Learning Business Through Trial and Error with Samantha Straub

 In this episode of Success Leaves Clues Podcast, our guest is Samantha Straub, veteran educator, licensed adolescent therapist, parent coach, and founder of Teen Savvy Coaching. With more than 25 years of experience working with teens and families as a teacher, administrator, school counselor, and therapist, Samantha shares powerful insights into the challenges parents face when raising adolescents and why the strategies that worked during childhood often stop working during the teen years. We explore the importance of psychological safety, communication, emotional connection, and understanding adolescent development, as well as Samantha’s personal journey from lifelong educator to entrepreneur. She opens up about the lessons learned from her own upbringing, the realities of educator burnout, building a coaching business from scratch, and her mission to help parents create stronger, healthier relationships with their teens. Whether you're a parent, educator, coach, or entrepreneur navigating change, this conversation is filled with practical wisdom on growth, resilience, and meaningful connection.

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-straub-8ab67337/
https://teensavvycoaching.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TeenSavvyCoachingwithSamanthaStraub/
https://www.instagram.com/teensavvycoaching/
https://open.spotify.com/show/7pcB98qTWee8BtL0nU7tI7?si=5893caf3c6844261

Transcript

Samantha Straub 0:00

So I work with parents of teens and tweens who who are feeling disconnected, who are feeling overwhelmed, who know what they want, but don't know how to get there. Like they think that what they're doing is is working, but they're like, if it was working, it already would have, because I've been trying very hard. You know, so these are invested, caring parents who who know their North Star, generally speaking, but they but they don't have a roadmap for how to get there.

Davis Nguyen 0:27

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues, the podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swain, and I'm a business coach and a founder of Purple Circle, where we help business owners achieve their first six-figure, seven-figure, and eight-figure year, all without sacrificing their quality of life. Before becoming a business coach and before founding Purple Circle, I started to scale several seven and eight-figure coaching businesses and have been a consultant at several businesses doing over $100 million each, including some that are publicly listed and doing over a billion dollars each. In every episode of the podcast, you're gonna learn lessons that took our guest years to learn, and you'll be able to learn that in minutes. No matter if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is gonna give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro Stein 1:11

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Samantha Straub, a veteran educator, licensed adolescent therapist, and mother of two teenagers whose 25 plus years working with teens and their families gives her both professional expertise and deeply personal insight into the challenges of raising adolescents. Samantha has taught everything from English and psychology to conflict resolution and leadership, giving her a uniquely broad understanding of how teens think, learn, and grow during one of life's most significant transitions. Samantha helps confuse and overwhelm parents reclaim their relationship with their teens through individual and group coaching programs that combine strength-based strategies with the kind of psychological safety that makes real learning possible. Her superpower is finding the funny in the chaos of adolescence, creating an environment where both teens and their parents feel seen, supported, and genuinely equipped to thrive together. Welcome to the show, Samantha.

Samantha Straub 2:27

Thank you for having me, Pedro. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Pedro Stein 2:30

Oh, great to have you. Well, I have two boys. One is three, the other is seven. So, first of all, good to know there's light at the end of the tunnel, right? You made it. You have your teens, right?

Samantha Straub 2:40

So my teens are now non-teens or almost. Next month I'll have a 20-year-old and a 22-year-old. So I'm I am days away from not having a teenager anymore.

Pedro Stein 2:50

Okay, okay, all right. Now, you know what? I love I'd love for us to rewind a bit, you know, go back to the origin story because you could be doing so many different things, but you chose to be a coach. So can you walk me through how did that look like? What happened there?

