588. "My business is beyond my wildest dreams! What's next?" | Coaching Session

I have this sticker on my water bottle that says, this might not be my first rodeo, but I still have no idea what's going on because that is my business life. I'm like, I've done this all before. We got it under control. We do not have it under control.

Hi, I'm Jaclyn Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow style thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what are mistakes they could avoid, how did they turn an idea into successful business? And what are strategies they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. This is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Hey, hey, product bosses. I am so excited to share this episode with you. Now, Shaunti and I have worked together for a while now and she is incredible. And you'll see our connection because we realize that we can't talk without laughing. But in today's coaching session, I'm really excited to let you in behind the scenes because we're talking to Shanti of a brighter year. Now she sells something really cool. She sells simple, easy and bite sized coloring books for the busy adult. Yes, coloring books for adults. And she's absolutely crushing it. Now her business has been going viral on TikTok and on other places and she's working with huge collaborations with huge brands that we know and it led to six figure months. Way sooner than Shanti ever imagined. Yes, I said six figure months. And she started this less than a year ago. Now she's left asking how, how do I keep up and what comes next? We talk about hiring, taking back control and setting your sights on an even bigger goal. All right, let's get into it. All right. Shanti, I'm so excited to coach you today. We've been working together for months now inside the inner circle Mastermind. I mean even before that you were a student in multi Stream machine and just like the growth, like you would message me or I'd see the Growth and all the things that were happening in your business is just like mind blowing. So one, I'm super honored that I get to work with you so closely inside the Mastermind. But for people who don't know A Brighter year and all the things that you do, would you mind telling us a little bit about your business? Yeah.

My name is Shanti. I own A Brighter Year. And A Brighter Year makes simple adult coloring books that are very different than the traditional, very busy, overwhelming, overstimulating coloring books. We went the exact opposite direction because it's what I wanted and apparently there are a lot of other people out there who wanted them.

2.

And luckily I have found those people in a very short amount of time.

Yeah, it's so cool. And the other thing that I think is really cool to go through with you right now is that you actually had another product based business that you've sold and in the process of moving out of, Right?

Correct. So I remember when I was a lot younger, I read somewhere that it takes on average someone 10 businesses before they get the one that actually hits. Right. Like everything hits. Right. I'm not on number 10, but I am on number five. So I think sometimes people look at this and they're like, wow, this happened so fast. But in reality, I've learned so many lessons through all of my other businesses to get me to this point to finally like get the pieces to click correctly. So I think that's like another thing to keep in mind for people who are just starting out for sure.

Oh, I love that. If I count like my first business when I was 10 years old, Jackie's Wacky faces, Painting faces. I probably am at 10. But no, it's true. I mean, it's like we can have other businesses that do well. Right? Like your other business is doing well. It just wasn't as well as a brighter year and like all the amazing things that are happening now. So I think like also when people are listening, it's not like, oh, this is going to fail or whatever. It's just you keep evolving as a business owner. You. You keep realizing what the customers need, what the market needs. And you and I both made great money from past businesses that we've had, which would be success in anyone's book. Right. But then the success you're having now is just like unbelievable success and growth.

Yeah. The path that got me to this point was I came from the service industry because I worked in the music business. So those were like my first two businesses. Then my first product based business Was not scalable. And I hand embroidered shoes.

Oh, I didn't know this.

Yeah. And the first time I went viral, which was on Tumblr, which that tells you when I started that business. Cause that's when like Tumblr was a thing. I woke up and now I laugh. But I had 25 orders. I was like, this isn't sustainable. I cannot hand embroider these shoes fast enough. And I knew I couldn't pay someone to come do them because no one else would work for the rate that I was selling them for and how.

Free you were working.

Exactly. So when I started my second business, which is the one that I'm currently selling, it's a party decor business and it is scalable. But everything we do is super handmade, super time intensive. And it is scalable because it's priced right. Which was the first thing that I knew when I started that business. It's priced right. So that really all I have to do is buy more machines and have more employees. So that business has been in business for 10 years. But about four years ago, my husband and I were like, I'm not gonna retire on party at your door, which is my other business. It's too time intensive. It's a lot of work. And so we started brainstorming on ideas that were more pack and ship oriented. I didn't wanna do just a regular like bring things in from China and pack and ship. That wasn't what we were looking for, but something that was not custom, not personalized, not as time intensive. And so we bounced around a lot of ideas, but I ended up on adult coloring books. Cause it's something I wanted that I couldn't find. And then that's how this whole thing started. So there was a lot of thinking that even went into it before I got to this point.

