#106 - Build Now. Elevate Later. What Amy Porterfield’s Pivot Teaches Us About Putting in the Reps

What if the thing standing between you and your first six-figure year isn’t strategy, talent, or timing - but rather your willingness to show up before it feels perfect and put in the reps?

In this episode, I’m unpacking what Amy Porterfield’s recent decision to close Digital Course Academy and pivot into a new coaching model really means for those of us who are still in the building phase of our businesses.

I’m sharing:

• How Amy personally encouraged me to start this podcast and what that moment taught me about showing up consistently
• Why “putting in the reps” is the unglamorous but essential path to sustainable income
• The 5 core reps every pre–six-figure entrepreneur needs to be practicing consistently
• How to build quietly, test what works, and create a repeatable system you can scale

This episode is one part pep talk, one part real-world strategy, and one part reminder that success doesn’t happen overnight, it’s built through consistency, clarity, and courage.

If you’re not at $100K or $150K yet, but you want to be and you’re willing to do the work, here are a few ways I can support you: 

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Join FOUNDATIONS Group Coaching Program HERE - This is a 6-month program with a robust course, weekly coaching and an amazing community of likeminded entrepreneurs building scalable systems. Start today for $347!

Apply for 1:1 Coaching and Funnel Build HERE (we'll meet first for a discovery call to find out how I can support your project)

Mindset to Market is a Luminous Creative Production. If you'd like to learn more about our business coaching program and group coaching container, please visit us online at DeborahcSmith.com.

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Mindset to Market is produced by Deborah C. Smith and designed to inspire and support big-hearted creatives in finding their own unique path, building a sustainable business, and creating financial, spiritual, mental wellness and abundance.

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Transcript

 What if the only thing standing between you and your first six figure year is your willingness to show up before it feels perfect and simply put in the reps. Today I'm gonna unpack what Amy Porterfield's recent major pivot means for the rest of us in the entrepreneurial space who are still in building phases.

I'll share how she personally encouraged me to start this podcast and what I've learned over the years about putting in the reps long enough to do what Amy refers to as earning your elevation. So this is gonna be one part pep talk, one part sort of deep study, of a guru shift and one part strategy drop for those of us entrepreneurs who are still building something.

So if you're not yet at a hundred thousand dollars a year, you're not yet making 150 k and you want to be, this episode is for you. Hey there, and welcome to The Mindset To Market Podcast, your go-to place for practical tools and solutions for the everyday challenges of being a creative and spiritual solopreneur living in a material.

World. I'm your host, Debra Smith. I'm a holistic business coach with 17 years of experience, and I help my clients bust through mindset blocks and build a daily practice that prioritizes your business's financial growth as well as your personal health and wellness. I'm here to offer you support of creativity, mindset, practical how-tos, and getting into imperfect messy actions so you can find balance while building the dream.

Business. If you're a purpose-driven solepreneur, who's working on that dream one day at a time, then you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Hey there. Welcome back to the show, or if you are tuning in for the very first time, welcome. It's nice to have you here. I was inspired to record this episode, um, this sort of a short reaction, um, after hearing that.

Amy Porterfield Yes, the Amy Porterfield announced that she'll be closing the doors to her flagship program, digital Course Academy. And if you're not familiar with who she is, Amy has been sort of the leading coach in the digital course creation space for well over a decade. She's been at the top of the podcast charts for even longer for her online Marketing Made Easy podcast.

And if you have been listening to this podcast for a little while, then you may know that she is someone that I've worked with personally, and in fact, she was the person who told me to start this podcast back in 2021. So learning about this pivot that she's making struck me as really important, not just because of the impact that she has had on this industry, but because of what it means to evolve as an entrepreneur and what it really takes to build something solid and put in the reps and as she phrased it, earn your elevation.

So for context, about a month ago, I think at the beginning of the year, Amy announced that after a decade of completely owning the digital course Lane and really being at the top of the online marketing game with course creation, specifically, that she would be closing her flagship program. Like I said, digital Course academy.

