#019 The Unsexy Business Strategy That Actually Works

Think your offer, your content, or your "energy" is what's holding your business back? Those things matter ... but in this quick-hit mini episode, we're getting real about the one habit that separates women building sustainable businesses from those stuck in the "I'm working so hard but nothing's changing" cycle. And it might not be what you expect.

In this episode, we cover:

• The fitness coach analogy that reframes how you think about investing in mentorship and why the "cheap option" is almost always the most expensive decision you'll make
• Why "building in ease" and "trusting the flow" without a system behind it is like walking into a gym on day one and saying you'll just move intuitively
• The exact data points you should know off the top of your head right now close rate, revenue per lead source, conversations needed to hit your income goal ... and what it means if you can't
• How tracking is the flashlight, not the punishment, and why you can't fix what you can't see
• The Rolex metaphor: why investing in yourself and the right coach isn't an expense, it's the one asset that appreciates and can never be taken from you

Key takeaway: Your energy and mindset absolutely matter ... but they work best when they're backed by real numbers. If you've been running your business on vibes and hope alone, today is the day that changes. Know your numbers. Invest in someone with receipts. You are the asset ... act like it.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

If you dunno your numbers, you don't have a business, period. I'm gonna keep this episode pretty short today because honestly what I'm about to talk about should not require a full in-depth episode. But I keep saying the same thing over and over and over again, and I think it's time that we have a conversation about it. I want to talk to you today about the thing that separates the. Yeah. Entrepreneurs who are successful at business and who build a real sustainable lasting business from the ones who just stay stuck in this cycle of working extremely hard, working so many hours, but nothing is changing. They're doing so much. They're spending so much time and effort on the wrong things. Okay, that's what I wanna talk about today. I don't wanna talk about content. I don't wanna talk about your offer. I don't wanna talk about. Your energy or your mindset? Well, kind of in a way I guess, but at least not in the way that the internet right now is talking about energy and mindset. I wanna talk to you today about whether or not you are tracking your data for your business. And I know I already know, I can already feel some of you pulling back a little bit because data isn't sexy. Let's be real. It's not, but it doesn't have to be sexy. To be a non-negotiable in your business. It doesn't have to feel aligned. And you know me, you guys, I always talk about being in alignment, but sometimes we gotta do things that aren't sexy to get us to where we wanna go. And if you're running a business, this is one of the unsexy things. And if you don't like it, hire an assistant. Hire somebody to know your numbers. Lemme tell you a story. Okay? Let's say. You decided that you're done feeling the way that you are feeling right now in your body. Maybe you're a little overweight, you're not as in shape as you used to be. Maybe you, you know, get a little winded when you walk up the stairs. Okay? No judgment here. Um, but right now you're ready to make the change. Okay? I've, I've been there in my life, been to places where I'm like, um, my clothes are just feeling a little bit tighter than normal. Um, and I don't love that. So guess what? You go and go out and you're gonna hire a fitness coach, right? You're gonna find somebody to help you. And with that comes two options. Option one is you can hire a trainer at your local gym who just got certified last month. You can go do the, the$5 a month,$10 a month,$20 a month, planet Fitness or whatever. Now this person, they're a nice person, they're enthusiastic, they're gonna hand you. A very generic meal plan. They're gonna tell you to do 30 minutes of cardio, um, do this, this, and this, and let's see how everything goes at the end of the week, right? So like that's the type of feedback that you're gonna get with a lower level coach. And there's nothing wrong with this person, okay? Everybody has to start out somewhere. But where you're at in your journey, in your fed upness with your current situation is gonna determine what type of coach you look for. Okay. Now, option two, you could hire someone who trains Olympic athletes. This person has spent years, maybe decades at this point, studying human performance, biohacking. They've worked with elite. Level bodies. They understand biomechanics, they understand the nervous system, they understand regulation. They understand recovery protocols. They understand nutrition at a granular level. And then when you sit down with them, they don't just hand you a meal plan and a template of a workout, like you can go on your app store and get those for$5 a. They're not that. They're gonna look at you, they're gonna look at your body, they're gonna look at your composition, they're gonna look at your history, or they're gonna look at your goals. They're gonna look at your lifestyle, and they are going to build something so specific to you and for you that