10 things a business owner can do to GROW in a recession

Yes. A lot of businesses will close. A lot of people will realize they're not cut out for entrepreneurship. A lot of people will lose a lot of money. But what happens is that the cream rises to the top. And so if you are a good entrepreneur, if you are passionate, if you are committed, if you are willing to make some changes over the next couple of years as we navigate this funky storm that will end, by the way, you will be in a position to absolutely clean up in a few years time.

Every good time has an equal and opposite bad time, and every bad time has an equal and opposite good time. Every period of high and great prosperity will be followed by a period of low and bad prosperity. Welcome to the Success School podcast. We're on episode 50, and today we're talking about how to create success during a recession. So I'm excited to talk about this with you, Steph.

Yeah, the economy's been doing some crazy economy, and we're excited to kind of break that down for you guys today. And I know that a lot of businesses suffering right now. I know that it's really tough out there. Breaks my heart how many messages we've seen and been receiving and people who have been in our worlds. And, you know, it's really hard out there right now. And we have some friends who are in Ecom as well, and they're saying it's really tough at the moment. And we know. We know it's hard. And so today we want to talk a little bit about the kinds of businesses that are still thriving in this economy and how you can turn your business into one of those businesses that still wins in any economy, in any recession, in any cycle. So super excited to chat about that. But before we do, personal updates.

Personal updates. All right, guys, so about 18 months ago, I had four businesses, believe it or not, so two gyms. I had a coaching business with Steph, and then I have a digital marketing agency as well. Okay. And one by one, I've been closing and selling, closing and selling and rinsing and repeating until the point. Now I have one. So I am the product of my learning, and we have something in success school called the master of One. Anyone who masters one thing does incrementally better than people that try to do many things. And the main reason is the split focus. So chase multiple rabbits, catch none. So I was chasing four rabbits 18 months ago. How do you think that went? It went okay because I'm a hustler and I get it done, but not as well as it would go if I were chasing one. So the process Steph and I have been going through over the last 18 months is selling these businesses so I could focus on the one thing which is successful. That's why this business has a podcast and I get to talk to you guys on this. But honestly, it's been incredible because all of my focus, all of my thinking, my brain energy, power, our discussions, everything is going towards making this one thing better and better and better and better. So if you're someone, you're an entrepreneur and you're listening to this and you're thinking, I got multiple things on the go and I'm giving everything a little bit less than it should do, and maybe I should just pick one thing from personal experience. Best thing I've ever done is simplifying my life and business and focusing on one thing. Okay. Because you're going to give it so much more energy and focus. Okay? The answer isn't starting a new product. The answer isn't starting a new income stream. The answer isn't getting new target markets. The answer is making your one thing better. And that's how you're going to create success.

Yeah, 100%. I think a lot of people think that in order to make more money, they just add more products. Or like, the number one thing I hear is like, oh, people saying they can't afford my product, my service, so I'm just going to create a lower ticket one, and that way I can capture that audience too. It's like, no, now you're having to create two lots of marketing messages, two lots of funnels, two lots of contracts, two lots of services. That's, you know, two types of, like, marketing messaging that you need to do. There's two lots of email campaigns that you need to like, oh, my God. It's just like, it's exhausting even thinking about how much work would have to go into two versus two. Like, okay, well, instead we could just refine our messaging so we can attract more of the higher level clients and sell those people and we'd hear our financial goals much faster, which actually sounds a lot easier. But for some reason people think it's easier to do the other, which is I get. But it's never been our experience.

Yeah. Honestly, if you guys are in a point where you're struggling at the moment, I can just tell you, just make your thing better. Steph, give us your personal update. What's going on for you? So snapping iPads in half in front of us. Yesterday we were in the kitchen and Steph was Like, slamming doors, slamming shit down. I was like, man, Steph chose violence this morning.

I might have anger management.

Yeah. Jesus Christ. A new iPad.

Brand new iPad. Tim hogs the iPad, guys. That's why it's hard for me to keep my notes over here. He's just hogging it from me. My personal update is around just this really cool connection of people I'm in the world with right now and how much biz babes. It's not just the biz babes. We chatted with Mitch this week and.

Matt, to be fair, both men.

Yeah. So excuse me, but the biz babes are great. So I have the last couple of years, felt a little bit lonely in business, and. And I think a lot of people have been feeling that way, and we've even been seeing this so much more in our own communities. But ever since, kind of opening myself up and realizing that we all have so much to teach each other, and we all have so much, you know, so much value to learn from each other, and it's okay to not always be winning and it's okay to ask for help. We have opened up our networks so much just in the last probably six months just by saying yes to things. So I do have a group of girlfriends that we're all probably all around the same stages of business. We all kind of target similar types of audiences. We're all in coaching, and we just get on a pow wow. Like, pow wow? Am I 90?

Lame.

