What I Learned in 2020

Welcome to the Rich Life Reframe podcast. We've been given an amazing opportunity in entrepreneurship that's never been available in any other time period. We live in a reality where the number of lives we impact can be directly reflected by the dollars in our bank accounts. This podcast is all about living a truly rich life that goes beyond the amount of income that we make. It means living the good life and existing in a state of freedom and well being. In this podcast, we'll be going through quick reframes that can help you get your mind right so you can truly live the life that you've always dreamed of. That being said, let's hop into this episode.

What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Rich Life Reframe. We're doing this on YouTube, but we are also turning it into a podcast. So if I get to see you. Hello, if you're listening. Also, hello. I just finished up 90 minute massage and I just, I'm kind of in that like blissed out post massage state and I had it on my goal list today to get a podcast recorded, to get a video created. So I figured why not? Maybe we'll roll with it and see, see where we go with this one. So the topic that I want to talk about today is a reflection of what 2020 looked like inside of my business. I had the biggest income year ever inside my business, but I also had a ton of lessons that I learned throughout the ups and the downs of scaling really, really fast. And one of my, I just did a presentation on this that was over an hour long inside of my Rich Life Lab membership and shared all of the numbers and all the details and exactly, you know, what each launch looked like. Some of the best launches that we had, some of the biggest mistakes that we had inside of our launches, really going into the details. But basically after I shared that, I did that hour long presentation with the membership and I felt sick afterwards. Like I just was a little nauseous and I was like, did I overshare? Did I go too far into the bad things? You know, did I hurt my credibility? Do people think I'm, I'm not worth following in business because I had so many ups and downs and I shared with my team, I was like, oh my gosh, I have such a vulnerability hangover right now. And my social media strategist, Rachel sent back this hand drawn chart of like what you think success will look like. And it's, you know, a bar graph straight up into the right, like you would hope. But what it really looks like is, you know, a lot of different up and downs and you're working your way towards up and to the right like we want on our graphs. But there's also a lot of ups and downs that come with that. So I, I feel like in my business, I walk this line where I'm almost being pulled in two worlds. I have the desire because I'm an enneagram3 and I'm very driven and I, I care. I still care. No matter how much work I do around this to not care what people think, there's still a level that cares how I'm perceived, what people think. And, you know, it's a practice for me to continue getting over what people think. But I do still care. And, you know, I want to be perceived as someone that can help people grow their businesses. So I want to seem like I have it all together. But then there's this other side that's very vulnerable and very open and authentic about what it really looks like inside of a business and the mistakes that you're making when you're growing quickly and running a team for the first time and launching big time and running ads and like all of the things that go with it. I always feel like I'm walking this line of oversharing, but also knowing that it's necessary because people need to know that it's not all sunshine and rainbows all day, that there are struggles, that there are challenges, that part of being an entrepreneur is actually working through those challenges and being creative and coming up with the solutions. That is, we are professional problem solvers, right? As entrepreneurs, things are not always going to go according to plan. Sometimes you have to fix things. Oftentimes you have to fix things. Sometimes you have to do it yourself. If your team members aren't available as the CEO of your business, it's always going to. You're always going to be the last draw, right? Like if someone's not available on the weekend or if something's broken and people aren't answering, like it's on you to get those problems solved or to come up with another solution or, or to find outside help. So, generally speaking, this year was a lot of problem solving for me. We scaled really, really quickly. But I also learned a lot about who I am as a business owner and what blocks I had that were probably keeping me stuck or making me grow in a direction that necessarily wasn't in alignment with how I want to grow my business and how I want to support people and how I want to encourage them to Grow businesses. So our revenue, bottom line in 2020 was $2.25 million in revenue. About 1.1 million of that was spent on Facebook ads. And then what I actually brought home to my bank account to my family was $170,000. So I feel on one hand like, holy Crap, we generated $2.2 million in business. But then I remember looking at businesses from the outside when I was first getting into online business and first, you know, starting to consult and work with people on their funnels and ads. And I didn't realize if someone says, like, oh, we made $2.2 million, I was like, holy crap, like, they're a millionaire. They must have put all of that money in their bank account and now they're like buying mansions and islands and stuff. You know, like, I