I Broke My Business—Twice. Here’s How I’m Rebuilding Smarter.

Most coaches who want to start and scale a profitable business in the online space, whether they are adding an online component to their in person offers or they are trying to go fully online, typically what I see are coaches who have concerns, fear, doubts and stress around whether or not they're actually going to achieve their goal. This usually comes from they've tried things before and it didn't work, or they don't even know where to start, or it feels like there's so much to do that they're never going to get anything done. So a lot of doubt and fear and concern can come through there. Or they're right about to hit their goal. Or maybe they've already hit their goal and they start to stress, worry, fear, doubt that they're not going to be able to maintain their success or they're going to have to work harder or it means something about them if they achieve their goals. So if that's you, the latter is you, then this episode is for you because I'm about to break down how I broke my business for the second time, why it happened, what came up, and what we're doing to course correct and fix it. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host Beverly Simpson, and if you're new around here, thank you so much for joining me. As a former district fitness manager for a national gym responsible for bringing in $2.1 million per year, hiring and developing personal trainers and fitness managers, as well as generating over seven figures online, I've learned a thing or two and today we're breaking down. I seem to have broken my business for the second time. Now, I know that's a little bit aggressive. If this is the first time that you're hanging out with me, whether you're watching here on YouTube or you're tuning into the podcast episode, buckle up. I hear I give you the full transparency. Nothing to hide. Here's what's coming up. Breakdown inside of BE since and Fitness. So first let's start with the what happened and what I mean when I say that I broke my business. If you've been following me for a while, then you know that I stuck started my business on Instagram and grew this one account over 17,000 followers on my Instagram account during that process. That was when I had my fitness business when I was growing the 30 and 30 and my 30 and 30 membership for moms. Then I transitioned over to the coaches so the account was a little bit disjointed. And then I also grew up in that era of of grow your Instagram account organically, and then all of a sudden is not organically. And then I broke my Instagram account. I was constantly getting blocked for like weeks at a time. And then when I was just going back and forth with a friend, we were literally just chatting. Instagram blocked me out for like 30 days. And I was like, what is happening? I make my revenue here on Instagram. So I decided to just burn it all down to the ground and I started a brand new account over from scratch. Now, I've shared in previous episodes of how that affected me and what came up for me. And it's interesting because that has been a slog, a little bit of a slog. And honestly, it's coming up again as I go through a similar process for the second time. And I'm noticing all of these things that are coming up and it, it's related to the Instagram slog and it's also related to this in the same way. And let me share and break down what I mean and what I'm talking about. So have you ever heard that, Phra, if you've been online for a second, then you hear people say all the time, don't build your business on Mark Zuckerberg's platforms or on someone else's platforms and really focus on building your email list. Well, the logic around that really makes sense for me because if you think about it, when your Instagram content goes live, or your YouTube content or whatever, your, your content, your public facing content goes live, your viewership is. It's in an echo chamber of content of other people and you literally have zero to three seconds to capture attention and then you have four to seven seconds to keep it. And something I tell my clients all the time, when we especially get fixated on short form content or Instagram content, is that typically people underestimate the amount of content that is a required and not just information content, persuasive content, ethical persuasive content, required. To take someone who's never heard of you before and turn them into a 2k, 10k, 1k, even $50 client is a hang of a lot more work than people realize. Or rather can be a hang of a lot more work than people realize, especially if you're new to the skill. Now, for me, I have content that just oodles out of me. So it's easier for me, especially since I've been in this world for at least 10 years, it's easier for me to get a lot of content out into the world. All that to say that means. And it makes sense for me to really spend my time focusing on my email list. And I ask my clients to do the same thing. And not just any email list. I want my email list to be 80% customers, buyers. I want my email list to be curated of people who have said yes to themselves. And they. They are in my world in a very, what I now realize, intimate capacity. So imagine my surprise when I accidentally followed the advice of my CRM chat agent and manually. I'm laughing as I'm saying this out loud. Even though if I, you know, even though