Perfection Not Required: Growing an Online Business from the Inside Out
Perfection Not Required: Growing an Online Business from the Inside Out
Ep.38 Creating a Borderless Business with Sam Varner
Her credentials were stacking up... but they were worthless once again. On this episode, Sam takes us on the journey from Canada to Australia and finally to Houston, Texas. It was the frustration of having to start all over again that led her to entrepreneurship but the passion for helping others that has kept her focused.
Sam Varner is a profit coach, money making business strategist and podcaster with a no bs style that I totally love. She's passionate about helping women make money in their business. No more Hobby Jobby!
In this episode, you'll hear about:
1. What's keeping you from making money
2. It's more than just strategy
3. You're the investment
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And it took me forever in my business. That is the one thing that if I was to say like what pinpoint from being kind of sort of passively doing a business to actually being successful, it was me embracing headspace in a way that I hadn't before. I felt like it was very woowoo. It wasn't really up my alley to begin with for a long time, I would read books and be like, I don't know what this is talking about. And when I finally did embrace it, it was like, Oh, this might have been the thing that I've been missing all the time. I can't just like action my way through things or tactic my way through things. What you learn is you can do a lot of other things. And so it's not working and you have to really think about, well, then why is it not working. And so when I finally did embrace the mindset piece in a way that was meaningful, lo and behold, it worked.
Jamie Stephens:Thanks for tuning in to another episode of breaking up a corporate each week I chat with everyday women that ditch their nine to five to bet on themselves. We break down their journey into entrepreneurship, unpack the lessons learned and create the vision of how this life gets to be if you're willing to get uncomfortable and step into your potential. I'm your host, Jamie Renee, to time corporate escapee and coach to burnout women looking to plan their escape. Let's go. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Breaking up with corporate today. I have Sam barter on here. And Sam is a profit coach, and a money making business strategist. Welcome to the show, Sam,
Unknown:thank you for having me. I'm excited.
Jamie Stephens:Yeah, just to kick us off. I mean, I'll just go ahead and jump right in. One of the things Sam and I were talking about was the profit piece, I was telling her at this point and my business, I have like a really expensive hobby that I've been working on. But we're gonna get into that in just a little bit and really kind of pull out that profit piece. But before we do that, let's go ahead and get just a little bit of your background and kind of what you were doing before you kind of landed in this role.
Unknown:Okay, sounds good. So, um, I think the best place to start is the fact that I went to school 180 years ago, it feels like sometimes now. But I went for public relations and communication. So that was a I was going to go and work agency and I was going to that was what my career path was going to be. And everybody listening knows, right your your career path versus the path that happens is always the exact same. And the agency collapsed, and I tripped into a finance job. It was I needed a job, it was a job available. And so I went into finance at that point, which is, if you had ever seen me struggling at the kitchen table, doing my math homework, you'd be How did that even happen. But lo and behold, it's like fifth grade math to do finance essentially met, you know, adding and subtracting, so I could do that much. And I ended up in finance. And what happened from there is, it's funny now I look back on it. But my husband worked for oil and gas, big oil and gas. And he got a job offer in Australia. So I was working my way up the corporate ladder doing estate planning and financial planning and working for the Canadian Medical Association. At that point, we were so in Canada, and he got a job offer in Australia, which is amazing. Who doesn't want to go in Australia by the beach? Like of course we do. So off we went to Australia with at that point, we had a three and a half year old and a one year old. And my thought was I would just get all of my license or your qualifications in Australia. And I would work there I would go back to work. We get to Australia, we find that we're first off we're having baby number three. So that's a surprise because now we're in a foreign land with no family support, and we're gonna have three very little kids all close together. But I do all the qualification I get ready I will eventually one day go back to work and in that position. Then Mike comes home and says hey, how do you feel about Houston? Oh, Australia, like Houston, USA, Texas, like what? Music Yeah, yeah, I they want to know we want to go and work out of the Houston office. It'd be closer to home like all of those pieces are, are very appealing at that point. We've been gone for three years. But my Canadian qualifications are useless in Texas. My Australian qualifications are also useless in Texas. And so we moved to Texas, and I decided I was going to build a business like a turtle shell that could come with me wherever he took me. So I wasn't sitting in that situation of like and again qualified and all these countries I don't have been and find it very pointless. So that's how I ended up falling into our partnership was almost out of necessity, right? Getting myself to that point of, okay, this, this sucks, I don't want to just be qualified and all the lands they don't live in. So I will, I will just make my own thing that doesn't need all the licensing. So now I started, when I started my coaching business, I started doing financial coaching for individuals. So personal budgeting, and wealth development strategies and that sort of thing. Almost everybody that showed up in my sphere was business owners. So it became very obvious that I was attracting business owners and I needed to go back into that kind of corporate money side of things rather than just the personal side. So that's how we got here. And we've been in Texas now for eight years. So that's, that's how we got here.
