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Organized Chaos

Are you feeling overwhelmed because you are busy doing it all? Taking the kids to soccer while a client is waiting for an urgent reply…Don’t you wish you could step away without feeling like a failure as a parent?Imagine accepting that YOU ARE an amazing, empowered mom and have found ways to balance both life and work (sacrificing only the idea of the perfect mom).In this podcast you will learn how to self-coach amidst the chaos, create the habits you want to be at peace with yourself and thrive in every season of your life. Your host Teresa Hildebrand is a mom of two, certified master life coach for mompreneurs, and creator of the C.H.I. Method™️, who is growing despite the chaos and sharing her insights along the way. She brings in guests from a variety of fields and specialities to bring their own genius to your day; with an occasional life coaching session so you can hear Teresa guide others to help them move towards what makes their heart happy. Each episode will leave you with the confidence and belief that you can tackle your daily goals, and manifest a life of clarity, harmony, and intentionality.

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Organized Chaos

From $40k to Six-Figures: Essential Strategies for Business Success

October 30, 2024 • Teresa Hildebrand • Episode 295

0:00 | 32:11

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#295 - What's the difference between making $40k in your business and surpassing 6-figures? It's not what you think. You'll learn six essential strategies to propel your online business forward, saving you time, energy, and money along the way.

Our story isn't just about business tactics; it's about a mindset shift. We unravel the myth that posting on social media equals business success and stress the importance of aligning your business efforts with personal goals and strengths. By reverse engineering your objectives, you can ensure your business model supports your desired lifestyle. Explore how intentional living and leveraging your natural abilities can accelerate progress, turning perceived obstacles into opportunities for growth and learning.

Lastly, embrace the power of investing in yourself and seeking mentorship. We'll share how surrounding ourselves with positive, proactive individuals and engaging with expert guidance transformed our business journey. From overcoming the daunting transition from a W2 to an entrepreneurial mindset to making pivotal investments in our growth, this episode is your guide to achieving rapid business success and realizing your dream lifestyle. Join us for an inspiring conversation that encourages you to focus on abundance, creativity, and the indispensable value of mentorship.

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Building a Successful Online Business

Speaker 1 0:00

So what would we do if we started our six-figure online business over again to get back to where we are without having to go through the pain and the struggle of the 12 years that it took to get here? That's what we're going to be talking about here today. We've been having a lot of conversation with people around some of the things that they really wish they had known before they started their business, and we want to be able to bring that stuff to you, and so we put together a training today, because we really want you to get ahead of a lot of the things that we're going to be talking about, because you can either go through the pain yourself or have somebody else go through the pain and give you the shortcuts so that you don't have to travel down that road. Now here's the thing talking to a lot of people who were struggling, like we were in the beginning, with getting started. I find that a lot of people and from these conversations, people start off doing the fancy work. First, they start putting together the graphics, the name of their business, their website, what they're gonna be talking about, what they're gonna be selling and all of these things, which are great once you have your foundation built, because if you don't get the first floor built, you can't start putting the fancy furniture on the second floor. It's gonna get messed up the first time that it rains, right? You've got to make sure that you build up that foundation and have everything set in place before you take those steps.

Speaker 1 1:11

And today we really want to dive into this, because not only do we want you to not waste time and waste energy and really waste money, but we want you to build the business of your dreams, because we know that you're here to help people in the world that really, truly need your help.

Speaker 1 1:27

But we've got to get out of our own way sometimes and we've got to have some processes to put in place to make sure that we're spending our time and energy wisely. So if you're somebody who's just getting started in business, maybe you just have an idea of what you want to get started with, but you have no idea how to implement it. Or you've been in business and you feel like you have been stuck and you feel like man, I don't know what it is. Well, today's training is going to be for you, because we're going to help you get unstuck by sharing the six things that we absolutely need to know, or needed to know, in order to grow a multiple, six-figure online business, so that you can grow that too. If you're ready to do that with us, let's go.

Speaker 2 2:18

Hey, my name is Teresa Hildebrand and this is Organized Chaos. We take a deep dive into living with intentionality, focusing on what's important in our lives so we can truly feel our best. It may feel chaotic at times, but with a little organization, the right mindset and a ton of self-love, we can still thrive. Join me as we talk to other busy moms and experts who will share tips and strategies to help you reach your goals. Hope you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos.