it's. It's not. It's not funny, it's awful. But basically, I did the same thing that I did to my Instagram account almost 10 years ago. I did the same thing where I manually entered these people. Now, these people had opted in, okay? They just were. They just. I had some tech glitch background where it, like, it glitched out. And they weren't getting entered into this email sequence. They were just floating. So I realized it, and then I manually entered them into the workflow. Well, this was a mistake because this was an abandoned cart sequence. So within an hour, I had sent over 5,000 emails. Now, you might think if you've listened. If you're listening to this and you're like, oh, well, that's not a big deal. I have a hundred thousand people on my email list. Okay, well, then it might be different for you, but if you're like me and you have 12,000 people on your email list and then you send 5,000 emails out within an hour, I don't know, it freaked out. And I literally. My bounce rate went crazy and I got blocked and I couldn't send an email for the next 48 hours, and I basically torched. I burned my domain. Okay? So now if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I know what to do, blah, blah, blah, trust me, I have literally, for the last two months, gone really hard on figuring out how to save my email list or rather save my domain so that the people on my email list all get my emails, okay? Because it's worse. They're not going just to the junk mail and spam folder, which there is a part of that that is. No, no, literally, I have been blocked. Like, Google and MSN will not even put my email into people's inboxes because I've been considered. I'm considered span and apparently have potentially torched my domain name. Not even though I have all the subdomains, the DMARC all of that stuff is sorted. Okay, so for those of you tuning in that are like, oh I am do this, do that please. I have worked with experts, I have been doing everything I possibly can and I took a 40% open rate to an 80% email list of customers. So these are people that have bought from me. These are not for people who have opted into something for free, even though I do have those people as well. However, I. So I took this 40% open rate email list and it's torched down to a 6% percent. 6% on a consistent basis. I done all the things like changed my sub domain. I've sent emails to get off of these burn lists that are apparently exist. I segmented the list, I did a re engagement campaign, take extensive notes on all of my emails that in the last two years that at the highest open rates and I resent them and I literally did all the things and I have and I torched my, my, I've burned my domain list or my domain name and frankly it's awful. Imagine my surprise when the majority of my revenue comes through my email list when all of a sudden over 80% of my people aren't even seeing the emails. In a month that is traditionally called no buy July and in a month where a lot of my contracts, my six month contracts are ending. To say that my nervous system has been tested is quite the understatement of the century. So here's what happened and how we're moving forward. So here's what came up for me. I went, of course, and I did everything that I teach my clients. And this is so important. I think it's one of the biggest mistakes that people get into, especially when they're new, they're told to, to really focus and dial in in on one platform, one offer, one sales mechanism, one platform. And for me, as someone who has lost access to my audience on Instagram, someone who's now lost access to my customer list, I think it's one of the biggest mistakes that we get into is focusing on one service source. Especially now. Because think about it, what are you going to do if Mark Zuckerberg decides to just close their platforms down and you've built your entire business on Instagram or you're like me and you get in trouble in your email list without even realizing it and now you have completely lost access to your customer list. So what I have learned in this experience is you need to diversify where you put your content. And right now, with the help of AI, it's easier now than ever to take content and repurpose it and reuse it and turn it into multiple different places and put it in multiple places. I get why people tell you not to do this, at least too early on, because the more variables that you introduce to your business, the more variables you need to manage. So for me and for my clients, once you fully understand what that customer journey looks like for yourself, and you know, these are my traffic targets, these are my lead targets, these are my customer targets, and these are my client targets, and you're really rooted in knowing in what those targets are and understand what your performance metrics are, then it in my opinion, it's easier for you to now diversify with how you're going to reach those targets because as long as you are solid on your plan and you're not doing what most entrepreneurs, myself included, do, which is throw the baby out with the bath water, oh, that didn't work. And throw it out instead, instead of really look being discerning in your data, then the easier it's going to be for you to add different variables because it'll be easier for you to manage, especially now with the help of AI. So number one, I realized more than ever it is so important