Going Amazingly Well Or Horribly Wrong?!

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there.

Hey everyone, this is Julie, and full disclaimer, I have zero idea where this podcast episode is going to take me, and a little scary. We'll see if I actually get it out. On Apple Podcasts, but I want to come to the mic today and talk about something that I said to my mastermind group and didn't give a whole lot of explanation when I said it. And so I would really like to see if I can dive deeper into it. And the— I don't know how to put this, but it's hard out there and it's also amazing out there. There seems to be this weird pattern that I'm noticing. And now remember, I have a client-like caseload, let's say, of 80, 80 different businesses. So while it's not maybe statistically significant according to, you know, real science, in my world, if I'm noticing patterns among 80 different individuals, I'm gonna take that as like something to be paid attention to, right? And so I have noticed two patterns inside of my Voxer. Pattern number 1 is basically this: I don't understand. I'm using the same emails, the same sales pages, the same launch strategies, and nobody is buying, right? Well, and that's a little bit of a dramatic statement. People are not buying the way they used to. I'm doing the same exact work and I'm getting 50% less. My deliverability seems fine. My stats seem fine, but I don't know. People are just not buying, right? So I'm noticing this pattern across B2B B2B and B2C industries. And I've noticed this pattern since probably, I would say, the COVID bubble started to pop like mid-2022 is when, you know, that sort of hyper-buying cycle of 2020, 2021, it started to kind of fade mid-2022. But I think it took a year for people to decide, like, is this, is this for real or is this just like a bad summer, right? And so from the summer of 2022 to the summer of 2023 was sort of this— we don't really know if this is the new normal or not. And now we're another year in, so from summer 2023 to summer 2024, and it looks like for many people the old way is not working anymore. And so if you have a bigger business and you have infrastructure, you're actually in a real difficult spot because you you— it's hard to dismantle things. It's hard to sunset programs. It's hard to let people go. But sometimes that's what has to happen during a prolonged pivot dry spell when things are shifting. Whereas people who are brand new, they can just, you know, they just have themselves and maybe one other person. They can just bail on whatever it is that's not working and try something new. And so the experimentation for smaller businesses is actually better right now than for larger businesses that had built a team and all this stuff. Right. So that's pattern number one. And I would say that, you know, without a doubt, I've got 3 to 5 voxers a week from clients who are befuddled by what's happening stats-wise. And because you have a business that has infrastructure, it's more likely that you're going into debt as this is all happening, right? Because you're trying to sustain the ship. And hope that you get to the other side and hope that you have some wins. And so that's what's going on. It's very stressful. I'm just not going to lie. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. We even see this happening in Funnel Gorgeous. Now, Funnel Gorgeous had, you know, banner years in, in the COVID time, and we did not really feel the impact of the slowdown in that 2022 to 2023 era. The reason being is that we had this revenue stream that was growing because we were selling software and that was an area that, you know, seemed to be rapidly growing. And so it was offsetting some of the core sales that were going down. So we didn't really feel it, right? I would say this year we have felt it and this summer in particular, you know, we are, we've adjusted our expectations locations. We know things don't sell quite as well as they used to, but still, when you have a big infrastructure and you're used to a certain amount of revenue coming in, and then that revenue doesn't come in, it creates this squeeze because your ship requires people, it requires all of these things. And so you are, are much more up against a rock than if you're brand new. So we have felt that. Okay, so that's pattern number 1. Pattern number 2, And this is equally as present in my Voxer. Julie, I feel guilty. I don't wanna talk about it publicly because things are going so well. I just had my best launch ever, and I know that so many businesses are struggling and so many businesses are shutting down. And so I don't really wanna talk about it because I feel bad. Now, as someone like myself who likes to find patterns and draw, you know, conclusions and correlations, this is confusing the heck out of me because I can't quite figure out if there's one common thread that is separating pattern 2, which are the people that are saying, I feel guilty because things are going well and I just had my best launch ever, and the people who are saying, I don't understand it, I'm using the same emails, the same launch, and people are not buying like they used to. Now, you would think that maybe one of the differences was that the pattern 2 people are newer in