Overcoming Business Challenges for Entrepreneurs

Speaker 1 2:42

Now on to the show you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos. Now on to the show. All right guys, welcome back. Let's dive right in Now. So, for those of you guys who don't know who we are, I'm Mark and Teresa. We are online coaches, slash entrepreneurs, slash parents, slash all these million other things that we do, and we personally were stuck at that $40,000 range for a long time in our business, and what we realized is, in order for us to leave our full-time jobs Teresa from corporate, me from LAPD we needed to be able to find a solution to be able to speed up the process of growth, and what we found are these six things that we want to share with you today that if we were to start over again, we would actually do differently, so we could actually grow exponentially faster. Now, since implementing these things, we would actually do differently, so we could actually grow exponentially faster. Now, since implementing these things, we rose to multiple six figures. We've been able to both retire from our career.

Speaker 1 3:31

Like so many people jump into business, they're super excited, right, and they don't take the time to slow down and realize that starting a business takes work, it takes energy, it takes money, it takes time and it takes focus in order to make it happen, and the reason why is because business is not easy. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. We wouldn't have an opportunity to separate ourselves from everybody else who tries something for a couple months. Instead, we have to get really good at leaning into what it takes to become an entrepreneur. We're going to dive into that today, but some of the things that I personally have seen as to why business is so hard, as well as all the thousands of people that we work with and have conversations with, there's a few things that really resonate with me that I want to make sure that you're going to be up against, because when you understand that you're up against it, it gives you the power to get through it if you choose to, and I don't think you would be here and still be watching this if you didn't choose to. So let's talk about this real quick, right? So here's how business is so hard. We have an idea, we have a thought, we have a thing that we know that we personally have been through sometimes, and now we want to be able to help other people through it too. So we are so excited, but we don't know what to do with that excitement. We're like well, should we start talking about social media? Should we get an LLC for our business? Should we talk to an accountant? Like, how are we get this program in place? How do we get a product? What should I sell? What are people going to want?

Speaker 1 4:54

And what happens is we get into this piece where we're not actually taking action. We're just consuming everything on the planet and we're not doing anything with it. Right, and one of the things that I like to say a lot because I learned it through hard, painful situations that I've been through is you don't get better by consuming. You get better by acting, because you cannot improve in action. Right, but when we first get started and we're like, okay, we're going to do something, and we convince ourselves to take action, then we just start doing the exciting things. We start doing the things that like oh, this must be what business is all about. This is designing the graphics, this is thinking about your website. This is like going to GoDaddy and doing some searching and figuring out what that thing is gonna be. It's thinking about, like, landing pages. And it thinks about like, oh, let me connect my bank account to this Stripe account and PayPal and all these great things, and some of those things are important.

Speaker 1 5:42

I'm not going to say that, but a lot of times we put the cart in front of the horse, meaning we have nothing to sell, we have nothing to do, but we're building all of these systems and everything in place before we actually know what we're going to not only lean into but, based off of our strengths, based off of the things that we love to do and based off of the things that we're capable of doing, we don't even think about that. First we jump into the kind of like fancy level stuff, the higher level stuff, when really we need to be starting out at the base level. Now here's the thing. I know a lot of people who get past this stage and they're like you know what? Now I'm going to do it, I'm going to build my program, I'm going to put together this product, I'm going to sell somebody else's product, and they spend all of this time doing that, putting it all together. They have this beautiful back end, they have this Mighty Networks or Kajabi, like everything's beautiful, and they have zero people to sell to. And because they did it backwards and you're going to hear this in one of mine is like how we do things backwards. We think we've got to create a program or product and then we just release it to the world and everybody comes knocking down our doors. That is not how it works. It's actually.

Speaker 1 6:49

There's an opposite theory that I really lean into. That's helped me grow our business a lot by not just actually starting with me putting together the program, but instead me making a decision on who I'm going to help, the problems I'm going to help people solve, and starting from there and working backwards. But here's the thing All of these things are things that we naturally go through in business, especially if you're doing this by yourself, and every single time that we get into one of these potential barriers, we have a decision to make. The decision is do I keep going? Do I make this not be about me? Do I make this mean that I just have something to learn and grow, or do we make this mean that I just can't be successful in business? I must not be good at this. I must not be able to help anyone. You get the opportunity every step of the way to make a decision. If you're going to lean into this, go all in and learn the lesson, or you're going to just shut down and not take those steps. So here's the thing I would really highly encourage you to actually have a plan and really connect with somebody who can help you.