You know what's amazing about that? Because you and I, we've been coaching because you're in the mastermind, so we can coach offline. Like we have a way that we talk back and forth. And you know how I was talking to you about, you know, your end result in mind, like your dream result in mind. It's what you did with a brighter year. You thought, I want to retire, I want to have a business. I'm not going to be able to do this with the current state of business that I have. So you actually did start this business with that in mind, which I love.

Right, Right. Definitely.

So good. Look at that. You're nailing it. Okay, so cut to last year. You started Going viral with your adult coloring books on TikTok and then you're still viral. Right. So you have like all these amazing things that you're making like six figures to multi six figures every month, quarter. Right. Like this is a lot of money worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in sales. Thank you to social media and all the other amazing collaborations and wholesale that you sell and like you have a multi stream machine going on to generate that money. But as that's happening, I know that you're starting to find that there are things that are trickier to scaling this business. Some of the things that you talked about that you want to talk about today and let me know if they're still accurate. One is drilling down the finances and the other thing is key performance indicators and play expectations and office culture. Do you still want to tackle those?

Yes. I think the KPIs leans in a little bit to what I am thinking about as far as we have all of these streams of marketing which are streams of revenue and that I feel are very untapped right now and underutilized. And so what I really want to do is try to figure out the KPIs for those to give to my staff as we're growing and hiring. Because my next person is coming on in 15 days is her first day and I would like to be organized when she starts and not unorganized. And so that's kind of where I am. Crunch time right now. She's the first person that I bring on only to do marketing and sales.

Amazing.

And part of that thing is all of this options on like directions where we can go. In my gut I feel like I might actually need to hire another person besides just her. For 10 years running my businesses, I always underhire and then someone always has to pick up the slack. But I also have never hired at this level before. She's way overqualified for the job that she's taking and so maybe she's going to get more done than I actually think and maybe I don't need to hire another person. The other person I'm considering would be someone who just did social media or helped with social media and I'd actually taken that off the table except I had someone apply to this job who I think would be the most ideal fit. Like I can't stop thinking about her. So I think there's something to be said for that. And my concern is that I hired this person who's way overqualified for this job and she's going to get Stuck in the weeds really fast, which is where I'm stuck in the weeds when it comes to marketing. And I'm wondering if we need to get someone else stuck in the weeds so both of us can kind of pull up and look at things more strategically from the top down.

So let's talk about your dream result, the thing that you want this marketing and salesperson to handle for you and your business.

We have talked a lot about blogging, and I do not want to be someone who blogs just to blog. We have talked in the Mastermind more about doing four or five Cornerstone posts, and so we are really leaning towards that, but we haven't done any of that yet. Another thing is Instagram is completely untapped for us. We do the absolute bare minimum there, and we don't even do it well. So someone needs to come in and treat Instagram like I currently treat TikTok. We also talked about YouTube shorts, and we do have a LinkedIn strategy that we want to lean into, but again, nobody has had the time to do this. So there's two things on LinkedIn that we think could be really beneficial for the business, which are reaching out to wellness people or HR people at these huge companies. The amount of people who tell me that they color at their desk during the workday for their mental health is overwhelming. I would say 70% of our customers tell me they color during the workday at their desk. And so I think there's something to be said for these wellness coordinators. And I used to work with some at a past endeavor. They have huge budgets to do these things for their employees. And so is that something where these people come in and buy thousands and thousands of coloring books for their staff as part of, like, their mental health initiative? And then the other thing, which we've already started building traction in, is event coordinators who want these branded coloring books for their events. And this is people that are coming to us. So I think if we go to them, there's probably a really big market out there for that. Affiliates. We don't do anything with affiliates that's outbound on any social media. And right now, about 20% of my revenue is coming from affiliates, but it's people who are coming to me, and I'm just like, sure, whatever. Have a free coloring book. That's literally our strategy.

Like, I built this into a standard operating procedure.

So they just take a coloring book, and some of them don't sell, and some of them sell $10,000 in a single video. Like we've seen across the gamut, everything happen. So on TikTok, about 20% of our revenue comes from affiliates. And I know if we leaned into that strategy across other platforms that it could be humongous for us or even if we did it with more strategy than what we're currently doing, which is no strategy. These people are going to be like, how?

Well, what I love about this, it's like, that is how you could have no strategy.

I have this sticker on my water bottle that says, this might not be my first rodeo, but I still have no idea what's going on because.

That.

Is my business life. I'm like, I've done this all before. We got it under control. We do not have it under control.