Samantha Straub 3:06

Yeah, I think that there's really two branches to this story, and the professional one sounds like this. I was a school counselor for many years. Actually, I started as a classroom teacher. I was an administrator briefly for middle schoolers. I was a dean of students for middle schoolers, so I was doing discipline for 11 through 14-year-olds. And then I was a school counselor for 18 years in several different schools for middle and high schoolers. And it was in that role that two things happened. One, I observed that sometimes I could speak with parents and never have any contact with a kid, and things would improve in a household because parents would call me worried about something that their kid was going through, wanting to like let the school know, hey, this is a stressor that's happening in our house. Can you, you know, give my kids some TLC or keep an extra set of eyes on my child? Or I'm so overwhelmed with this parenting thing. I just like you are the only you're the closest resource I have as a mental health professional because you're the school counselor in my kids' school. What the heck should I do in this situation? Right. And and I got all of those and more types of calls from parents. And my observation is that sometimes I could be a significant help to a kid without ever speaking with a kid because I could collaborate with their parents and give them new mindsets, tools that actually work, an understanding of the difference between a 14-year-old and an eight-year-old, because like there really are differences in the way they think and operate. And so how you respond to them needs to change when they hit adolescence. Uh, so so that's part of it. And also professionally, like I said, I was in schools for a long time, 26 years total. I was in schools. And so by the end, I was doing more teaching than learning. And many of us teacher types go into schools because we like learning. And I found myself doing more coaching of my younger colleagues. And I'd just done the job for so long that there was very little that could come my way that I didn't know how to handle. So I was starting to get, I mean, it was fine, but it was like the kind of busy that wasn't, it wasn't exciting me busy, it was just burning me out busy. But I wasn't yet burnt out. So I was like, okay, I need a new challenge. And so coaching kind of stemmed from those two things. That's half of the story. But why coaching teenagers, why coaching or coaching parents of teenagers, or why work with teenagers in the first place? Um I I really think that has to do with my own growing up experience because I had uh loving parents, both my married until I was 29. They divorced at 29, and they probably should have divorced when I was 15. Um, and and I grew up like really uncomfortable in my own skin. And I recall that feeling. You know, my parents did the best they could, and my mom in particular was a really inconsistent presence. And I don't mean she was around and not around. I mean when she was around, I didn't know which version of her I was gonna get. Like sometimes I got the loving cheerleader, like funny, easygoing mom. And sometimes I got the like sighing, I'm just exasperated because you exist, mom, uh, because she just was on her last nerve. And that was a that was a whiplash experience that that made me kind of like keep my own feelings inside and not learn how to be comfortable in myself. And I'm sure that's why I went into counseling. Also, I was like, I'm sure that's why on top of teaching, I became a counselor. And what I that's a very preventable experience for kids and for parents. And what I want is to be a partner with families to prevent other kids who like there was no abuse in my background. I didn't ever go without, but I had a lot of unlearning to do or a lot of relearning to do in my adult life because of some things that did and didn't happen in my growing up house. And they were subtle and they were fixable if my mom and dad had just had the tools that I now provide for families. So some of it is a professional trajectory, and some of it I think my my own professional trajectory, I think, was influenced by my personal experiences.

Pedro Stein 7:30

Well, a couple things, right? Uh, first of all, it looks like you're serving past Samantha in a way, right? Um, you went through a lot and you want to avoid people to going through what you went through. Not that it was like traumatizing experience, but like having that feeling that you're not really safe, 100% comfortable, what's next, you know, and you can navigate people and help them with that. So there's that. The other thing is like you told me half the story. We're here for the full story. You can tell me the full story. When you mentioned you didn't hit uh burnout at that time, I'm wondering when did you? Because it sounds like you did.

Samantha Straub 8:09

Well, I was on the road to it, really. Like, I so in 2022, I started teen savvy coaching, and I could feel myself falling out of love with my experience as a school counselor. Like, so that that school year, the 2021-22 school year, which by the way was like just on the heels of COVID, which you know, any educator who was working during that time will tell you that was a fast track to burnout. That was that those those years were so horrible in schools everywhere. Um so I began teen savvy coaching. Then I had this like sort of, I don't know, uh, like an inkling that I wanted to try something. And I connected with a business coach who I worked with during the summer. And during the 22-23 school year, I started a business. I kept my full-time school counseling position because I wasn't sure that it was gonna work. And I was moonlighting as a therapist one night a week at a local private practice. So I had three jobs that year. I was, and I was mommy, I was a mother, so four. I wasn't burnt out by the end because I had made a commitment to drop the school counseling job midway through the year. Like I'd said to my administration, I won't be coming back. And I'd made that decision in in January. But had I done another year like that, I most certainly would have been burnt out.