that you are diversifying where you are posting and showing up in order to grow your business, whether you're trying to grow online in person or a combination of both. I have shared in previous episodes how the impact of the Instagram breakdown really showed up for me. I didn't realize how impacted I still am by the experience of losing my Instagram account. When I lost my Instagram account, I felt like I was a fraud, that I was no longer an authority in teaching people how to grow an account. I felt like I was no longer an authority in teaching and showing people how to build businesses online. And that had a huge impact on me. It it show it changed the way I showed up online. It I felt foolish, silly, and I felt more frozen and got into overwhelm very quickly. I really stopped showing up in a big way on Instagram because I felt like I was no longer an authority there because I was starting over and I wasn't growing as as fast as I wanted to grow and more than that, as fast as I felt like I should be growing as an expert. So I didn't realize it until I lost my email address. But I had literally been hiding in the invisible component and the invisible factor of my email list. My best work was getting put into my email list and I didn't even realize that I was hiding there. Because my first thought when I lost the email list was, oh, I'll just go back onto Instagram and, and put what I'm putting in here onto Instagram. But that exposed me. I felt vulnerable. I felt like then people will see me. Which is an interesting dichotomy because I have been this year, I've been really wanting to work on my visibility. I wanting to show up in a bigger way, but it's felt scarier. It somehow felt more exposing. Despite the fact that the work in what I'm doing in the email list is technically the same, but it feels more invisible, it feels safer. And so I'm working through these feelings as I'm showing up more, as I'm being required to show up differently. Because for the first time ever, I'm laughing, but it's not really funny. My views on social are the bigger impact than my open rates or my email list. Oh, my gosh, it's not funny. It's not funny. So now here's the plan moving forward, because here's the truth. Once you acquire the skill, it's much easier to build momentum once you have the skill. And so the plan for us moving forward is, number one, I'm acknowledging these experiences that are coming up for me and I'm going to clear them out. I need to clean it out. I need to process it. I need to. I'm publicly stating, sharing it with you. I'm sharing with you my feelings and what I'm coming, going through and how I'm thinking through this for two reasons. One is because whatever you're afraid of, I want, the only way out is through. And so for me, it's like that pink elephant, right? I want to be the first one to say it, to call it out, to mention it. It helps me take my power back, to show up powerfully to share with you. Instead of fear and wonder, are you going to notice and point fingers and whatever those feelings that you might be experiencing or feeling yourself, listen, you're not alone. I'm human. I go through the same thing. So I'm being the first one to call it out. The second thing I'm doing is, is experiencing it and then processing and moving through it and saying, hey, thank you, my old friend, for keeping me safe. We're gonna keep going and I'm gonna show you why this is powerful and how this will help you. And then I'm going to do the things that I know to and feel called to do to continue to grow my business because I have a team of people that are counting on me. I have clients that are counting on me. I have you who are counting on me. So I'm going to feel the fear, do it anyway, show up anyway and get the rep, both on Instagram because it's the platform that I love here on YouTube and in my podcast, because something else I noticed about me is that when I get into overwhelm, I start to get inundated and then I can't sort through the the action items because I get inundated with a million ideas and I need to get focus, get clear in focus and feel like the pressure of time is on me. But that's just not true. And so some of the other technical things that we'll work on doing is, you know, getting a new domain and, and warming up a new inbox and trying to get off blacklists. And that will be some of the practical components. But it's not as important as the energetic components. The practicality that will come. But I forgot who said it. Maybe it was Tony Robbins. That business is 20% of it is strategy and 80% of it is psychology. Okay, so I said a couple of things here in this episode that people have really been asking me about. And so I'm going to be diving deeper into it as we continue in our time together as I keep moving through these pieces of content. First of all, people have been asking me how I'm using AI so powerfully in my business. People have also been asking me how do I repurpose content. That's part of. That's one of the things that I was saying inside of this episode. So welcome back. Welcome to my channel. Hit subscribe if you're not already. Tune in next week. We'll be diving into a lot of those content topics to help you start and scale a profitable business in the online space as a health and wellness professional. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today. I'll catch you on the next episode.