Jamie Stephens:That's quite a, that's quite a journey. And I mean, it's just that I would have to be just so frustrating to to just like, finally get going. And then just okay, like, here we go, you know, which I feel like, women tend to be in those positions a lot more than men. So I really, I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship, especially for those reasons so that women get more choices and love and those things. I know, it kind of just like glossed over in your thing. But what was that transition between working with individuals and working with businesses? Kind of what did that that look like? Like within a couple of months? Or how long did it take to figure that out?
Unknown:It was pretty quick, it was pretty quick, realizing that I could help people figure out like, what is the budgetary changes they can make in their homes, to just create some more financial flexibility right at the beginning, or they have a business and we could just make their money, which alleviates a lot of those budgeting problems, right? If you can figure out how to take the thing you're already doing, and have it be more profitable, which of course is always like more money in your own individual pocket, then all of a sudden, you're not trying to like can I Starbucks it? Or do I have to kind of the latte factor, like all those things that we hear about in personal finance, which I kind of despise that philosophy anyway. So I think it was just like, oh, no, I'm just going to do it this way. And then I started talking, you know, on social media and networking and stuff. More to if you have a business and I always I it's funny, you said like I have an expensive hobby, I always talk about hobby job, right? Where like, it's a little more hobby than it is job. And because it's not, it's not paying all the bills, right? It's not creating that income that's giving you that, that flexibility and that freedom. And that was the thing that started talking about. And so then people that were in that position, that's exactly who showed up to begin with was hey, yeah, I haven't they, I need to make it be a business because it's, it takes all my time and causes me a lot of stress to be a hobby.
Jamie Stephens:So what were kind of the overarching themes, like with what I'm assuming that some patterns emerged with what people were showing up with why they weren't making money, and you know, asking for a friend, so
Unknown:I love it. I know this person. Okay, so huge themes that I see really often is okay, I think competence is huge, right? Like really stepping into, I am all in on this idea. And I am like Full Tilt ahead and doing it confidently. We do a lot of hiding behind the computer. Sometimes the busy work of like I worked really hard this week, I worked all day. I accomplished a lot of things. But I didn't actually talk to any other humans about what I have to offer. Right. So that reluctance to kind of make it public and have it out there in the world. That's huge. And that stems often from a lack of sales skills. So most entrepreneurs don't start in a sales role, and work backwards to creating a business. They start with a passion, they start with something that drives them. And they they're so excited because they know the value of what they have to offer for clients and they're so excited about that potential. But there's that really big like sleazy stumbling block of sales people get really caught up in, I don't want to pester people, I don't want to overwhelm people, I don't want to only be talking about my business all the time. I think I might sound like a used car salesman, you know, a terrible, terrible one from a 1992 movie kind of idea, right? And it's that those two things, the companies in the sales skills are usually at the forefront of the problems. And then sometimes there's the money in the finance deck on the back end of like, how do I even figure out what my pricing should be? If you're in a position of like independently setting your own prices, sometimes, depending on the business, that's not the case. But those three things show up over and over again, right? Yeah,
Jamie Stephens:yeah, I can see that because that is so much of what I have worked through over the last year. I mean, it's yeah, it's really not so much like the The Skills part of things has not tripped me at all. Yeah, I think like a lifelong learner or somebody who came from a corporate, you know, like, I can pick up on the know how to do these things. Yeah, I can do that things. But it's like articulating the value of the things, being confident in my own ability of the thing, because I don't have the official training, you know, all of the things that can meet yeah, I've definitely realized a lot of those. The good news is I do feel like I'm mostly on the other side of that I've done a lot of just personal growth over the last year, just really just pushing myself and put, you know, all of those things that were once very uncomfortable, including something like this, like, No, everything's new at one point.
Unknown:Yeah, we all start at the beginning, right. And I think we forget that sometimes, because we so often see people like midway through their journey, or three quarters of the way through in reality, and they're so good at that. They are so smooth, it's so clear, they they come across really well. And then the reality is, there was a point if you I mean, with everybody, unless they clean up their social media. If you're ever feeling that way, just go way back go into the archives of like, what did it look like? The first time they tried to do it? It probably looked ridiculous, right? They probably stammered and stuttered and didn't know how to present themselves or like, you know, I did a whole webinar once and didn't have a call to action. There was no like, it was like, thanks for coming. By, like, there was no way to contact me. There was no, there was no way to purchase anything from me. It was just like, I'm so glad we spent this hour together. Thanks, guys. I can relate to that. Right? And you get off and you're like, oh, no, that's not gonna work. I was like, and I have I don't even know what to thing.
Jamie Stephens:Translate to nothing. Yeah, experience. Good experience.
Unknown:Yeah. What to not do put that in the Don't do that again. Call me. Yeah.
Jamie Stephens:You know, like that is like a, just a big column for entrepreneurship is it's just a whole bunch of, we'll put it in that column. We'll learn and move on. We'll put it in that column. We'll learn and move on. It's just a rinse and repeat.