you are almost guaranteed If you follow this, you're gonna get results. Now, here's my question to you. Which one is going to cost more? Obviously, option two, it's gonna be. Significantly more. And most people would look at that price tag and say, I just can't justify paying$600 a session, a thousand dollars a session. I will just start with a cheaper option and upgrade later. I'll do it on my own. Which there's nothing wrong with doing it on your own, but you're gonna have to put in a lot of blood, sweat, tears. You are gonna have to put in a lot of that. Okay? And if you don't wanna do that, here's how you short track where you want to go. here's what happens. When you choose to invest in the Olympic level coach, you are gonna get results way fucking faster. You are going to avoid injuries that lead two setbacks. The person who invests in an elite coach, mentor trainer. Knows that they don't wanna waste six months of doing the wrong things. They don't wanna have to unlearn bad habits. They are going to make an investment that is going to save them time, money, and frustration in the long run. They have the long game in play. They're forecasting the future. The cheaper option ends up being the most expensive at the end of the day because decisions that they made. Now are going to affect them for another year. And that's exactly how it works in business. And I like to compare business to fitness because in reality it takes the same level of commitment, of discipline, of planting the seed before you ever see the fruit of that tree. You don't just go into the gym and you get six pack abs in a week. And I think. That a lot of people think that business should work that way, and it doesn't. It doesn't. You can collapse timeframes by working with an expert who has the results that you want, who has been in the trenches, who knows the nuances of everything that you're gonna go through that you can't even forecast or think about right now. They've been through it. That's why it's so important to invest in the right mentorship and coaches, not just people out there online selling you the dream and the fantasy of this is gonna be easy. You're gonna be a millionaire by next week. You're not gonna have to do much. Just go with the flow. Right? No. No, that's not how it works. It's a delusional fantasy. I'm here to like, hopefully give you some realistic expectations. And again, I kind of wanna circle back to what I talked about at the beginning, right? Like you can absolutely not have a coach, not have a mentor, not have an expert by your side. You can go watch free content on the internet all day long, and you can eventually get the same results. It's gonna take you longer, and it's also gonna require. Quite a bit more effort from you because you're gonna have to take yourself back to school, and you're also gonna have to be the teacher as well. There's nothing wrong with that approach. I want to say this right now. Maybe you're in a financial position where you can't afford the expert that you want, so you have no other choice but to take yourself back to school. But this is where realistic expectations come in. There's been many times in my life where I haven't been able to afford a mentor or an expert to help me and guide me where I need to go and see my blind spots. But you are damn sure that I took myself back to school. I was a student, I was a teacher. I put in so much work. Like right now, guys, it's funny because I'm coding out a software program that right now already has like. 27,000 lines of code. Um, didn't know that I was capable of this, never even thought about it. But I'm finding that I'm truly loving this, like this is my love language and it's been sitting in front of me all these years. And I remember a mentor one time, he asked me, you know, if there was anything that you could do in life and you could make money at it, like, what would you be doing? What do you love doing that you could monetize? And at the time when he asked me that, I was like. I've heard this so many times and I know it logically in my brain, but I can't tell you what it is that I'd wanna be doing. I don't know. And at the time I'd said, I think, you know, just being able to give people strategies and they follow those strategies and get results. Like, I don't wanna be an accountability coach. I don't wanna have to babysit another grown adult. Like if I tell you to do something as a coach, as a leader, as a mentor, as an expert, and you don't do it, that's on you. I don't wanna be the person that's like. Hey, come on. You said you wanted to change your life. Like we're gonna change your life. Come on, come on now. Come on. Like, no, that's not me. If that's something that you need, that's not me. And you know, I was talking to him about this and he was like, you know, that's kind of what I do. I'm like, I know that's so, I respect you. So I like you. That's why I like working with you. but it wasn't until I started developing the software that I'm like, holy shit. All the things in my life over the past decade have been pointing me to this direction, and now the pieces are starting to make sense as I look back at it. But as I was in it, I couldn't see it. Anyways, I digress. Okay. I say that to say I had to take myself back to school. I right now am spending 16 to 17 hours per day learning, coding, learning how to develop and build this software