135. The Secret to Consistent Revenue? Belief, Energy & Action

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Well, hello. Hello, ladies. How's it going? I hope you're doing well. It is so great to be with you today. Thank you for being here. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are, whatever time of day it is. I am getting ready to wrap up my day, but I wanted to come on and chat with you first. And we have been in the transition stage of having the kids on summer break and kind of figuring all that out. It hasn't been perfect. Sometimes it has not. Well, it hasn't been ideal either. But we're getting there, right? We are figuring it out and taking it day by day. I have been experimenting with changing up my schedule a little bit so that I can spend more time with my kiddos and still get work done. Because I. I do believe we can do both. I believe we can hold both. And so I don't have to sacrifice the growth of my business during the summertime and I don't have to sacrifice the time and relationship I want to have with my kiddos during the summ in order to grow my business. So it's definitely not a perfect science, but I think having that belief is really what's been helping me and helping me give myself some grace and just kind of play with different scenarios. And some things work and some things don't. But, you know, that's kind of. Kind of like life and parenthood and business and that's how we're rolling. But today I am so excited to get to talk to you about consistency. And I know that can often drum up some. Some pressure, feelings of pressure or inadequacy or whatever. But I just ask that you stick with me here because I want to explain to you because consistency is something I most often hear women that talk to. It's what they want. They want consistent results, right? Is that you, too? Would you like to have a consistent. And maybe it's not. Doesn't. Maybe that doesn't mean the exact same every single month. Exact same amount of revenue incoming every month. But it is predictable. And predictable based on you trusting and knowing how you create clients and bring revenue into your business. And so you, you know, my hope for you is that after today, you'll have a greater understanding of how much of your Revenue and how much of that you are actually in control of. I know so often we think that whether clients come to us or not is kind of random, it's kind of out of our hands. You know, we do a whole bunch of things, we're not really sure what's working, what's not working, but we just keep doing a whole bunch of things and hope that the people come to us. Right. And that the revenue comes in. But I want to offer a different way. I want to offer a way that you know and trust yourself that you can create the revenue, the clients, the opportunities that you want to create and that you learn to trust that you're able to do that. And I find that this is really important work and it's really common work for those that are in the mid five figure revenue range right around, you know, 20, 30, 50, 60K, all the way up through six figures and beyond. And so the stages that I often see for our women owned businesses, for us as women entrepreneurs, is that in the early stages when we're just starting out in our business, we're often experimenting with a lot of things. We're like, who's going to pay me for the service I want to offer? What is the offer that I want to put out into the world that I believe is really going to achieve the impact and the results that I want. And so we put things out into the world and we try a whole bunch of things, we serve a whole bunch of different people. And then as time goes on and we learn how to make money and how to bring in revenue, we are able to really focus down in on the clients that were best suited to serve the service. And the way we provide our service that gets great results for our clients and that we love, right, that we feel great putting out into the world. And then there comes this place in the mid five figure mark where we are still kind of in that we're hanging on. I, I should say to that experimental energy where we're, we, we're still thinking and feeling like we're beginners and we don't know everything and we're not an expert in sales or marketing and we need to go and learn a bunch of things and try a bunch of things and it lends to that energy of emergency, right? Like we're always in an emergency trying to create revenue and trying to figure out how we. But what I want to offer you is a much more calm, peaceful, trusting energy in your marketing, your sales and in the way that you serve your clients. And so that's what I want to talk with you about today. It's if you are in this, this period, in this phase, this mid five figures phase, and you really want to be growing and getting over six figures, figures and beyond and keep growing, I want to invite you into a new way of being, a new way of running your business where you have a lot more peace, a lot more trust, and where you have a lot more trust in your own wisdom. And you know how you create money. And when you need to create money, you create it. So that's what I want to walk you through today. And so really, it takes three things. Three things, three. These are the three most important places in our business that we need to be consistent in order to create consistent results. Because consistent results are created by, number one, consistent belief, number two, consistent energy, and number three, consistent action. And when you have consistent belief that feeds your consistent energy that feeds and leads into consistent action, you will have consistent results. Right? And yes, there are some pieces in here of experimentation, but if you've been in business a little while, you've probably already done a lot of this experimentation. And if you get quiet and really examine what you already know about your business, your belief, your skills, your