Pedro Stein 9:35

You know, interesting. So I'm married to a teacher, okay? And personal side, she was like around two to three years ago, she started her own practice, right? And private uh teaching and all that. But she's more like she helps uh kids in the autism and the spectrum, ADHD and all that. And when she launched it, I told her, honey, in about I don't know, one to two years, you're gonna get fed up of going to school because she still was working full-time school, she moved to part-time, and now she decided she's gonna step out. I'm not saying that exactly what happened to you, but to a point, it's like whenever you got and uh you turn into yourself into an entrepreneur, right? Something clicks. She's like, I'm fed up of you know, clocking in, clocking out. I'm fed up of following by their rules and they're wrong, you know, in certain ways. So would something like that happen to you too when you you you distance yourself from the school life? Because that happened to her.

Samantha Straub 10:43

I didn't know that that was going to happen. Um, I didn't my my husband says he he he jokes and he's like, you were institutionalized, Sam. You were in like you had like drank the Kool-Aid and you thought that you had flexibility because you know you had some breaks built into your calendar year. Now we all know educators need like those are like regenerate breaks and plan your next year. Like you don't you don't get all the the whole summer off. But at any rate, I thought that meant flexibility. When I left schools, and I have prior to starting teen savvy coaching, I had never not worked in a school. I left so so I graduated from college, I started, I had a teaching job. That was in 1997, and from 1997 to 2023, I spent every year in a school. And prior to that, I spent every year in a school as a student. So I had never lived uh lived a life that wasn't following the ebbs and flows of a school year and the energy highs and lows of a school year. So it's been three years since I was in a school, and it took me a while to unfurl, I would say, like to just like relax and realize oh oh that my time is my own. I more. I mean, I I don't just run teen savvy coaching. I did pick pick up my therapy hours. So I now have two jobs instead of three. So that job that I was moonlighting at where I was what doing therapy one night a week, I do that more now. Um so I'm there two two and a half days and I run my business the other two and a half days.

Pedro Stein 12:15

Okay. Now I want to dive into something that I usually call as an identity shift, which is like you're get you're getting out of school. You like you're mirroring your calendar to school calendars, right? That's how you roll with like more than 20 years, something like that. Yeah, you're like, okay, and then you turn yourself into a business owner. You turn you you made that leap of faith, right? But there is an identity transition here. You it's like almost like you're in a birthday party, and then Becky asks, Hey, how's cool? And you're not there anymore, and and caught you caught you off guard. You're you're the CEO of your own business, and then you have your part-time uh uh therapy that you mentioned. But uh about the CEO part, right? What how did that look like for you when you you made a transition, like in your own skin?

Samantha Straub 13:03

A good question. And I I'll tell you when you were asking the question, uh, like a moment that was recovered. That it's I still think this is something that I continually deal with and and haven't made peace with yet. You know, you said at the beginning of our conversation that like it seems like you were in service of something bigger than than Samantha, you know, bigger than myself. And that is part of the identity of an educator. And it's the only way you can really be okay with the pay. And I'm serious.

Pedro Stein 13:37

Not very different in Brazil, okay? It is like that. Okay.

Samantha Straub 13:41

It's like if you, you know, there you have to kind of find meaning and purpose in your work because you are not being compensated for the you know, the amount of education you have, or the amount of hours or s or just emotional investment that you put in, or that I put in. I'll just speak from my own perspective. So the attitudes that we have around money absolutely influences how magnetic money is to us, I think, and and how easy it is or comfortable it is to take financial risks or spend or acquire money. But I am used to being underpaid and overworked and and quietly being satisfied with that because it meant something to me. I'm having I still am having you to get used to the idea that um money is actually infinite. Like in the business world, there's there's there's always scaling that can happen. There's always like you don't have to, of course, you have to structure your business how you want it to be for your lifestyle. And but that's been a key one is like shifting how I see income and what I see as my potential for income. And I don't think I'm there yet. I really think I still deal with the this is what I deserve because I'm an educator and I'm used to getting paid like half or a third what my similarly educated you know peers do are in other uh professions.