Speaker 1 7:42

But regardless, I think the thing that I really want to make sure everybody gets from this is understanding that it's time to lean in when things get uncomfortable. When you do some of these things which, by the way, all of these things we personally have done it's an opportunity for you to lean in, for you to learn the lesson and for you to teach it to someone else so that they never have to go through it again. And that's why we're here. I just really want you to know there's a lot of power in coming up against these obstacles and getting through them, getting to the other side, because now you can help so many other people get through it too.

Speaker 1 8:15

Now, the reason why I started off with this is not because I want everybody to peace out on business. It's because I don't want people who are not going to be willing to take action, to make adjustments along the way, to not take this personal. I don't want you to waste any time if you're not going to be able to do that by being here, I mean definitely it's not something that our program is for for people who are just testing things out you have to be willing to lean in. You have to be willing to put in the action and the energy and not take it personal, which is something that we're going to be talking a lot about today, because that is how true businesses are built. They're built on you learning the lesson, you trying a bunch of things, figuring out what works, figuring out what doesn't work, sharing your knowledge with other people and then making sure that you're surrounding yourself in an environment of other people who are doing the same thing. That is what will make you successful in business.

Speaker 1 8:58

Now we want to give you some tactics and some strategies along with that, but that mindset piece that I just shared with you is the most important thing of all. You're going to get knocked down. It depends on whether you're willing to get up and how many times you're willing to get up and stop asking yourself how long is it going to take, and start figuring out how much more you're going to be able to succeed, how much more you're going to be able to create, because the more that you lean in and actually find the solutions that we're talking about here, the more that you're going to make an impact in the world and then know what's going to happen. Six years are going to go by and then somebody's going to be like, oh, you must have gotten lucky. And anytime that I hear that from people who are like, oh, you must have gotten lucky for you and Teresa to retire, I'm like you are out of your mind.

Speaker 1 9:41

If you think this has to do with luck, this is all about learning, struggling, paying money to learn things, having mentors and all the things that we're going to be talking about here today. All right, so people will think that you got lucky, but I guarantee you inside you're going to be like there was no luck as a part of this process. All right, luck is just you taking a lot of action and being present. When that thing is not, opportunity presents itself. That's really what I think luck is, as opposed to not taking action and just like not stepping into your true potential, not only as a business owner, but the impact that you're going to make in the world.

Speaker 1 10:14

Now here's the thing I want to start getting into these three, or actually six, things that we wish we had known before we got started. But I wanted to set you up that way because I want to make sure that you're all in with this. You're not just going to test this out. You're going to lean into this and create the business of your dreams because you and your family and, honestly, the world, deserve it. Because this isn't just about you, it's about the people that you can impact and you have to be willing to fight that fight.

Speaker 1 10:38

So what we're going to do is I'm going to pass it over to Teresa we're going to kind of go back and forth we important things that we wish we had known. That would have sped up the process and the growth of our success, of our business. Some of them I kind of hinted around. Right now we're going to go into a little bit deeper because I want you to have these six things. I want you to take notes and anything that resonates with you. We want to see it in the chat. We want you to comment If you've gone past that in your business. I want you to share how getting past these things has really helped you tremendously. All right, ready to get into number one?

Speaker 3 11:07

Let's go.

Entrepreneur Mindset and Business Alignment

Speaker 1 11:07

Okay, go for it.

Speaker 3 11:08

All right. So number one is that posting on social media doesn't mean that I have a business.

Speaker 1 11:15

Ouch.

Speaker 3 11:22

Yeah, and this is a really hard one to kind of grasp, because we see so many people on social media and we think that if we just start posting that people are going to come to us First of all, that if we just start posting that people are going to come to us First of all, not a lot of people see our stuff and that's for everybody. There are people that can kind of train the algorithm and things like that so that more people can they can get more reach. However, for most people, whatever you post on social media, a very, very small percentage see that very, very small percentage. See that. But also, social media is just the tip of the iceberg. It's just a strategy to be able to, you know, share your business, but it's a very, very small piece.