clients and what they need, I would venture to say you already have already know a lot of this. And it's just a matter of bringing it into clarity, bringing it into your awareness. Right? So I'm going to walk you through these three areas. Consistent belief, consistent energy, and consistent action that leads to consistent results. So number one is consistent belief. So often the problem that I see and that I've experienced myself, I'll tell you my own story. There was a time in my business where my I, I had been in a very high place of belief, believing in the work that I was doing, that it was valuable to my clients. I was believing that there was a lot of demand out there for the work I was doing, that people wanted to work with me, they were able to pay me, and, and I believe there was plenty of them out there, right? Plenty of people to work with. And then I hit some bumps in the road and my, my belief started to suffer. Right? I, you know, was having, having some trouble signing on new clients and really bringing in the, the revenue that I wanted and needed. And truthfully, I also had spent more money. You know, I got kind of into a spending spree and I was spending more money than I should have been. And so it created a hardship in my, my business finances. And so when that happened, it also affected my Mindset and what I was thinking about myself, I started thinking, you know, kind of became a cascade. And you may have experienced this, where I started to think, well, I'm bad at business, I'm bad at managing my money, I'm bad at. And, you know, then the just the list keeps going on, right? And I did not have awareness at the time to where I could really address where I was addressing those thoughts and cleaning up that thinking. Because our minds are always going to be giving us this pros, you know, prosecutorial type thoughts, right? Like that we're bad at marketing and. And we're an imposter and, you know, all of these things, right? And so we have to have awareness of that and then be able to address those thoughts. And so I got. I was in a place at that time where I wasn't addressing those thoughts. And so they began to snowball. And as that, they began to snowball, belief in my value, my belief in the demand for what I was, my services, and my belief that there were enough clients, enough business out there that wanted what I have to offer all started to decline. And when that declines, then what happens is your energy declines, right? You start, you know, all of a sudden are not feeling like you're up for going out to networking events or, you know, showing up online like you had been. You let your marketing plan slide. And when that happens, then when you know, your actions suffer, and when your actions suffer, when you're not marketing and when you're not showing up where you want to be showing up, and when you do, you kind of have all these stinky thoughts and beliefs, then what happens is the actions, even if you're taking a whole bunch of action, is not going to be as effective in creating opportunities, bringing in sales, bringing in clients, and bringing in revenue, right? So if you're finding yourself in this place, I always recommend you go all the way back to what you're thinking and what you're believing. So beliefs are basically just thoughts that you think over and over. So I have this exercise that I ask my clients to do time to time, from time to time, and what ask them to think about, you know, in regards to a specific subject. So say your sales or your revenue for the quarter or your business or marketing or whatever the subject is. What are your five most prevalent beliefs about that subject? So we talk a lot about marketing around here, right? So let's just examine. Here's a little exercise for you. What are your top five beliefs about your marketing? Right. And some of them might be Something like, I'm not good at marketing, I don't like marketing, I don't like social media, I'm not good at writing emails. Marketing doesn't work for me. Social media doesn't work for me. Like any combination of, of that, right? So, and so think about what are your five most prevalent beliefs? And then what I want to offer is that those are the five beliefs that create the energy that's currently going into your marketing, right? So if you have a lot of negative beliefs around yourself about yourself and your marketing and how you come across to people or whatever it might be, that becomes your unintentional marketing message, right? And so even if it's not the, the words that you're saying, it is the energy or the vibe or the feeling that you are portraying and projecting to your audience, to those that are, that are taking in your marketing or receiving your marketing messages, right? So there are three main category or three main categories of beliefs that I teach that have for me been the greatest needle movers in terms of shifting my energy and shifting my belief. And the first one is around demand is believing that the work I do and how I do it and who I do it for, believing that is in high demand. And you might say, well, I don't have any evidence of that. Well, I would ask you to go find some, right? Like find the evidence for how you and the work you are doing is in demand. So for example, there was a time in my business when I didn't believe that there was demand for my work, right? There wasn't demand for the marketing and business coaching that I do. So I had to. So, and you may have heard me tell the story before, but the shift for me came when I heard or I was listening to an audiobook, I think the 10x is easier than 2x book. I was listening to the audiobook and Dan Sullivan is on there and his co author, Dr. Ben Hardy was saying how that he's been business coaching for 50 years, that Dan Sullivan has been business coaching for 50 years. And that hit me just in that moment, just that one sentence created the shift for me because I was