045 Build Your Own Bailout

One of my first tips for you is really just refuse to lose. Refuse to accept that you can’t make money right now. That is the mindset of people who won’t make money right now.

But if you are somebody who’s like, “I’ve got to find a way. I’m going to find a way. I’m going to find a way to match my skills and my abilities and the talent on my team, the tools that I’ve built over the years, like my systems, my processes, my IP. I’m going to find a way to take what I’ve got right now and turn it into something that can generate money right now in the economic climate that we find ourselves in right now.”

Welcome to the Hello Seven Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Rodgers, wife, mother of four children, a lover of Beyoncé, coffee drinker, and afro-wearer, and I just happen to be the CEO of a seven-figure business. I am on a mission to help every woman I meet become a millionaire. If you want to make more money, you are in the right place. Let's get it going.

Hello, hello, guys and welcome to BYOB, build your own bailout. I’m going to go over the top five things you should be doing right now to keep your revenue going and growing even during an economic crisis.

I have been in business for a decade. And when you’re in business that long, and if you have any desire to have staying power and have your business be around for at least 10 years or more, you are going to see economic downturns.

You are going to have to exist during recessions. Things will shift in your industry. Changes will happen that will affect your ability to stay in business and you have to be someone who is able to shift and get creative and keep the party going no matter what. So, that’s what we’re going to talk about exactly how to do today.

Normally, when I do a training, I walk you through my Million Dollar Badass framework. And that is the nine-step framework to take your business from 100K to a million, to take you from a place where you are making really solid money, not working too hard, and having a massive impact.

That’s where you want to be, versus being in a place where you are struggling to get leads, where you are working all the time, and where you aren’t having the impact and the kind of audience that you want to have. So that is what I typically teach.

And in that framework, I go through each of the nine steps and exactly what you need to do to get your business up to a level of seven figures or more. These are the nine steps to building a seven-figure business.

Now, what I’m going to focus on today is three parts that you want to focus on in the midst of this economic crisis that we are in right now. So, those steps are, find your rhythm, which is all about your marketing rhythm. We’re going to talk about fill your flagship. And that’s all about sales of your main offer. And then we’re also going to talk about sort your systems and how systems can save you at a time like this.

So, I will walk you through those three areas. If you’re interested in the other areas, then you can check out some of my other trainings or keep listening to my podcast and I’ll tell you at the end about how you can get any additional questions that you have answered.

So, this is going to be, as I said, a crash course. Now, your number one worry right now might be, “Hey, I don’t have enough leads coming in. I don’t have enough revenue right now to get through these next few months in the midst of this recession.” So, that is probably one of your biggest concerns right now.

And the overall fear is that you’re going to be out of business. The overall fear is that, if I don’t fix this revenue problem, if I’m not able to create consistent revenue, then I am not going to be able to keep these doors open and keep this business party going.

And so, that is the ultimate fear of literally every entrepreneur right now and that doesn’t matter if you have a $10 million business, if you have a billion-dollar business, or if you are operating a really small microbusiness. Regardless of the size of your business right now, everyone is concerned about this recession and how to keep their revenue going.

I had concerns about it. My concerns are less acute though. I don’t have concerns that have me up at night or have me working really late hours or anything crazy like that because I have a really solid business foundation. And so, I have a lot more runway and I’ve got a lot more options in, “How do I need to shift some things in my business? How might there be some pivots that I need to take during this economic recession?” But it’s not like I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to pay my mortgage.

I’m so far away from that because I have built my business to multimillions over the last few years. If you are not there, do not worry. We’re going to talk about exactly what you should be doing. And probably, what you want right now is to be in a place where you have a steady amount of leads, you have a steady amount of clients, you have a steady amount of revenue coming in and be in a place where you can actually thrive and take advantage of the opportunities that are presenting themselves during this recession rather than being in a place where your business is failing.

So, that is where we all want to be, I think we can agree. And I’m going to show you how to get there.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about who I am and my story. So, I actually started my business in 2010, right in the midst of a recession. I was actually just a recent law school graduate. I had just graduated from law school. I had a couple of job opportunities available to me but they weren’t amazing. They weren’t my dream job.