didn't. It didn't register to me how much actually goes into supporting a team and doing it well. How much goes into advertising, how much goes into all these random growth expenses that you might have if you have big goals like I do. I'm always investing in new product development and doing things differently. But I have a knack of being able to criticize myself no matter what the scenario. And I'm working on rewriting that story or changing that voice. But part of me is, why isn't it more profit? Why didn't I get to bring home more? What did I do wrong? Because I should have. If I made 2.2 million, I should have brought home 2.2 million, right? So rewriting that story a little bit and realizing how much impact I've made by generating that amount of money, by recirculating that amount of money, that's a really big gift too. So I just encourage people who are thinking they should be bringing more home from their businesses. Like, look at what else you're contributing to, what else you're helping to recirculate and be okay with being the generator and looking at how much more impact you're creating with that business. However, if you're like me and you're doing the math and you're like, okay, that's like 1% or whatever it is, I don't know what it actually is. And you have a goal in mind. Like, for me, I would love that number to be closer to 30% of my overall income. If I could spend 33% on advertising, 33% on team and expenses, and then 33% on my take home, that's the goal that I'm going for. So I can look at my expenses and my Profit for each month. And I can look at the better months and look at what we did, right? And I can look at, you know, when, when my take home was closer to 30%, what was our team set up, what were we launching, what were we selling? And just figuring it out from that standpoint and looking at those ups and the downs throughout the entire year and figuring out, you know, what, what can I take away from every single lesson that I had? Because there were a lot of them in 2020. Some of the lessons that I made or that I had in 2020 included excessive hiring. I would say launching and scaling so quickly because we broke things, that I had to bring in high ticket consultants to help fix the things that we broke. But had I been a little more patient or had I not, you know, hired people to help me scale even faster, we wouldn't have had this like, hiring snowball where we scaled so fast that then we were spending more on ads and then we were bringing in, you know, systems consultants to fix the things that we broke. And I think there is a lot of beauty in learning slowly in, you know, like in the instance of, here's just another example of being impatient and being okay with slow growth. When my husband and I wanted to start getting into investment properties, I was like, oh, we could just, you know, we could just take out a loan and we could buy all of these, like a commercial loan and maybe buy like 30 properties at one time. Or maybe we could just jump in with an apartment or maybe we could, you know, I'm like always trying to find the way to pour gasoline on the goals to make them happen even faster. And now that my husband and I have two investment properties, just two in two years, we've learned a lot from those too, that we won't repeat those mistakes when we buy 3 and 4 and 5, right? So, like, had we bought 30 properties all at once, like I was pushing for, the results could have been catastrophic. Like the failing at the level that we did. Not that it was a failure, but, you know, just learning every single step. When you multiply that times trying to scale so quickly, the, the higher risks could be a lot more, like I said, catastrophic at that, that level versus just learning slowly. So if you're feeling impatient, if you're feeling like, oh, I should be getting further faster, I don't know why this is taking so long. Stop judging what you expected the journey to look like and, and just try to truly fall in love with the process and learning every single step of the way and just Listening to that gut instinct of like, okay, what's the next thing I want to experiment with? What's the next area I want to play in? What else can I create? What else can I learn from? Because there's much so, so much, I guess even culturally, at least in the usa, it's like more and more and more, faster, faster, faster. So like how can we find peace in the journey and really fall in love with what we're doing and how we're doing it, what kind of impact we're making and what level of people we can reach? Or like how many people we can reach versus always trying to sell more, better, faster because there is so much that can be gleaned and learned from in slow growth. So I think in hindsight generating that amount of money was great. Like I think it opened up a lot of doors for being invited into peer masterminds or being just that level of visibility and being able to connect with a lot of other really cool entrepreneurs that are at a similar level income wise. That part is absolutely amazing. Being able to walk across the stage and collect the 2 comma club award, amazing. Having a book deal in the works because of that, amazing. So part of it's also understanding your goals. What is your long term goal? For me, having big numbers thrown by launches allowed me to get publicity, allowed me to connect with people. So the, the impact that that will continue to make inside of my business, inside of my career, in the direction that I know I ultimately want to go, it's worth it. But if you're someone who's looking at those numbers and you're like, you only