Unlock Your Genius Zone

The 80/20 Breakthrough: How Eliminating 5 Things Took Me from Struggling to Six Figures as a Mom Entrepreneur | Ep. 59

Ine Coetzee Episode 59

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In this powerful episode, I share my personal journey of transformation from struggling business owner to consistent $10K months while learning to be the present mom I wanted to be for my growing toddler.

After investing $25,000 in a coaching program (that honestly… I couldn't afford at the time!), I was forced to get brutally honest about what wasn't working in my business. This led me to eliminate 80% of what I was doing and focus only on the 20% that actually moved the needle. Long story short, this forced me to get brutally honest on what ACTUALLY worked, and what was holding me back.

What You'll Learn:

  • My turning point moment in May 2024 that changed everything
  • The 5 specific things I let go of to finally cross the six-figure mark
  • How I cut my work hours from 50+ hours to less than 4 hours per day
  • The identity shift that unlocked my business potential
  • Why comfortable business practices are keeping you stuck
  • How investing in yourself creates non-linear growth
  • The abundance mindset that replaced my scarcity thinking

Key Takeaways:

  • Time vs. Money: Why "paying with your time" keeps you stuck
  • Energy-Based Productivity: Working during your high-energy hours multiplies results
  • Zone of Competence vs. Zone of Genius: Why your comfort zone is holding you back
  • The 80/20 Rule in Action: Real examples of eliminating the unnecessary
  • Identity Evolution: The critical shift from cello teacher to business owner

Connect With Me:

If you're ready to make a non-linear jump in your business without sacrificing precious moments with your family, this episode is your roadmap to working less while earning more.

Podcast intro music: J.S. Bach Cello Suites, Suite No. 3 in C major, Prelude 
Musician: Mari Coetzee 

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Speaker 1:

It's 6.05 am and I snuck out to film the intro of this YouTube video because I wanted to share with you the difference that I have now with how I feel in the mornings versus how I felt simply a year ago. So we moved here about a year ago and, in that door right there, I've been sitting there every single morning at the dining room table working, and, uh, in this mode of I have to do more. I always have to do more. I started sacrificing my early morning workouts, I started sacrificing time with my son, I started sacrificing all the things that really matter, but what I learned is that it is not about doing more. It is doing less of the wrong things and more of the right things, and that's what I'm going to teach you in today's video.

Speaker 1:

There really is a way you can stop feeling guilty when your son asks you to come play with him. There really is a way you can stop feeling guilty when your son asks you to come play with him. There really is a way that your life can start to build towards that dream. So that's what I'm gonna show you. Watch all the way to the end. I'm gonna have a very special invitation just for you, so that you can start getting unstuck and start scaling towards that beautiful dream that is in your heart.

Speaker 2:

Hi. The turning point came for me in May 2024. I had just invested in a $25,000 coaching program. My husband's company had literally just moved hours north and we were struggling. I had a toddler that was growing, but what I knew is I could no longer pay with my time. I had to start paying with my money, and this is a concept that I've learned the hard way over the years. I used to think, if I just do all the right things, if I add enough intensity, if I just do more and more, I will eventually reach success. Now the reality is you will, but you always pay one way or another. You can either pay with your time or you can pay with your money. That is the only way to really learn and to develop yourself as a business owner. This is a concept that I learned from Alex Hermosi. I highly recommend him if you don't listen to him already. Alex Hermosi has been a massive influence on the way that I conduct business and this principle I didn't really believe until I experienced it.

Speaker 2:

So that decision finally investing $25,000 that honestly I didn't have into a coaching program, that honestly I didn't have into a coaching program it forced me to get brutally honest with number one, what wasn't working, and number two, how I was using my time. Because all of a sudden, I had to make these $4,000 a month payments for six months and hear this at that point in time, I was actually only making four thousand dollars a month on average. I hadn't hit the fifty thousand dollar mark in my business really quite yet. There was one year where I made, I think, fifty nine thousand, but that was a hard year. It really was. It was really at that point in time when I had to assess okay, if I'm gonna start paying with my money, then my time obviously has to change. Something has to change and I transformed. So that's what this video is really all about the five things that I let go of in order to finally reach that six-figure business owner mark that I'd been striving for six years. I'm going to show you the five things that I let go of so that I could reach a six-figure business in six months after six years of struggling to get there. Are you ready?