And part of that was because of the recession. So, there were all of these law school graduates, fresh lawyers ready to take on the world, and there were very few jobs available for us. And so, there were a lot of lawyers that found themselves out of work. I wasn’t one of them. I had job opportunities, but they weren’t what I wanted. And I had felt like I had worked so hard for three years in law school that I wasn’t just going to take whatever job was handed to me.

So, I decided to start my own practice, much to my mother’s chagrin because she was like, “Please, just take a salary position anywhere and stop trying to build your own thing.” Well, that worked out for me, right, 10 years later.

And so, I had to be really strategic in how to get clients at that time. I was a brand-new lawyer. I didn’t have a ton of experience. I didn’t have a book of clients that were ready and willing to pay for my services. I had to prove myself as a new attorney. And it was a recession.

There were all these reasons why I shouldn’t have been able to make money. And yet, in my first year, I was able to replace my salary from my last job, which wasn’t a huge sum. I mean, what I was making was $41,000 a year as a law clerk for a judge. And so, I was able to replace that salary in my first year. And within three years, I was making over $300,000.

So, it is absolutely possible. I know how to market myself and how to sell in the midst of a recession. I know how to sell services that don’t seem necessary at the time or are not desirable. No one wants to buy legal services. They have to, in most cases.

And so, there was a lot about that business that really trained me and I really felt like I had no choice because I was the breadwinner for my family, I had to make the money come in one way or another. And so, one of my first tips for you is refuse to lose.

Refuse to accept that you can’t make money right now. That is the mindset of people who won’t make money right now. But if you are somebody who’s like, “I’ve got to find a way. I’m going to find a way. I’m going to find a way to match my skills and my abilities and the talent on my team, the tools that I’ve built over the years, like my systems, my processes, my IP. I’m going to find a way to take what I’ve got right now and turn it into something that can generate money right now in the economic climate that we find ourselves in right now.”

Okay, so there has to be a determination and a refusal to lose. So, that is one of the things that you definitely want to know, but like I said, what I have done over the things is really build a business that is not a house of cards.

I have a lot of friends who have built multimillion-dollar businesses as well but they never bothered to build a team. They never bothered to build sustainable systems and processes. They just kept launching new things all the time. And so, when an economic downturn comes, they’re feeling more stressed.

They’re feeling more pressure and they’re feeling like, “My margins are thin. I don’t got a lot of profit sitting in the bank account to protect me. I don’t have a strong team that can pivot quickly and come up with new offers. And so, now I’m in this really scary situation.”

And I chose to build a really solid business from day one, and that means delegating significantly, building a team, reinvesting in the business by building a team. And that was one of the first things I did; capitalizing on the intellectual property that I have so that my business isn’t only dependent on me.

So, if I have a rough day or a rough week or I’m just not able to show up that day because I’m busy homeschooling my children right now, my business is still rocking and rolling and clients are still being served. So, that is really the difference between a really solid foundation business and one that doesn’t have a solid foundation.

And so, I felt at times like I was building Noah’s Ark, right, where people were saying to me, “Why are you hiring all of these people?” I had a team of 10 and I had people say to me, “Why are you hiring 10 people? You could be taking all that money home for yourself.”

True, right, but what I’m trying to build is a $10 million business, $20 million, $50 million. Really, the sky is the limit. So, I’m not going to stop at a million or two-million and say, “That’s enough. I’m going to take all the profits out of the business and just keep going and hope it lasts for as long as it lasts.”

No, I want to build something that is solid, something that is available to my children, something that leaves a legacy for my kids and for our society. And so, I want it to last more than five minutes. Which is, unfortunately, what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs who figure out how to sell something, they figure out how to build an audience, but they never figure out how to really build the backend of that business. So, all that to say, that’s my street cred, that’s the authority that I have today to be sharing these tips with you.

So, I want to go through the actual steps and share some stories of myself and from my clients that will help to illustrate why these are the most important things that you need to be doing right now to be growing your business.

Step number one, your number one priority when you’re building your own bailout and ensuring that your revenue is protected in the midst of an economic crisis is your current and past clients; retention, retention, retention, retention.