I want to take a moment to point this out. Shanti has been seeing major growth in her business without ever putting much thought into her marketing strategy. Why is that? Because she's been open to opportunities. She's had people reach out to her and she took a risk. Some didn't move the needle at all and some paid off massively. Now, I obviously don't recommend moving forward without a strategy, but we can learn from what she's experienced so far to craft something that will carry her business even further. Remember, my friends, it's better done than perfect. And I love to take opportunities when they come my way, when they feel like they are really well aligned. And this will really help her, especially as she begins hiring things out. So here's going to be my question, kind of going back to your original question about this hire that you have coming on that is overqualified.

Yeah.

Okay. So this is a list of all the things that need to happen that you want to work on. If we look at this overqualified individual that's coming on, what can she take off of your plate that she can be director or manager of? So we don't need to give anyone C suite roles, like they don't have to be presidents or whatever, but if they have a title of manager in their role, that means that they have ownership and oversight of parts of this department. So what would you like this person to have oversight and ownership of?

We're going to do weekly meetings. I set that up from the very beginning. Have a weekly meeting where we go over all the marketing strategy and plan.

Who comes up with a marketing strategy and plan? You don't have to own it anymore. If we're hiring someone, it could be we'd like her to own it by being trained by you.

I would love for her to own it if we can get there.

And do you think that she's qualified for that?

Yes, I do think she's qualified for that. But we'll see within the first 90 days.

Correct.

If it actually goes as planned or if we start all over again.

It is bonkers how many people say they can do things in interviews and resumes. And you're like, liar.

Yes.

Okay. Because what I want you to just start to think of is you as CEO of your company, that only five people ever report to you. So that's the max amount of people that are direct reports to you. It could also include your finance team. Like if you're like chuckling, like if you have a fractional CFO or whatever, that number comes to you. And then the key people that you need. So you've got your operations person, your product development person. So operations handles production. Product development is design and development. Marketing and sales is another person. Right. So maybe that's three or four people. Everyone else is a direct report to the people that are leadership. There's that way you're not getting inundated with questions. There's one person that manages the outcome that you're hoping for per each task or each part of the business that needs to function.

Yes. And they're pretty good at that. Even now, people know for both businesses, they better go ask Briana first before they go ask me. But sometimes I step in when it gets too much for her because it's a lot.

So that's why, I think, because Brianna's operations, you're either going to have her operate like your integrator, where she is like the person before you on everything, or you start to have team meetings with leadership, where you're still there and the leadership has to work with themselves. But not everything goes to Brianna. So you just as you start to develop your growing team, Brianna might have oversight to everything and have project management to everything, but she doesn't get bogged down by everybody's growth questions too.

Yes. So what I hope happens is if I bring on another marketing person now or in the future, they would answer to my marketing person I just hired. As far as my product and development, I don't know if we would ever have to hire someone else only because we normally outsource that stuff as far as ops. And this is one thing that we have struggled with, which is we talk about things in the marketing meetings. And then I'm like, omg, she doesn't know that we have 500 books going out this week. She needs to make sure that Inventory is accounted for. And so we've realized how closely inventory and marketing has to work together. When you have like such huge influx of inventory happening, or they don't know that there's a big sale coming up on TikTok, you know, they don't know these things, which is why I'm like, we just have to get to a weekly meeting and we're also starting a song, which I think will help as well.

The goal at small businesses of your size and other people is that they are not just managers, that they also can get their hands dirty. That is a big requirement for smaller businesses. Because when you start to hire even like online business managers, there's certain people that are like, I will direct everybody, but I won't do the things. Typically it's like, can you do and direct? And then when it gets to be too much, that's when we hire someone below. So like, then there's someone who is more of a doer that comes on. But that top person starts to establish SOPs like standard operating procedures, KPIs that are required for that role. So whenever we see someone max out on their time and we do, we do time tracking. So we'll do time trackers, like where we might say for a whole week. I want everyone to track their time of what they're doing so that we can then say it's being used effectively or it's not. Or we're like, oh, this person's doing 60 hours a week instead of 40, like they're at max. So can we take off their plate? Or maybe we need to hire a part time person. So going back to your marketing person with your list of stuff, what would be great is that your operations person can help them set up target goals. So they might say to you, shanti, okay, I see that you want to add on LinkedIn because LinkedIn is more of a sales thing because you want to get certain amount of people in to sell your stuff, a lot of your stuff. You want to do blogging for Cornerstone, you want to start to grow on Instagram, what do you want to do first? And that's the stuff from you as like creative director, visionary of the company. And I hate it, to be honest, because I like to move super fast speed. And I don't want anyone telling me no. But like my director of ops is like three projects. We work on three projects at a time. And when that's finished, we have our list that that next project can come in. So I think for you it's really understanding what your priority is and then what your team is going to work on and you can give it a deadline. So if you thought that cornerstone blogging content is the first thing, it's going to have the biggest needle moving impact. You're like, let's do it great. You might say, let's get up five blogs, ask me for what it is, do the research and let's get that done in the next 30 days and then we can move that off our plate. If you're like, blogging would be nice to have, but it's not the most important thing. I really want to grow Instagram and what's the reason? Or I really want to start understanding emails, because emails do drive sales. Pick one of them as a project and see it through as a project because that's when the team feels overwhelmed. And then I would give that to your new marketing and salesperson. So you've got Brianna organizing the operations of it all, managing that this project gets done and then your new marketing and salesperson takes that on as a project and then they see it start to finish. They can come ask you questions as they're doing it, but their result is that they get that done. And then when you're asking, do I hire an assistant, a social media assistant, the one you said you can't stop thinking about, you could test that person with projects. So instead of thinking of like hiring this person on, you might say like, hey, not yet, but maybe I'd like to try like a 30 day project with you where like you present to me content that we could bring to Instagram and blah, blah, blah, blah, and we test it. You could see if that's something you want to do. Managing people is a lot. Onboarding people is a lot. So you can either onboard them at the same time, so everyone's kind of getting onboarded. 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Question about the social media person.

