645. 3 Things EACH that Saved 2020

Remember when everyone's like, it's bad year to raise money, bad year to raise money. You're like, doesn't matter. I know the right people want to invest in this, and I've watched you crush it because you stayed true to your vision and that's where you derived your energy from.

Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author. Each week I'll bring you a guest or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul, and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves. Get ready to earn, own, and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. And we're back with another episode of he said, she said.

And this was kind of cool because we're going to talk about three things each that we think saved our butts in 2020, right? Three things that made 2020 a successful year despite all the obvious challenges.

How weird is it that it's almost 2021?

I mean, this is that time of year that you start doing podcasts like this, right?

Like, oh my God, was this the fastest year ever for you ever?

Which is crazy.

Really bizarre. I don't know why that is.

Because you feel like this is a year where it would have felt like it was trudging along because of COVID and lockdowns. And then, you know, we had some extra challenges with dad dying and waffles dying and all the other things, but. So you'd think it'd be like this, never ending, when's it going to get done year. But this is the fastest year ever.

Yeah, it's definitely. This is going to be a big year for reflection for people. And I pray that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, if you were like, wow, I essentially did nothing that year or this last year, or I feel like it was wasted. Like, I really hope that it's a. What I want everyone to realize is that this year served purpose no matter where you were. And we have this great opportunity to set ourselves up now for a 2021 after all of the learnings, because no matter what happened to you this year, you learned. You learned something about yourself, you learned something about your family, you learned about the importance of shifting and adaptability.

I don't even know what your three things are going to be. I know what my three things are that I think, you know, saved my butt in 2020. That made 2020 successful for me. And when I say successful, I want to remind people that we simultaneously had our worst year and our best year ever. Not just, like, financially, but I mean in terms of, like, happiness and purpose and clarity, because those things really are what success truly is. Right. And so when we share these three things each, I don't know what yours are going to be, but I want people to realize that they also apply to 2021, because the challenges of 2021, they're not going away just when the calendar flips. No, there's still going to be probably moments of social unrest. There's still going to be some Covid restrictions, there's still going to be polarization. There's still going to be, you know, the economy is still going to be a really challenging economy for many, many sectors. And so I think the three things each is called six things that saved our 2020 will be applicable to everyone listening going into 2021. So there's some real gold here.

Yeah, I think I'm going to start.

All right, go for it. Are you telling me I'm rambling?

No, not at all.

All right.

It was a really weird transition, like, for everyone who listens to podcasts, sometimes they're smooth, sometimes they're weird.

It felt like you're like, okay, shut up.

No, not at all. That was me just excited and thinking about number one. So my number one is the fact that I had a vision. And for anyone that says, well, maybe I didn't have a vision, or do you have to have a big vision? I do want to say I had a vision that did not work out well with COVID hitting. Like, I had a vision of, you know, having in person events and launching my alcohol company. And I had a vision of being able to go in restaurants and retail stores, and that quickly had to shift. But there was a time in there where I had such a big vision. And then all of a sudden I felt like my vision could potentially be crumbling. And a lot of people told me this is a bad year to fundraise and I was doing my first ever capital raise that I know nothing about. And I had a lot of people say, you know, this isn't smart, or this is a bad year for it. And I decided not to listen to that. And I decided to listen to people who were doing it. So what I want to say is, even if you're sitting there and you're like, well, I have a vision that doesn't work anymore for this, or I'm not sure what my vision is. Like, I can't tell you how important having a vision is. I mean, whether you read the Bible or not, like, it's just so true. Like, those without vision shall perish because you have nothing. And we talked about this with the hopes. Right. Our last, last. Our last podcast a little while ago was get your damn hopes up. Like, you better get your hopes up. Because if you don't have something to hope for and wish for, if you're going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and looking at, you know, what's going to go wrong next year and getting stuck in the fear and watching news, you will not have any energy. So my number one is get a vision, think of a vision, meditate on a vision and then just freaking decide on it and then adapt, have that vision and see how it can adap to a new way of getting out into the world.

And I want to clarify. So you're saying your vision that kept you centered this year, even though the route you took to getting there looked very different.

Yeah.

Your vision was, I'm going to go start and build this alcohol company like pink come hell or high water.

Yep.

And you stuck to that vision. That's what. I watched it. I literally watched it when you were going to be the number one sponsor of female driven events in person, and that was the big plan for launch and all that stuff. And when all those events got canceled, I watched you be energized by the vision where you're like, okay, how do I still get there? Okay, what's next? Okay, what can we still do? And when I remember when everyone's like, it's bad year to raise money, bad year to raise money, you're like, doesn't matter. I know the right people want to invest in this. And I've watched you crush it because you stayed true to your vision and that's where you derived your energy from.