And so in her recent podcast episode, she referred to this as an earned elevation. And you know, the kind of pivot that you make after you've really done so much deep work in one zone of expertise, that you arrive at a point that it is just naturally time to shift. And this is not because you're bored or tired of putting in the work or you're chasing a shiny object, but it's something bigger is just calling you forward and you have enough experience to evaluate whether or not this is the right move for your business.

And that got me thinking about, you know, when I first met her and I started this particular phase of my business, I was in a pivot. And this was around midway through 2020. Um, I was circling around the idea of launching this podcast. I'd been dabbling in packaging up some of my expertise in digital products, and I had been working in the wellness space for well over a decade, really, since 2000.

Four, and I was most well known. And frankly, I still am in some places for building New York City's first ever mobile juice bar and creating a whole culture of popup wellness events throughout New York City. So even though I'd been coaching women entrepreneurs on their marketing the entire time, I was publicly seen as the juice lady.

And I mean that literally, like I still run into people in New York City who see me and recognize me and they're like, oh my God, the juice lady. It's like, yes, that is me, but I don't run that business anymore. But it's, it's, it's such a solid brand because we were everywhere. We had mobile food trucks, we were popping up all over the place inside people's businesses.

We would do an event partnership with anybody. We did all kinds of brand partnerships. So we were like all over the place. Um, and. If you know my story, then you know that during the pandemic we had to shut down the full in-person service branch of my business. And at that moment I just knew, I'm like, this is my opportunity to pivot fully to online business coaching and start working with women as a mentor.

So I took my shot and at that time I joined Amy's TCA because I really wanted to learn from the best. People out there how I could package up my knowledge, share educational offers, and start really galvanizing on digital marketing. And it was something I'd already been doing. It's how I ran my entire business.

Online marketing was the foundation of the success of my wellness company, but I still had so much to learn. So I remember vividly, we had a call one day and I raised my hand to ask for advice about this particular feeling of this pivot. And I told her, you know, I was feeling pretty stuck on how to navigate, you know, changing brand identities.

And just in terms of how to dismantle the current brand and show up in this new skin. And I shared a bit about my background, et cetera, and she looked right at me and she said, you have an amazing story. You need to start a podcast. Just do it. You'll be able to reach the right people that want to hear what you have to say.

You'll be able to use your voice the way you want, want to the way you're meant to, and you'll be able to connect with the right people. And so while it did still take me another year and a half to actually get started, I'm grateful for that guidance because this medium is actually perfect for helping tell your story and illustrate how you can be of service.

So, um, this march, it'll be my second full year working with a podcast. Over 100 episodes shared, dozens of new clients served that came to me through this podcast. More content created than I can wrap my head around funnels built and tested, and so much learned by doing it. And what I realized listening to her episode is that I've been putting in the reps.

That's what she was referring to, right? It's not glamorous, in fact, it's often extremely messy. At least for me it was, but it was necessary work. I had to build the scaffolding. Put down the train tracks and then run the train down the road a couple times and see if it crashed, right? So we have to create something and then launch it out into the world, share it with the world, sell it in a variety of different ways until we find the method that feels most comfortable and accessible and is most profitable for us.

And it's different for everybody. So I wanna talk about this idea of putting in the reps and what that actually means and share with you what I think that means and how I would use that concept to help support my clients. So there's this fantasy that you'll build this one shiny funnel or launch the one perfect offer, and then everything's gonna just click and you're off to the races.

But what actually gets you to that first six figure year or up to $150,000 or higher is showing up and building the operation and testing it. So it, it's not just gathering the pieces together and, and just getting clear on what it is you're gonna sell. You have to actually test. Selling it. You have to practice putting it out there over and over again and figure out the system.