brought home 170k, like I could make that on just one on one coaching. Awesome. Like there are so many different ways to run an online business. There are so many different business models. So if you can really look at what you want to create, what you want to put into the world, how much time you want to work, and I did that in 15 to 20 hours a week because I was distance learning. I was in survival mode for most of the year if I'm being honest. And you know, so to be able to do that and to be able to create new relationships and see the big picture for my business, I think that was definitely worth it. But just knowing that there's a lot of different ways to get there. So in hiring, in scaling really quickly. I did some consulting with Frank Kern this year and when I was on a call with him, I was presenting my business model or like my org chart. So the org Chart is, you know, who works inside your business, what roles did they play, who do they report to, and all of that. So I showed him my org chart and he was able to look at it within 15 seconds and be like, you don't need this person, you don't need that person. This role is repetitive. And realizing that I was hiring out things that were my personal strengths because if I didn't have that self belief that I was good at something, or I thought someone else had the magic key, or I thought there was an easy button by bringing somebody else into the business, that's kind of the mindset that I was operating in where had I just trusted myself. Like I got myself to the first $750,000 in 2019, right? So then when I decided I wanted to grow and I wanted to scale and I started bringing people in, I lost a little bit of contact with myself, a little bit of belief in myself that I could do it alone, that I didn't need the perfect coach. And I have a different podcast about this called like you don't need a business savior. But that reigned true for me in that the answer wasn't in hiring other people. It wasn't in hiring someone to help me scale faster. It wasn't in the right consultant or the right coach. It was always gut instinct. I always knew what I needed to do. Had I just trusted myself to follow my first instinct, to bust down some of the blocks that I might have had about why I couldn't do it or what it looked like for me to do it on my own, I probably would have had a lot different number at the actual take home Pay line of QuickBooks. That number would probably be a lot higher had I just trusted myself. But at the same time, had I not outsourced, had I not brought people into that business or into my business, I probably wouldn't fully trust myself on the level that I do today. So I saw what it looked like to bring other people into the business. I saw would it, you know, just kind of how it felt to be operating, feeling like I was a little bit of a puppet, like I was, you know, just showing up and doing the webinar and someone else was pulling the strings and telling me, this is what you should say, this is what you should do. It didn't always feel good, but I had to experience it to know. I mean, you kind of have to learn what you don't want in order to fully turn around and realize what you do want. And I'm reading this book that's all about Law of Attraction and manifestation and Abraham Hicks. And it talks a lot about that, about how you, if you're operating from the low vibration of only focusing on what you don't want, that's just going to continue bringing in more of what you don't want. However, if you're flipping that and focusing on how you want to feel and what you do want to create and the positive and existing in that higher vibration, you're going to keep bringing in more higher vibe experience experiences. So part of what happened this year, and maybe it was corona and maybe it was having kids home and being, you know, perpetually exhausted and overwhelmed the entire year, but I feel like I lost a little bit of the mischievousness that I had in my business and you know, a little bit of the spark that I had because I was handing the reins over to other people because I was just trying to survive distance learning and I didn't have any help with my kids or my house for like five months where I was just doing it all myself. And I was wondering why I was feeling so low all the time. But it's because I was disconnected from what that higher level version of myself feels like. I was disconnected from, you know, doing the workouts that make me feel high vibe, from sitting in meditation, from journaling, from doing, you know, some of those, those like extra self care items that really keep me existing in a state of creativity and flow and excitement. I didn't have time for that. Or slash, I wasn't making time for that inside of my business. So slowly over 2020, if you take what a high I was at in January, I started sinking probably around, I'd say like July and August. And then I made some team choices and took some of the reins back in my business and fell flat on my face. The first launch that I did on my own and left me scratching my head and wondering like, oh crap, am I cut out for this? Did I make a huge mistake? And then the second launch post changing over my entire team, which was a six figure launch by myself and it worked. So proving to myself I have exactly what it takes. I don't need someone else in my business to pull the strings to tell me what to do, to tell me what to say. I think just gaining that level of confidence in my ability to be a leader on my team, to show up, to know exactly who to hire, to know what my org chart needs to look like, not based on what anyone else is