3 Phases of Business Growth - Phase II How to Grow from $10k - $50k

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 304. Today we are continuing with our series in the stage two of how to grow a business Online. How to go from 10k to 50k bucks. Are you ready? Let's dive in.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is the first time you're pushing play, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited that you're here year. This is the first time I'm saying this on the show, so if it's the first time you're hearing it from me, happy New Year. Thank you so much for hanging out with me and letting me be part of your prosperity and growth in 2024. I'm so excited for you and I cannot wait to help you hit all of the milestones and all of the visions. Whether you love New Year's resolutions or don't, may you hit your business growth opportunities in 2024. Cheers to you. So let's go ahead and dive in. I have really struggled to get this episode out and I wanted to get this episode out in by the end of 2023 because it's so near and dear to me. It's the stage that I feel like I've been in the longest and I really wanted to close this chapter of my life as we step into the vision of seven figures in 2024. However, I am recording this at the end of the year so I'm still. My intention still remains where I close this chapter of my life, step into the consistent seven figure CEO and continue to grow and prosper in 2024. And hopefully you've done the same. I'm really excited. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm about to carry my accelerators through a three phase goal setting workshop. It's really vision casting to help them do the same in 2024. I don't know about you, but if you've been hanging out with me since for a while, I mean, we're already in 300 episodes in, then you've probably heard me Say before, this is the year I'm gonna hit seven figures. This is the year I'm gonna hit seven figures. And so I'm laughing because it's easy to be like, oh yeah, Beverly, you keep saying that you're gonna do that, but then you never do. Well, first of all, this episode which I am going to share with you, that I'm gonna share with you all of the nitty gritty behind the scenes tell you think I have it. We did not hit seven figures in 23 and how we plan to do it in 2024. And the truth of the matter is that we actually did have a seven figure, putting this in quotes, a seven figure month back in the summer. I'm going to tell you why that happened and then I'm also going to tell you why I think it didn't scale and why we. Why it didn't move to consistent months. And then I'm going to give you some tangible takeaways inside of this episode. So if you're like me and you're in that six figure or that mult. Multiple six figure range and you're wanting to break through, I'm going to show you how we did break through, why we struggled, and then how we intended to step those consistent seven figure months in.

Okay.

So that you can walk away with some big takeaways. Now. I have hit record on this episode at least six times even previously. And I think that I just, I want to make sure that it's very organized and tangible and I'm not living by my, my method of 70% perfect, just hitting record and because done is better than perfect because we all know that practice makes permanent.

Okay.

So I just want to dive. I just. This episode is so near and dear to me because I really feel like this community of people in the multiple six figures are underserved. And the reason why I say that is because if you've been in the online space for a while, you step into the space and you see these containers and people get really. They get put into two containers, right? You've got the 500k plus and then we'll get you to eight figure container and then you have the brand new container. People who are brand new to business building or brand new to the online space or to coaching in general. And I want to say and just share that there's nothing wrong with either one of these containers. Nothing is wrong with it. I just feel like. And I'll also share with you why people put them into these two containers.

Okay?

It's because it's because if you go into the business world outside of the online space, but you're in the business world, they really think of business in the 0 to 100k range. As a beginner, now, if you're like me, I got triggered by that because I was like, What? I'm making 50k per month. I'm not a beginner. But they, but in terms of business, they think of the 0 to 100k as like a startup. It is a beginner business. Okay, that's number one. And so then. And then what? Also the number two, what happens is because of that they say, oh well, the beginners have a different set of problems than the scalars.

Okay.