Yeah. And I. So I looked for new proof. So could I have found proof of why it's not a good year to raise money? Of course. Could I have found proof about the why this may not be a great year to do what I'm doing or why this industry is oversaturated or why it's going to be tough for me as a woman to bring this forward in a male dominated alcohol industry? Of course. But all of the reasons that I kept finding proof for why it was bad or hard. I found equal, if not more, why I must do this, why I must prove this for women, and why and how other companies are still raising tons of money and how they're still coming out with amazing things during this time. So look for the proof that you want and that's what you'll find.

Yep. Okay, so yours was have a clear vision. My first thing of the three that really made 2020 successful was asking how, not why. I mean, a lot of people this year, they got stuck on asking, why did this happen to me or why does it have to be this way? Or why are there these restrictions or what? Why? Why? I watched people why themselves to death this year. And I get that natural human tendency to do so. But I chose to ask how, okay, how can I still have the mastermind? Not why do I have to cancel it, or how can I still serve people at, you know, in huge numbers? Not why can't I speak on all the stages I was booked for this year? And I mean, here's a great example asking how, not why we ended up having the elite level Mastermind in person still, even though everybody else wasn't having in person events by moving it to the freaking Grand Canyon in the middle of nowhere when before we always just hosted it in like Ritz hotels and all that stuff in Los Angeles. The middle of Grand Canyon, in the middle of nowhere, where everyone stayed in tents, even the tents were spaced out. Is that funny how spaced out the tents were where all the meetings were, like in this outside space and there were hikes with Navy seals and all this other cool stuff where because I asked how instead of why, I got a better answer. And we've taught this a hundred times, careful what you ask for, because that's what you're going to get. And so when you ask a better question, you get a better answer. And when you're asking a crappy question like why, why, why, those answers aren't going to do you any good when you're asking the question of how, those are the answers you want. And it allowed us to continue to serve people the way we wanted to serve them in a common sense way that was still safe for everybody because we asked how, not why.

I was just thinking with that. I just have to say one more thing that I heard from a lot of people was when, when is this gonna come back? When is this gonna be over? Instead of saying, you know, what am I gonna do in, you know, the time that this is happening? Like when am I going to set this new date of when I'm gonna make sure I'm doing something? Like, a lot of people were letting this dictate. It was just another. I just watched excuses take a different form is all it was. It was actually finally a tangible excuse for a lot of people to say, see, this is why I can't do it, instead of saying, this is why I must scapegoat. Yeah, totally. This happens all the time. I mean, I'm guilty of this. It would have been so easy for me. I had my days, Chris. You saw me with my days of like, see, this is why I can't do this. Oh, my gosh. Of course. This year, here's the vision, and now it's, it's over. Like, I have to think of something else. And that's an upper limiting. We talk about that at all. You know, upper limiting is when you just take the circumstances that are happening and choose to use them for why you can't instead of why you must.

Okay, what's your second reason that Save 2020 that made it successful?

My second one is friends and mentors. Like, I legitimately wouldn't, Wouldn't be doing what I was doing if I, if I didn't know that I, if I didn't use the people around me. So I got closer to a lot of the people around me who maybe were just acquaintances. Like, I got really, really close to people because I got really vulnerable, saying, I'm really freaked out, but here's what I want to do. I'm going to do it anyway, you know, So I would borrow a lot of belief that didn't necessarily even feel like it was there some days, but I'm like, this is what I'm doing. These are the people I need to talk to. I got real brave this year and just forced myself. I did, I did. Mel Robbins. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Probably, I don't know over a hundred times where I literally have sent messages or emails over and over to get on people's, like, radars of people. I knew that I would need to either borrow their belief or I would need information or education from them and I would need a few key questions. And I just forced myself to share where I was at with friends and mentors because I, I was clear that this vision was so big that I needed people.

I literally watched you create relationships with celebrity business. What do you call entrepreneurs this year that you didn't know when the year started or maybe you barely knew, and they became wonderful friends and Wonderful mentors in a year where everybody else was like, I can't network. Right? I can't. The events are gone. The dinners are gone. The thing. No, I watched you host tiny backyard dinners with other couples. I watched you still have people to the house. I watched you, like, find an opportunity in the slowdown to go build relationships where both you and those people probably would have been too busy to build a relationship this year.

Yeah. And I think for people who are listening, like, it's not because of who I am, because they didn't know who I was and they didn't give a shit who I was. It was literally because I asked what I could do for them or not even what I could do. I brought value to them by studying their stuff, knowing what they were interested in, and either me, like, attempting to connect, like, a contact with them, or asking them straight out, like, hey, I think you're X, Y, and Z. This is who you've been for me, like an online mentor. You don't even know it. This is what you've helped me do. I know that this is a big ask, but if I could just get on the phone with you for 20 minutes and ask you two things. One of them is this. One of them is this. Would you be open to this? And this is what it would mean. This is what I'm working on. So it's like, I just did that over and over, and people did not know who I was when I was reaching out. And I got so many nos. I've still have, like, you know, emailed different people eight times. Literally have one that I'm like, this is my 8th email. When do I turn into stalker formula here or formula? What am I saying?