Pedro Stein 15:12

Yeah, my wife, she liked three to four X the salary, right? And she was she was like, Holy cow, I can really make money. It's like there is no ceiling here, like people keep showing up, you know, and she's delivering and all that. She's very good. It sounds like you too, right? Very not just good at what uh what she does, but cares about what she does, right? And sometimes the systems, uh they it's not they're not helping. I'll put it like that. Sometimes there are ways of red tape, sometimes it's like the entire structure of a school doesn't help to have the to get the best out of a student. That's another topic, but just of uh in her experience being able to shape how she wants to deliver her services, it sounds like it's a game changer for her, right? No, I'm very curious about one thing, okay, because the name itself is teen savvy, right? The name of your business. So it sounds like there's already a target, obviously, a targeted audience, who do you want to serve and all that? But in the early days of your coaching practice, and sometimes there are tests. Oh, we are testing the waters, we're trying an error. Oh, this is the age I want to help, this types of kids I want to help. So, how did that look like for you? And uh today, who do you exactly serve? You could if you could expand on that.

Samantha Straub 16:37

It hasn't changed. And and again, it's because I because I knew from 26 years of testing the waters in a different role who I wanted to work with. And and that is parents of teens and tweens. So teen savvy means when you as a parent have are savvy about how to be and work and interact with teens, your family goes better. So like I teach teen savviness. I don't teach savviness to teens. I teach parents how to be savvy about teenagers. And I'm qualified to teach savviness to teens, but that's not what I do at teen savvy coaching. I feel like I just like gave a tongue twister right there. But um, so so I work with parents of teens and tweens who who are feeling disconnected, who are feeling overwhelmed, who know what they want, but don't know how to get there. Like they think that what they're doing is is working, but they're like, if it was working, it already would have, because I've been trying very hard. You know, so these are invested, caring parents who who know their North Star, generally speaking, but they but they don't have a roadmap for how to get there in terms of harmony in their household, helping their teen to thrive, or creating more open and peaceful communication patterns.

Pedro Stein 17:55

Okay, so I'm curious about one thing. Is the teen or tween involved in the process or it's just a parent?

Samantha Straub 18:02

Just the parents. Uh rarely will I involve, actually, very rarely. It's a real exception. And the reason for that is because uh there's two I like working with parents. There's just very little I haven't seen. Um, but there are two types of populations I really like working with. I like working with parents of kids who have ADHD or executive dysfunction, and I like working with parents of kids who are anxious. Those are very prevalent, and they sometimes are the same parents because those two things are like two sides of the same coin for a lot of kids. But when I'm talking to parents, sometimes I have to talk about a teenager in a way that I would never say in front of a kid. Um, like I might have to say, listen, when you're when your son is behaving in that way that is so legitimately annoying to you, here's what's really going on underneath the surface. But I have to be able to validate that the experience is annoying to the parent. And I would never call a kid annoying into his face. Never. You know, I would use different language, I would have to dance around it. I can go right to the heart of the matter, and it's loving what I say. You know, I'm like I'm not saying pejorative things about teenagers, right? But I can be so much more frank with parents when kids are not around.

Pedro Stein 19:20

Interesting.

Samantha Straub 19:21

And I truly believe that when what that I'm a believer in family therapy. I do family therapy half of, you know, sometimes in my other role. But sometimes teens are being exactly who they're supposed to be. They are not being a problem. They are behaving exactly how they're supposed to be, given their age, their wiring, and their circumstances. And when parents can realize, oh, this is like the nature of the beast, and we can adapt to the beast, they therapy is no longer necessary.

