Cash Flow vs. Long-Term Brands | #FFLTV Case Study

This is the part of the show where we look at one of our students businesses and we find out what they're doing well and what they could be doing to make even more money. For this one, I thought it would be fun if we brought in some of our tribe members here in person. So let's see if this still works. Can we manifest a tribe member, someone who's doing over a million dollars. Bring in the tribe member.

Whoa. Oh man. That continues to work. That is amazing. And we got the Cohen's here. What's up guys? Welcome to freedom Fast lane tv.

Ryan, where are we? I was just working on my computer.

That is the law of attraction at work right there. So you guys run Lifestyle Dynamics. You guys are doing great. Doing 150,000amonth. Great. You guys are right at that $2 million mark, which is awesome. So tell me a little bit about the business and where you guys are looking to go and what you're running along the way.

Take it away, Chels.

Well, we have a second brand that we've started and that brand is one of the brands that we are going to be focusing on primarily.

Okay.

So we've got the, the first brand is really our cash flow brand. This brand is our long term, long play brand that we really want to push outside of Amazon.

And is that because your passion is in that second brand or is that because you just see diminishing returns in the, the million dollar business? What's, what's, what makes you want to step away from a business that's selling over a million dollars a year and start something that is at zero? What makes you want to do that?

Multiple reasons. The primary, the first reason was the diminishing returns. So we met with you last year and we had a kind of pivot where Lifestyle Dynamics was doing well and it was growing. But the, the lifespan of that brand is not going to be, I mean, realistically. Right. I mean these are me too type products. They're good products. But we wanted to start.

Got it. So you don't really want that to be the focus of your time. It served its purpose and now it's time to build something that's really meaningful to you that you really want to spend your time and energy building. And then you want to either automate Lifestyle Dynamics or sell it so you can put all of your energy into the new thing. Okay, so tell me a little bit about what the challenge is on the new brand or we could talk about growing Lifestyle Dynamics. What would be a good use of your time?

We're more interested in learning what the best strategies are for mostly focusing on the new brand. And the biggest issue that I think we're having is that I am a huge bottleneck in our business. So I need to figure out how to not be a bottleneck and at the same time be able to enjoy life and not go crazy.

Great. So where are you spending the majority of your time right now? That is just demoralizing and taking up all of your energy to where the time you're done, you're like, ari, what am I doing with my life and my career? What are some of those activities right now?

Finances.

Finances? Yeah, finances. And I have outsourced some of the finances, but it's not nearly enough for what I'm paying the company. But finances is a big part of it. And the other part is.

Could I ask, what does finances mean? Does that mean managing books?

Managing books.

You know, paying bills.

Paying bills, Payroll taxes.

Taxes take a lot of time up. She's really good at it too. So she.

Sales tax.

So first things first. I have some great resources that I'll recommend off camera for automating that that are affordable publicly. Bench code is an okay job, and I have some people that I've worked with personally for a long time that I can make recommendations for. So what are the other things that when you're trying to grow the business that are just sucking you dry?

I think feeling like I have to do everything and that I'm not outsourcing enough. I have to do all the blogging and then I have to learn. I'm learning click funnels now. And then I want, you know, email marketing. I'm not getting enough out on email marketing. I feel like there's all of these opportunities that I'm missing because I'm trying to do all of it.

Got it.

So it's also kind of a transition. Like, for me, I'm sort of the opposite of Chelsea, where I want to outsource everything and I don't want to do anything.

So I have no problem outsourcing it. But then there's only so many dollars. Right. And we have to survive off the income as well.