Status status. Thank you. Stalker status.

That is the stalker formula as well, but stalker status. And it's like, you have to, like, you always say, chris, ego is your biggest overhead. I can't tell you how many times I was like, this person may think I'm annoying. They may think I'm needy. I might be pissing them off. And I had to take that risk.

Yeah, I love that. My second thing out of the three that made 2020 successful was I overserved. When the pandemic hit, instead of going into paralyzation, I went into overserved mode. I remember literally the day. The day that everyone was like, whoa, every. The world is being canceled. Right when in the biggest of cities, when you start to find out, wait, we're going on a what? A lockdown, a quarantine. This is like, out of movies I remember that day. I immediately booked calls with all my clients, all my masterminds, instead of waiting to find out what's going on. And I said, guys, we have a call in 48 hours and I'm going to have a plan for all of you. And here's how we're going to navigate. Here's the state of the economy. Here's what I think is going to come. And then I took all that information to free webinars. I did free webinars. When I say I overserved. I did free two to three free webinars per week for months and months on end. And each one was about two hours where I would teach for 45 minutes. Hey, guys, here's the state of the union. Here's what's going on. Here's what we are doing to pivot. And then I would answer their business questions for an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half live. And I must have done, I don't know, 20 or 30 of those times two hours that's over serving. And then I made myself extra available for other podcasts for other people's platforms because I knew that you and I had that experienced 11 years ago where a recession hit. We lost everything. I knew how people were feeling, but I also knew how to pivot. I also knew how to stop the bleeding, build a Runway and invent new income. And I was like, I got to take this message on tour. And do you remember how much I was working? I was exhausted when everyone else was like, yay, pandemic.

You were working.

I was dying because I overserved. And it was so worth it. Now, that was not sustainable.

No.

But for about a four to five month period, it was awesome and it was what the world needed. So my number two was I overserved because now I was paying massive dividends.

And I want to say I watched you just be like, exhaust yourself. And there were times when I would tell you, like, just don't do the webinar. Then, like, don't worry about it. And you were like, no, I have to do this. And I also want to say for people who are listening, they're like, oh, easy for him. You probably got thousands of people on there. Like, all these people tuning in. You didn't.

Nope.

You had sometimes hundreds or maybe less.

Sometimes some of them would have 50 or 60 or 70 people.

People need to hear this because they just think, yeah, well, it's easy to show up because you have this huge audience. No, you were up there for people who were like, sometimes 50 people would tune in.

Sometimes I'd be like, yay, 500 is great energy. Other times, like, wow, 50 people. Oh, well, I'm just going to serve anyways.

And you were like, I'm going to. I don't care if 10 people show up. I'm going to serve those 10 people so hard. And people, People don't hear this part. I don't care who you are. There are things that, especially if you're doing it new and you do it consistently, you're going to have a few that I can't tell you how many times I was. People are like, oh, you're putting on all these, like, huge boot camps and women's events. Like, how many times when I had a gym, did, like, two people show up? And I thought I was going to have 50 or 100. And you're mortified. And yet you also just keep serving. And that's why you're like, that's what success is. And so many people stop. I've asked so many people and they're like, well, people don't show up. Or I only got one comment. Or no one commented. I'm like, so you. So you quit? Like, that's. This is what I'm talking about.

Like, to make you quit.

I watched you go over and over and I even, I even tried to talk you out of a couple because you were so exhausted. And I was like, well, there's not a lot of people on there looking back, like, what an idiot for me saying that, because I know it's how it's built. And you were like, no, like, you were so consistent. And so many people now tell you that, you know, the reason that they're joining your stuff now or your big ticket stuff is because you showed up for them during this.

Well, and we know one of my friends, Darren, he calls this a starburst moment. Like when JFK was shot or when the shuttle blew up or, you know, when significant life things happen, you. That's a starburst moment. It's like ingrained into your DNA. You remember how people treated you and who showed up and who didn't for you in that moment. And I just knew I had to overserve. So my number two was over serving. And that's something that people can totally take into 2021. What's your number three? The third thing that made 2020 successful for you?

You know, for me, this is the year that I just went all in with prayer. Like, full on out loud prayers on walks with you, like, just like leaning in and leaning on God, whatever you believe. Energy universe, like a power greater than you. And truly I'm so clear now that your dream is not big enough if it's not a God sized dream. Which means that unless you have to rely on him or that outside energy to achieve it, it's actually not big enough. So it's not, it's not in. Some of you aren't. Maybe you're not here for this dream yet. Maybe you're in the beginning stages of just like getting out there. So you're like, whoa, anything feels huge, but you're going to get to a place. And I'm talking to the people who know it's time to step into their highest or one of, one of their highest callings. Because I know there's level, there's continual levels until the day that you die. So right now what is the highest calling that's in front of you? So I guess it is, right? It's always a God sized dream because it's always the highest level that's in front of you. So like I'm creating dreams from now on that I can't do on my own dreams.