Pedro Stein 19:54

It's like the beast. I love that the in this analogy, the best the beast is the teen, which is so true sometimes, right? We've all been teenagers. I I know I gave my mom a hard time, but I I like the fact that you can talk like plainly with the parents, right? And level the playing field so they understand what's normal, what's not normal, and how to react and when to react. Even sometimes it's just about accepting the fact that that's something they're doing and just leave it alone and you know you don't have to react or solve or whatever. So I like that. Now, right, I'm curious about one thing, and I want to do an exercise with you, if you don't mind. Okay, I want to pretend I'm one of those parents.

Samantha Straub 20:36

Okay.

Pedro Stein 20:37

Okay. So, first of all, marketing-wise, how would I be able to find you?

Samantha Straub 20:43

That's a great question. Uh, right now, it's a stumble on to me. And and that's, you know, if I'm looking for kind of ways to grow my business, I most of my clients, not all, but most of them are word of mouth. So in the area where I work, I'm well connected with therapists and schools. And and of course, when I work with clients, they they often will send me friends. But otherwise, you if you Google, you know, parent coach, I may come up, I may not. I've been working on that, you know, trying to get the SEO. But like, I have not spent money on advertising. I have not, you know, like I've not done paid ads, but you can find me on Instagram at Teen Savvy Coaching. You can find me on Facebook at Teen Savvy Coaching with Samantha Straub. I have a podcast called Parenting Shrink Wrapped, and I co-host that with a child and adolescent psychiatrist friend of mine. Um, so there are ways to stumble onto me, but that's currently how people find me, or someone refers them.

Pedro Stein 21:45

Okay. Now, when you mentioned a child of the lesson and you're like psychologist, I was wondering is this a kid with a heart? And you imagine having a co host as a teenager. That would be hilarious.

Samantha Straub 21:57

I would love that. We've had we've we've had our first teenager. She's a psychiatrist, so she's like the medication provider. Um, is but we we had our first teen guest on parenting shrink wrap recently. It was a it was a recent episode. She's a 19-year-old with a TED talk, and she had things to say about how to speak from the parent perspective to connect with your kids, and she was brilliant. Sonia Southar, I'll give her a shootout a shout-out. She was fantastic. Nice. And we've got another, I'm recording another one with a teenager because we're we ended all of our episodes saying thank you for raising the next generation of world changers. And so we're always looking for world world changers to interview. So uh we've got a world changer who's who we're interviewing actually next week. Um he's gonna talk about his experience being a young, he's a young adult now, but being a teenager with ADD and what that felt like. And I'm excited for that conversation.

Pedro Stein 22:49

Okay.

Samantha Straub 22:50

Now, rabbit hole, you asked me how to find me, and I told you about guests on my podcast.

Pedro Stein 22:54

Yeah, no, we're we're still in the same exercise, okay? I'm still the parent, I'm still your ideal client profile. Same exercise. I'm like, I was referred to you word of mouth, right? You mentioned, let's pretend that happened. Uh I Googled you and it popped out. Okay. Or I listened to one of the podcasts. I'm like, you know what? Samantha seems cool. And I get in touch with your you and your business. And let's say there is alignment. Let's speed up the sales process a little bit. Okay. You can help me. I can sense you can help me and all that. That's good. Now, can you walk me through how does it look like to work with you or teen savvy, right? And what are the potential outcomes I can expect out of it?