Speaker 3 11:58

So putting so much effort into social media, especially at the beginning, is a big mistake, and I wish I knew when we first started that I didn't have to put so much effort into it. Now, you know, if I look at my social media account, I'm like it's been years that I've been posting in thousands and thousands of posts, but that's not where the money has come in for us. Social media has not brought us the revenue that we have now. It's been a small piece and an important piece, but it wasn't the thing that I needed to focus on at the very beginning.

Speaker 1 12:32

Yeah, I love that. I love it because I originally thought that when I had a social media account and I started posting stuff about my business, I might have a business Only, like you said, like nobody would actually respond to it and even on social media, like I had to go out and find my person right, because not everybody on social media is your person right. But there's some things that we have to do to reverse engineer it to make social media worth it when you do post it. That's something we'll talk about a little bit later. So, for me, the first one is making sure that my goals and my strengths are in alignment with my business. Here's the thing when I think about like leaving LAPD, one Think about like leaving LAPD. One of the things that I didn't realize is that I don't wanna like leave a job so that I can work a business that I hate just as much as my job. I wanna make sure that it's number one in alignment with my goals, meaning that I actually want to achieve and make it so that I can have a significant income that allows me to retire from work, and actually want to do that Now being able to reverse engineer this, which is what we do as life and performance coaches had me realize that absolutely I do want to be at home. I kind of want to be like a stay-at-home dad, where I get to take the kids to school, I get to spend time with Teresa. After this, we're going to go on a walk and just do like things that I typically couldn't do. Being an LAPD sergeant, having to work 12-hour days, having to work 12 hour days, having to be on call for a ton of different things, right. But I had to reverse engineer what those goals would look like and really like does the business actually fit into what those goals are? So if I was, let's say, selling, you know, let's say, somebody else's product, right, and I was getting about $10 or $20 for every sale that I was making, I'd have to look at the numbers and say, ok, if we want to have and make $250,000 a year because we live in California, so that's what we have to make in order for us to make ends meet, if we want to make $250,000 a year, how many sales would I have to make for a $10 item? And those numbers really at the time didn't really work out for us. I was like that's not going to happen, right? And so really thinking about reverse engineering the business that you're going to be in. You have to work the numbers out now, not after you start the business and you start having conversations. You start selling things, because if the numbers don't work out, we shouldn't be spending time and energy into it.

Speaker 1 14:43

Second part of this is my strengths. So, when it comes to me with my strengths, strengths is not social media, strengths is not marketing. Strengths is, for me, video. Strength is my energy. Strength is my coaching ability. Strength is me and my intuition, and so, whatever I had was going to do, I had to ask myself is this based off of my strength zone? Now, for me, coaching was in my strength zone.

Speaker 1 15:07

I wouldn't say health and fitness was my strength zone, even though that's where I started. But when I leaned into it, I was like health and fitness first off. I'm going to have to have 100,000 clients, right? I don't want to have that many. I'm going to have to talk about health and fitness all the time. I don't want to talk about health and fitness all the time, right? And also, it's not my strength like me, teaching exercises, classes or writing meal plans, like even I, even though I have that certification, that is not fun to me. It's not like I can't wait to come home so I can write people meal plans. Now, if you're like I love meal plans and I'm like let's do it Right. But you have to have this conversation about is the business that you're going to start is in alignment with your goals really also with your core values, but also based on your strengths?

Speaker 1 15:46

If I had known that, I would have not wasted like four or five years. Now here's the thing I said wasted. I want to go back on that. I don't mean wasted. I would have sped up the process so it didn't take me five years to learn that lesson. Because here's the thing I know.

Speaker 1 15:59

Ubang talks about getting people to take action. The one thing that I'm the best at is taking action. I mean I wrote a book called Mastering your Life Through Self-Coaching the Tactical Guide to Get you to Show Up and Become a Leader of Leaders, right, so you can take those actions. I'm the person who, when somebody is like, hey, take action a year from now, I'll take action for five years, like that's not a problem of mine.

Speaker 1 16:20

When people say like I don't have enough money to be able to do things, I will find a way to make it happen. Like I'm the action taker, I'm not focused on what's broken, wrong or missing or what I don't have. I'm focused on okay, but what else can I do? I mean, I borrowed money from my mom. I borrowed money from my brother. I did so many things that made it so that it was possible to get to where I am, because I wasn't stuck on not taking action right.