business and they're just innovating and they're trying new things and they're fresher and they don't have as much— they don't have as many expenses, and therefore they're, they're feeling that. And I can, I can pick out 1 or 2 people, 3 people maybe, that that qualifies for. But there are people that have large businesses, million-dollar businesses plus, that are having as good a year, if not a better year, than last year. And they're doing the same things. So this— the hard part is part of me wants to tell everyone this because I want you to know that it is possible. Like, it's not all doom and gloom. Like, things aren't going to crash and burn. But I also wanna step lightly because I don't wanna minimize the pain and suffering that is really going on. And so I'm gonna try to distill down some of the things that are working and then also some of the habits that I see that aren't working. But I, I think my conclusion to seeing these two patterns is that if you are in pattern one where things aren't going as well and you're scratching your head, The temptation to catastrophize, right? Everything is failing. Everything was better back then. We're working so hard. What is— what is wrong with me? What is wrong with my business? Right? Don't do that. Don't catastrophize because it doesn't mean that the world is ending and that your business is failing and that everything is doom and gloom. It really doesn't mean that if you are like in pattern number 2, I think that you want to celebrate that because I think people need to know that not everybody is grinding away in the dirt and having trouble. So I think that we need both. And so if you're in pattern 1, don't make it all about you and what's wrong with you and what's wrong with your business and what's wrong with your offer. Just Chalk it up to, I mean, yes, like look at the data and analyze the data, make sure you have a coach, all that stuff. But assuming all of that is dialed in, just be like, okay, you know what? We're gonna dust ourselves off. We're gonna feel the feelings. We're gonna harvest the data and we're gonna get up and we're gonna try again. We're gonna try something different. We are not going to stay stuck in the past. But it worked then. Stop it. Just stop it. The past is the past, right? We need to really stay in that creative momentum building mode. and it does mean being a little gritty. It means a little bit of hustle. It means doing things that maybe you said you weren't gonna do anymore, but now you have to do, right? So the, you know, the saying that goes, what is this? What does it say? The more you try or the harder you work, the luckier you get. I think that really is true here. The more that you continue to get up and dust yourself off and try again, the more likely you are to find that slam dunk because there are slam dunks that are happening. All right, so let's talk about the people who are having the slam dunks, the pattern number 2. So some of these people have been steadily building their audience for a decade, and so their audience really is sustaining them long-term, right? And they've been consistent and they have become known for something, right? I'm thinking of one client right now. She has become known for something. She's been doing that something for 10+ years. And so there is stability in that. And so, you know, that's not something that you can just manifest if you're in pattern 1 and you don't really have that. You can't just like manifest that because that just takes time, right? Time is that ingredient. But it does mean that as you're building your business, you have to figure out what is something that you're willing to put the time in to become known for long-term, because that pays dividends even when uh, you know, times get hard. So that's one thing. The second thing is that I notice there are people doing well and they have a very strong focus and engineering brain around their Facebook ads, and they are using it in such a way that it is like what They do like that. They're the CEO. They're not telling themselves, oh, I shouldn't be doing ads. You know, I'm the CEO. Let me just outsource that. They are in it. They are building the ads. They are testing the ads. They are looking at the ads. They are, they are getting their hands dirty in ads. And if you are using ads to build your audience, there are two things that you need. To think about because dabbling in ads is probably the most dangerous because you spend money and then don't see return and then you wrongly assume that ads don't work, right? That's, that's a very common thing. But if you are willing to give your ads enough creative and I mean enough, I don't mean 3, I mean 30, I mean 100. You're willing to give your ads enough creative and enough budget Very, very important. You can get data quickly and pivot quickly, and the people who have the data are able to move faster because they can read the data, interpret the data, and figure out what is working and what is not working. How much would you love to know if your offer was, was working within 3 days versus 3 months? Right. Think about how much time, energy, and resources. Well, if you know if you know that your offer is working 3 days in or it's not working 3 days in because you