Speaker 2:

So the first thing that I let go of was work time. I honestly started working. Let me see, I used to be working about six hours a day. Some of these hours were when my son, my two-year-old, was asleep and a couple of them were when he was awake I would park my laptop and this makeshift desk in his room and he would play on the ground while I prepared scripts for my webinars, while I wrote emails, while I wrote copy for my landing pages, created content, all the things, and something just didn't feel right. I will never forget.

Speaker 2:

It was August 2024. And I was on a walk with him. I was buried in my phone, like I was responding to voice messages, still working, even though this was supposed to be my time off, my time with him. To just point out the trees, point out the rocks. At this point he was about 15 months old, he had just dropped his morning nap, so we were trying to get a lot of outdoor time in and I realized there has to be a better way. There just has to be.

Speaker 2:

So I thought back to myself what were periods of time in my life that I had really experienced? Back to myself, what were periods of time in my life that I had really experienced working in flow, like where I was being more efficient with my hours than any other point in time in my life, and I realized that it really was when I was performing consistently Like I used to perform on the cello professional cellist you can see my cello right there. I used to perform for a couple hours a week, like minimum one time per week, at my group studio class and then at busking, at gigs, at concerts, at recitals, all these different things, and in that season I didn't have the time to practice eight hours like a lot of my colleagues were. At that point I was still finishing high school, I was going out with my now husband. It was a very intense period of life. I was finishing my music diploma and I got by with less than two hours of practice a day.

Speaker 2:

And that day when I was on that walk with my son, I realized I had to get back into that mentality of a high performer. What does a high performer do? They maximize their highest energy points in time. So first thing I let go of was a time-based schedule where I thought I had to put in six to eight hours a day of work, and often I was so burned out and I started focusing on an energy-based schedule. This allowed me to cut down my work hours to less than four hours a day. I've been doing that for the last six or seven months since August and this has been one of the biggest, most helpful changes, honestly, that I've ever made I realized that for me, with my chronotype, I'm an early morning type of person.

Speaker 2:

If I put in two hours before Francis, my son woke up, then when I experienced my energy slump at the end of the afternoon nap block, I could actually go take a bath, I could go for a walk with our horses we have a bunch of horses on the property and I could go read a book, I could go take a nap. It was like time expanded, because what happened is I was creating double the value in half the time. I experienced a two to four X in productivity, where I was producing higher quality content with higher results. In fact, my YouTube channel grew by 300% in just seven months because of this shift. So that was the first thing I let go of was work time.

Speaker 2:

The second thing I let go of was my comfort zone, and I like to call this my zone of competence. So your zone of competence everyone has one is that area of work where you've probably created a lot of success for yourself. You feel comfortable there, you feel like it's good business when you think about the years you've spent in your zone of competence, but the channel name that you're listening to right now is Unlocking your Zone of Genius. Your zone of genius is really what you want, but letting go of my zone of competence showed me what I was capable of. So one of the things that I did to let go of my zone of competence the work that was honestly draining me in the end of the day is I hired a virtual assistant and this was one of the best decisions that I've ever made in my business.

Speaker 2:

Chelsea became my lifeline. She took over scheduling all my posts, website updates, graphic design, administrative tasks. She even started posting the videos of the recordings of my cello school, the behind the scenes cello academy that I run and still run. It's still going in the background, without very much input from me, because I've been applying the 80-20 rule. I focus on the 20% that really makes a difference, and then the 80%. I let go of the 80%. That is in my comfort zone, that's in my zone of competence, and when that is gone, boy that 20%, it produces results. It really does. Okay, the crazy thing is, five months after investing in a virtual assistant, I may have my first 10K month. Okay, I had actually thought that I needed to be making six figures, so at least $8,333 a month, before I could hire a VA. But, in fact, investing in yourself and investing in your time buying back your time is what allows you to get actually to that six figure mark and I can absolutely show you my strategies. I'm going to give you an opportunity to actually receive coaching at the end of this. So hang tight watch to the end, because you're going to receive a very exciting invitation.