Speaker 1 16:41

But that's my strength. That's something that I actually want to lean into is like leaning into my strength and being able to pull that with me into every endeavor that I possibly could take right. So when I think about business, when I think about overcoming obstacles and resiliency, those are really important things for you to be able to have and tap into, especially if you're like wanting to grow a business, because you have to be willing to do those things right. So that's why I want to make sure that when you do start a business, that when you do make that decision that you actually think about, is it related to my goals? Is it possible for me to actually hit my goals based off of this, and is it something that is in my strength zone that I love to do. If so, then we're going to keep moving, but if not, we need to examine it now, not down the road, when you have thousands of customers and you're thinking about making a pivot now. Right, we can think about some of these things in advance.

Speaker 3 17:28

Number three for you so, number three, what I wish I knew was adopting an entrepreneur mindset was a must. Like Mark said, that's the most important thing. Like this wasn't hey, I'm gonna dip my toe in, or hey, I'm just gonna try this out. Or oh, this is kind of like a hobby. Right now I'm gonna treat it like a hobby. I had to really adopt a mindset of I'm going to do this. This is what I am committed to doing.

Speaker 3 17:58

I didn't know all the steps, I didn't know how long it was going to take, but I knew that if I had that energy going into it, that it would have happened a lot faster. So our success would have happened a lot faster. Now, of course, we have a little bit of a different dynamic here, because it was, you know, the both of the, both of us working on the business. But, you know, even if you're by yourself like we'll talk a little bit later about some of the other strategies you can use when it's just you and like trying to create a business but I knew in my mind that if I had known to really apply like this mindset of like a go-getter and like, hey, you know, if I know what I want and I know that what I'm going to be doing is going to be enjoyable and it's going to make a difference. I really need to take it seriously, because there's so many people who will just jump into something.

Speaker 3 18:55

They get really excited, they get really motivated and they're just like, oh, you know, they're just going to go in like, kind of like a try it kind of yeah Like yeah, that kind of attitude and I got to say like in the beginning you may not know if this is going to work out, Like nobody knows that you have like the ability or the potential to make this happen, like you have to apply that attitude and that energy into it because you will find that it will go a lot faster if you do that, rather than just like going in and then coming out and then basically failing and then feeling like a failure when it's just an experiment. We're all going to fail, Doesn't matter how many tactics, how many strategies we give you. That's part of the process. Failure is part of the process in order to get to success. So, knowing that, going into that, you can learn the lessons from that and move forward a lot faster.

Speaker 1 20:07

Yes, yeah, this entrepreneurial mindset one. I think we could spend the whole video on this because of how important it is. What I have to say is, like you don't have to be an entrepreneur to have an entrepreneur mindset. I was a police sergeant from LAPD, like what I could sell people into was handcuffs and that was pretty much it. Like I'd never been in retail my entire life. Teresa was working in corporate.

Speaker 1 20:29

It's like these things, these ideas of being an entrepreneur, were not with us in the beginning, so we started out in a multi-level marketing business. That's when entrepreneurship started to rub off on us and we're like, hey, we would love to be able to achieve this stuff, to not have to work all the time, but being able to have a steady income where we could actually there was uncapped and there was no cap to how much money we could make. Right, when we realized that we had to have an entrepreneur mindset, which was we're testing it out, we're going to figure it out. It's just a matter of it has nothing to do with me and my worth. It has everything to do with. Is this the right thing to bring people or is this not the right thing to bring people? Having that entrepreneur mindset is like I'm going to find a way and I'm going to like be more creative and not be focused on what I don't have, not be focused on how everybody else had it easier, not be focused on lack of time, money, resources, but be focused on what can I do to make this happen without, like we always say on this channel without burning yourself out or sacrificing your family time. There is 100% a way if you're willing to lean in and learn that, but you have to have that entrepreneur mindset. Now, number four for us is very much related to this entrepreneur mindset, and that is I wish that we had gotten into the right environment sooner Working corporate, working, lapd.