I totally get it. So I think I have a nice samurai for this one. And if this doesn't help you out, we'll go deeper. But a funny thing happens with entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs who have a success under their belt once they have the success. Now they say, well, I know how to do that. This is normalized to me. So I'm gonna go learn a completely different skill set. That isn't what made me successful in the first place. So this thing works. I know that. Yeah, that's all great. Let's learn a completely new set of skills and spend all of our time being noobs again, starting all over and building the business completely differently than what worked for us in the past. So here's a question. When you are building this new brand, can you use the exact same skill sets? Putting things on Amazon, optimizing your listing? You're a thought leader on optimizing listings and you are amazing in front of the camera. You know how to build audiences. You've seen what Maruusha has done with her new brand. You're following a kind of a similar model. So you have a bit of a following that's starting to build. Can you only focus on audience building, optimizing listings, getting reviews and getting this business to be profitable and then worrying about email marketing and all these other things that aren't in your core skill set?

Yeah, I think so. I guess the. When I think of email marketing, I feel like I should have that email marketing piece as part of the building the audience, but I don't feel like. And we've got a list from our previous business and we're going to be working on setting up like a click opt in to get the list from one business to the other.

Yeah, great.

But if I'm not marketing to that list, then what's the point, you know?

Yeah, I totally get it. And you can and should be marketing to that list. And I'm guessing you could be marketing to that list if you weren't worried about all of these other things that are keeping you bogged down. So I guess my question is what? You're building up a good audience. You have products that you both are proud of. You've got videos that are being shared that have a heartfelt message to them. You've got a list that you can market to. You know enough about email marketing to be able to do some damage. So what is preventing you from really going aggressively into this new brand and stripping away the things that don't provide revenue right now?

My answer is nothing. We are going aggressively this year. So we've already, we have business planned it out, we have the products lined up and we are making strides in that direction. So that's my viewpoint and we work together as best we can to do that.

Can you pull that lever now? Like, can you promote those products right now?

Yeah. And I think that, you know, he says nothing, but at the Same time, I know that I've got that. This mental block. There's a website that we have that's generating a lot of. That's generating traffic about, you know, 200 per day. It's building our list, but there's no conversion there. So we've got the problem of a website that's building a list but nothing else. And then we want that to be happening over here so there's content. Like, we have to put content out so we can keep building that list.

I've got to keep doing the thing that's not working so I can get it to work rather than focusing on the thing that's working really, really well so I can make more money. I mean, this is. I'm not picking on you guys. This is very, very common. And here's something that we've done internally that has helped us. Rather than try to manage all of these different pieces at once, we make a deal internally that we're gonna focus on two to four of them for three months. Now, we're not allowed to learn anything new or focus on anything else except for those two to four items for three months. And at the end of three months, we can decide a new set of things that we're gonna focus on. So we have to say, if I'm gonna keep blogging, I have got to replace something else on that list of three things that are gonna be the focus of my time. And what you'll find is that you will double down on the things that are working really well, and you will naturally have to make the hard decision of, we're not gonna do this now. We can do it later. We can make this a focus later, but we're not going to do it now because this is the thing that we're going to focus on learning and really improving. And when you give yourself three months to do that, you're not waking up every morning and going, I got to get this done, and I got to get this done. And I got to get this done. And at the end of day, feeling completely exhausted, like, you made absolutely zero progress. Now, for you, that's probably going to be building the audience, writing an email to the existing list to promote the new products, getting new reviews, and maybe sourcing new products for the new brand. And if you focus on only that for three months, and at the end, you say what this really needs is content, well, the good news is you've got momentum now, and you could theoretically then hire that out and make that the focus of the next three months. We're gonna find a really good person in the next three months is gonna take over content that knows what they're doing and let them do it for three months before we evaluate the result. And what you'll find is that by simplifying things you actually move faster rather than slower.

That's great. Awesome.

How's that? Well, you guys are doing a great job. Congratulations on the multimillion dollar business. And I'm so.

I'm just gonna.

Yeah, go for it. I guess I took you away from the coffee at your other computer. So congratulations on what you're doing. I'm so excited I've told you this. I'll say it publicly. The minute you guys need an investor, call uncle Ryan. Cause I love what you'll do in your new brand.

Yes.

Cool. Thanks, guys. Thanks for coming on Freedom Fast Lane tv.

All right, Ryan, thank you.