Speaker 2:

Okay, the third thing that was one of the hardest things for me to let go of was actually financial scarcity mindsets, and this meant not spending anything in my business. For years, I had a 82% profit. I made 82 profit and only had what? 18 expenses. I thought that was a good thing. I thought that was good business and, honestly, if I made a million dollars a year and had a 82 profit margin, I'd be very happy. I would like that would be fantastic. But I really don't think that I can get there without investing, reinvesting into the business and kind of creating the cycle of number one buying back my time, creating mastery in skill sets, like buying back my time by investing in coaches who can really teach me what they spend years to create, and this bought back years of trial and error, simply by letting go of the financial scarcity. I had to become somebody who believed in abundance, who had an abundance mindset, and start investing in myself, in my time, in my skill sets, in the business, in people who could help bring the business forward to the seven figure mark and really really scale it. I was still of the mentality that I could go far alone, but the reality is you can go fast alone, but it takes a team to go far.

Speaker 2:

When you invest and you let go of financial scarcity, you have this abundance mindset. The money follows you. You attract what you are most interested in and what you are most focusing on. You move towards your most prominent thought. So if you're constantly thinking there is a lack of money here, there is a scarcity in my business right now, you are never going to experience the abundance because you're believing in scarcity. Why would you achieve something that you don't believe in? So start believing in abundance, let go of that scarcity mindset and start investing in yourself.

Speaker 2:

Warren Buffett he says that the best investment you can make is in yourself. Nobody can take it away from you. It'll always be there for you and, in fact, you're developing your brain into a billion dollar brain, and I know that. You know that your brain is one of your greatest assets. So go invest in it the same way you would do in a fantastic piece of technology. Your brain is your best piece of technology, so why not invest in it? So my top takeaway for this third thing that I let go of is the right investments. Don't cost you money. They buy you freedom.

Speaker 2:

The fourth thing that I let go of was low standards, old standards. Until I invested in that $25,000 program, completely rewired my brain, let go of all these things over a six month period of time. I was still celebrating when I would cross the $4,000 mark in a month because that meant that I was halfway to $100,000 in my business. But the thing is, if you see $4,000 as your limit, your energetic minimum is what one of my favorite entrepreneurs, allie Reeves, calls it. Minimum is what one of my favorite entrepreneurs, allie Reeves, calls it. You are going to always get that energetic minimum. So $4,000 was my energetic minimum. In fact, I had set this years ago. That was like one of my first income goals and I realized now that subconsciously I was still moving towards only $4,000 a month.

Speaker 2:

So the $25,000 program, as I've mentioned. It came with a six month payment plan. So I put in an initial. I think it was a couple thousand dollars. But what I remember is in Canadian, I had $4,000 Canadian that I had to cover every month from June to November. So yeah, june to November, six months. Now think about it. I was barely crossing $4,000 a month just a year ago. That was my energetic minimum. I had this extra $4,000 to cover. That was 100% of my income at the time.

Speaker 2:

Something had to change. You want to know what? I let go of a bunch of these things within the first three days, or at least started the process, and I had my first $4,367 day three days after investing in this program. In fact, I'll go grab it. I got this award at my coach's conference just a month later in June. For the day that I got the $4,000 in, it was called Cashing In on Conversations Award, winner 2024. And the interesting thing about this is, when they gave me the award, they had my name, they had the title of my business or what I did underneath it and it said I'm going to win Music teacher. I had to change one last thing in order to start reaching 10K months consistent 10K months, because even after I reached that $4,367 day, this happened a handful of times over the next six months. Again, I still didn't quite reach 10K months until I let go of this last thing.

Speaker 2:

The fifth thing that I let go of was an old identity. I had thought of myself as cello teacher or cello coach to elevate the identity just a little bit. It was safe, it was familiar. It was what I had been doing since I was 14 years old. Familiar, it was what I had been doing since I was 14 years old. That identity had to go. I admire coaches so much I had the most phenomenal cello coaches.

Speaker 2:

So I am not saying that there's something bad with having that as your identity. What I am saying is that it was in my zone of competence. Remember the previous, one of the previous things I talked about? I had to let go of that competence. It was in my comfort zone to teach the cello. I could do it in my sleep and in fact I think I did. Once I was like four weeks postpartum, had barely slept and I taught a lesson to somebody and they had one of the biggest light bulb moments they ever had. I could literally teach in my sleep that is how much of a comfort zone it was.