The Power of Investing in Yourself

Speaker 1 21:42

There was not a lot of people with an entrepreneur mindset that we'd have conversations with. Most of them were like what you are working? You've been working here for 20 years, like most people work for 33 years at LAPD, and then they retire and they get to live a comfortable life and they're like you've literally gotten more than halfway and now you're going to leave this, you're going to leave this job, you're going to leave the security and all the things that you have and you can't even collect a pension for being in that environment pulled me down a lot and it was because I was trying to figure out ways of being able to succeed as an entrepreneur while I was fighting the whole internal things that was happening by working at LAPD. And if I had a chance to go back, I would have made sure that I got into an environment where business owners and entrepreneurs that was the norm as quickly as possible. Not that I could have removed myself from my police career I couldn't. At the time I wasn't making enough money.

Speaker 1 22:31

We're making $40,000 per year in our business but when we leaned into a group of people more often than when I was hanging out at LAPD, it got me to think differently. It got me to start focusing on what I could create. It got me to focus on abundance. It got me to focus on purpose and potential and what I could really do, rather than the negativity of what's broken, wrong or missing, which is what's on 99% of the careers and stuff out there. If you look at social media right now, I don't even know what's going on with the election and all that kind of stuff. I could care less, because the direct impact that it has on me depends on how much of my time and my energy I put into that level of negativity, but when I focus on creating something and I'm around other people who are creating something too, I got to tell you that energy is contagious and it will help you to break through, to take action, to do all the things that we're talking about. Because you're hanging out with people who that's just their norm. I dare you to hang out with people who their norm is to think of problems that people have, think of solutions of it, think of a way to market it and how to sell it, have conversations, rinse and repeat until they find their products and their programs that work. I guarantee you that if you hang out in that environment, guess what will happen to you too? You will be more creative. You will find different ways and different solutions and you'll be less focusing on what could potentially go wrong and you'll be focused on what you're creating in this world. Your life will look entirely different Mine did Of a year of being in that kind of environment, not hiding in the back, not just paying to be in the environment, but being in the environment, jumping up to the front of the room and saying I need help.

Speaker 1 23:58

This is where I'm going through. This is what I need. I need some ideas, some creativity. It is incredible what you can get not also from the energy from other people who share the same values and goals and want to get after it as much as you do.

Speaker 1 24:11

So if I had to start over, this would probably be the first thing I do is make sure I get into an environment.

Speaker 1 24:16

I don't just sit in the back of the room, I'm at the front of the class and I'm taking notes. I'm taking action. I'm bringing those actions back to get everybody's advice, because that is the best thing that I could have done back then and instead I was just sucked into whatever it is that anybody else was talking about, whatever it was that was going on social media, whatever that was going on in LAPD. At the end I worked at Internal Affairs and let me tell you, there's not a lot of positivity that comes out of the whole Internal Affairs and investigating people, right, but I was so sucked into that I wish I would have had an environment that would have pulled me away from it sooner. Thank God we did that and now we actually create environments like this for people who refuse to just be led in those other environments where that negative negativity and toxicity come. So that is number four from the six things that we wish we had known.

Speaker 3 25:02

Yeah. So number five is what I wish I had known is that I can incorporate everything that I've learned and all the experiences that I had outside of business into my business, so not feeling like I was starting off from square one. And here's what I mean. I worked for I don't know 10, 15 years before we started a business. What we do now has nothing to do with what I used to do, like it was a whole different career. It's not even related to what we're doing now, but I learned so much from my work experience, so it doesn't matter what you did in the past.

Speaker 3 25:43

Everything that you all, the skills that you developed, everything that you learned along the way, the failures and the lessons that you learned from that. If you learned your lessons, all of that can potentially be applied to your business. For example, there were just kind of like what Mark, piggybacking on what Mark said. The thing that would really make me not move forward in my career was my environment. So the people that I was hanging out with you know the water cooler that really wanted to, you know like develop themselves and learn things, and you know if they saw a problem, they wanted to find a solution, not complain about it so that attitude can be applied in business as well. I mean, we just talked about it and how it can be applied.

Speaker 3 26:46

So everything that you've learned, all of the experiences that you've had, especially in leadership so if you've had a leadership position in like the corporate world or anything like that, that can most definitely be applied in your business, right? Because most likely, once your business grows, you're going to have a team, you're going to have people that you have to deal with, that you want to connect with, that you want to have great communication with. So don't feel like you're starting off from scratch. If you're starting a business, you never are. If you've had experience working or any life experience at all, that can also be applied to business.