Okay.

Do you know anyone that has ever affiliates get paid like on a percentage of their Sales. Right. Do you know anyone on social media that has done a similar thing? Like you bring on all these affiliates and we will give you a percentage of everything your affiliates sell? Or is that also might just be a bookkeeping nightmare?

No, I think there's. Obviously there's software that you can track it. So you're saying that this social media person, you'd almost want them to manage the affiliates. Yeah. And get money from that. Okay. So it's not just a straight social media person, which I love for you. Better. Yeah, that's.

So she's coming from a content creation house. So she is very versed in, in doing a lot of content for a lot of different people in a lot of different voices and they are very results driven. Like this post better get millions of views. Right. Like they know the formula that makes this the most likely thing to happen.

Okay. And you want that person to then also manage brand ambassadors, affiliates, creators?

Yeah, I think that they'd probably be really good at that because they just are really in that seat.

Okay. And is this person a full time person or a contractor?

It would not be full time, it would be part time. And they definitely start as a contract.

Okay. So what I don't love sometimes is when people are like, I'm just going to hire a social media manager. Because a lot of times people feel like if only I could get that off my plate. Now for you, because you drive so many of your sales from TikTok, for example, it makes sense. But some of the best creators that I know that have product, it's not always outsourcing it to someone else. It's like still there in the game of it because they understand the virality. They understand that's just their superpower. So if you could bring this person on to assist with that part, like so to handle. Sounds like she's more of a content creation person. So the marketing and sales person is overall strategy planning, project implementation, and then this other person could come in as the actual creator of the content. So she creates the content and then her goal could then be she takes that one piece of content, gets it TikTok version, Instagram version, YouTube shorts version.

Yeah. And where we're at right now is I create four pieces of content a day on TikTok for TikTok. And I don't even really mind creating the content that I create right now. I do know there's a little bit of content fatigue with my audience, so I feel like my content needs to be tweaked a little bit to Keep it exciting. But I don't even mind creating a lot of the content, like the bulk of the content. What I really need is someone to come in and edit it and repurpose it for all the other outlets. And we know that the content that's going to deliver on TikTok doesn't always hit the same on Instagram. So how can we repurpose this in a way for that platform that's going to deliver and not just like download upload. Correct.

So if this person is more strategic with content, they're actually two different people. So marketing and sales is overall marketing and sales strategy. And then this person you would bring in would be less of a social media manager and more that person handles your content. She might be creating original content for you on TikTok. She might be taking the content you create and then understanding the different platforms and then like you said, coming up with the different ways that it would be repurposed on different places. And so that person's job and her KPI would be one keeping up with your four pieces of content or whatever the strategy is of like how many times you want to post on Instagram, how many times you want to do YouTube shorts. Even LinkedIn can be implemented that way. Now I don't know if she knows all of these platforms. That's the other hard part. To get someone who understands all platforms, then that person's in charge of content and content creation. Plus maybe then to make the value there is that your head of marketing and salesperson oversees her and has goals set. So like we want to work with X amount of creators per month. Our goal is that we work with, you know, small, medium and large creators. But our goal is that we want to hit X amount of revenue from these creators. So those KPIs are set and then our content person is responsible for also managing that. So then it gives her more ways to make money back for your business. Because one of the biggest things is like we worry about hiring because hiring costs us money. But in fact it needs to be investment into talent that then will 4x to 10x what you're investing into them back for your business. So if you think that that's something she can do, it's kind of a partnership, but it's like brand creator partnerships. Then if that person can hold both of those, to me it's a better value than just repurposing content because you could get very low level person to just take content and repurpose it.