Unknown:Yeah, it is. And I think, I think almost titling that column wins. Right? Yeah, it was the first time you did that webinar. Well, that's the win. It doesn't have to be like if we anticipate that the wind should be in I sold 20 spots in my coaching program. That's insane. For one wouldn't nobody's going to do that drowned. And just going from like, I've never done a webinar to now I've done my first webinar, that's a win. So we put it in that column, and then all of a sudden, it starts to be like, oh, all those things, right? That whole column doesn't feel so painful. When it's a win win. It's a thing I've achieved the thing that I try the thing that I put out there and learn from feels better. It feels way better than being like my work. That didn't work. It's so
Jamie Stephens:true. And having that expectation at the front, too. So like, a few months ago, I did a five day challenge showed up live five days, an hour at a time. First time ever. Yeah. And it was going into this group coaching program. Yep. My goal for the five days was I show up every day, I don't die. I get this experience 100%. And if somebody happens to sign up, then we'll call that like bonus. But my goal is that I survived this. And you know, it was like, and lo and behold, that's kind of what happened. But it was just like, Yeah, okay, I was prepared for that. And yes, there's still that, oh, like, little disappointment. But it's not like I just walked away from that feeling like a failure. So like, yeah, having those reframes even before you go in and having your results over something that you can actually or your wins be something that you can actually control, like, showing up every day and doing your best. And that's that whole reframe of that's not a failure, you just got to collect those along the way and you're just stacking it up. And that's good. Exactly.
Unknown:And doing it more than once. I think, I think the one thing that I've learned over the years is how frequently we try a thing once and we don't come back to it because it didn't work because we do have in the back of our head, even if we don't set those goals if we're trying not to kind of like put ourselves in a poor position. We still somehow in the back of our head is like Yeah, but we need so many sales to justify this and it's like okay, but maybe we just need to say I'm going to do a webinar every month or every two weeks until I land a sale and then I'm going to do that webinar or whatever that looked like every month right and I'm I'm saying this from coaching world, but again, that's like shoemakers, children guys, I didn't do a webinar every month. I kind of like threw in the towel for a little while and now Now it's back on my radar to do again. But I think it's that piece too of sticking with those. Whatever those strategies are long enough to give them a chance to actually be successful as well, is sometimes the hardest part of it. Right? Yeah.
Jamie Stephens:So thinking back to one of the earlier things we were talking about, I'm curious, has anybody ever come to you with their jabi? Their hobby jabi? And you recommended that they just kind of make it a hobby? Or is there always like a conversion of to yeah, this can be a viable business. Is there anybody that you just said, like, I don't know, if you're cut out for this.
Unknown:There's not been anybody where I've thought, oh, I don't know that entrepreneurship is going to be your thing. But I've had a couple of people like just in my environment, right, that hat, they they have a new idea. Every time I see them. They want to talk about all of the things. But there's no action. There's no back end action. So I think there is a little bit of that, like, the novelty of being your own business owner, that I've never had to say to somebody like me, this is not for you. This is not for you. Barista is for you. That's your plan. Just carry on this carry on carry on with your job. It's great. No, there's always been, there's always been a way that I can look at that business. Regardless of what type of business it is, and be like, Yeah, this can be viable. But this needs to change. Like often it's appraising structure, things like that can be really a problem sometimes.
Jamie Stephens:So for the people that do have like, lots of ideas and lots of things happening, or as an entrepreneur, like how do you stay focused on stuff? Like there's always shiny object syndrome, and I tend to be prone to? So I'm just like, what is the the secret sauce there to actually
Unknown:actually sticking to it? Yeah. Do you think your shiny object is more like in terms of strategy? So you're still trying to achieve the same end? Or you're just trying different methodology to do it? Or do you think it's actually the, like that structure of your business like that? What is my business idea? What am I actually creating? Which one do you think is the bigger?
Jamie Stephens:It's more like, I know what I'm going for? It's the individual pieces on how to get there that seemed to kind of change a little bit. And part of me is like, well, the more I learn, the more I'm incorporating them, you know, but then part of me is like, just shut up and finish something.
Unknown:Okay, yes. So that for sure says to me, first off, I the first question I would always have for you or anybody else, who's in this circumstances, how many things are you trying to build at the same time? Right? Do you have multiple different service offerings are multiple different products? Are you trying to grow everybody all at the same time, which, of course, then you're getting like, you really only have 10% energy for each one of these things, if you've got 10. Or my suggestion always, for entrepreneurs at the beginning is to like go all in on one offer. So at least even if you are like choosing 15 different ways to promote it, or to sell it or to have it out there in the world, it's all the same offer. So you're still talking off the same song sheet, if that makes sense. And then I really said my clients all the time, you have to do a strategy for 90 days. And all that we're doing along the way is the evaluation piece. Did it work, what worked, what didn't work and changing one variable at a time? We have a tendency, I think, as people to change everything like, Well, that didn't work. So let's go on to the next thing. Or like, I saw somebody on a pipe or listen to somebody on a podcast and they said, do this thing. And so now I'm gonna try that, like that seems right. It worked for them. It should work for me. And I'm a big believer that like, it doesn't matter what strategy you choose, it will work. If you give it long enough to work. Most people don't. Right. They just abandon it to the next shiny thing, right. Yeah.