telling me it should because of XYZ business model that they've seen. But really knowing, like, how do I like to show up and serve on my team? How can I be the best leader that I can be? How do I like to communicate with our students? Like a lot of online business models or a lot of books that you might read about leadership, about being a CEO, they're pulling the CEO completely. A lot of, I mean, at least in a lot of the like four hour workweek style books where it's like, just set it and forget it and walk away and let your team manage it. That doesn't work for, for everybody. I like being involved. I like talking to my team every day. I like personally responding to my students when they send me messages on Instagram. Those are things that I enjoy doing. And I think in terms of reading the books and hearing from the experts, I think I started pulling myself out of my business before I was ready to pull out of my business and before I realized these are the things that I really like to do. So I think that made a really big difference as well is just that awareness of I don't have to do it the way anyone else is doing it. It's not going to be the most profitable option for me to do it the way other people are recommending because it's not in full alignment, it doesn't light me up and it's not completely who I am as a business owner and CEO. So those are really interesting things that I realized this year. The other really interesting thing that happened, even way back in January, pre pandemic, pre corona, I won the 2 comma Club Award in January. And it was something that I'd always mocked a little bit, you know, in true, true marketer mockery. I talk a lot about bro marketing and just like throwing rocks at that whole industry that I was like, whatever. A 2 comma club award is dumb. Like, I don't even want one of those. And then I was at FHL Funnel Hacking Live in January where they give out those two comma club awards. It's given out by clickfunnels. And I was there and I had my laptop out and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna log in and I'm just, I'm just gonna look at Stripe and I'm just gonna look at PayPal and see, see where we ended up. Well, it turns out we had like crossed the 2 comma club, the $1 million mark in revenue generated from that funnel while I was at Funnel Hacking Live. So I was able to reach out to people that I Knew that worked for clickfunnels to get connected, and I was able to actually collect the award. While I was at Funnel Hacking Live, my husband drove through the night from Minnesota with our three kids to be there when I walked across the stage. And it was this huge deal. It was like hitting a goal that I didn't even know that I had, right? So then. Then I'm crossing the stage, and afterwards, you know, it was just like, holy crap. Like, I can't believe that just happened. But it was such a. Like a shift afterwards in my energy. It was such a downshift for me. It was like, okay, now what? Like, just hit this big goal. Like, I don't know what else. I. I don't know. Like, I don't have a vision anymore. I don't have a goal. I don't have anything I'm working for. Because it was. It was such a high and then the letdown of, like, okay, I'm still operating my business. I, you know, haven't. Haven't done anything too crazy with all of this money that it looks like I generated from the award. And I think realizing that if you're only going. If you're only like, checking off your goals or your accomplishments and you're not finding, again, finding joy in that process, you're never gonna get to that level of satisfaction. And I am a very driven Enneagram 3, so I know what it looks like to always be running towards the next goal. But I think there is so much. So much beauty and so much power in being able to reflect on what you've accomplished and how far you've come. In 2019, I made a list of all the renovations I wanted to do to our house because we bought. Bought our house in 2012. We were both W2 employees at the time. Bought well below our, you know, our approved budget because my. My husband and it's all about financial security, right? So, like, we had a ton of things that I wanted to do to make our house feel more custom, to make it feel like it was less builder grade. So we got a new kitchen, we got a new bathroom, we got a new laundry room. We. We went to Disney World before everything shut down. Like, I had this list of, like, I gave our money a job, right? So it wasn't just like, I need to make infinity money. It was, I want to make money so that we can redo our kitchen, we can redo our bathroom, we can redo the laundry room. We can take the kids to Disney World. We can, you know, I Forget what else? Like, oh, I bought a new car, which was really cool. Bought a new car with cash. So it's like I gave myself all the, gave our money a job. And looking back, I did accomplish all of those things, but instead I'm looking at this list and I'm like, well, why didn't I make, why didn't I bring home more of that total revenue amount? So I think being able to pull yourself out of being driven or critical and like, look at what you've actually accomplished. Like $170,000 to take home during a pandemic when your kids are home, distance learning and you're working, you know, 15 to 20 hours a week. That's a huge accomplishment and something to be incredibly grateful for. And I think focusing again, abundance, right? Like focusing on those high vibe feelings, really rooting yourself in. The gratitude for everything that you, you have created in your business. Even if it looks different than you thought it would, even