spent $5,000 and gave it 50 creative, you are in a much better place even if you lost $5,000 than the person who spent 3 months wasting time, energy, resources on something that did not convert. So it's counterintuitive. It's kind of like when the stock market is going down and they always say, oh, you should buy when everyone's panicking and you should sell when everyone's celebrating. It's a nice little quippy phrase, as if we're all capable of doing that. But we forget that we're humans and we react very predictably according to social cues. And most of us don't do that. We panic sell and we buy in euphoria. But the same thing goes here. If you are not doing well, right, the idea of, okay, well, I got to spend more and I got to get data faster is going to be very counterintuitive because you're going to be under that squeeze, that financial squeeze, right? And so you might need to figure out how, how do I get some cash to be able to do that? But that's probably what needs to happen. Okay. The next thing that I see that is working well are people who are focusing on sales, and that means they are in the DMs, they are networking, they are joining groups, they are having private conversations, they are sending pitch emails, they are doing live webinars on the weekly or the biweekly, they are showing up and selling and not worried about rejection. I am seeing that and I'm seeing that work really, really well. So if you are not actively doing sales activities, that's a problem. And it's really interesting because we don't think that it's our mindset holding us back. We think that there's some magic tactic that we're not doing that if we did would change everything. And it's not true. It is usually the mindset that is holding you back. And so sales activity— so if we, we can't track, like, we can't control when people are going to give us their credit card, right? We just can't. But we can track how many conversations we have a day, how many leads we work a day, how many groups we enter a day. You can track all those sales activities. And if you are tracking that, and then you start to see, oh look, there's a discovery call in my calendar. Oh look, there's someone who's interested. You are going to notice that you are probably missing leads. You are probably not paying attention because especially if you're in that pattern one and you're kind of in that panicky mode, you, your vision gets more myopic. It doesn't expand, right? And in fear we get very singular focused. And so there's probably a lot of things that you're missing. So focus on engineering and adds a focus on sales. The third habit I'm seeing are people who are not afraid to do things that they maybe weren't going to do, like, or that they said they were going to not do anymore. So let's say you're a service provider and now you coach and you don't want to do service work anywhere anymore, but you're noticing that it's harder, so you go ahead and you take on service work. That, you know, that has its positives and negatives. The negative obviously is that, you know, sometimes that can eat up your time, but the positive is it can give you cash, which can help you do some of these other things, which can release some of that pressure from the— that rock that you feel up against. And so that is another thing that I'm noticing in the people that are having really good experiences. Lastly, innovation. The people who are looking forward versus the people who are looking in the past. Why didn't that work? Why isn't that working? Well, we can try to figure it out. We can try to read the data. We can look, but at the end of the day— sorry if you hear my dog barking— at the end of the day, we can't control it. So let's look forward. Let's take the data that we can, look forward, and keep moving. So I hope that helps, and I hope that that gives you some things to chew on. And if you are kind of stuck in that fear and that panic, I want you to reach out to me. You, if you're my client, reach out to me on Voxer. If you are not yet my client and are interested, reach out to me on Instagram DM or email, because a fear-based mindset is going to limit your creativity, limit your momentum, and that's not going to get you out of the situation you're in, we have to figure out how to expand it. And I've seen this happen where I can see as an objective, you know, coach, I can see, hey, here's where you have some money and some opportunity. And the, and the people that I'm sharing that with, they can't get there from here. Even if all the friction is removed, even if all the tech is solved for, even if it doesn't cost money, even if you have a big audience, even if you have this affiliate sending for you, even if you have all these things, their mindset, they're blocked. They can't get there from here. And that's usually fear and anxiety driven. So make sure you have a coach and a mentor who understands that, who can kind of work with you on that, help you on that. And, um, hang in there because there are a lot of people having their best year ever. And at the same time, you're not alone if you're having a really hard time. I hope that helps. I'll talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit.

I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.