That's gonna be something that you can automate. So this is the not sexy part about entrepreneurship. In fact, it's, like I said, it's often very messy. It can be quite emotional. There can be, um, at first I, I've seen lots of ups and downs. I personally experienced some extreme highs and some extreme lows in the sort of beginning phase of this part of my business.

But. It is consistency that is going to teach you how you will build and scale. So it's clarifying your offer, it's refining your messaging. It's building out those email, you know, growing that email list and building out how you speak to those people. It's practice. Putting in the reps is about practicing, so that's getting visible even when your brain is.

Totally full of doubt or you're not feeling like it. It's showing up when you don't feel good. Sometimes it's showing up when the world seems to be falling apart and it's showing up when it's boring and you have no new ideas, right? Like there's boring stretches of entrepreneurship too, where you're just like, ah, I still have to do the work today.

And I think this is where so many entrepreneurs get stuck and honestly give up. Right, so you, you hit a wall. There's some hard moments. You're spinning your wheels in like the weeds of content. You're chasing trends that don't really feel comfortable, don't quite fit, and aren't also not producing results, and, but you're not actually putting in the reps that move the needle.

And those types of activities are, I think, the, the lifeblood of a working business. And those are not usually the most fun activities, right? These are the things that you have to do week after week, consistently if you wanna move things forward. So it's sales related tasks, marketing related tasks, expense tracking and accounting, just organizational tasks.

Content creation is usually now a part of that. Like we don't have to love it, but we have to do it right? So. Amy announced this big shift, she's closing DCA and she's actually launching a brand new coaching offer that is a coaching program for women entrepreneurs who are already making $150,000 or greater inside their business.

And I heard that and at first, I have to admit, I was like, oh boy, she's gonna start dominating the coaching lane. But then I realized, actually this works well for me because she is working with women who are. Already at the point of earning, you know, six figures. Plus my program is designed to support women in building that initial offer and automated system that will help them put in the reps to get to that point.

So, um, I would be lying to say I'm not grateful that I'm not competing directly with her. 'cause I mean, she is, you know, I mean, I think she's a fantastic coach. I loved, I loved working with her so. Nothing but props. Um, but I support, you know, those entrepreneurs who are in the trenches right now building something brand new and, and trying to get it right so that when they go out, they have something with which to put in the reps.

So, let's talk about why right now is a great time to start this type of work. Here's just a few thoughts I wanna share with you about building quietly and showing up consistently. And what I, again, what I think of is how I put in the reps. Because the women that I see doing this, who actually put their heads down, stay the course, they're seeing their income increase.

They're seeing, their patterns are starting to emerge. They are seeing exactly where and how they can rinse and repeat activities and learning how to save time and shave time off of things that used to take them a long time. And, you know, time is money. So it's, it's by doing the work and repetition that they're starting to tighten up the system.

Fix little leaky things here and there with their actual funnels. Fix leaky things with their own personal sales energy. And you have to start someplace because you can't repeat a pattern until you've laid down the outline of it. So you've gotta test and refine your work, and that takes time. So you will always hear me encourage you to start now and do it messy.

Do it uncomfortably. Do it vulnerably, but do it. Do it with support and accountability. Find peers in your niche that wanna share horror stories with you and meet up with them regularly to, you know, like laugh and cry together. But just start. Because the sooner you start, the sooner you can make the inevitable series of mistakes you're gonna make, the sooner you can start to see those patterns emerge.

Um, so in general, I love winter and summer for building types of work, for like creating a whole new offer. Um, I think this is largely because in winter we are naturally in a phase of burrowing and staying inside, so it's easier to get quiet and go inward and focus and really put your head down and build something that you can then go test.

Um, and also in the summertime. I have found that this can be a, a great time to do this as well. Like Midsummer, July, August. I find you can easily carve out those two months to really put your head down and say, okay, I have a solid eight weeks here. It's a nice little neat container. I'm gonna create an outline for this new offer or product or service, and I'm gonna launch it by September and start testing it in the fall.