Samantha Straub 23:36

Yep. I have a couple ways to work with me. I have a membership, a monthly membership. Um, and that's the least expensive way. And that where I go live and I've got recorded courses that are a lot of my foundational things that I go over with my private clients. And some people, that's where they start. Many of the people who are in the membership, that's not where they started. That's where they went second. So that's called the Teen Savvy Parent Hub. And there's there's a lot of validation that comes from signing on to a conversation and hearing someone else say your story because you're like, oh my gosh, this this annoying like nails on a chalkboard behavior that I'm seeing in my household. It turns out it's not just my kid. This is like, again, nature of the beast. Like someone I don't know from Idaho just told us the same story, right? And that's very validating. So that's one way to work with me, but it's and that's in a group. I also offer private coaching. And if and I offer that in two ways. So um when I first started coaching, when I first started coaching, uh, the advice was do not offer single sessions, you know, don't that that's that's not gonna go any place. So I started by just offering coaching packages. But that's a big ask. That's a big ask to get on this discovery call with someone and say, hey, like let's meet for even my coaching packages are not even very big. They're four sessions long right now. I have some bigger ones, but my like the one that that works the best or that sells the most is four sessions long. And I can do a lot in four sessions, and many people re-op, they'll they'll buy a second package afterwards. But that's still a sizable time and financial commitment. And so what I started offering was single sessions. You got a problem, and to book a package with me, you need to get on a call with me because I'd want to make sure that I can actually help you. I don't want someone just buying four sessions saying, like, I paid my money, now solve this problem. I'm like, no, like that's beyond my area of expertise, or the problem's too big for four hours. Like, I want people to have a realistic expectation for what we can do, what we can accomplish together. So I get on it, so so I make sure that you you know have a discovery call with me. And I'm very straightforward about that. But I started offering single sessions, and that is by far the thing that sells the most is parents, people would book, and sometimes from a discovery call, sometimes not, a one-hour session, and it costs more per that one hour than if like if you if you end up booking four with me, the hourly rate is less, obviously. But so frequently I'll just get parents saying, I just need an hour with you to talk me off this ledge or talk me through this one thing. And I would think I actually have the stats on, I think it's about 70 to like high 70s, 80% of folks who book that session end up booking up some sort of larger package with me. It's because they're like, This was good and I want more of it. So to answer your question, there's a lot of different ways and it and to to work with me. And it depends on what your needs are, how big of a problem it is, what what kind of support you're looking for. Is it like put out a single fire, just spend an hour with me? If you want ongoing support, but like there are there isn't a crisis, join my membership. If you want, if you've got kind of a a few months to dedicate to this, sign on with me for private coaching, and then maybe join the membership for maintenance afterwards. That's what a lot of people have done.

Pedro Stein 27:01

Okay, interesting. Different uh offers. It's almost like they they need to feel a taste for it, almost like a trial. That that first one, and then they roll out to the continuous plan. Interesting. Okay. Now I'm gonna throw you a curveball, if you don't mind. Okay, small one, really small. You do have your part-time therapy work that you do, and you have your full your your own business. It's in savvy we're discussing here. So, how do you think about capacity so you don't stretch yourself too thin? You know, because it's hard to I'm a coach and I am a podcast host full-time, and sometimes I I love both to be candid, and I have a hard time managing that. So please enlighten me a little bit.

Samantha Straub 27:53

Pedro, if magic were possible, I would be doing coaching full-time. I really I I like it a lot, it's more creative, it's less draining. I don't dislike therapy. Like if any of my therapy clients hear this, they'll be like, What? We're your second favorite, you know, and because certainly that that doesn't feel like that when I'm with them, but it's it's a more regulated field, and like there's just there's more like can't do this, have to do that um nature to it. It's less less flexible. And and sometimes at the end of the day, I go home and I've just listed like on on Tuesdays, I have eight therapy clients. That's what I do when you talk about capacity. Like I am tired on Tuesdays. I have no space for my business on a Tuesday. So I but that is when I made the jump from teaching, like I I'm not a owner of the therapy practice, I'm an employee. So I negotiated a salary there. So that was something I could count on. So regardless of how well or poorly my business did out of the starting block, like I had some financial predictability if in my income. If magic were possible, I would say, you know what, I'm just gonna run my business because it's geographically not like I could go anywhere. Um my kids are about to, they're gonna be out of college soon. You know, we're we could we could live any place we wanted to on the globe. How do I think about capacity? It's hard. I think that like trading dollars for hours is is a limiting factor in a in a service-oriented business, which is why I opened the membership.

Pedro Stein 29:24

Okay, makes sense. Maybe magic is possible. You never know, right?

Samantha Straub 29:31

I think it is. I think it's possible. I don't know when. I don't know when it'll be possible, but like that's that's my my plan one of these years.

Pedro Stein 29:38

Yeah, I bet that uh if past Samantha was talking to you, she was like, What? You left school, you know. So in a way, you're already there, okay? It's just about the next step. So you're right.