So many business owners just want to think about, “What’s a new thing I can offer? Let me lower my prices. Let me discount everything let me offer one to one services even though that doesn’t make sense for my business model.” We just freak out, we panic, and we start giving away everything that we’ve got for rock-bottom prices.

And that is not what you need to do. The number one thing you need to do is take care of the clients that you currently have. It’s about retention. So, you want to think about, “Who are the clients that are currently paying me, or who have recently paid me? And how can I continue to serve them? What can I offer them?”

The fact of the matter is that people who have already worked with you, have already gotten results with you, have been happy with your services are the best people to go back to and offer additional services or say, “hey, let’s continue in some way.”

So, if you’re going to brainstorm anything, you want to think about, “How can I retain more of the clients that I already have? How can I make sure, if I’ve got a membership community or a mastermind or some other retainer-style services, that my clients are able to keep me on retainer and I’m not one of the first ones they decide to cut?”

And so, you might have to get strategic and creative with this. One of my clients, Kathy, and amazing at this. So, she specifically serves professors. She serves professors and helps them to become tenured professors. And one of the main ways they need to do that is through writing. They need to write academic papers, they need to get published, and that’s what helps them to get that tenured position.

And so, that is her main offer. And so, what she decided to do is offer additional trainings, additional content related to how to continue to write and keep up your writing habit, even in the midst of a global health crisis and an economic crisis, how to retain your writing habits when your kids are home and you’re homeschooling.

She’s also helping them figure out, “How do I teach via Zoom?” This is something new for them, but for her, she’s been doing it for a very long time, so she’s teaching them how to do distanced learning. She’s giving them the tools that they need right now and making her services absolutely essential to them so that the last thing that they want to do is stop working with her. They want to keep the party going because she is helping them to protect their own revenue and their own careers and helping the to continue to move forward during this time.

And so, that’s been a great example. She had one of her biggest months last month. She had the biggest webinar she’s ever hosted with 900 people attending just in the last couple of weeks. So, right in the midst of this crisis, she is out here making money, serving clients, and continuing to get paid and having some of her biggest months.

So, your number one priority is going to be retain clients. This is one of the things that I’ve been doing as well. So, we’ve just pivoted how we show up in our mastermind a little bit to make sure that we have business brainstorming available for any of our clients that need to figure out, “How can I adapt my services to not being in-person?” For those of them that serve clients in person, we’ve been helping them with that.

We’ve done daily meditations. We’ve done special trainings, like on virtual events. It’s one of the things that we’re teaching our people how to do and how to create a virtual event offer that they can make a bunch of money from.

So, we are also, even in my own company, pivoting our services to make sure that we can be serving the clients that we have. And I’m happy to say, like, 98% of our clients are still with us. We’ve had a very low attrition rate, even in the midst of this crisis. And that’s because we are an essential service to our clients and they need us and they’re not looking to leave. And that’s exactly what you want to do with your services.

So, number one priority is retention. And if you don’t sell a service that is ongoing, so for example, in my law practice, I sold a service that was registering a trademark. It was finite. Once your trademark was registered, that work was done.

But if I was still running that law practice, I would go back to those clients and say, “Hey, we took care of your trademarks. Is there something else, some other trademarks you want to register? Is there other IP that you need to protect? Do you have employment law questions? Is there some other way that we can serve you as small business attorneys right now in the midst of this crisis?”

And so, going back to those same clients and saying, “Hey, what else can we do for you?” and finding out how you can serve them and be useful to them is crucial. Alright, so that’s number one.

Number two, the second thing you need to do is take advantage of your untapped audience. So, you want to monetize your untapped audience. We all have an audience that is available to us. Whether it’s our newsletter list, on Facebook, the people following us on Instagram, we have a community of people that are following us, even if it’s just our network, our in-person professional network that we’re connected with on LinkedIn or with whom we have all of their emails.

So, we all have a community of people. Now, some of those people have chosen to become clients. Some of those people have purchased our services and chosen to work with us, and some of them have not. For most of us, the majority of our community and the people in our audience who know that the services that we offer and the problem that we solve in our businesses have not chosen to work with us yet.