if it doesn't match someone else's numbers, like there are different, different levels for all of us of what we think it should look like. But really giving yourself a moment to reflect in gratitude and look at how much you have done and how much you have accomplished instead of always being on that hamster wheel of more, better, faster. I think that's a really big lesson that I learned in 2020. The other lesson that I, I've been working on a lot that I've been learning is that mom guilt is such a, a pervasive feeling for me and has been like, anytime things seem like they're getting too good for me, my children are the way that I will self sabotage every single time. So if it's, oh, I need to change daycares, I need to change childcare, you know what childcare looks like right now? I need to start homeschooling because my kid is struggling in school. I will always default to not letting myself feel good in business for whatever reason. Like, I will find a way to sabotage using my children as the excuse because they are always the greatest reason for anything, right? But I realized that, that, that was really rooted in the mom guilt that I was feeling for having a business, for having help and really just learning to let that go in 2020. And something I said on my mastermind call is that we talk a lot about, or there's that quote that says it takes a whole village to raise a child right? But as, at least in the United States as mothers, we don't rely on our villages nearly enough. We don't Build our own villages. We don't ask for help. We don't hire people, we don't bring them in. I can't tell you how many Facebook groups I've been in where moms are like, oh my gosh, like, I'm distance learning. I'm trying to work full time. My husband doesn't do the dishes. Like, I'm cleaning, I'm doing all the laundry, and I'm just burned out. Well, of course you're burned out. You just need more help. Whether it's getting your spouse involved, whether it's hiring out the laundry, or like figuring out how you want to feel in your house and figuring out who can come in and help you create that feeling in your house. If it's, you know, if you need to get rid of stuff so you don't have so much to clean. If you need to bring in a cleaning lady a couple times a week. I always thought like a magic pickup fairy, if somebody could come in, like after dinner and pick up all the toys and like, clean all the dishes after dinner, that would be amazing. But what we ended up doing in August of 2020 is I hired a home manager. So this home manager comes in, she keeps my house picked up. She keeps it super clean throughout the day. She does all the laundry. She helps the kids with their distance learning activ. And when I arrive home, you know, I typically work from about, let's say, 8 o' clock in the morning until noon or 1. And then I can go to the gym when the gym's open. And when I get home, the house is spotless. The kids are done with their school. You know, they've done all their extra stuff that I make them do because I make them do extra math and extra, you know, creative time and playing outside. And they've got their checklist of all the things that they need to have done. And then when I get home, I can just be mom. You know, I'm really passionate about my business. I love what I do. I don't feel, you know, I don't feel guilt about being a working mom because I know that this is lighting me up, that this is giving me the space to be a much more intentional and loving mom when I'm home. And then when I get home from work, I can just love on the babies, right? Like, I can just read with them. We can play outside together. We can. Last night we went ice skating for two hours. You know, it's like I have that spaciousness where I'm not reactive. My husband and I have a better relationship because I'm not frustrated that I'm the only one taking care of the house or I'm folding all the laundry, or I'm, you know, he's playing with the kids while I'm doing the dishes. Like, there's no resentment anymore. So if you're in a position to be able to hire some help, there's no shame in having someone come into your home and be able to help you get some things done, even if it's not full time, even if it's just a couple hours a week. Giving yourself permission to not do all the things was a huge weight lifted off of my shoulder. And it. It felt a little weird for me to put out a. A job listing on indeed, which is what I did for a home manager. And I listed all the things that I wanted. I wanted meal prep, I wanted cleaning, laundry, and I put my name on it in my community. And I was like, what if people see that I'm, like, hiring someone to come into my house? Like, this is weird. This seems very, like, hoity toity and not what you would expect someone to do who lives in a small Midwestern town. But I. I did it anyway. And, you know, I've told my friends locally about this person that I have. Her name is Sarah. Sarah comes into the house and, like, everything is great. The kid, you know, kids are happy, house is clean, and they're like, well, I need one of those. Like, giving women and mothers permission to get help, to step into that kind of role, I think is obviously part of my life's work, is to help empower women to lead even better, more fulfilled lives. But. But there's such a stigma about asking for help. And I think my. Aha. As I said earlier, like, working through, not caring what people think, that was one of the biggest areas where I've learned that what other people think about getting help inside of my house doesn't matter. Like, that's the thing that has truly made the biggest