Jamie Stephens:I think part of what my learning opportunity for the last year has been just that because it was I'm not to say that you can't. I mean, people figure it out all the time. You know, some of us are late bloomers, and it's fine. But
Unknown:I've even figured out tons of things. I I have
Jamie Stephens:figured out tons of things and there's still so much more. But like one of the things it's like, really, my goal has been this podcast. I mean, like I was starting from fresh. So I launched a podcast I learned how to do social media, which for an introvert is love I that's a whole therapy. Course. And it's,
Unknown:yeah. You need like a service dog in the, in the Oh, for reals when you're trying to do it right.
Jamie Stephens:Is that my feet? Yeah, exactly. So like all of those things, and I put all this pressure to also build a business on, you know, and, and I was not even sure what that business was in the beginning. So I did a lot of angsty, flip flopping, trying to figure it out, you know. So now that I've figured out what I want to do, it's like, Okay, now, now, I gotta go, like, refill the coffers a little bit. So I can have more runway. But really, it's, it's such a process. Now I like the whole just change one thing at a time, because I do tend to go the throat in the bucket.
Unknown:Yeah, it makes all the difference, because then you can start to see when you get traction, right? It's not immediate when you see that with. I mean, when you start social media, and you start posting, and you you know, at the at the early stages, you're very quick to like, Wait, did anybody, anybody calling anybody? Like, did anybody follow me? All of those things, and it's kind of like, that's never going to happen. 30 seconds after you get, I mean, your mom will follow you and your sisters and maybe your friends. You know, I know, my husband follows me on Instagram, but that was because I was like, why are you not following me on Instagram? He's like, I don't have an Instagram, like, how do I even do that, and I'm like, here, I'll do it for you. Like, you're gonna follow me on Instagram. Um, but there comes a point, right? Where it's like, it gets more comfortable. And now you're doing it more frequently, and you're probably a lot less quick to go and check whether it worked right away. Right, as opposed to just knowing I'm gonna put out the value, people will get it, and I start to see that you're gonna see it, not where you expect, necessarily, right? It's not necessarily 15 comments, every post or 35 comments or under 50 comments. But it's somebody who says to you out in the world that you actually know, like, hey, was a great post the other day, I read that, and I thought that was great. And you're like, that makes me feel good. And write probably didn't post, right or comment on your post, they just told you in real life, and so many people that you're having an impact on through the podcast through social media, they're not going to say like, Hey, thanks, right? Even though you know, they exist, right? You will start to see that gets interruption. And it's just having the having the faith and doing it until it works.
Jamie Stephens:How long did it take you from the time that you decided you were going to be an entrepreneur to the time that you actually, like, started making money? Okay, so
Unknown:my trying to think back, I do everything and measuring of like, how old were kids, and how I like judge my entire life. So my youngest now will be nine in September. And when he was, he was finally going to preschool a little bit of time, right? So I carved out a little bit of time for myself at that point. So it wasn't just a pipe dream, right? It wasn't just me reading a bunch of books and fine, making ideas. Probably five and a half years ago now, I think. And the first money I made was, we have a swimming pool at our house and I was getting the, you know, the baby fans put around the pool. And the guy came and he were just chatting. And he asked me so what do you do? And I said, Well, my financial coach, do this all what is that? And so it kind of told them. And he asked me how much I charge and I said 730 bucks for like three months, I think was the pricing I had at the time. And he's like, Okay, perfect. Well, why don't I do defense for free? And then I'll pay you half of what? Right? Because that worked out was like what he was placing me accordingly for it. So that was about five and a half years ago. And then literally, I can't remember what your next client was after that. But it wasn't very quick. Like it was like, it was a really and I think most entrepreneurs will tell you that the beginning is like it's like, I have a boyfriend. I have four months or nothing happens. Again, the pain of depression. I have a client deep right and it and that eventually gets easier. And then now I am I pretty consistently getting to the point of like between 10 and$15,000 months. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. So five and a half years of like, gradually increasing how much time I could spend right as kids. He's now going into third grade this year. So obviously, I now have six hours a day when they're in school, or being like a working human which right before that with four kids. It's a lot of not a lot of time on my own. So yeah, it's kind of taken that long. So he's been in school for three years. And that's really when I was able to just commit the amount of time and not feel like I was getting knocked off kilter with school days and non school days, that sort of thing.
Jamie Stephens:So how did you maintain like your optimism during those those beginning years? Is that what you part of what you coach women on now?