And so, what you want to think about is, “How can I monetize the untapped audience that is available to me right now?” I’ll give you an example of how one of my clients did this.

So, I have a client named Sarah. And what she helps clients do is get grants. So, she teaches them how to write and complete applications for grants and which grants to apply for and the whole process. She takes them through it step by step and helps them get access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in grand money.

Now, during this time, she’s working mainly with clinicians, healthcare workers. Those are the folks who are looking for grants at this time. And so, that’s who she normally works with. Well, they are not looking for grants at the moment. they’re busy solving problems, working in their clinics. And they’re not thinking about the research they need to do for the future necessarily.

And so, she’s got some clients that she’s continuing to work with and maintain and she’s got to think about, “How can I still get new clients at this time?” And so, she made a pivot. And what she decided to do was instead of her normal four to six-month offer that helps people walk through the grant-writing process, what she decided to do was make an offer that was specific to COVID-19.

And so, she is helping clinicians who are looking to get a grant, to help their research in relation to the current virus that is out there that is causing all of this crisis. She’s helping them in 30 days or less get their grants out the door, get grant money so that they can continue to do research so they can solve this huge global health crisis right now.

And so, how amazing of a pivot is that? And she got several clients immediately, as soon as she shifted her offer a little bit, to meet the need that is happening right now, tapped into a whole segment of her audience that she had not been tapped into before because they need to take action right away.

She’s still got those clients who are not necessarily – their work is not necessarily related to this healthcare crisis, and so, they work in healthcare, but they’re not in crisis right now. And some of those folks are long-term clients, but then she’s also got those clients who need something in-depth and quick and are available and hungry for that right now, and she’s also serving the world. She’s serving the greater good by doing that.

So, I was really excited for Sarah and, you know, she’s had one of the biggest months she’s ever had just a month ago. And now this month, she’s offering this new offer and it’s selling. And so, it just goes to show you that just because we are in crisis, doesn’t mean your business and your revenue had to be.

Another example I’ll give for this is my own business. So, I offer a mastermind and normally my services are at a price point that is consistent with a high-level mastermind. And so, that’s the main way that I work with my clients. But we actually just recently decided to do a membership community.

And so, we are going to be offering a membership community that is much lower cost but enables our clients to still get access to our amazing services, to our coaching, to our community, to our network, to the business strategies that we teach, but at a price point that works for them.

And we just created an offer that was different to our usual business model, to tap into the untapped segment of our audience, the segment of our audience that isn’t ready, necessarily, for our mastermind services but that does still want to work with us and learn how to grow their business.

And so, that’s just two examples of how you can tap into your untapped, unmonetized audience and find a way to serve them and generate additional revenue in your business by serving them. Okay, so that’s your tip number two.

Now, let’s talk about number three. Right now, there’s a huge opportunity to grow your audience. Facebook ads are less expensive than they’ve ever been. Attention on social media has grown by 70%. People are spending much more time on social media. They have a lot more free time. And they’re very tuned in because they want to know what is going on in the world.

They want to know what their peers are doing in the midst of this crisis. And also, they’re stuck at home. And so, this is an opportunity for you to grow your audience. So, the best way that I can illustrate this for you is to share an example from one of my clients.

So, one of my clients offers musical theatre education for kids. And musical theatre education for kids, at first glance, doesn’t seem like a top priority for a lot of people. And one of the things that he decided to do is grow his audience and really focus on audience growth and then offer something on the backend of that.

So, he decided to put together a challenge. It was a 21-day challenge. And so, he started running Facebook ads to it. There’s a huge opportunity right now with costs being much lower on Facebook ads, so many businesses have turned off their adds. And so, that’s an opportunity for you to get in, cut through the noise, and be able to acquire leads at a much lower cost.

So, he’s paying 10 cents a lead right now and he got 10,000 people on his list. And he said to me, “Rachel, these are the people that I’ve been looking for, for the past two years. And I’ve been growing my business and growing my audience slowly but surely over the past two years. And in just one week, for $1000, I was able to acquire 10,000 ideal clients. And now they’re in a community with me, they’re in my Facebook group and I have a whole strategy and plan for how to reach those people and how to offer them my services during this time.”