system. I, I, I kid you not, I go to the bathroom, you guys with my laptop. Like, I don't go anywhere without my laptop right now because I am so invested I, right now, there's not really anybody that I, I mean there probably is, but not really.'cause everything lives inside my brain, but like, I have to take myself back to school for this one. I have to do this on my own. So I'm watching the free content. I am investing my time into building my knowledge and my skillset in this. Okay? So there's nothing wrong with that, but if you want to collapse timeframes, partner with someone who has gotten the results that you want to get, period, you can put together strategies from 17 different people who all contradict each other and be overwhelmed. You know what I'm talking about? Or you can invest in a mentor, someone who's actually done the thing that you're trying to do at the level that you're trying to do it and collapse your timeline. You only got two options. take yourself back to school or do that. We don't wanna waste time. And I know that there's a whole corner of the internet right now that's telling you to just go with the flow. Build with ease. Don't force it. Trust the process and listen, I'm not saying that that ease is not real. I'm not saying that flow doesn't exist. But ease and flow is something that you have got to fucking earn. It's not just going to be handed to you on a silver platter. You don't get a trophy just for participation in life. I'm sorry, but you don't. Flow and ease is what happens after you have built the business, the systems, the discipline. You don't get to skip all of that and just go straight to ease and flow. That's not how any of this works. And honestly, if you're starting from scratch in any type of business. It's gonna be at the bare minimum. Bare minimum, I'm telling you, eight to 12 months for you to unlearn some shit that you unconsciously picked up throughout your lifetime. That's gonna be limiting beliefs. That's gonna be your mindset, that's gonna be your discipline, that's gonna be all these different things that you learned. Somewhere along the way, you're gonna have to unlearn. that would be the equivalent of you walking into the gym on day one, never have tracked a meal in your life, never have followed a fitness program, and just saying, Hey, I'm gonna move, like how my body wants to move. Intuitively, your intuition, my friend has not been trained yet. You can get it there, but right now it's not trained and it's not a matter of if you're good or bad at something. Whether you're talented or not talented, it's a matter of whether you're trained or untrained. That's it. And you don't have a baseline yet. You don't know what you don't know. So I, having an expert in your corner is so valuable. And that brings me back to the data piece because when you hire that Olympic level coach, that is the very first thing that they're gonna have you do. They are going to have you track everything. Okay? I have hired some pretty. Pricey coaches in my life, and I know this from firsthand experience, I have not hired an Olympic level coach yet, but I have hired and spent multiple thousands of dollars on coaches. Okay? Um, but they have, you track every single meal. They track every single rep, every single set. Uh, they have you track your sleep, your water intake, your recovery, your heart rate, your HRV, and at first, if you're not used to this, it's going to feel a lot, it's going to feel a little overwhelming. That's normal. And it feels like that because it's, it's tedious. Like you have to make a conscious effort to do it. Eventually it'll just become second nature. And then, you know, it's great. Your discipline will kick in and you're just like, oh, it feels weird. I haven't tracked yet. Okay, cool. Got it. And what starts to happen is you start seeing patterns that you have not been able to see before You realize when you start doing this, if you have ever tracked your calories, your macros, anything like that. You think maybe you're eating 1800 calories a day and you're like, yeah, I don't know why I'm not losing weight. But then when you actually start tracking every single bite, every single little thing that you put into your mouth, you realize that you were eating 3,400 calories and you're like, holy shit, I had no idea. You're gonna see on the days that you slept less than six hours, that your performance dropped by at least 30%, and you never put two and two together before because you weren't tracking. You're gonna discover that the thing that you thought was working wasn't actually working, and the thing that you were ignoring was the thing that you needed to be doing to get you the result that you want. Tracking as sexy as it isn't. It is feedback. It is the flashlight in the dark cave. It is a flashlight to help you see what you cannot see. And if you cannot see it, you cannot fix it. Now, bring that into your business. Do you know right now? Not a guess. I want you to know an actual number. Okay? What is your close rate? Do you know how many conversations you need this month to hit your income goals? Do you know how many sales that you need? Do you know how your leads are being generated? Do you know which lead source is actually converting and which ones you're wasting time on or money if you're running paid ads? If you cannot answer these simple questions in under five seconds, you