Yeah, so what I'm really trying to figure out is like, do I try to bring her on? If we go through the next interview process, does it make more sense, which goes back to the very beginning that we talked about, to onboard her at the same time as I'm onboarding my other person or does it make more sense to just get my other person up and running and then we see where our holes are? One thing is I do feel like these two people would complement each other really well and also would complement me. One is almost 10 years older and one is almost 10 years younger. And I think that is so key in social media as well. I mean just everyone's feed is different. Everyone, whatever you scroll, everyone's algorithm is different. Everyone's what's what the trends are for, your people are different. And that is my demographic which is like 18 to 44 is my, my key demographic up to 54.

But yeah, so you can do it either way. The hard part is, is when you found talent, like you could lose talent, right? Like, so it's always like the best job offer in the offer in. If you are making a decision that maybe you're actually going to build out your marketing and content department now all in one fell swoop, then you could say I'm going to hire both and I'm going to onboard them both on at the same time. I'm going to teach them at the same time. I'm going to take different meetings with different people. So the person I want to manage the marketing and sales, I'm going to train her and then the person who is doing content, I'm going to train her and then there'll be like joint meetings together. You absolutely can because you're just going to like take this leap into expansion. Because the only thing is, is that if you do wait, which you absolutely can wait too. But if you're afraid of missing out on this talent, then they may not be available once you onboard like in 90 days once you onboard this person. So I would test it. You could either say I'm onboarding you as a part time person if you like them, or another option is that you give her a project and you can pay for projects. So you could say to her, I want you to go through my X amount of content on TikTok and I'm going to pay you your hourly rate and I'd like for you to come up with X amount of content that we could post on YouTube shorts, so we could post on Instagram and I'm going to test it and then we're Going to see the response. Right. So you can give her a week or two weeks worth of content you want her to come up with.

Right.

And then pay her for it.

Okay. I think that makes a lot of sense and does offer a lot of clarity on the social media front. How important do you feel that it is that I do lives versus someone else doing lives? When I do lives, they sell really well. I run out of time every single day to do lives. Which part of the strategy I've been going back and forth on is it that do I get all this stuff off my plate so I do have time to do the lives, or do I delegate the lives to someone else and put them on their plate?

Okay. So you can do it two different ways. The reason why your content works so well is that they just recognize you. So it's the same way that with the product boss, like we got really specific on the way we do our static quote posts. So that when someone sees it, they just kind of know it's a product boss quote. So I get the least interaction when I post guests. Like if I start with no offense, right? But if I start with your face on Instagram, they're not gonna follow cause they don't recognize you. So usually it has to be me at first or a way to create a second character in the business. So really it's a choice for you. You can continue to be the main face of the brand until you choose not to be. And we do open up your plate that that is what you do because you know you can do it well. Or you start to think about how do I add in second character people? Because everyone's following a quote unquote show, right? They're following a storyline. They know there's more to it. They understand the brand and who plays in that brand. Same way that if you know a brand if like I'll bring up Farm Rio. Cause I like they do all those prints. You may not see Farm Rio written on the thing, but you see the print and you recognize, oh, that's Farm Rio, or that's Rifle Paper Co. Or that's a Kendra Scott necklace. So I think when people start to recognize a brighter year for the coloring books, as long as that visual is there, they might notice that and then the person. Because you are working with creators that are creating content for you and that is going viral to their audience, but it's because they're being recognized. There's not a right or wrong. It just might take time to shift you out of it. So if you're like, I don't want to always be the face. I want this brand to be more than just Shanti. I want it to be other key players. Then you just start to put them in, introduce them, but make them repeatable characters. Hey, it's Jacqueline from A Brighter Year. I'm going to talk to you about my favorite coloring book. And then you start to, like, you might need to pass the baton. So you might have to be like, hey, it's Shanti. This is Jacqueline. She's going to tell you all about her favorite whatever, and then you fall back and let her be it, and you start to bring her up as a character. Whether or not you choose to be the face of your brand is totally up to you. In the early days of your business, you may not have a choice, but at some point, you'll have an opportunity to pass the baton to someone else. The key is that whoever shows up as the face of your brand remains mostly consistent so that the customers learn to recognize and associate them with your brand. Think about flow from Progressive, right? Actually, funny enough, Stephanie, who plays Flo on Progressive, her kid went to preschool with my kid, and we actually just recently ran into her. She's been playing that part for over a decade. So if we think about that part and we think about Progressive, we associate her as a character. But if you see what they've done, they've also added in other characters at Progressive, like that guy with the lighter hair and other characters that really come together so that it's not all on flow, but you recognize her. I want you to realize that with your business as well, you can start off being the face of your brand. And, my friend, you can always pass the baton to other people. You just have to start incorporating them in slowly. And if you choose not to be the face, just note that there needs to be a face to your brand. And when I say that, it also means if you ever look at big fashion campaigns or just fashion campaigns in general, they have models that are the face of the brand in that moment. So we may not know who are the designers or the creators behind the brands, but there is a person and personification to the brand, and that's something you want to think about. So what I see in this whole discussion is that you absolutely can do anything, and you're proof that you can do anything, and you're proof that you've got so many ideas, and most of your ideas work really well. What I want you to really think about is what do you want to happen and why do you want it to happen? So I think for you, do you want to set a North Star goal? Do you want to like work that out together?