So, if you are not out here growing your audience, you’re doing it wrong. Whether it’s investing in Facebook ads, or a different marketing strategy, you want to make sure that you are building your audience actively. Because if you are a business that plans to be around in three months, six months, next year, then you need to be building your audience now for the things that you are going to be able to sell them in the future.

Even if some of them are not going to be ready work with you, some of them will be ready to work with you right away. And so, you’ll be able to make money right away. But then, you are also creating an insurance policy in your business for the future.

Because if you’re bringing in that cold traffic now and warming them up over the next few months, they’re going to be ready to work with you, if not now, then maybe this summer, maybe in the fall, maybe early next year. And so, that’s why we have to always be actively growing our communities. So, that’s tip number three; to be growing your audience during this time.

And so, then I have two more just bonus tips for you. So, tip number four is definitely continue to market consistently. So, we’re talking about Facebook ads and doing strategies to really grow your community in tip number three. But tip number four is show up consistently.

If you’ve been doing Facebook lives in your community every week, make sure you keep doing that. If you haven’t been sending a consistent newsletter every week, start doing that. Maybe it’s time to launch a podcast. Maybe it’s time to launch a YouTube channel. Think about how you’re going to show up consistently for your audience because they are paying attention right now.

They are listening and they are looking for the leaders who are calm, who are poised, who are not in panic and stress and struggle and who are going to lead them to where they want to go, who are going to provide a solution to the problem that they have.

So, make sure that you are showing up consistently for your people and you’re not just disappearing on them in the midst of this crisis. Think about your people and who you serve. What do they need from you right now? How can you show up and deliver for them?

Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to be on a 24-hour nonstop live stream. Because I’ve seen that too and I think it’s bananas. You’ve got a business to run, you’ve got bills to pay, you need to be able to make money. But you do want to continue to show up and nurture your audience. And when you do that, you are going to find that more people are reaching out to work with you and to pay you for your services.

So, keep showing up consistently for your people and create relevant content for them. So, this is about finding your rhythm, as I mentioned, and a system, a creating and marketing system so that you can show up consistently for your people. That is so incredibly important right now.

And those people who already have those services in place are winning. Those who don’t, it’s time to set it up. There’s not time like the present to get in there and start showing up for your people. And you will see that when you show up for your people, they will start showing up for you and paying you.

And then last but not least, invest in your mindset, invest in your community. Right now, if you are a part of a coaching community, if you are part of a free Facebook group, if you’ve got a business mastermind that you’re a part of, if you’ve got any kind of community where you can tap into entrepreneurs who are looking for the opportunities in this crisis, who are calm, who are staying positive, who are taking care of themselves, who are sharing tips and strategies about what’s working for them, that’s where you need to be right now.

So, those are not bills that you should be cancelling. You want to make sure that you’ve got a community of badass entrepreneurs, if you’re a woman entrepreneur, being in a group of badass women will really serve you so well during this time.

If I was surrounded by people who were freaking out about this coronavirus and freaking out about the economic fallout related to this coronavirus all day every day, I would have a hard time staying in my place of cool, calm, and abundance. I would believe that I couldn’t make money.

But instead, I’m literally surrounded by entrepreneurs who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars, who are having their best months ever. So many of my mastermind members had their best month ever in March 2020, which is insane to think about because that is exactly when all of this stuff started to build and became a crisis. That’s when the shutdowns began.

And during the worst of it, my clients are still out there making money and they’re selling coaching services, they’re selling legal services, they’re selling their therapy services. They are selling services in the arts and design. They are selling things that are not considered essential.

So, mindset is everything and it is my belief that having a strong mindset comes from the community that you surround yourself with. So, really place yourself in a positive community. If you’re currently not in one, you are welcome to join my Facebook group. It’s called Hello Seven Facebook Group. Look for us. And that is a place where you can join a group of women entrepreneurs who are out here killing it and being super positive in the process.

