Have you crunched your 2019 numbers yet? And I don’t just mean your revenue numbers—revenue is only a part of the story when assessing your 2019 to date. While your monthly revenue numbers are important, there are several other numbers you must consider that will paint a fuller picture and allow you to diagnose how you need to adjust for the second half of the year. This is all about getting honest with yourself about how you’ve shown up, and how that has affected your bottom line.
What you measure matters.
When I look at the full composite of Q1 and Q2 over here at Hello Seven, it’s clear that we are precisely on schedule for our 2019 goals.
We're continuing to grow and scale both our company and our revenue, and in order to do so we've spent the first half of the year completely reworking our backend—with a focus on marketing and delivery. We’ve been incredibly intentional and systematic so that we can scale without harming our clients or the team. We're now systematizing our sales process and growing our team to support the influx of clients we anticipate as we scale to $10M—which is our “larger than 2019” goal.
We have more than 2Xed our Q1 & Q2 combined revenue over 2018, which means we are right on track for hitting my goal of doubling our revenue over the previous year—I hit this goal last year and fully plan to make it happen again.
We’re exactly where we want to be, and that is an incredible feeling to take into the remainder of this year.
Let’s look at how we’ve gotten here.
MARKETING
Most of our marketing is now systematized, and we produce at least one podcast and newsletter per week, along with Instagram and Facebook posts and stories. (I was a late adopter on IG stories, but now I’m a convert!)
Podcasts produced: 15
Newsletters: 27
Marketing emails: 97
Instagram posts: 181
Webinars delivered: 7 (3 of these were “UnWebinars” which are—op, you’ll have to join MDB to get that sauce)
Media Appearances: 4
Keynotes/Non-H7 Workshops: 2
Live Events: 4
I cannot stress enough the power of finding your rhythm with content that converts. This is one of the essential levers I teach in Glow Up and MDB, because creating consistent, valuable content is one of the best ways to build “like, know, and trust” with your community.
We’ve noted that the podcast serves as an amazing way to bring our ideal clients into our community and then programs, so we are working on strategies to focus more of our energy and attention there. Webinars are going to happen MORE (but with much less team time required), and live appearances and speaking in person is another area we’re going to spend more time developing.
These marketing metrics matter not only because they affect who comes into our programs, but also because, with a small team, every single thing we do needs to have a direct relationship to increasing our revenue.
PROGRAM DELIVERY
We spent the first half of 2019 diligently working on our backend to maximize and exemplify delivery in all of our programs. We’ve taken 100 new members into Glow Up in this first half of 2019, and we are closing June out with 41 MDB members. Glow Up serves as a natural proving ground for Million Dollar Badass, so finessing the experience is essential—over half of our current mastermind members joined us from Glow Up.
I wrote an entire article about the importance of delivery which you can read here, so I won’t go into it again. In short: delivery matters. Honor it. Value it. Prioritize it.
In order to serve these 141 clients well over the course of the past six months, one thing has become abundantly clear: we needed even more support ourselves.
HIRING (AND WHY I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT SALES HERE)
I make no claims that I do any of this alone. I have a badass team, and the $600,000 in profit we made last year is what convinced me that it was time to turn my contractors into full time employees. I started the year by hiring 4 full time team members, and I’m closing out this first half of 2019 with 3 brand new employees and one more position still to be filled. This means Hello Seven is going into Q3 with 7 employees and 5 contractors.
If you're wary of hiring employees, trust me, I get it. That weekly payroll is a fearsome thing to confront, at first. However, let my experience pave the way for you: we saw a 40% increase in revenue after hiring 4 full time employees. #WorthIt
One of those new full-time employees is a badass who’s taking the lead on our new client enrollment. #praise
Enrollment has long been managed by the entire team, and many of our past clients spoke directly to me or any one of my amazing coaches before entering into a program. However, this quickly became an unsustainable practice—it became abundantly clear that we needed ONE person, in-house, whose entire focus was devoted to the influx of interest in Hello Seven we’ve experienced due to our killer marketing and intentional delivery.
Once you nail marketing and delivery, you essentially create a deluge of a funnel leading directly to your phone. And you want to have the best person on the other end of that line to guide clients into your programs and services. This is why I'm talking about hiring over sales, which you would think is the natural follow up category to discuss after the previous explorations of Hello Seven's marketing and delivery.
Over the past year, we’ve tried out several different methods to solve our enrollment problem, and resolving it at the end of the first half of the year makes the second half look like a delightful pleasure ride. My team is essential to the growth of Hello Seven’s revenue, and they’re the only reason I can even entertain my ambitious revenue goals:
I believe in them.
OTHER NOTEWORTHY MEASURES
- We are under contract for a historic building in downtown Greensboro to serve as Hello Seven HQ, and we’ve begun work on plans for the restoration.
- My book proposal was FINALIZED, submitted to agents, and snatched up by a BIG DEAL agent in less than 3 weeks.
- Million Dollar Made: A Luxe Leadership Retreat for Advanced Entrepreneurs was revamped and relaunched, and we sold six spots for France 2020. #chateaulife
As I look back over the first 6 months of 2019, it’s obvious we’ve slayed. Much of that slayage has yielded a massive return. Now, we trim the fat where we made errors or found our efforts to be ineffective, and we claim the remainder of our 2019 goals.
Here are some resources to refocus your efforts as you enter into the third quarter of 2019:
Podcasts
- Hire Your Million Dollar Team to Build Serious Wealth
- How to Price Your Services to Avoid Burnout and Leave a Legacy
- How to Be a Chillpreneur with Denise Duffield-Thomas
- A Masterclass in Million Dollar Mindset with Kaneisha Grayson
Articles
- Don’t Make Another Decision Without Reading This
- You Can Be Everyone’s Mama or You Can Be Rich
- There Can Only Be ONE Ideal Client
- Are Your Skills Sabotaging Your Revenue?
Okay, now it’s your turn to pause and assess.
Take a look back at your 2019 so far, measure what actually matters, and complete your Quarterly Review. Consider where you are in relation to your goals for the year and make the necessary decisions that will allow you to reach the bar you set for yourself back when you were a doe-eyed, fresh faced thing back on January first.
This isn’t the time to give up. This is the time to level up, get out of your comfort zone, and get excited.
xo,
R