I do have a hard number for my new team of what I want them to accomplish on all of the platforms that are currently not accomplishing anything. So I think that was big for me.

Okay, what is the big old revenue number you want to hit this year?

Well, I'm about to hit a million in 10 months and I never ever in my wildest dreams thought I would ever hit a seven figure business. So that's the other thing. I'm just kind of like, well, I never ever thought that would happen. And it's about to happen. So now what? You know, it's like when you hit that point, you don't even know what to go to next sometimes.

So what we know is so far this quarter you've hit almost 300,000 in Q1.

Yeah. So my goal for the girls for the rest of the year, for all of these platforms that are untouched, I would like them at the very minimum to bring in 280,000. And I think that is a pretty low ask considering that's what we did in December.

Okay, but before we go to that part, because it's a little bit like if they're focusing on all of them, none of them are going to grow. So we wanna have like project focuses. So if you kept on the average that you're doing right now, it's about 1.2 million. But we know that you had almost a $300,000 month in December.

Yeah.

What do you think you could do in Q4 now that you're bigger?

So here's what's crazy is like March was my third busiest month ever because we went viral, but we didn't even go viral off a new piece of content. We went re viral off of a piece of content that had gone viral in September. It went reviral in March for some reason and it's at like 7 million 8 million views or something. And so that's part of the thing when you sell on social and you get into this like viral cycle that we're in, it is also really hard to set those numbers right that are realistic.

Okay, I think I figured you out. I think because you do social and because it feels luck of the draw if you feel ungrounded in, how do you even set numbers when it's like, I don't know, will we go viral? So it's a little bit more reactive versus like what I think what you've been asking me is like, how do I plan for something I can't even plan for?

Is this why most days instead of sitting at my desk, I sit on the ground? Like, I'm literally trying to get myself grounded. This is making so much sense right now.

You are like me when it was during the pandemic and I walked out into the woods and sat behind a rock. I was like, I need to be on the ground. Slash having a panic attack.

I told my girls, I was like, I have to go home and take a meeting, Like a real meeting that I can't take from the hallway. Sitting on the ground with my computer balanced up on top of shipping boxes. Guys, I'll be back later.

I remember seeing you, was it at Christmas time where all your shipping boxes were in that stairwell hallway?

We have a suite, like, somebody works at the office next to us, and we haven't seen them in like nine months. And I was like, you guys, if they come in here one day, like, what are we gonna do? They can't even get to their office.

You'll cross that bridge when it happens. Okay, so that's what I think it is. I think because you feel like you don't have control over the predictability of your business, you're trying to find that measurement of control. So what we know is, on average, you've been doing a hundred thousand dollar months doing exactly what you're doing, whether it goes viral or not. Would you agree to that?

Yes.

More or less. A piece of content that you do do goes viral in some capacity, you haven't fallen really below that.

Correct.

So what we know is most likely there is a guaranteed metric of $1.2 million for this year for you, because on average, based on just all the pieces that are working in your business, you're going to hit at least 100,000.

Yes.

Does that feel accurate?

Yes, that feels very doable.

Okay, next is. Is what do you feel doable or comfortable in doing? Do we want to set a $2 million goal? Like, what is the goal you'd like to set?

This is hard because I feel like 2 million right now with what we're doing. Running two businesses is like a stretch. But when I think about having not three of us doing two jobs, two businesses, and when I think of us all being really focused, I feel like 2 million is a really scary number for me. But it's also, like, when I think about it, it's very doable.