And that's true to some extent in the sense of when you're in those 500k rooms, you're dealing with different challenges. It's not to say that the challenges you didn't face or they aren't still there. Your comeback rate is just faster. And the things that you're concerned about are things like team growth or performance management. Maybe you're also dealing with some scaling breakdowns which we'll talk about in this episode. It's just a different set of problems than a lot of the beginners. When a lot of the beginners are asking some how to questions. When a lot of the mental mindset components of being afraid to be judged and parents and family looking at them and unease and selling, there's a lot of other components that are at play in that beginning range and there's no shade. But what happens to the messy middlers? What happens to the people in the teenage years which we're gonna break down now? The multiple six figure business, they kind of get lumped in. They get lumped in where they're e are underserved because the challenges that they face are a combination of both the messy middlers. Well, at least for me, at least I felt like there were challenges in the beginning stages that I didn't face. But I, but I needed help discerning how to maximize my resources. And then what happened is that I ended up trying to scale something that I didn't know was broken in the beginning. And then I, I got over resourced, meaning that my team got too big for the amount of revenue that was coming in. But I didn't have any insight. We weren't having those conversations in the like, hey, I'm struggling to go live or hey, I'm feeling icky about selling were not conversations about being discerning and how best to Maximize your resources, time, energy, effort and money. So these people in the messy middle, at least for me, at least how I felt, is that it was very, it was very concerning because every person has blind spots, okay? We all have blind spots, we all have roadblocks. And there were big blind spots of mine that were not. That were missed. And I think for me, they were missed because I, in a room where I had been, majority of the time was spent on people who were just getting started. And there's nothing wrong with that. But then my blind spots got continued to go blind and that I so badly wanted to be in the rooms with people that were talking about performance management, because I too was talking about performance management. But I just did some things a little bit out of order without realizing it. And so this is the 10k to 50k month container, which is the common traps. At least I fell into this, and this is what I see a lot in my clients, is that if you are trying to scale something that's not handled in the beginning phases, you're done. You're going to hit big problems. We're going to break this down and I'm going to share with you why I know this, how this happens, and how you can make sure that you're set up for success so that when you go from 10k, when you hit that 10k and you get that optimized, you can get to 100k, because that's what a lot of people say. You'll hear people say if you hit 10k, you can hit 100k months, but only if you've got these systems and structures in place. And we're going to break that down inside of this episode. So there are three big pillars that we really need to look at in business and in each phase. The first is the invisible component, starting with the belief, the belief in yourself, and the belief in the ease. So what I mean by that is, what does it look like when we're having conversations of 10 10k 100k months? Does it feel like, oh my gosh, I'm never Gonna hit those 10Ks, they're elusive. Nobody in the planet hits 10K in fitness. And if you feel like that, then you're already gonna go into a world of self sabotage and feeling like, oh, well, I'm just never gonna, you know, you're already gonna go into a world of self sabotage when you, if you think that it's not possible. So people in this phase need to believe that 100k feels as easy and effortless and not like Mount Ever, Mount Everest is right here. Shouldn't feel elusive in the same way as if I said, hey, can I have a dollar? It needs to energetically feel the same. And if you cannot feel neutral about that level of growth, then likely you'll continue to struggle. Then number two, we need to take a closer look at strategy, structure, skill, and focus. Okay, so number one, when you're in the zero to 10k range, you kind of nailed and dialed in the strategy. So strategy is a sliver of it. But what happens to a lot of people in this phase is if they're in that vicious cycle of the valley of despair and constantly oscillating between being in despair and then uninformed optimism, then you're going to stay in this perpetual loop for a while. Now, usually I see that happen to people in that 0 to 10k range. But if you've hit 10k and you have dialed it in, meaning you have implemented a leverage fulfillment system, meaning that your offer that you have created is scalable, that doesn't mean no one on one, by the way. It just means that your offer scalable. That meaning that you can do the same thing from 5 clients to 100 clients. Even if you're like Bo Beverly, I can't train a hundred clients. Sure. But you're going to have people underneath you that are going to know your process, know your system, be able to coach in the same way. Okay, or maybe now you have. That's your like premium, premium offer and you have an accessible option where you can reach more people. But now that you get here, in this 10k to 50k range, if you try to scale something that's broken, meaning that you have not figured it out in the 0-10k range, you will struggle and you'll struggle hard. And here's why I'm saying this is because if you've listened to me for any amount of time, you've heard me say over and over that make data driven decisions. Data driven decisions. Data driven decisions. But here's what happens. When you have a loyal audience, they will buy from you even if the offer is trash. And it's not that your offer is trash, but even if the offer has got some holes in it, meaning that you're going to try and scale it and it's going to go sideways. So then what happens is, is that you will tend to identify and struggle identifying what the breakdown is because the data looks like it's scalable. But then you go to scale it and then you break down, and then what Does a breakdown look like, well, the breakdown looks like you get, you have to work 18 to 24 hour days. You actually are working in the red. And the fulfillment structure is not scalable. And people say, oh, that's because there's one on one. Just take out the one on one. But that's not true. That's not true. I took out the one on one. Then the offer changed and it didn't go well. My clients suffered. So I had to figure out a way that was going to help me create a scalable option where everyone is accountable and responsible for the components that they are responsible for while giving them the support that they need and want in order to scale. Because here's what happens. People come into the program and then they're like, oh, you know, I need coaching. But then they come to the coaching and I'm asking them questions about, you know, the coaching is an implementation component of the curriculum. It's not in place of the curriculum. So if you come to a coaching, a coaching call with me and I ask you some very specific questions and you have, you have not watched the training, you're going to feel very quickly.