Spring always feels like a launch phase to me. Fall always feels like a big launch phase to me, like back to school vibes, but winter and summer seem to feel like. Kind of hunker down and do some creative building work. But why is right now the time for you to get started if you have not already started building a signature offer and an automated system, and it's something you want to do.

The reason that right now, it doesn't matter when you're listening to this right now, is the time to decide how you're gonna do this. Because the sooner you can start. The better I, if you could have started last year even better, but you, if you have not yet started putting together what I think of as a repeatable operation, a system that you can scale, making those really core identity decisions and getting some of these like foundational decisions made.

Start now. Not when you feel ready. You will never feel ready. Not when it's perfect. It will never, ever be perfect. But showing up right now and making some of those decisions is critical because the longer you wait, the longer you put off this necessary work of putting in the reps. So you have to ask yourself, how are you gonna stay in regular touch with people?

Like what is a mechanism by which you're gonna. Connect with other people in the world to tell 'em about your business. Is it social media? Is it something else? How are you gonna grow an audience of people who know who you are and, and buy into your private audience space, your list or your community or whatever?

How are you gonna automate and build an online system? So it starts bringing you new clients and bringing you in consistent, trackable income that you can start to plan around. So with all of that in mind, with those questions in mind, here is my short list of five things that I believe you need to be doing consistently that I think of as putting in the reps, and of course I'm talking about.

As related to DI online marketing, right, so I'm talking about as related to using digital spaces to create, grow, and sell your business offers. Okay. Number one is about content creation. Everyone's favorite thing, but really weekly content is. A stalwart critical piece of your growth program, right?

Because when you show up weekly with content that speaks to your I ideal client, that shows them that you understand the problems they're facing and you have a solution to that problem, and then you establish the various different ways in which you understand the field, the niche, the topic, whatever, giving examples and just showing them how.

You operate in that space, positioning you as an expert in that field, that helps your ideal client automatically build trust. And so when they finally decide to click on a link of yours or come to talk to you about your business, they, they already know who you are. They know something about your business and they trust you because you've been consistently providing this support week after week.

This could be, you know, a LinkedIn newsletter, it could be a podcast, it could be a blog. There's a lot of different ways to do this. It could be short form video on TikTok. There's so many ways to do this, but the point is that you're consistent. Again, putting in the reps. So consistent weekly content that speaks to your I ideal client is number one.

Number two has to do with your email list, even if it starts with three people, it's your mom and your husband, and your best friend, or whoever. Maintaining a private and proprietary email list of people who have expressed interest in your business is a critical. Repeatable process. I think you should be growing an email list and using that list to regularly reach out to the people and say, Hey, here's what I'm up to, or here's a link to this new content I created, or something that I'm doing.

Um, and I'm not suggesting that you become one of those email marketers that is constantly spamming people and emailing them 25 times a week. I am of the mindset that a, a consistent weekly email is enough. Um, I've been keeping my finger on the pulse of this for over a decade. Email marketing is still one of the most cost efficient ways to connect directly with people who say they want to hear from you, and it cuts through all the noise of the internet.

So if they've opted into your list and said, yes, I wanna hear from you, they are. Fine with getting emails from you once a week or maybe a little bit more. I find that people get really fed up with constant daily emails. They feel overwhelmed. They feel spammed. With that being said, you will know your audience and will find a pace at which you reach out to them.

It's even okay if you do it monthly, as long as you're consistent. Putting in the reps here means telling them, yeah, I'm still, I'm serious about this business. I'm still here. I'm still coming up with interesting ways to sell my offers. I'm still open to help you. I still have a solution to your problem.

It's just building trust. So number two for putting in the reps is just getting your email marketing list going and sending out a consistent message to the people who say they wanna hear from you. All right. Moving on to number three. It's about offer creation. We're talking about clarifying your offer.