Okay, so if you need to come up with an extra half Million. How are you going to work backwards on that? What do you need to do then? That should give you the navigation point of okay, wholesale. Because you just had this person order from you and they're selling out and they need more. So what would more of those customers look like? And what percentage of that half million could be brought in by wholesale? Do you want 250,000 this year from wholesale buyers? Then you split that up and you say, how many wholesale buyers do I need? What are the average orders? How often will they reorder? Now you have a KPI and a metric that you're going to follow and either you own it or someone on your team owns it. And then you check in monthly. How close are we to our goal? And then maybe the second half of the quarter million is the outreach you said that you were going to do towards people in wellness and event coordinators. Maybe they're two different ones. So you might say one or the other and. Or you find like, can I then get a hundred thousand dollars in sales this year from emails? Because they've grown my email list and I know that when I email my email list, on average when I send an email, I make $5,000 per email or I make $1,000 per email. And you also can calculate that. So really it's just coming up with more grounded, solidified numbers. I'm going with half million. Does that feel accurate to you?

Yes, very doable.

Very doable. So I want you to have the confidence because we might blow through these numbers and you'll be like, oh, $3.5 million at the end of the year. And like, don't know how that happened. I went viral wholesale.

Okay, but here's the thing that we haven't even talked about yet is, but, well, we have talked about this. It's going to be so hard. But we are really pushing to expand the product line by Q4. And so when we expand the product line for Q4, our average cart value is going to go up yet again. And I think that is what I see being the tipping point for things maybe becoming a lot easier because our average cart value right now is $20, which was up substantially from the $8 that it was originally.

Proof you can build a million dollar business selling an $8 product.

Literally, I did it, but it's at 20. But I think we're going to very easily be at a $50 cart value with what we have planned for Q4. I feel like, good about that and I feel really good about box. Like that's A pretty solid amount. If we could lean into growing that, like those are grounded things for me, when we talk about me feeling not grounded, like subscription boxes, like even if we have a slow month, we're like, subscription boxes are reoccurring next month. It'll be fine. Right, Right. You have those things that are like really consistent. And I think when that offsets my like virality up and down stress a lot when you have the more consistent things running through there.

So that's what I want your focus to be. None of this like I know you're trying to go viral on all these other channels, but that is not the thing that's going to bring you like the well being you're searching for, which is grounded predictability. So how can you create that? You can grow an email list because your email list is something that you know you own. And when you send out an email, I have a client that she would send out her newsletter selling yarn and she'd make 30 grand once a month off of an email for yarn heads, whatever they call themselves. So if you're one of your metrics is growing your list. We don't know your conversion rate, but you already have a great open rate and a great click through rate. So don't change everything based on this other person. But you might just vary the content. So ecom emails versus the emails that are already working for you. But I really want you to really focus on growing your list and then the content, the KPI that the content people are doing is are we growing our email list? We know you've got it with sales, but the email list is the thing that organically you know how to nail it. Even influencers, you might be like, hey influencer, you want to do a giveaway to grow our list, right? Like you want to grow that. Then I think having a metric for how many wholesale accounts you want to bring on this year and how much you want to drive from it, fine. You're coming out with a new product line down the road, let it be all extra money. But I want you to find your grounded numbers that you feel like you have more control over that you have metrics. So imagine you have 800 retailers by the end of the year selling a brighter year and you know that on average they order X. That's the stuff that you're like. Doesn't matter what happens with TikTok because I also have retailers that are selling my stuff. So I want you to just find the more solidified and obviously everything changes, which is why you have this multi stream machine of both sales and visibility but it's probably more important to find the like the actuals that we can lean into than the can we go viral on more platforms and then cross our fingers we get the response we need.

Yeah. So do you think. Nevermind. I think I know the answer to that. I was going to say what do you think blogs their main focus can be but I think blogs can do two things. One they can sell and two, they can capture emails.

Correct. So the way we teach it in multi stream machine is a backdoor in so people searching for a solution to a problem and then they're finding a backdoor in through blogging that then sells them the product. So for your Pinterest strategy in other ways it might be it is it your number one focus? No. Because you're still now waiting on virality to drive traffic. So if it's a way to back it up. But I actually think I'd rather you shift your focus to retailers. So you said you're turning down people coming to you and you feel like they're coming towards you. So can we get that part off your plate? And then also with the idea of a goal of can we get 10 new retailers a month or something on average buying a thousand dollars worth of product that could be a predictable number. And then email list growth and then that is what your people work on to start. Plus can they get you out of some of the stuff that's keeping you as a bottleneck and then we can bring the rest to Boxer. I'm not here to say going viral is a bad thing. Absolutely not. But it can be overwhelming because when business explodes beyond your wildest dreams, not only does it take a lot of work to get things operating at the level they need to in order to sustain the but you have to completely recalibrate what your goals for the future are. Things may feel out of control and I'm telling you that's temporary. But you can always take back control and you'll learn what you need to do next. Conversations like this where you're able to talk through your goals and turn them into concrete steps are a great way to reorient yourself and keep your business moving forward. If you don't have a person to do that then it's a great time to consider do you need to work with an expert or a mentor? Do you want to have community around you and surrounding you to bounce ideas off of? And you have a way to start to expand your ideas. Right. To really become expansive in what could possibly happen next. Does that feel better?