Oh.

Because the coaching is implementation. The coaching is to help identify blind spots so that you can get out of these teenage years faster. Because for me what happened when I was scaling is because I'm in these containers for that 0 to 10k range, my blind spots weren't identified because my blind spots were not the same as someone who was struggling to go live for the first time. My blind spots were, oh, you're over resourced. Meaning your team is underperforming. And you didn't realize that your team's underperforming because, because you, because there's been. Because you are actually making sales. And so it's hard to identify, well, what's the actual metric that I need to be keeping track of people come into my space. And when we start looking at the third thing, which we're going to talk about, which is the P and L, we're going to start looking at your profits. Because a seven figure year is not the same thing as a seven figure salary. And then so many people come in and they're over resourced, meaning they've got a team of 10 really expensive freelancers. They're making, you know, 10, 15K, but they're paying out the majority of their income and you start to go, what is wrong? Why am I working so hard and I'm not getting paid? And then that is a challenge that people face that People who are brand new, like, I'm scared to go live or I don't know how to sell. Those are different challenges. This is why I say that this teen, these meth, this messy middle, these teenage years, this gets, this is an underserved community. Because what happens is people, they have loyal customers, they have loyal clients, they have some results they've hit in this. But if you have not cleaned up some of the fundamentals, meaning you try to scale a broken off in the offer that's not scalable, you get over resourced because people just tell you to hire a team and then you can't identify what the real issue is because the data is telling you that you're doing really well. So what do you do? I'm laughing, I'm laughing. Not at you. I'm laughing because this is exactly how I felt. This is exactly what I was looking at. Or I'd be like, I don't understand. And then I would listen to these podcasts that would say, oh, you could get to 100k with a part time VA and you know, an assistant coach. Or I would hear, oh, you could, you know, oh, I got to 250k a month on my own. And I'd be like, what, how is this happening? What, what is, what am I doing? Where's my blind spot? What am I not seeing? And you know, that could be very dangerous because those are some very, you know, disempowering questions. The quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions that you ask. So instead of, why is this happening to me? What am I doing wrong? Instead it's like, how can I look at this another way? How can I come up with a different solution? Help me see what I'm not seeing. So in this second pillar, this strategy, this structure, we also have skill and focus. And so I want to break down this, the strategy. So what happens if this, if what happens to a lot of people when they're kind of oscillating and stuck in this like 10k to 50k like life range? If they, if they already had the belief, the invisible components of the belief dialed in and nailed, is that they start to strategy hop and they're like, oh, let me do this skill, let me do this skill. They start to strategy hop. And then they start. Or they start to strategy hop where it's like shiny object syndrome and they kind of live in this like valley of despair vicious cycle, oscillating between uninformed optimism and whatnot. So, so that we have to cut out and that's going to require focus, which is get dial in the strategy and be relentless in figuring it out until you figure it out. And then the structure. So I talked a little bit about the structure is making sure that the structures that you have in place are actually scalable and that you're not working in the red. Meaning think about the amount of hours it takes to acquire a customer, to fulfill on a customer and then make sure, sure that you are actually getting paid for the hours and paid for the outcome that you deliver on. If you have to value what it is that you bring to the market space, otherwise you can't expect other people to value it. And so if you're under charging for your services, then it will break you. Now, this doesn't mean you can't have accessible options. Of course you can have accessible options. However, undercharging for your services is detrimental to your business, to scaling and to your clients. We'll do a whole other episode on that because it's a really big, it's a really big deal. You have to value what you bring to the market space. So then, and then we also have to take a look at skill. Skill. So in order to go from 10k to 50k, you're going to need skill in execution, communication and selling. You're just going to need skill on it. I find that what happens to a lot of people, especially in this 10k to 50k range, because likely they've been at it for a while, it's going to require a certain amount of skill. Skill in the communication of the value proposition of an offer. Meaning can you communicate that this process program, offer whatever it is that you're selling, is 10 times worth the asking investment measured against the cost of not getting started? Because when you can do that and communicate the right offer to the right person at the right time, time, this requires skill. And that type of skill will help you grow to whatever you want. 10k, 80k, 50k doesn't matter.