Unknown:Okay, yeah, the mindset piece is huge, right? It's arguably pretty much every other skill I can teach you. And I can teach you how to manage your mind. But that becomes the most important part more than any of the other step, right? Like, can you work a spreadsheet? Sure, if you can't, no problem, we'll get your bookkeeper. Like, you can hire all those things out, but to manage your own mind and be optimistic and be driven, right? So you don't have to be happy all the time. There's always those times where you're gonna be like, This is terrible. I could just go back and get a job, I'm going to just throw in the towel. But for me, I was kind of like, I'm never going back. I'm never going back to work for somebody else. And so I have to make this work. Or I guess I just, I just won't, and I'll make $1,000 a month, and that'll be that'll be what I make it. Go back to no more lattes. So it was that it's it's my kind of this, this isn't a short term plan for me, right? This is a very long term plan for me. And I think that helps, because I'm not expecting to hit my goals in a short term way, either. Right? I'm, it's, I'm giving myself enough time to be like, yep, this will eventually happen. Now, I'm also really lucky in that we're, now we're a two income household, but for a long time, we weren't. But that was something that was an option. There have been many times, right. If I had started this earlier, back, when we were still in Alberta, I would have had to work this would have been a side hustle for me for a really long time. Probably until like replaced almost all, if not all of my income, right. At that point in our lives. We just couldn't have had maybe like, well, I might make money. This quarter. I might not, I would not, you know, we wouldn't have been able to feed our kids and things like that. So it depends on the circumstance you're in always. And I think I never forget how lucky I am that I'm in a situation where Mike's job can pay the bills and keep us going. While I build this, right? That's a very, very privileged position to be in. And I'm super grateful for that. But it was always the end game. It was like I'm doing this until it works, right. And once it starts to get working a little bit, once you get a little bit of traction, where you're like I had more than one client at a time, or it's not like I coach clients for six months, and then there's nobody until I find one more person that might want to coach, once you start to get that piece, it starts to be easier to believe that right to think that this might be a viable situation. See, I coach on that a lot. That's a huge portion of it for entrepreneurs is trying to keep themselves in the mindset of, of the possibility of what they're building. Right.
Jamie Stephens:So I know a lot of coaches end up coaching on the lessons that they themselves needed to learn the most or, you know that will you say that that was true for you as well?
Unknown:Yeah, I think it's funny what will happen. So I have my coaches for me that coach me, and we'll go and I'll do a coaching, I'll be getting help on something that I can't get myself sorted out to save my life. And then that week, almost inevitably, I will have a couple of my clients at minimum, sometimes it's like three or four of them that come with a very similar problem. And I'm like, Oh, I can actually help you this week. Because I just, I just started this I work. Here's where I think I am on this. What do you think, and it's the benefit of a coach is Yeah, their experience of they've done it before they've gone there before. But it's also the objectivity. And that's where entrepreneurs, that's why I so strongly encourage people to get a coach because you cannot see the forest for the trees on your own. You just can't. And you need somebody to just be like, Hey, wait, just just look over here. Oh, oh, I didn't even notice. I didn't even see that. I couldn't even see that. And so I think there's those parts, right? I think it's like, yeah, I'm gonna coach you on exactly what I'm struggling with, or the thing I was struggling with eight months ago that I finally figured it out. And now I can share that with you. But then also the, let me show you what you can't see or let me talk to you in a way that you can hear. Because we're mean to ourselves really mean to ourselves. And your coach is not going to be mean I my clients do call me a bit of an ass kicker occasionally. But I'm nice about it right? Like I'm never gonna be mean the way that your inner voice says me to you, but I will kind of be like, you can do that faster. Yeah, you can do more than that. That goal you just said is I mean, do you feel proud of that goal? I feel like it's doable and I'm like okay, but yeah, if it's like oh you it's a putting a brush your teeth and your to do list you know you're going to burn Your teeth, or you might have already brushed your teeth. And you're just checking off for the sake of checkmark. Yeah, doesn't count. Come on now. So
Jamie Stephens:calling them out.
Unknown:And what I need, I mean, and I think what happens is I realize how much like the coach that I have. Is that kind of a coach, because that's how I need to receive rice. Sometimes it is a swift kick in the behind. Yeah. That's who gravitates to me is like, Yes, I need, I need a push, I need some help. I also need the support on the back end, that you're never going to leave me feeling terrible about myself, but you kind of pull in people that are just like how you were near moments ago? And that's who you're coaching for the most part.
Jamie Stephens:I get that for sure. Yeah, I respond that way to where it's really like don't sugarcoat it.
Unknown:Yeah, you don't need to fluffy jacket for me just like, get it out there.
Jamie Stephens:Yeah. Awesome. So one of the questions on your bio sheet is about your crush formula, what? What is not?