do not have a business yet. You have a hope and pray strategy. You got a hobby. You are playing CEO, but you are not CEO yet. And I say that with so much love and so much honesty in case nobody has told you that. I tell you this, to make you better so that you stop wasting all of your time and energy doing the wrong things. And you're not gonna know if you're doing the wrong things or not unless you're tracking your data. That hobby business is not paying your mortgage. If you are a playing CEO, that is not gonna pay your mortgage, that is not gonna retire your husband, that is not gonna set your kids up with a trust fund. Like you are not gonna be able to do all those things unless you do the unsexy thing, which is tracking your data. And I want you to kind of think about this in a way of like investments, okay? Okay. Everybody's familiar with Rolex. When someone buys a Rolex, nobody questions that investment. There's a wait list, like my neighbor just bought one. Um, it's a, it's an antique Rolex. Beautiful. That Rolex, the reason nobody questions the investment in it is because it doesn't lose value over time. It's going to appreciate, so you're not spending money, you're investing money in an asset and. You get to have the status of the Rolex. You get to look at it. You get to, you know, all the things that come with a Rolex. That's more than just a watch. I could go buy a$10 watch from Walmart. It's not the same thing. You're not buying the same thing 10 years from now that Rolex is gonna be worth more than what you paid for it. That's the exact same equivalent to investing in yourself, investing in your skillset, investing in the right mentor. It is not an expense. It is not. Spending money on a course, it's putting money into the one asset that can never be taken away from you. What you know, how you think, how you perform that can never be taken away from you. Your knowledge is so powerful. The reason that you are not where you wanna be at financially yet is just a knowledge gap and a skills gap. Knowledge is gonna improve your skills. That's it. So if you're at 10 K, 20 k months right now, and you wanna be at a hundred thousand dollars, how does that a hundred thousand dollars person operate? What do they know that you don't know? And that's it. That's how you collapse that when you invest into a coach or a mentor who has the results, who has operated at a high level, who can look at your business and tell you exactly where the gap is. That is your Rolex. That investment compounds over time. The skills that you learn, the patterns that you are able to recognize with that, the systems that you build, those pay you back for the rest of your career for the rest of your life. But the person who refuses to invest, who keeps trying to figure it out all on their own with the free content, the vibes, the manifestation, like, and I'm all for manifestation, like on a quantum level, I am all for it. But not how it's being marketed to. The pacified versions in this corner of social media right now that is doing you a disservice. That is the most expensive decision that you can make because you are paying in your time and you cannot ever get your time back. So here's the one thing that I want you to walk away with today. Okay. If you have been running your business without tracking your numbers, we got a couple different things we kind of covered today. Tracking your data and also investing in a coach, mentor expert who has the results that you're wanting. Two things today, If you are not tracking start today, you're just a decision away, not tomorrow, but today the software program that I'm developing is going to help you fix all of this, and we're making it sexy. Um, so here in the next few months. I hope to have it launched beta, so I will need some founder beta testers, if that interests you. Um, stay tuned. Follow me on social media, Steph Skye, S-T-E-F-S-K-Y-E. That's my handle on everything. That's where I'll be posting updates. Um, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be absolutely fucking epic. Like, I'm so excited for this. It's gonna help so many people and it's a tool that I wish I had for the past 10 years. Um, so today I want you to start tracking your data, though. I want you to know your calls, how many calls you have, what's your show rate, what's your close rate? Know your revenue per lead source. Get very intimate with your data. The person who transforms their business and 10 Xs it. are the same people who 10 x and transform their bodies. It's the same thing. They track, they execute. It's unsexy. It's simple, but it works. And if you've been going back and forth on whether to invest in a mentor or a coach or anything like that, like asking yourself if you can afford it, what's the cost of inaction? What's it costing you to not find a way to afford that? Find someone who's done what you want to do, not someone who teaches theory, someone with receipts. It is so important to find someone with receipts in this day and age where there's so many people and gurus that are bullshitting their way through trying to build a business and make it look sexy, and they've never actually built anything. So be careful out there with those people. But go all in on yourself. Invest in a coach. Start tracking your numbers. You my friend, are the asset. Invest accordingly. That's the episode. I'll see you in the next one.