This is something where it's not the same as like every day on Tuesday at 9:00 AM I'm doing something. Offer clarity is something that you're gonna have to do again and again and again, both until it clicks and it's selling easily, and then also as you evolve. So it's sort of a moving target, but as the industry that you're in evolves as the appetite that your audience has evolves, as you know, a variety of new solutions come on the marketplace.

For that problem that you solve, you've gotta keep your finger on the pulse of it. S you know, see if your offer is holding up against the competition. So at first, you're clarifying your offer to make sure that it actually sells, and then eventually you're updating and clarifying your offer as you and your audience evolve.

Offer clarity is not negotiable if it's not selling and getting you to your target financial goal. It needs to be refined. And this is something that people skip and they just kind of keep trying to sell the same thing that isn't selling and until they quit, and instead of going back and maybe considering the potential that their offer is not solid and you know, tucking their tail between their legs for a minute and admitting that they need to refine the thing that they're selling so that they can be competitive in the marketplace.

So. Offer clarity is huge. Um, I have a, a fun signature offer AI prompt that I developed that I can send you the link for. It's actually in my links list on my website, uh, deborah c smith.com/links. And that's more for creating an offer from scratch. But it's also great if you're in the, in the process of pivoting or refining.

So go check that out. But the, the point here is that. This is something where you have to put in the reps. You have to make sure your offer's clear or it won't sell. And if it's not selling, you can't reach your target financial goal. Number four is asking for feedback. So this means talking to your audience even when it feels uncomfortable and using their.

Actual feedback and their actual words and what's going on with them now to help with your sales. So this is something that not enough entrepreneurs do. We have to get into a conversation with our audience. What do they need? What do they think they need? You might have a really good solution to their problem, but do they think that your solution is the right solution or do they think it's something else?

And a great way to do this is to simply ask them for feedback on your offers. Why aren't they buying? If you do a launch, you can send out an after launch survey to ask why people chose not to buy. If you are in the process of developing an offer, you can set up a poll on threads or Instagram stories, or in TikTok or in LinkedIn or anywhere on your website and ask people what are they most interested in as it relates to your offer.

Or when a client completes a contract or graduates from a program or decides to leave your membership, you can send them sort of an exit survey and find out what they took away from the, the work that you did together. You know, pros and cons, any, any feedback they have for you, testimonials, et cetera.

And just get their feedback and find out as much as you can. I like to do occasionally, do, um, just in depth. Interviews with my ideal target audience where I offer to buy them coffee and just ask a few questions. Where is the marketplace at? So this is obviously gonna be very helpful with sales, really knowing your market and really knowing your audience and nothing compares to real world feedback from real human beings who have really gone through your program or have experienced your marketing copy and made a decision whether or not to buy.

It's great to get their feedback so. This is one of those areas where putting in the reps can be a little uncomfortable, but I promise you it will help you evolve much more quickly to an offer and a system that gets you to that, that a hundred thousand or greater annual income. All right, here we go.

Last but not least, number five is tracking your data. Tracking what's working inside your business and what's not working so you can repeat what's working and cut the things that are not. And in order to do this, you do have to have a system in place. So I like to have a system for tracking leads. I have an actual lead tracker and I check in with it.

Twice a week, maybe three times. I have a profits and loss basic Excel spreadsheet that I track, income and expenses, so I can see where I'm spending money and getting a return on investment, where I'm spending money and losing money. I track, you know, income by revenue source, so by different program type and different lines of revenue.

And of course all the expenses variable and fixed. And I also track my time, so. I was just talking about this inside my coaching program today. We did a special training on how to track your time, because we often don't think about our time necessarily as, as the investment that it is, but time is money.

So if you're spending hours on a task that you could outsource to somebody who could get it done in, in, you know, a matter of 15 minutes, you might wanna think about. Hiring out that task because two hours of your time versus 15 minutes of somebody else, there's not really a contest. So the way to do that is really just to time yourself doing various different tasks and determine if something is taking you a lot longer than it probably should.