Okay.

You know, we have that skill and structure in place now. Part of that structure is also the systematic approach to consistently generating new leads, turning them into prospects and converting them into clients. When you have that plus the relentless focus on generating the revenue, then you could hit whatever you want in the constraints and capacity of time that you have. Because this isn't like work so hard until your eyeballs bleed. You can let it take what it needs to take until it takes. But it does require strategy, structure, systems, and relentless focus on skill acquisition.

That's it.

And the more Variables you add or change, the longer it going to take. Then we have to look at the third pillar, which is the P and L, the profits and losses and what happens to a lot of people, at least for me, this is what happened to me is that I kept hearing, well, you just got to hire, you have to hire, you have to, you know, a team, grow a team. And I think teams are really important. I think they are important and they are the fast track. But you have to be very clear on who comes first. You also have to be very clear on your profit losses, margins, because a 7k salary is not going to be a 7k revenue. So here's what I like to do and what I like to teach my clients, okay? Because if you're in the online space, you want to have a good 50 to 60% profit margin. The majority of your budget, in my opinion, can come from the lead acquisition. Because it's either now that we have all these systems set up when you're in this phase of like 10 to 50k, meaning, okay, I know that my offer is converting. I know my strategy, I know the structure and the fulfillment. Now I've dialed it in, okay? Now we need to have a systematic conversion content approach to attract new people and convert them.

Okay?

Now you could do it organically. It's just a slow track. It's the slow track and that's fine. Meaning that you can't. You pump out as much content as you want, but it takes hours. It also is slow. It also is out of your control. Okay, meaning that, you know what kills me is like people will say things like, it's not your. It's not the algorithm. It's not the algorithm, it's your content. I'm like, well, that's not entirely true because, because I had an account, I started off over a brand new account and then I had, then I had a seasoned account with 17,000 followers and then I put the exact same piece of content out. Like, I'm literally the exact same to a T. One had thousands of views, one had a hundred. So how can you tell me that the same piece of content, oh, the audience just doesn't like it when it's the same piece of content. So it's not fair to say that the algorithm doesn't matter.

It does.

It does matter. And those are things that are outside of my control. So I can either put energy and effort into that or I could put money into it because I have a systematic approach and I let the money serve my content that I've created to the people who need to see it. This is how I can create passive income and generate leads every single day and then use my content, a conversion content systematic approach to nurture them. And then let the sales system be pressure free and permission based and take what it takes, takes until it takes. That way people don't feel like there's pressure. And people love to buy things, but they hate to be sold to. So I just continue to communicate a value proposition so that for every day you say no is just an opportunity of you leaving thousands of dollars on the table. So the majority of my budget in a P and L is to marketing. I want my ads to give me a 4x return. And so this means that if I'm going to spend $25,000 a month on ads, I'm going to hit 100K, 25 to 30,000amonth. And if you're like, oh my gosh, Beverly, I can't even think about spending $100 on ads, well then there you have always kills me too. There you have it. Now we have to go back to the number one in terms of terms of now we've uncovered a blind spot. Let's go to the first pillar of belief and you believing that it's possible for you because these people making 100k a month, they're spending 20 to $33,000 per month on ads. Do I think that's where you should start? No, of course not. Of course not.