Unknown:Okay, so the crush formula is what I think are the five kind of key areas to business development, and to profitable growth. So the crush formula has the five categories. So you start with the C, which is the core of your business, it is your mission, your vision, your values, the way that you want to build the life that your business is supporting. So it's, it's kind of really digging into that piece of it. Are is talking about revenue. So that ends up being all of the numbers. Are you ready to hire? Are you ready to expand? Do you need another bricks and mortar location? Are you needing to talk about pricing? Do you need to figure out what your profit and loss statement look like? Whatever that might look like? The use for utility. So it is really talking about? In order to scale your business, you cannot be a one man band with no automation with no software support doesn't necessarily mean you need to build yourself a big team. That's, you know, some people really want to do that. And some people are like, no, don't want to do that. But it's creating yourself all of the support that allows you to scale right, giving you the capacity to deal with more clients than just 123 at a time, then S is sales. So it's all how do we sell how do we price? How do we promote ourselves? Overall, this is where I find my like PR and marketing kind of background as really comes into it. Like how are we going to promote you? How are you going to stand out and differentiate yourself really confidently to sell whatever it is you're selling. And then age is the headspace. So back to that mindset piece really along the way each piece of it is, and how are you feeling? And what is going on? I get claimed sometimes it'll come in and be like, I didn't do any of the things that we talked about doing. I'm like, okay, that's fine. Why? What stopped you like what was it that stopped you from doing the thing you had committed to What stopped you from being committed to that action. And so often, that's the roadblock. It's not even, that they don't know what to do, it's that there's something there that we have to just work through a little bit. So those five key areas, you keep coming back to them all the time. People always say to me, because I poach with clients for six months at a time. And they always say to me, like, Is it six months, and then you're done, like you're off to fly free. And I'm like, yeah, sometimes people are super happy to do that. But most of the time, it's like, okay, now back to the beginning, because now I'm at a new stage. And I need to be able to make sure that this is all still working at the next level that I'm at. It's kind of a rinse and repeat. As you said earlier, that formula, you just rinse and repeat until it's really streamlined. And then you grow and you rinse and repeat again. I like that.
Jamie Stephens:I really like that you included the headspace as well, because I am just a firm believer that that is just a it's what makes everything else work. Because without it, it's just, you're just gonna go crawl in the fetal position and stay under the covers and never give up.
Unknown:And it took me forever in my business. That is the one thing that if I was to say like what pinpoint from being kind of sort of possibly doing a business to actually being successful. It was me embracing headspace in a way that I hadn't before. I felt like it was very woowoo it wasn't really up my alley to begin with for a long time. I would read books and be like, I don't know what this is talking about. And when I finally did embrace it, it was like, Oh, this might have been the thing that I've been missing all the time. I can't just like action my way through things or tactic my way through things. Back in my PR days. It was very much like well, what's the goal? What are the tactics? How do I get there.if I do the things it should work. And it's like, what you learn is you can do a lot of the things And so it's not working. And you have to really think about, well, then why is it not working? Right, right. And so when I finally did embrace the mindset piece in a way that was meaningful, lo and behold, it worked.
Jamie Stephens:Yeah. And I think that kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, too, is, I mean, like, once, that mind set pieces kind of in place, you you know, how to frame everything else to support you on your journey. Which, if you're not doing that is really I mean,
Unknown:it's really hard. I'll tell you, it's really hard.
Jamie Stephens:Yeah. I mean, with just that constant repeat of main girl in your head, just telling you how stupid you are the whole time. And what are you doing it
Unknown:again? So look at these people, they're doing it and you're like, I should be able to I'm doing all the things. Yeah, maybe not all the things Oops.
Jamie Stephens:No, it's so important to to recognize that. It's not. It's not just about recreating the actions of someone else. It's like, you can't just follow a blueprint, per se, and still get the same results. Because there's so much that goes in behind the intention. And like where you're at, and who your people, I mean, all of it so much, which is one of the lessons that I've had to learn over, like, every course that I've bought every you know, it's like one of those things. It's like, wait a second, why am I not a millionaire? Yeah.
Unknown:Yeah, well, yeah, it's that it's that like, multiple permutations and things, right, whoever made that course, stumbled across a way that worked for her. Most of the time, it's the 57 things she's tried. And it finally works. And probably because she stuck it out for long enough. Right. And I think we just we're like looking for that. As a society, I think we just do the look for the magic pill thing, right? Like, what is the just telling you in three steps that you can tell me how to do this, I can do it. I'm like, I could give you everything I've done from when I started to now. And you still wouldn't be able to replicate my results, you might massively exceed my results you might be never making it down it, you just can't tell right, because it's got more to do with who you are, and who your audience is and how you connect with them. And the service that you bring, and you just have to find a way to comfortably start sharing work, right, and just doing it probably more times than you are doing it. That's if I tell clients one thing is you need to talk to more people. It doesn't matter. The industry doesn't matter. The business doesn't matter, the entrepreneur, you're not talking to enough people about what you do and how you can help them.
Jamie Stephens:For sure. I mean, really, yeah, I know. I'm like, hey. So your podcast is a way for you to do that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
Unknown:Yeah, so she needs grit podcast is very much a conversation. Ideally, I'm trying to create a conversation like this. It's kind of with myself in a room, but still kind of talking about the topics, what do you need to build your business? What do you need to scale? What do you need to grow? I'm just at the point where I'm going to start bringing on guests into the podcast in the fall, which I'm really excited about. Because up until now, I've been talking to myself in a row. So I think it'll be some good variety for the audience to get a little bit of instead of me just saying the things, let's have a conversation about how that actually affects my, you know, my interview person, and a back and forth, right. So I think those lessons can be learned just as easily, if not more fun, without being just talked to. So I'm excited about that. But it's a lot of these topics. It's about being profitable, it's about on being visible, getting your confidence up there, on scaling your business, the next kind of series of podcasts that are coming out are very much that scaling piece to what do you need to grow from where you are right now? And what parts of it do you need to start thinking about and implementing?