Yeah. I'm not going to have any more meltdowns this week.

I mean, have as many as you need to.

I'm too tired for that right now.

Okay, look, I've cried all my tears. I mean, you had some big stuff happen in the business that was unexpected, which is boss life.

It really is.

But it caused big growth for you, right? Because we had to get back to your values, and we had to. Like, we had. We were thinking, okay, all right, like, let's anchor back in. So I think that's a thing for you is like, let's get you back. Anchoring back in. The things that keep you anchored and grounded. And then the things that you put happening in your life and in your business need to go back to that if it feels like, well, I don't know what's going to happen with it because we're going to have to wait if it goes viral on this. Also, I think, as you said, you don't know. You're not doing outreach, so you don't have control over the outreach part. So again, you're like, well, what if the faucet turns off and people stop calling? Right. You're waiting for the call versus making the call. So maybe it's just a little bit of a switch into both. And people are gonna keep coming at you, but that you have some sort of strategy that you're like, they can come to me, but even if they don't come to me, I know how to go out and get them.

Yeah, that all makes a lot of sense. And when I'm in, like, the same space as you, I just have, like, these moments of clarity. I had just gotten to a point in business that I couldn't have these conversations with any of the people that I talked business with at all anymore because no one was experiencing these problems anymore or could even, like, give me any sort of help on, like, how to navigate these things. So here we are. And that's why I have these moments of clarity when I'm in the same room as you.

I love you. Thank you for saying that. But, yeah, I mean, that's. It was the biggest change for me in my life and my businesses. Right. Like, we're intelligent and smart and we've done amazing things, but, like, it does get hard when we're alone in it. Like, can someone else see the gap or the hole or see forward for us? Because we're so in the weeds? So I'm just so glad because I know you've been such rapid, fast growth but also like you said, in the weeds and selling a company which is not easy. And congratulations on that. So we can keep chatting about it, but in the meantime if people would like to buy from you, support you, how can they do all the things.

A brighter year.com or if you are on TikTok, that's where you find me all the time. I'm always on TikTok and I'm also on Instagram, just not as much. So you can also find me there. But you're going to be seeing me there a lot more based on this strategy.

Shout her out, tell her that you support her and you feel her. And thank you for being on and for letting us share your coaching because it's going to impact a lot of people as well.

Thank you.

This was a great call. I love laughing with Shanti and we laugh all the time whether we are messaging each other back and forth within the Mastermind or coaching calls just like this one. So for those of you who are working in your growing business and maybe your business has hit six to seven figures, I hope that this really has helped you and if you're not there yet, you can see what's possible as you grow your business. And while Shanti gave us nice unsolicited plug to the Mastermind near the end there, I'm going to confidently say that joining a group of like minded product based entrepreneurs like inside of our inner circle Mastermind is one of the quickest ways to reorient your business after explosive growth. Not only do you get celebration and support from those who know what you're going through, but also encouragement for getting through this hectic time. Plus practical advice on what to do next. Wherever you're at in your business, I'm wishing you all the best. Go out there and achieve your wildest dreams because it is all possible, friend. All right, I'll see you in the next one. Thank you for being here and listening all the way through the Product Boss podcast. If you love our show and it has helped you in any way in your business, would you mind doing two things for us? Subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode and like leave us a review. Reviews help other product entrepreneurs know that this is the place to be to grow their businesses and realize that they're not alone. And we know that you all know that a five star and honest review helps you sell more products to more people. So you know that your reviews help us reach more listeners around the world. Remember what we give is what we receive and we are all about helping each other in the Product Boss community. We are all in this together. We would be so appreciative of you if you could take the time right now to subscribe, leave a review, and even share this episode on social or someone you know so we can impact more lives. And remember, subscribing means that you will get notified each time we release a new episode so you never miss a thing. You have helped us grow and climb into the top 10 of all marketing podcasts and together we can keep climbing. Thank you friends and remember, there is room at the top for all of us.