantee you that at some point in the next couple months, however long you can sustain it.

'cause it's, it is variable. Some people are like, I've spent four months and I'm. it's still not, I feel exhausted or I've spent 2 years and I'm still no further ahead like it just depends on your level of willpower and how much you're willing to, to do it before you get [00:33:00] tired of just not seeing results in your business.

But if you're not seeing results in your business or like I said, you're in the early stages and you just don't know where to focus your energy. I've just shared with you exactly what I would do. And this is how I would do it every single time. And it's how I did my brick and mortar, right? Again, I go back to that overhead.

There's no way we could have sustained our business for months with me just posting on social media, trying to get a feel for who I am and all of that. There's absolutely no way. Like we had to have a product and we had to have a way to sell that product. And a way to make the product and all the things and the way to communicate it and the way to grow our audience and we focus predominantly on word of mouth because we had done the calculations of like, all we need is a base of six or 700 recurring customers, which doesn't seem like a lot, right?

Like it, uh, does not seem like a lot to have to happen. And that's what we were building towards. And that was our goal. And that was our sole focus, right? So we had looked at the numbers, we looked at what we needed to [00:34:00] sustain it. These are all things that you need to look at in your business, right? Again, the numbers piece is huge.

Lots of times I'll ask business owners like, you know, what are your numbers? What are your goals? And They'll say, I don't know, or I don't have them, or, I don't know how many customers I need in order to be sustainable. And I get it. If you're, you know, the, the soulful, the wooey, you're like, oh man, the super creative.

I hate looking at the numbers, but at the end of the day, you have to in business, right? You've gotta look at the numbers in, in your business, you've gotta know the numbers. You gotta know where you're moving towards, right? How many customers do you need in order for. Your offer to be successful. How many customers can you have that before your, you reach capacity?

These are all questions I'm constantly asking my clients because it's great to have a goal. I want, you know, a hundred K months or whatever. People sell that and you're just starting out in your business and I want a hundred K months. Cool. But how are you getting there? Like, And [00:35:00] then to think about what that'll actually be like, is that sustainable?

And how is that sustainable? And what is the offer? And it all comes back down to the offer or offers. Like, what are the offers you're selling to create the 100k months? It's not, you know, what does my website look like in order to make 100k months? Or, you know, what am I calling myself on social media to make 100k months?

Like, it's what are the, what are you selling? There has to be revenue and income that comes into your business. And the only way to do that is through sales and or affiliates or whatever, right? But there's got to be a revenue stream or revenue streams. And again, it starts and ends with the offer. And that's a mountain I will, I will die on.

So if you're spending any time whatsoever on tasks or things in your company that do not tie back to the offer and what it is you're selling and how you're selling it, all of that, Then there's, there's something missing here, and you're, there's a leak here when it comes to that income and revenue, because you're gonna have a hard time making income and revenue or sales in your business if you're [00:36:00] not focusing wholeheartedly on what it is that you're selling.

So with that, I'm gonna leave you. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. Cheers. Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at Creatively Owned and online at creativelyowned. com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.