Speaker 2:

So if you have an identity that is so comfortable for you to do, so comfortable for you to stay in, it is probably holding you back, unless you've gone through this process of iteration and you feel now comfortable in this level. But just know that comfort zone is actually keeping you away from the very next level. So always have this awareness of identities. What are you identifying yourself as? Where is your identity found? So it was November 2024.

Speaker 2:

I had made it. I had made five out of the six payments. I had done it. I just had one more left. And I was looking at my numbers and, lo and behold, my bank balance said a whole 372 dollars. My heart dropped, my stomach dropped. I looked at my projection sheet and, with Christmas looming, I hadn't really been actively looking for more opportunities to make money. I've exhausted my warm audience. This was a low point I had to figure out. Okay, am I going to keep with this identity of being a cello teacher and stay where I am and maybe not even make this final payment or am I going to make a nonlinear jump? This is what this book 10X is easier than 10X talks about and luckily, by divine intervention, I had been reading this book for the last couple of weeks. So, beginning of October, I started it and this is now October 22nd. The payment was due on November 16th, so I knew I had to do something in the next couple of weeks, so what I did is I created a brand new program, completely new and with a new identity, new pricing, in fact, even a new currency. I started charging in USD, like that was one of the things that I upped my standard for and I sold it 22 days after.

Speaker 2:

I had the idea that was the final step of these five things that I had to let go of. In fact, those five things, it summed up 80% of everything I'd been doing to that point. And then for the next six months November through May we are now May 2025. I continued reiterating each of these things. In fact, I relaunched the same program five times. I did five launches for this program in the course of four months. What happened was is this program, which actually took less time than the cello school that I'd been running actually took less time than the cello school that I'd been running. It made me the same amount of money as all of my other income streams combined in 2024.

Speaker 2:

I'm still mind blown how this is possible, but I don't miss the mystery anymore. I understand the answer. I had to let go of these five things. Let go of 80%. Take the 20% that worked and that brought me to the first freedom I had seen in my business since I started seven years ago. So here's the summary of everything that happened since I let go of these five things. Number one I went from working 50 plus hours a week to less than four hours a day. My YouTube channel grew 300% in just six months. I completed five different launches in four months. I hit consistent 10K months and crossed six figures in the last 12, having obviously been created in the last four to five months.

Speaker 2:

But, most importantly, the thing that I celebrate the most is I was a present mother. I became present for my son he just turned two, in fact, on the day of his birthday as he was napping, we had celebrated, we'd gone to the park. It was a wonderful day. I was looking at my numbers and I realized I had crossed the six-figure mark. It felt easier my work the last six months than it had the last six years. Really it did, and it was because I had let go of these five things. That is why this book is called.

Speaker 2:

10x is easier than 2X. It is easier to go 10X because you have limited options. You are doing 80% less, you are focusing in on that 20%, you are staying focused and this is so possible for you. My friend, if the only thing you take away from this video is that it's possible, then I will have done my mission. It is possible to create more value in less time. It is possible to reach a higher standard of living in less time. This is so possible.

Speaker 2:

And, most of all, it is possible for you to be that present mom or dad that you want to be with your kids growing up, right in front of you, without you missing the smallest little cry of mommy look at me. Or a milestone, or them making a joke for the first time. I don't want to miss those things, and you can probably notice I'm getting emotional, like my eyes are glassy, because I used to be stuck in that hustle culture, that unending wheel of $50,000 a year Less than that I used to be stuck and now the business is scaling without the trial and error, without me needing to sacrifice precious moments with my son, and I get to be that excellent mother that I've been journaling about for years. This is not about working harder. It's about working smarter, focusing exclusively on what truly moves the needle.

Speaker 2:

So if you've been feeling stuck, if you've been feeling stuck, if you've been questioning how to get unstuck and actually start scaling your business to 10K months, then I have a surprise for you. You, my friend, as you're listening to this video, you, the person who clicked on this video you are invited to my brand new workshop happening on May 13th From Stuck to Scaling. It's happening tomorrow as this video comes out. This video comes out May 12th. It's happening tomorrow. So if you missed it, that's all right. I'm probably going to be hosting another one. So absolutely grab your spot. But if you've been feeling stuck and you want to get out of the rut you're in, this workshop is for you. The spots are filling up fast. We are almost at capacity, so make sure to secure your place today. And I want you to remember you do not need more time, you just need a completely different approach to the time that you do have. Let me show you how I'll see you in the room.