Okay.

I would never do that. But this is now we're talking about growing a business.

Okay.

And if you want to do it 100% all organic because there are a handful of people out there who have done it 100% all organic and amazing. But you're also paying and they have also paid in time. So it's not free. There's a cost. There is an investment of resource, whether it's time, money or combination of both, which is different than throwing money at a problem and hoping that that's going to stop solve it. Which is another thing that a lot of people get into, especially in this phase, like, oh well, you know, let me just throw money at a freelancer. And then they get over resourced because they think that the freelancer is going to be able to do it. No, there's nothing inside of my business that I don't know how to do. If someone quit, I could figure that out. If someone quit, I could step into that place. I could clean the toilets of my business place. So if a janitor quit, I am not Too proud to jump in and do what the business needs at any level. Ads manager has to go, I can take over my ads. Granted I did have a little bit of like, you know, it had been a minute, but I can do it. And so I would. There's nothing in my business that I can't, that I can't manage. So the majority of the budget in the P and L, if we're looking at a 50% profit margin, we want that to be, we want that to be, you know, so if we're going to look at half, 50% of the P L is going to be in expenses. The majority of that is going to be left into, is going to be put back into the business for marketing. Then what we have left left over, we're going to start delegating to team. Okay, so and then the team that we want to put into place is going to come into two ways. Okay. The very, very first person, it doesn't matter, the 0 to 10k range needs to have this person too. We need to have a va at least part time. Somebody who is taking off tasks on your to do lists that are like death by a thousand paper cuts, like building your landing pages, like to do stuff, like stuff that, that is, you know, admin work that is a huge chunk of your time that needs to come off your plate. Okay, then what we need to do is we need to look at your, we need to look at your time constraints in terms of like where's the majority of your time going? Where can we identify the stuff that needs to be delegated, automated or delete it, Just delete it. Oftentimes people in this range have so many variables that if they just got it off their plate until they hit the next level, then they would still be really massively profitable. Now again, if you're like me sometimes with my free time, what I want to do in my free time is stuff that I think is fun that will help the business. Like sometimes I want to learn about YouTube or listen to a podcast or self development. Like that's what I would do if I was sitting on the beach. That's very different than feeling like I have to do this in order to grow my business business. Okay, so you have to be discerning there about, about the truth for you. So when you're looking at, you know what, who's the next hire? Okay, so are you going to delegate sales and marketing or are you going to delegate fulfillment? And now it's hard because you, it's hard because in my Year. What I started with was the delegation in sales and marketing, which was challenging because. And the reason I did that was because I loved fulfillment. I love fulfillment.

Okay?