Jamie Stephens:Would you say that for a lot of women, that you coach, the thing that's holding them back from growing is letting go of the control over their business? Or like outsourcing that sort of thing.
Unknown:Delegation is critical. You can't you cannot do it yourself. We all try. And at the beginning, part of why we're trying to do that is money, right? I don't have enough money to hire help. But you get to the point where you can't grow without spending money. And that is a hard place to be in when you're at the early days where there's not just money and you you know, unless we're independently wealthy, there's not just cash to spend. But we're getting looking at it and saying like, what am I buying? For myself if I hire a VA, and the joy of the industry now. And then you need industry being entrepreneurship is that you can hire somebody for two hours a week to do something. So if you buy yourself back two hours a week, and you can sell one client in that two hours, or you can go to a networking event, or you can create all of your social media for the month, whatever that looks like, but that time, it's worth it. Right and you, you just can't get there without it. Because what ends up happening with entrepreneurs is then they work 60 hours a week, and they're miserable, and they quit, because you're trying to do at all. So there's so many ways to look at hiring that isn't necessarily like I'm hiring a full time human person that's going to need an office and need, I don't know, 401 k, and the all of that stuff like that. There's just creative ways that you can get help and expand your capacity, which allows you to talk to more people and tell them what you do, right?
Jamie Stephens:Yeah, no, and I was thinking about that the other day to kind of remember what how it came up or anything, but I was telling somebody, you know, if I were to go out and start a restaurant, there would just be this expectation that I'm going to burn through a lot of cash, I'm going to have a lot of upfront expenses that I need to cover for equipment, for food, for staff for training for all the things, but then for some reason, women go into business and think I don't need any money. I'm gonna do every single thing myself, I'm gonna figure it all out, you know, when it's just kind of like, why do we do that? Like, why do we minimize what I know, part of it is probably necessity that it's like, well, we don't have, you know, $200,000 to just go sink. That's why we're doing, you know, an online business versus like a brick and mortar, but it just seems like, I don't know why it takes us so long to kind of get to that point to where it's like, Oh, I could actually pay somebody to do that thing. That takes me six hours. And they can do it in any
Unknown:order. And it's it's that investment philosophy that if I could change one thing about entrepreneurs, especially early stage entrepreneurs, is that you don't have a bricks and mortar. So the thing you need to invest in is yourself. That's it, you have to invest in yourself. And so that does look like hiring a coach that you feel is going to get you to the next level, it is taking the time to go to conferences or you know, like business webinars, things like that, that are going to uplevel whatever skills you don't currently own right? It is taking time to say, Am I doing the $1,000 an hour work in my business? Or am I accidentally doing the $10 an hour work in my business? Get rid of that $10 An hour work. But then make sure that you are and this is where I think then of course, like this is a shameless plug. But like having a coach that helps you figure out the difference, and where your skill sets are and how to implement that should always create a massive difference in your bottom line. Right? So it's like, if I was going to hike up Everest, I need somebody who's going to show me the way, right how do I avoid that crevasse and avoid that, whatever it is, and body over there, whatever on Everest. I'm going to hire a Sherpa to carry my stop. But at least some of it because it can't possibly carry it all myself and still do this. And online entrepreneurs have a tendency to think they can do all of the things forever. And then they think it means that I make all of the money, right? I get all of the money. You look at any other business in the world, they are leveraging whatever cash is available for them in order to grow. Right. So I get clients sometimes it say to me, like I don't know if I can pay your rates, right? I don't have enough cash in my business to do that. And I'm like, Okay, what other ways do you have that you could pay me if this is the thing and not not as a pressure thing, like not as a need to pay me but what other way? Can you create this solution for yourself? Are there books out there? Are there seminars out there? Do you have accessible loans or accessible credit that would allow you to get that experience, get that help? And then grow? That's what everybody does? Nobody pays cash for the restaurant. Right? Right. They take out a business loan and they decide, okay, I'm going to need to do the construction and then have to hire staff before I have one patron in here eating a hamburger or whatever it is. And I think it's that if we can get over that mentality of like, I can't spend any of the money I just have to do this all by itself. It just takes longer, you can do it, you can 100% do it. I believe any entrepreneur that's really driven can do it that way. It just will take you longer inevitably, which is usually the last thing they want to do is take longer,
Jamie Stephens:right? Because the more you put that off thinking that you're saving money, the more money you're actually costing yourself.