Alright, so, those are your five tips. And just as a quick review, number one, you want to retain your current customers, do what you can to retain your current customers. Number two, you want to monetize your untapped audience. Number three, you want to grow the audience that you currently have, grow your audience, bring new people into your community.

Number four, you want to make sure that you are marketing consistently, showing up consistently for the people in your community. And lastly, number five, you really want to focus on having a strong mindset. And in my opinion, that comes from having a really strong business community that you can go to for support, for when you’re struggling, for now ideas, for opportunities, and to just stay in this really positive place.

So, those are my five tips for you to be able to keep your revenue going and growing during this time. Now, some of you may have additional questions and be wondering, like, “Okay, I know those are the five things that I need to do. Super-helpful. But how do I go about doing all of them?”

And that is what I want to offer you, is an opportunity to get on the phone with a member of my team and be able to talk through this plan of how you are going to continue to make money, how are you going to have a growth plan during this economic recession?

And so, if you are a woman entrepreneur that is really interested in taking advantage of the opportunities and interested in growing your business during this time, particularly if you sell services, because that is who my team is specifically poised to help, we have a ton of experience helping women entrepreneurs who sell services. So, if that is you, you should definitely have a call with us.

So, you got to helloseven.co/apply and that is where you can fill out a short application and then you can book a call with somebody on my team. Sow what we’re going to do on this call is go over this plan, walk you through these five steps, walk through what’s happening in your business right now. Have you seen a revenue-drop? Do you need to grow your audience? What moves do you need to make?

The person who you are going to have a call with, her name is Grace. She’s amazing. She’s a very experienced entrepreneur. She’s had brick and mortar businesses, service businesses. She’s had to pivot. She has sold businesses. And so, she’s got a lot to share with you about how you can have a growth plan during this time.

The call is completely free. And the reason why we were able to make it free is because we know there is a percentage of the people who do a call with us who are going to want our help to work with them and who are going to be interested in signing up for one of our programs to get more assistance from us.

There is no hard-sell on this call. This is really about connecting with you and really trying to help you. And if we think we’re a good fit to work with you, we’ll let you know that. And it’s up to you whether you want to work with us or not.

A lot of people who do this call, we say, “Actually, we can’t help you. But here’s where we can point you to.” We point you in another direction. So, we are not interested in doing a hard-sell. We only want people in our program who are amazing. We have an incredible community of entrepreneurs. And so, we are very protective of that community.

So, if that sounds amazing to you, please go ahead and go to helloseven.co/apply to fill out the application, get all of the details. It’s a really short application just to let us know what’s going on in your business, and then you get a free call with a member of my team to really help you figure out what your growth plan is going to look like at this time.

So, the main thing that I want you to think about as you think about these things, review your notes, decide what your action plan is going to be, I really want you to think about an 80-20 rule. There’s a lot of businesses out there who are going to struggle and who are going to have a hard time keeping their doors open during this economic recession, who have built a house of cards that doesn’t really have a solid foundation.

And then there’s the other 20%. And those 20% have been always pushing their revenue forward. Even when they don’t need the money, they keep growing because they know there might be a rainy day in the future.

They know that building up a savings is essential, just to have that safety net. They know that they can have a bigger impact, so why not keep going? They also know that they need a team, that they need to take advantage of intellectual property, that they need to build a business that is sustainable.

And so, you have to decide what kind of business do you want to be? In this economy, all of these issues are business issues, ae personal mindset issues, our personal imposter syndrome, all of that stuff is going to come to the surface in the midst of an economic crisis like this.

And so, it’s up to you to decide, “Am I going to be like the bottom 80% that are not building elite long-lasting businesses? Or am I going to be like that 20% that is going to build a business, that is going to be around for decades and that is going to weather the storm and survive many recessions?” Not just this one, but others in the future. And we’re going to be just fine. And we’re going to be able to continue to grow and take advantage of the opportunities that are presented by recessions rather than failing during this time.

So, you have to think about what kind of business you want to be. If you want to be in that to 20% then I encourage you to book a call with my team. We’ll be able to help you out. Thank you for your time and attention. I hope this was helpful for you. Go forth and conquer and we’ll talk to you real soon. Bye, guys.

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