like, oh, business coaching has been in demand for the last 50 years. It's gotta be in demand now. Like, it can't have just, you know, disappeared off the. It's not like the typewriter, right? Like it's. People are still building businesses and they still need help. So that became the catalyst. And since then I've been able to build a lot other, a lot more beliefs, deeper, bigger Higher belief around the demand for business coaching, the demand for marketing coaching and the demand for me as a coach, right? And so when you go and look for that evidence, you can find it just in the same way that your mind will often look for the evidence of the opposite belief. Right? And here's the paradox is that both may be true, right? It may be true that there is demand for business coaching and that may be true that there isn't demand for business coaching. Both may be true, right? But it's not in the extremes, like it's not all or nothing. Like maybe there's less demand now than there was and maybe at other times there's more demand. But the fact remains that there is demand, right? So that's really the key is believing that there is demand. And then you have the. So if that's a fact that there's demand for the work that you do in the world, then you, the power is yours to develop your mindset, your skills and your tools to go out and scoop up that demand. Right? Number two, belief is a belief in value and your value in the value that you offer. And that that is important and transformational to the people you are best suited to serve. And so when you believe that you have value to offer and when you believe that it's important to the people that you serve, then you are much more likely to want to go out. That creates that energy of wanting to go out and help people, right? And so I have an exercise that I do with many of my clients around establishing their value and really helping them to, to integrate that, to embody it. Because when you believe, and you know to your core that the work you are doing is changing lives and impacting people, there's nothing that's going to keep you from going out and telling everybody about it, which is marketing, right? So that's belief number two. Belief number three is that all the clients that you have the capacity to offer or to serve are already around you. And so most of the clients that I work with are, you know, are low volume, high ticket advisors, coaches, consultants, helpers, healers, right? And so most of them don't need a high volume, you know, high number of people around them in order to have a very successful business. And that's the beauty of these businesses that we're building, right? And so you can build a very successful coaching, consulting, advisory, helper, assistant business with a small network. So the, and the exercise that I take people to, through, and I've done this myself is tabulate all, you know, tabulate your network, look at your network, all the people around you, right? How many is that? If you look at all the contacts in your phone, all the friends you have on Facebook, all the connections you have on LinkedIn, all the people on your email list, all the people you have following you on Instagram or whatever the other platforms are, how many people are you connected to right now? So, so I would bet if you add that all up, it's probably 1,000, 2,000, maybe even 5,000 people right now. Those are all people that you're connected directly to that are one degree of separation, right? They're directly connected to you now. So you say, okay, that's 1,000 people on the low end, all right, 1,000 people. Well, each one of those people, how many people do they know? Even if they only knew 10 people, you are two degrees of separation from 10,000 people. And you only need, what, a dozen, two dozen, 50 clients in a year to have a really successful business and meet your goals. There's more than enough people already around you, so you don't need to be out like hoarding new contacts, right? And so with these three beliefs on board, it makes it super simple to be marketing, to be selling, and to be offering a high level client experience. So how do we do this? So number one is practicing new beliefs that serve you in your growth and the growth of your business around your demand, your value, and that there's plenty of clients, right? So you're practicing those thoughts over and over. That's how they become beliefs and practice thoughts that you can actually believe, not BS thoughts that your brain's like, well, that's totally unrealistic, right? So you practice those over and over and you decide on purpose what you want to believe, and then you set your mind to going out and looking for the evidence, right? Find the evidence on it. And this is a daily practice, my friends. This isn't just, oh, I did it once last year and I'm good. No, this is daily brain training. Just like you train your body in the gym, just like you brush your teeth every day, twice a day, hopefully, right? You have to practice and maintain your beliefs consistently. That's that consistent belief. And when you do that, what you are doing is creating connection with yourself and your why your purpose, right? Why you're doing what you're doing. And your beliefs fuel your energy. And so when you are practicing those beliefs, you'll feel somatically in your body the charge that those beliefs create. And that's your energy or your feelings, right? Your emotions around the thoughts. And so when you practice that, then it changes your energy. And so from that place then you go out and you execute, you practice consistent actions around bringing people in. So that's your marketing actions, right? So I always encourage and help my clients to create a consistent, simple marketing plan, a one, one page marketing plan that they can, they can keep up with, keep consistent with without a lot of physical, mental gymnastics and effort, right? So I like to help you create