Unknown:Yep. Because that person can do it faster than you can, right? Whether it's lead you down the path, or create the social media posts, or figure out how to come up with a sales funnel. You could teach yourself how to do it salesman, no problem, but somebody out there already knows and can do it in 45 minutes. What are you doing? Like, why are we doing this to ourselves? I did that usually when I started the podcast, because the hindrance for me for the podcast was I don't know how to edit podcasts. And that took me a long time to be like, Well, I just won't do it. Like, I'm not ready, I don't have capacity. I wasn't gaining any capacity in my business where I was getting busier. And so when I launched, I hired somebody that set it all up on the back end, did all of that for me and produced the first three shows, and edited it. And then I kept her on for a long time doing all of my editing. And now my VA does all of my editing and all of my marketing of the podcast. Because there was no way I think you're going to take it back in house and you're going to do it your own cell. That's only if I don't if I have time to do that. I've forgotten that I need cleaning to Yeah, right. Now a long lesson to learn sometimes for me, possibly. But, you know, the sooner you learn that the faster you'll go with the growth. And that's the goal. Yeah,
Jamie Stephens:I will say that that was just one of the one of my learnings that I was eager to implement, because I you know, in my corporate environment, I used to lead a team. And it was like, I found my way, like I was the delegation queen. No, no, this is not a me problem. This is for you. This is
Unknown:not my skill set. But look, you have this skill set. Yes. Take this.
Jamie Stephens:Yeah. So like, I really, you know, that's a good one that I've developed over the years. And so like being able to be like, Okay, I recognize that this is not my strength or my you know, happy place. Let's go ahead and get rid of this. For sure. Yeah.
Unknown:Yeah. So critical.
Jamie Stephens:So what else? What else do you have going on? What What kind of ways are you working with people through your podcasts through coaching
Unknown:through the podcast. Um, so the fun thing about the podcast is because I'm now taking interviewee applications, that's going to be a really fun opportunity either come on in two different ways, either as an expert in your field, that is kind of in conjunction with what I'm doing, right. So if you are a support to building a business in any capacity, then that's I want to have you on and have that conversation about it. So if your audience, anybody that resonates with them, then then put in an application. And I'll send you that the link will be in the show notes, and on the link tree on my Instagram. So make sure everybody has access to that. And then the second way is I want to do some live coaching on the podcast, because I think I'm in a number of different group coaching programs and have been over the years. And I think there's so much value in having somebody else get coached and you being able to listen to it and hear it and pull from it, what resonates with you, or like what might be the thing you are going to deal with next, or the thing that you're also knee deep in right now. So those are the two different ways I'm going to have people on the podcast. So if you're somebody who knows you need a little bit of coaching or wants to kind of dip their toe in, or just has a burning problem right now that they're like, if I could just get some help on this one thing that's tripping me up, putting in an application to me for that as well. would be a cool wait.
Jamie Stephens:I agree that those coaching conversations that I hear, man, those are gold, not only do you learn like they're your own approach of how to dig deeper how to pull questions from people how to really understand what the real thing is that's going on. But also just the lessons learned on the other side. I mean, there's all of that. All of that is really gone. That's exciting.
Unknown:Yeah, so that's really exciting. So that's kind of happening right now. And then, of course, anybody who wants to come in and do one on one coaching with me, I work with clients for six months. So it is weekly coaching calls, it's me really like elbow deep in your business, helping you get from where you are right now to whatever that scale amount you're looking for. So really working on bottom line profit is of course our goal, but all along the way we work through that crush formula and get it down.
Jamie Stephens:That's so awesome. All right. Well, Sam, thank you so much for your time today. It's been such a fun conversation.
Unknown:Yeah, this has been great. I loved it.
Jamie Stephens:Okay, that concludes another episode of Breaking up with corporate and I can confirm that Sam is my kind of people. I had such a fun time chatting with her and got so much personally from this episode with some of these key takeaways. Number one, who are you attracting? When Sam realized that the majority of the personal finance clients she was attracting just happened to be entrepreneurs, she was able to see the opportunity and create a program for them that really took her business to the next level. Number two, step into confidence, get some sales training and go all in learn to talk to humans and share your offers in a way that doesn't feel sleazy or salesy. You don't become profitable by hiding behind your task list on a computer. Number three, it's all feedback. There's a lot of trial and error and entrepreneurship, when something doesn't work out. Take it as feedback, what worked, what didn't What will you change next time. Get curious, not frustrated. Number four, check your expectations. A good way to keep up positive momentum when you're trying something new is to set the expectations around what you can do something you can control like showing up and giving it your best. If you do that it's a win. Anything else is just bonus. Number five, it doesn't happen overnight. Going from side hustle to full fledged business paying the bills can take time, focus on slow sustained growth versus chasing after immediate results. It's like going to the gym and eating right versus searching for the next diet pill. Number six, manage your mind. You can outsource pretty much everything but only you can work on your mindset. Make it a priority. Number seven, you can copy but you can't replicate. Recreating the actions of a successful person is not a magic pill for success. Your mindset, your personality, who you are, there's so much more that goes into it. Number eight, you're the investment. When you have an online business, you're the investment your brain, your learnings, your time. So get a coach, go to conferences and delegate that admin work to a VA as quickly as you can so you don't burn out. That's it for this week. Thanks so much to Sam for being on the show today. I have all the links in the show notes so you can check out her programs or podcasts, all the things as always if you enjoyed this episode, help us sister out go drop a five star rating for me. There's a link in the show notes to do that as well. Thank you so much for being here and I hope you have a fantastic week.