Maybe that's not your zone of expertise and you wanna farm that out to another person, a va, an online business manager. I'm personally a big fan of hiring designers, graphic designers, and web designers because that's not my expertise, and they'll get it done a lot faster and better than I will. And I learned that the hard way by doing it myself for, you know, 10 years.

So, but the idea here is that you're tracking your time and tracking your numbers, tracking your income, your expenses, and also within each system that you use. So if you invest in email marketing and you set up an email marketing system, track your open rate. Track your click link. You know, link click rate track sales that come from email marketing.

Um, if you are running Facebook ads, you're gonna start tracking those numbers to see which ads are converting and which are not. So anything that you're doing inside your business, tracking the data is a. An unnecessary rep that you need to put in, and it's not the most fun. I don't love it, but guess what?

I do it every week because that's what's gonna keep me in business. And now that I've been self-employed for, she checks her watch 18 years, I think, trust me when I say tracking the data is where I turned the corner from being running around like a chicken with my head cut off in circles to having a profitable business.

It, it boiled down to tracking my data, period point blank. I was like four years into business with the juice bar and that whole like wellness branch of business that I ran for many, many years before I started really, really tracking income and expenses. I mean, up until that point, we were just doing whatever it took to keep it going.

Once I started locking down. Uh, every little number, and I could see, I could see it so clearly the numbers don't lie. And it was like such a, it was like somebody hit me in the face with a frying pan. I was like, oh, oh, oh. And decisions were so much easier. It was all so clear because the numbers don't lie.

And so you're in business to make money. Yes. We're in business to make an impact. Probably all of us listening, if you're listening to this, you probably are somebody who cares deeply about people and want to make an impact. But you can't do that if you're not making money. So we have to track our numbers so that we can become profitable so you can make an even bigger impact.

So this is important stuff that you wanna have your finger on the pulse of. Number one, showing up with weekly content. Number two, having a proprietary email list that you can use to contact people. Simply number three, clarifying your offer. Four, getting consistent feedback and having conversations with your audience.

And five, tracking your numbers, tracking your data. Those are putting in the reps 1 0 1. I would do all those things every week inside your business. And you guys ask for help and invest in yourself if you don't know what you're doing yet. This is a major, part of the reason why I am where I am today is because I invested in courses, in programs in Masterminds that gave me not only the tools that I needed to grow, but the accountability to show the hell up and take action consistently.

Without that, there is absolutely no way I would be telling you how to do this right. There's no way, uh, it took me years and years of putting in the reps. To be able to share this with you confidently. So that is where the work adds up. That's how you build the thing that's gonna let you elevate to the next level, and where the income starts getting really easy.

So whether you're building your very first offer or you're refining a one-on-one coaching program, or maybe you're still figuring out what your funnel is gonna be and how you wanna connect with people, I just want you to know I see you. I have been there, and if you are putting in the reps, I would love to support you.

This is literally what I do inside my coaching, my group coaching program. Um, but I've got a few ways that you can work with me this particular quarter. So whether you're ready for private coaching or if you want, you know, strategic, technical funnel building, or if you would love to be a part of like a small group container, that's all about building your scalable foundation.

Those are all things that I do that I offer. So you can DM me on Instagram, the word reps, or you can go to my website, debra c smith.com. And check out any of my offers there, or just jump on my mailing list. And you do not need to be making a hundred thousand dollars in order to participate in any of my programs.

In fact, you don't need to have made any money yet. You just need to be showing up or be willing to start showing up like the woman who is headed in that direction and is willing to do the work and put in the reps. Because if you do, I promise you, you will get where you're going. And please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about today's episode or if you have any thoughts that you wanna share about with me about putting in the reps like this.

And if you like what you're listening to and you're enjoying the show, um, I invite you to please leave me a rating or a review. That means the world to me. It helps me to stay connected with my audience and understand how they're doing. So I would love for you to do that, and thank you in advance. And as always, until next week, may you be vibrant.