Speaker 1 27:26

Yeah, 100%. So if you've lost weight, you're a parent, you're a spouse, those are all things that you get to bring into your business. And any situation that you've been through, any struggle that you've been through resiliency, being able to overcome obstacles that literally makes you the person who now can help others do it. So it doesn't really matter where you are. You get to bring everything that you remind yourself that you have with you into business. If you pretend like you're starting over, guess what you are starting over, because you will forget all of that stuff. But you get to bring all that stuff with you if you choose, and also remind yourself to do that, which actually perfectly leads into number six. So the sixth thing that I absolutely wish that I'd known earlier is to invest into myself, by whether it's hiring a coach, getting a program, having somebody who's a few steps ahead of me, that can help push me to not only learn new things, but to reflect on what's working and change up what's not. Here's what I mean. I, early on in business, was just taking action like I was saying I was doing it and doing it, and doing it and doing it, and I didn't have a way of reflecting on what's working and what's not working, what can I adjust and what can I not adjust? And because I didn't have that, it slowed down my growth exponentially. Because what happened when I actually found a team and I found a mentor is I spent a significant amount of income that some of you guys might be like you spent that much? And my answer is yes, because I wanted to get through the struggle as fast as I could, to actually come out on the other end so we could retire and being able to lean into that. I really wish that I had done that sooner. I had all of the thoughts I'm like. Literally all I had was, you know, credit card debt. How am I going to be able to afford this? And remember what we talked about the entrepreneur mindset. The entrepreneur mindset in me was like, oh, I've got to have a certain amount of money saved or I have to have a certain amount of thing first before I can invest in that, and that kept me stuck for a super long time.

Speaker 1 29:18

But one of the stories that I tell is is back when I was needing something different. Right, I realized that coaching was like my thing, but I didn't really have the certification or the know-how to like really develop my skills. So I spent $20,000 when I had $0. $20,000, okay, I went through this program 42 days after I graduated. It was a six-month program. 42 days after I graduated, I had already made back the $20,000. Since then, I've 10, 20, 50x, 50x what that is, and it's because I was willing to go.

Accelerating Business Success Through Mentorship

Speaker 1 29:53

I need some help with this. I need to figure out a way. And what's crazy is and Teresa and I were talking about this we're online business owners. If you talk to some of the people and some of you guys might even be the brick and mortar people spend $200,000 on inventory, on a building, on all of these things. And for some reason, when I got into the online space, I wasn't an entrepreneur, so I didn't really know that.

Speaker 1 30:15

Spending $16 a month to me was like, oh my God, I'm spending $16 a month and I had to really lean in and I had to realize that if I wanted to be able to achieve results faster, there were people out there who had the solution and when I did it, when I paid $20,000, one thing I can guarantee is I was going to get back my money because I was like I'm going to do everything humanly possible to lean into this program, which, honestly, I probably could have gotten for free on YouTube. But do you know how much energy I would have put into it? Not as much as when you put $20,000 in. And so when I think about this, when I think about what I wish I had started sooner. I would have hired a coach, I would have found a mentor, I would have asked somebody who was a few steps ahead of me so they can help guide me through that process, so I didn't have to go through all that pain, because the one thing that's more expensive than paying money like that is your time, because you will never get that time back. So if I could rewind and fast forward it six years and only have been in business for six years and be where we're at today, I would do that in a heartbeat and I would write the check, a blank check, to figure out what that would actually cost.

Speaker 1 31:18

Because for me, I want to get through that process as fast as possible and get to the other side so I can be living the life that I truly want to live. And for me, it was that shift of going from the W2 mindset into the entrepreneur mindset that really was the game changer and ever since, whenever I want to learn something, whenever I want to grow through something yes, I'll join group programs and things like that but I always ask myself how can I work one-on-one with the person who created this, or very closely with them in a small group, to make sure that I can have the speed of growth that I truly want? And that's honestly why we're here today. It's not because we had any more money, it's not because we had any more smarts, it's not because we had any more anything. It's just we were willing to have those conversations, to figure out ways of being able to lean into it and being able to get past these six things. That would have tremendously sped up the success in our business.