impact on my 2020 was getting help finally. My kids are 9, 6, and 4. And up until this point, I have done largely most of it myself or with very little preschool or school or some daycare as the help. But inside of the house, we've never had anything. So having that, just having that level of support, that's let me be more intentional as a mother, that's let me be a better wife with no resentment towards my husband. Like, that has been. That was really probably the best decision or a highlight of 2020 is getting that help inside of my house. It also stretched me to also, along with being, you know, CEO of my business, it helped me stretch into having difficult conversations because people, people grow up differently, right? People have different ways that they talk about things. There are different values that when you bring someone into your house, they might share with your children. So being able to step into being the leader of my family and the leader of my business and being able to have those hard conversations if something doesn't feel right for my kids to be watching on YouTube or watching YouTube at all, or how we're talking about food to the kids, or how we're talking about being good or bad to the kids, helping her understand how I want to raise my kids. That involved having some hard conversations and some awkward conversations, but it also helped me grow as a leader, as a mother, and even spilled into how I lead my company and what, how I want to treat my team and how I want to communicate with them and how I want them to feel like they're being heard as well. So my highest profit months were January, April, September and November. And what I realized after looking at the whole year in the months where, you know, I kind of felt like the walls were closing in and like, oh, we're not making. Are we going to make ends meet? Are things happening? I wasn't actively launching anything. So the difference between my highest profit months and my months where I operated with not so much profit was just a matter of having systems built and having an open cart. So if you're feeling like, oh, I'm not making enough money or I just wish I could make more, you just need to have more orchestrated launches. You just need to give people more opportunities to give you money inside your business. Because you're always just one launch away from. In lieu of using clickfunnels tagline, their tagline is one funnel away. But you're just one open card away from having a completely different month. Because every time you show up and you make noise about what you have available and you make relationships with people and you keep showing up consistently until people are sick of your face, you will always see some level of success or have some lesson that comes out of that that leads to having more income in your business, but so many of us shy away from the asking or we feel like, oh, I just launched, like I can't do anything else. But in reality, like having systems where you're always bringing new leads into your business, like a tiny offer, because I'm biased on those front end funnels being a really Great way to grow your email list and your buyers constantly. But if you have that fresh stream coming into your business at all times, there's no limit to how many times you can open the cart or who you can reach. Or like building in some of those evergreen style funnels inside your business too, to take the weight off of what it feels like in between launches. Because that felt really heavy this year as well. But then every single time I open the cart, it's like all of that fear and the lack mindset that tends to sneak in for me, at least in between open cart launches or live launches, that's something to keep in mind too, and realize. Like you can put it on a calendar for 2021. You can. What we're going to be doing in 2021 is opening the doors for tiny offer lab eight different times throughout the year. My highest ticket, Mastermind Impact Lab, that is launching in February, that's going to be opened just a few times throughout the year. So building in that consistency and knowing when your open carts are going to be so that you can backfill with content or, you know, maybe joint ventures or partnerships and stuff like that in the slow phases in between launches, that can help you have a really consistent, almost like evergreen style flow of income coming into your business. So hopefully that was helpful. Thank you so much for being here and for listening. And I am somewhat still feeling that vulnerability hangover because, you know, I want to be the just do all the things right person and like the shiny, sparkly personality of the entrepreneurs. But that's not reality for me and for most people and from what I've heard, like the things that make us relatable is our vulnerability and our authenticity. So if you can show up and not be afraid to show some of the harder pieces or the struggles that you've had, that's what's going to actually help people grow and learn even faster. And it's a gift to be able to share with people that openly and not hide it, because that just makes people feel like they're doing something wrong if they're struggling, which is certainly not the case. If we've learned anything in 2020, it's that we are all in this together, right? Like, I can't. I didn't watch the news at all without hearing a commercial that said that or hearing some sort of advertising that said we're all in this together. So with that being said, I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day and thank you for being here and I will talk to you later.

Bye.