marketing, a marketing plan that is going to get you connected with your best fit client regularly without a lot of friction in between, right? So whether that's going out and networking where you're meeting potential best fit clients face to face, or you know, emailing them, simply not having some massive email funnel or something like that with technology you don't understand, but creating a direct connection and connecting with people easily in ways that feel simple and just second nature to you. And so that's what I, I love helping my clients, you know, create those beliefs and then create that simple, sustainable one page marketing plan that magnetizes your dream clients to you. Because when you are in energy of belief and connection and service and value, you become magnetic to your clients and to the people that you want to work with. And then when you're committed to that consistent action, you will create consistent results, consistent opportunities coming in the door. And then from that place you need to have a consultation and follow up process that will turn, that you can be consistent with and that provides a great experience for those people coming in that turns those connections into paying clients easily, right? Something that you can feel confident in and be consistent with. And so how is that done? How is that, how is that set up? That is set up with systems and rhythms and automations and understanding your client journey so that you can stay consistent without burning out, right? Because when we're using all of our cognitive and physical energy to just keep up, then we're not giving ourselves the time and the space and the cognitive space to really be thinking about our best fit client, how we can help them, how we can solve their problems, we want to be thinking as much about them and what they need and how we can help them as we can. And so how do we set up these systems and these rhythms, these consistent routines that really help create a peaceful, trusting, consistent business? We do it through evaluation, right? We create the consistent beliefs and the consistent energy and then implement through consistent action, right? And then we're evaluating all along the way, evaluating what's working and what's not working and what we need to change and do differently. And when we, we pivot and make those changes, make those optimizations and those iterations and learn from everything that we're doing, that goes right back to then creating that consistent action. We shift our beliefs, we improve the energy, right? And then we get back into action based on what we learned and we go again. And when we do that in a very measured and from a calm and strategic and thoughtful place, that's how we get to that point where we know and we have confidence in our ability to create the revenue, the business, the growth that we want to create. So this is the perfect blend of mindset and skills and strategy. Right? Putting it all together in this way really brings that confidence that you can trust yourself and trust your business, that you always know how to create the clients that you want to create and build the business that you want to build. And so I'm inviting you, if you're in that mid five figure place, to really build this type of business. I'm really calling you to a higher level of maturity in your business and I would love to see sit down with you and help you map out what this could look like for you and your business. Because my dream, my hope, my wish for every woman entrepreneur on this planet is to help you create this kind of peaceful business where you can trust yourself and focus all of your time on energy, on your impact, on spreading your message, on doing the work that really lights you up and seeing the results from that, the results financially and creating that financial freedom, but also the results in the impact and the change that you're making in the world. And so if that's something that you would like to explore with me and we can sit down together and I can build that roadmap for you, I do that in one 60 minute session. We can do it one on one, privately on Zoom together. And the way you do it is going to be completely unique to you. And so I would love to explore that with you and what that could look like and walk you through an assessment process where I can really get a great understanding what's currently working for you and your business and what we can do to help you get to where you want to go. So if that's something you're interested in, please reach out to me. All of my contact information is in the show notes. I will have a link in the show notes to schedule a call with me. And I would love to work with you, love to help you develop that roadmap. It's a gift from me to you. Because like I said, my dream is that you can have the peace, the trust, and also the business that you dream of. Right? Because I know it's completely possible for you. I know 100% it's possible for any woman that desires it, that wants it, and is willing to do the work. And we can do it together. I can show you. All right. Okay, my friends, that's what I have for you today. And I thank you for being here. I hope this was helpful for you, and I would love to hear your thoughts, questions, and engage in that conversation with you and help you to develop the business that just lights up your life. All right? I hope you have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you very soon. Bye. Hey, if you like this podcast, I want to invite you to become part of my community. The link is in the show notes. Each Friday, I'm going to deliver to your inbox my weekly celebration, as well as my thoughts on the latest in business and marketing. I want to keep you in the know about my upcoming events, free trainings, book clubs, all the fun things, even some free gifts. And of course, I'm going to let you know about these new podcast episodes. I'll see you there.