This was challenging because it is a hang of a lot easier to communicate the value of your program than it is to teach someone else to communicate the value of your program. Okay, that's challenging, number one. And then number two, sometimes, at least for me, I was getting into the arrogance of like, nobody could teach this as well as me. And I. That's just plain and simply not true. So the first thing I would do is look at the ways that you could get support and fulfillment. Okay, Is there an assistant and part time, Is there a part time assistant coach, community manager, someone to run your customer support inbox, Someone to really take off some of the fulfillment death by a thousand paper cuts so that you can stay in the sales and marketing component and a very leveraged asset access to you inside of the, inside of the fulfillment container. Now listen, I had a lot of twisted things in my mind about like, hey, I don't like how I'm doing these, these free calls or these free trainings to people who haven't invested in me. And then the people who've invested me get less of me. But that's not true. And that's not what's happening. They don't get less of me. Even though I thought I felt like it when I was delegating my flight fulfillment. That's not true. They don't get less of me. And, and, and while it feels like, oh, but I'm doing this training, I'm doing the same training to the free people over and over. It's the same. They're not getting. That's like going to Peloton and going to Beachbody online and doing the same workout over and over and over. There's no progressive overload, which is what we do inside of the program. In the program, I'm there to help you identify these blind spots that I wish people had identified for me when I was in this teenage stage, as I'm in this teenage stage. And so now what happens is now that I've got the structure and systems in place and I'm putting the right people in the right order at the right time. I can see now why people say if you can get to 10k, you can get to 100k, but that is you have to get to 10k with the offer that is leveraged. So you have to have a leverage fulfillment system in place that works and you have to have the systems, the conversion content system in place so you have a systematic way to bring in new people. Paid lead acquisitions is what I like to teach my accelerators. A hybrid sales system, okay? And then we have the hybrid sales system so that you can make sales every single day. Like right now, next week, I'm going to be taking the year between Christmas and New Year's off so I could spend time with my family. But we will still be making sales every single day. Here's why. Because we have the conversion content in place. I've got my ads running, I got my sales system running. Then we cleaned up my P and L. So what was happening to me, okay, in my profit margins when I was looking at it is that I was trying to scale by adding team, but I wasn't being discerning in terms of what needs to come from. This was also because of me and the beliefs that me and what I was struggling with in terms of the invisible components, feeling like I needed to do everything. But no million dollar business was what is built on its own. And then what was happening was because I'm laughing, but at myself, not at you. So if this is you, I'm laughing at myself. But then what was happening is I was hiring the people, but then I was still doing all the work work. And I was like, I'm working 18 hour days and it was just not. It's not sustainable, not scalable. And then you're gonna end up burning out. And then, and then, now that I'm starting to, kind of feels a little bit like I'm starting from scratch, even though I'm not. But I'm looking under the hood and I'm taking a closer look and I'm like, oh, well, here was the hole, here was a hole, here was a hole. And I didn't realize it. Now that we've cleaned all that up up, we are going to consistently move to those seven figure months in 2024. Because now that we've got these systems in place and then we've had. They've been in place. So it's not that they weren't, it's just I hadn't. There were some things that were not cleaned up that I was trying to scale. And then when that happens, it breaks. And then in order to acquire that skill, it needs relentless focus. And if you're in this 10, if you're floating in this, in this range of like not even hitting 10k or close to 10k or in this multiple six figures, then you might be running the risk of either you are over resourced and your P and L and your profit margin is not sorted. So we need to look at that. We also might be in the valley of despair loop of consistently changing the strategy and the structures, which is fine. But then we are starting over and every time you start a variable over then you're hitting reset.

Okay.

And we need focus to scale and or we don't have any of the actual, you know, we don't have the necessary leveraged components ready to go so that we could scale. And then the other thing is that is the invisible components and belief and self sabotage and we need to have that dialed in if you haven't already.

Okay.

So that's what really it looks like when it comes to scaling to that 10k to 50k months and then once you can hit that, once you dial that in you can get to 100k. And I feel a little bit like ah, it's not fair for me to say that. It sounds like I'm just parroting that. But what we did to hit 80k in July was the same as what we did to hit 20k, 50k, 40k. All of that was the same. All of those three systems were in place and it was the same. What broke was capacity in terms of resources and matching that. Matching it. What I mean by matching it is that that but I was undercharging for something so that when we went to go to scale it broke. It couldn't get fulfilled. We were putting the wrong people in the wrong spot. And so when that happens, everyone starts to feel deflated. Coaches start to feel deflated. Some of the messaging needed to change so there's some really big moving parts but the actual essence still there. I just need. I'm changing my messaging. I'm taking a look at. I raised rates, I changed some of the deliverables so that it doesn't sacrifice client results or client connection. I cleaned up some of the team in terms of making sure that they're actually performing so that we could hit these milestones to get to 80 and to get to 100k. And then I put it. Now I'm going to put in order the the team. So I help. I got help in fulfillment then now I'm going to get help in sales and then once we dial this in and lock in 250k then we're going to do the next thing, hire more in sales and more in fulfillment in an effort to help our clients get results faster. That's all we're doing. So with that said, hopefully this episode helped you. If you have any questions or you want our help in setting this up for us, send me a DM at bsims and Fitness over on Instagram. We love to hear from you and if this episode helps you, it takes five seconds to leave us a five star review. Please help us help more people share this episode in on your social. We love to hear from you and connect with you. So great job here and I'll catch you on the next episode.

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