Samantha Straub 29:51

You're so right about about if Pat Sam was like, wait, you you're a business owner? Like what? You're you're not I you have a podcast, you started a membership, you don't know you didn't know how to do those things. You're you are not wrong.

Pedro Stein 30:07

Okay, now I want to um move to a different topic that I really really like, okay, which is pricing, but not about hard numbers or anything like that, more about the mindset behind it, right? Yeah, because in the coaching space and service industries overall, and you mentioned trading your time for dollars, the coaching space is a very self-worth path, right? Oh, it's just my time, right? And we can come up with a price, and sometimes we are undervalued undervaluing ourselves, sometimes we are unaware of what's the right pricing point, so we don't want to get ourselves out of the market. So, about pricing, how do you think about it today? And were there any lessons on the way that Shay Tao you landed where you are?

Samantha Straub 30:53

Absolutely. It has changed because I told you that I came from a profession where my time and energy were sorely undervalued financially. So that was a mindset I entered into this. Plus, in therapy, there's a set price per hour. That's what you pay. Like, you know, you if you go to a therapy practice, I'm an out of network provider, I don't take insurance. So you can go to the practice where I work and see how much it costs to work with me for an hour. And and so I was like, well, is that my worth? That price, you know, and but like who set that? The owners of the therapy practice and and the field of therapy in the Maryland area where I work, right? That's that's random. So I was like, is that is that my hourly what it's worth? And so at some point I started realizing, you know, what what I can offer genuinely like is peace of mind. I can offer a transformation in a household that like has significant worth. And it's worth more per hour than than what I thought I should charge. And so I started focusing on what I can what I can do for a family, not just how many minutes I'm spending to make it happen. And the fact is, when you're when you hire me, you're not hiring me for an hour. You're hiring me for an hour of my time that has become more valuable because of my 27 years of experience developing the expertise that I have, the master's degree that I hold, the professional development that I've undertaken, to be able to offer you off the cuff an answer to your question without you having to Google at 11 at night. I can synthesize things, I can pull from my head and my experience and my my you know my curriculum. Um what you need when you need it. And that's pretty valuable.

Pedro Stein 32:38

Okay. Uh the pricing, it's always interesting. I I really like it, you know, the the topic itself. Like I charge by the hour too, to an extent, and sometimes I stopped doing that. And one of the reasons I stopped doing that because I felt like I was turning myself into a commodity. Yeah. Right. Say they were they were comparing my fees to the cleaning, cleaning lady, the dentist, whatever, whatever industry. It's just like Pedro charged this, and uh, I could get a dentist. Like that doesn't make any sense. But anyhow, that's one of the reasons. The other reason was that it made it weird mathematically. Why? If I go over 60 minutes, 65 minutes, should I be charging more? Or if I stop five minutes earlier, am I stealing them from their time that they already paid me? So, and there's nothing magical that it happens at this when the clock hit the 60-minute mark, right? That's the the trick. And I think you kind of nailed it when you mentioned the transformation in the household. Honestly, I don't take in consideration what I invested in my years of practice or certifications or my business graduate for to help the in my coaching practice. And the reason I don't do that is because that's a cost mindset for what I'm doing now, which it's totally fair. If you're taking a look at overhead in a business wise, but I'd love to fix my idea into the transformation. Like if I'm helping um Brazilian, a Brazilian guy, a dev developer, land a job in the US market, what does that even mean to him? His first paycheck, the second paycheck. If you help a household to have a very, you know, peaceful uh environment, uh how much does that mean? You know what I you know what I'm saying? So I really like when you you you nailed it in the transformation because that's the way at least I see it. And I mean, I'm not saying I'm right or anyone is wrong, it's just the way I see it.

Samantha Straub 34:45

Well, that that's the thing also about being an entrepreneur and being a coach, is there are some best practices that you can find out there, and then you combine what you learn about best practices with a process called throwing spaghetti at the wall, where you just try stuff and see what works best. So I'm actually about to revise my offers. So, like if you go to my website today, we're recording in early June, it looks one way. But my website is under development behind the scenes, and when it rolls out, there will be new and different offers that are less based on ours.