They require prayer.

They require full on leaning in in prayer. Like they require daily miracles. Because right now, Chris, I'm saying crazy things like I want that person over there on this movie or television show as an investor and then they show up. And it's like they show up. But it's also very, it's strategic with prayer with. So it's act, it's prayer with action. But I set an intention, then I pray and then I'm like, God, show me like give, show me that you're here and that you like if this is right, it'll show up if I keep on leaning into it. So that's my, that's my number three.

I love that. I feel like we both got doubled down or got closer to our relationship with God this year and it paid massive dividends. My number three kind of sounds small and tactical compared to that one, but boy, is it important. This is the year that we leaned into text marketing. And guys, if you're not doing text marketing right now, oh, you're missing out. We have like a three year window, maybe a four year window of absolutely printing money until we all ruin it. Like we did email marketing and everything else. But I mean, do you remember, I unapologetically say this, we made $386,000 in one day using text marketing during a launch. Like yeah, your, your text list will be smaller than your email list because less people will opt into it, but your open rates are over 90% in the first two hours and over 96% in all.

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Yeah, that's crazy because I was asking you the day before that particular launch how many people were on our text list? And I remember thinking, oh man, that's such a low number. And in my head I was like, oh, we'll probably have like 25k convert or you know, 50k convert. Because I was comparing the numbers to email conversions when of course, if you even compare the open rate of email versus text, I literally could not believe my eyes.

Yep, yep. Yeah. Well, it's because people, number one, text feels more intimate. Number two, nobody leaves texts unopened. So the open rate is so high. Number three, it's more timely. Like you know when you're doing a launch or you have a sale and you get an email, this happens to be all the time because I get my email only like every four days or so. So I'll go in, it'll say 50% off your favorite T shirts and I'm like, oh shoot, that was three days ago. Like 24 hour flash sale. That's what's the problem with email lists. Not just the low open rates, but it's like antiquated now. It's not timely anymore. Texting is timely and has the high open rates. And it's such an intimate relationship with your customers, with your tribe, with your audience that it builds. You know how they say people only buy from those who they know like and trust? It builds the know like and trust exponentially faster, right? And so you can't just sign up for it, not use it. You got to make sure that you're texting back and forth and there's great systems and stuff that we can teach you. So it's not overwhelming. But oh, it is printing money. It is printing money. And by the way, you guys, we use a platform called community and you can sign up by going to 4westdigital.com forward/textme. They actually train you and coach you how to do text marketing so you're not guessing it on your own as soon as. So affordable. It's the cheapest marketing. You'll sign up for 2021. So if you want to kind of do it the way we did, go over to Four West. That's F O U R like the number44westdigital.com text me. Fill out the app there real quick and you'll see. It's. It'll change the game for you forever, I promise you. And that's what it did for us. So I know all of our launches in 2021, they're all centered around being text launches now. So the six things that made us successful in 2020, your three and my three. I've got. I. Okay, I'm gonna go from memory here. I know mine were asking how, not why it was overserving, and it was text marketing. Yours was. You had a clear vision. That's where you got your energy from.

Yep.

You sought mentors and friends like never before. Leaned on them. Sorry, you leaned on mentors and friends like never before. And prayer.

Yes.

Guys, those are the six things. Asking how, not why, over serving, text marketing, having a clear vision, leaning on tribes, leaning on mentors and friends, and prayer. If you take those six things and go into 2021 with that being your plan. If that's. If that was your whole plan right there, some tactical, some not. Holy crap, you would Crush it in 2021.

Yeah. I really hope that you guys sit down and apply this list to whatever it is that you're gonna be doing in 2021. And Chris and I will much about planning as well. I know you and I, that's. That one of the biggest parts of our year end is also knowing what's coming in that next year. So if you guys don't have a planning, you know, like day or even an hour, like to sit. Sit and plan your next year or sit and plan with your partner or everyone that you work with, whatever that looks like. That is a key element to success for your next year. And also reflection. But we'll be talking about that in some other podcasts in the future.

You know it. In the meantime, guys, thank you for listening. We sure appreciate it.

Until next time. He said she said goodbye.

Our. Our ending is just anticlimactic.

Well, we got a right one.

All right.

Like a jingle.

Appreciate you.

Bye. Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with some someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review if you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought, an honest comment. Tell us what you think, tell us what you want to hear more of it would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn you're happy. Thanks again guys. Bye bye.