Pedro Stein 35:20

Okay. Now, shifting gears for a second, you know, what what's next for Teen Savvy and you? You know, I'm curious about where you're taking all this. I mean, you do have your the therapy, you do have your own business, you're launching offers. I mean, what's next? What's exciting?

Samantha Straub 35:36

Okay, I'll say it out loud. I I when I started Teen Savvy coaching, I really I said in my head to nobody in particular, I'm gonna do this, and somewhere along the lines, I'm gonna have a podcast, I'm gonna create a membership. Those were two things that I was like, I'm going to do this. That's I liked I like teaching, I like being one to many. So what what what I'm thinking now is I would like to expand my team and write a book. And I don't know how to do either one of those things, but I didn't know how to create a membership or start a business or start a podcast, and I pulled those things off. So that's what's next. I'd like to, I'd like to have, I already have a virtual assistant. I have I pay someone to help me out with the business and I pay someone to do my social media. But like I would like to bring on someone to who's uh who's another coach or another expertise area of expertise or even a whole like host of people who have different um areas of expertise where there's affiliate work or referral work. I'm not sure, but I'd like to expand the Teen Savvy team and I'd like for there to be a book with my name as the author.

Pedro Stein 36:44

I love that. Exciting. Okay. Now, if someone listening wants to connect with you, Samantha, follow your work. And we're gonna have all the links in the description, but what's the best way to people to find you and connect with you?

Samantha Straub 36:56

The fastest my website is teensavycoaching.com. So T-E-E-N-S-A-V-V-Y-2Vs coaching.com. And that's the best way to find me. Everything's there. And like I said, my website will be refreshed maybe by the time this episode drops. I'm in the middle of an upgrade right there, but it's not gonna go off. It's not gonna go. I'm not taking it down before I upgrade it. So that's the best way to find me. And you can also follow me on Instagram at Teen Savvy Coaching, on Facebook, Teen Savvy Coaching with Samantha Straub, or listen to Parenting Shrink Wrapped. We drop new episodes every Monday.

Pedro Stein 37:31

Okay. You know, there were a few things you've shared today really stayed with me. Usually at this point, I pick a few and I highlight, but I'm gonna do a little bit different with you. I feel like it's one big package with you. It's like when sharing your experience, you know, from your your parent, what like your parents, they ended up divorcing themselves, the struggles, understanding uh how you help teens when you're in school and the identity shift you made towards being a business owner. Then we talked about pricing, then we talked about you know capacity. Don't don't stretch yourself too thin. Samantha, overall, so open, you know, so open about your your obstacles, your struggles, what you're still developing. So to me, that's oh my god, that's the the true key asset of a true coach. You know, it's like someone who can understand that they're not perfect, they're still evolving, you know, they're still in the journey. So kudos to you, really. Now, thank you.

Samantha Straub 38:37

Usually okay, and usually I hope my parent coaching clients feel the same way because the last thing I want is for a client to come to me with their most vulnerable stuff, which is raising their kids, and have me feel like I'm talking to them from up on high. Because I that's never that's not how I feel. Like I'm uh you're not gonna get judgment, you're gonna get love, and I'm gonna be rooting for you, and we're gonna be working to collaboratively. Yeah, that's that's and I'll be open about my own struggles and I'll make fun of them too.

Pedro Stein 39:06

Okay, now I usually I wrap up the episode today. I'm gonna wrap up a little bit different. Okay. So thanks for raising the next generation of world changers. Okay. I appreciate you being here today and sharing with us.

Samantha Straub 39:19

I love that. Thank you, Pedro, and thank you for having me. This has been a pleasure.

Davis Nguyen 39:23

That's it for this episode. This episode, as well as this podcast, was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help business owners elevate their business through six, seven, and eight figured years, all without burning out. If you're looking to grow your business as well as get the time freedom that you are looking for, visit us at join purplecircle.com and see what we can do to help you and your business.