We just get on, like, a zoom once a month, and we just brainstorm each other's problems and help each other out. And one of them is like, probably if you were to zoom all the way out, you would think that we were direct competition. Like, if you were to, you would think, like, we target the same audience. We have really similar offers. We do the same sorts of marketing, run the same sorts of marketing campaigns. We look really similar. You could say that we are, at some level, competition, but it just doesn't feel that way. And they're also a husband, wife, duo, and we help them out and they help us out, and it's just been really beautiful. And it kind of just, you know, reminds me that, like, guys, like, the people at the top are collaborating, and there's really no such thing as competition. Like, we really don't see it. We really don't feel it, and we're seeing that so much more. Even with success school, the last couple of months, we've seen so many of the women, like, at all the humans in success school just creating, you Know, little mini groups where they're going and they're doing little brainstorming sessions and stuff, because everybody just wants to learn from everybody else. And I think that if we can help each other more as entrepreneurs to just brainstorm and have thoughts without seeing each other as competition or without feeling like you need to be this professional person that's all perfect all the time, you just get so much more growth, so much faster. And so one of the things we've been doing in success school is doing some brainstorming calls. So we've been inviting people into brainstorm calls and they've just been like, we have some really incredible. Some of Australia's best entrepreneurs in our program. And so getting everyone's perspectives on, you know, the problems, it's just been phenomenal. It's been so cool and we've been really loving it.

Yeah. So it's kind of a off topic, but we've been having a few discussions about this. So we have a couple of our clients that are like a little bit scared to say when they're struggling in our group, which is super interesting to us. But I feel like if you don't tell people you're struggling, you never really get the support that you need. Not that you have to be public with it, but if you live this entire sheltered life, like everything's all good all the time and I don't have any issues and everything's all good, you're probably not going to move forward. I think it's when you admit that you need help with certain things, that's when you create certain growth. So I just kind of wanted to. I don't know if we need a spitball, this stuff or like, what's kind of going on with it, but why do you think people are scared to, like, share where they're at, what they're struggling with, etc. In business?

This actually leads perfectly into today's topic because one of the reasons that we have had this come up a little bit the last couple of weeks in Successful has been that, like, the economy is like, shit has changed. Like, people's buying behaviors have changed. Like, we're seeing a huge downturn in consumer spending. You know, there is a lot of stuff that's happening right now in the world that has meant. And there's a lot of more people getting into entrepreneurship, there's a lot more competition and there's a lot less consumer money. And so we are seeing a bit of a change in the tide. And so we have had a couple of clients Reach out, being like, oh, I just, I feel like things have gotten really tough. And the reason that they don't want to ask for help publicly, so they're coming to us and they're still asking for help, which we love. So thank you so much for just doing that. But the thing is that they're doing it privately instead of publicly, like in our group. And one thing I've had to go back to all of them, it's only been like two people. But one, one thing I've had to go back to these two people and say has been like, guys, what you're experiencing right now, every entrepreneur experiences like recession or no recession. There are months in business where you have lower cash. Months. Like, that's business. Like, hi, welcome to business. I was talking to Tim this morning about it's not up all the time. Like, we went past a jet ski store today and I said to Tim, I was like, gosh, they must really not sell many jet skis in winter. Like, it's seasonal. That makes sense. And you know, they just have adjusted their business model to allow for that seasonality. And same with car tinting. One of our friends in the car T business, and he was like, yeah, like it's, it's a lot quieter winter than it is in summer. And I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. Like, businesses have down periods, guys. Like, this is normal. But what these women are doing, what these people, what everybody I think does, especially in the startup phase, is you think because your business is having a downturn, you are a failure. And you're attaching those two things together without realizing that, like every single entrepreneur, us included, has months or weeks where things don't track as well as you expect them to. And that's business, not you being a failure. That's just part of the game. So, Tim, after touching on that, if somebody is experiencing some maybe hardship right now in their business because of what might be happening in the economy, can you give us a bit of an update? We don't watch the news, we don't read too many of the, you know, the media outlets of what's happening right now. But can you, in your own words, kind of give us a bit of an update on what's happening with the world, with recession, with money, with our economy from your perspective and what we're hearing right now?

Yeah, so a couple things here. Steph and I did some mentoring with a billionaire a couple of years ago, and he was great because he had a very high level view of the economy. What's happening in the world, the economic cycles, et cetera. And if you're an economist listening to this, maybe switch off, I'm going to completely butcher this, but I'll give you the Tim Ferray version of what you're doing.

If you have an economist and you're listening to this, please reach out. We would love to speak to you.

So like a bit of a high level concept here, but you know, there's a theory of the polarity of the universe. So every good time has an equal and opposite bad time, and every bad time has an equal, equal, equal and opposite good time. Every period of high and great prosperity will be followed by a period of low and bad prosperity. And the economy, the housing market, the share market, gold, silver, all of these things all happen in this cyclical cycles. Okay? So it's 12, 18, 24 years, whatever it is, but everything is in this cycle. Okay? And at some points in the cycle it's the highest it's ever going to be. And then some points it's the lowest it's ever going to be. So whenever the, the government decide to jack up interest rates, that's basically what's going on at moment. They're getting to, you know, all time highs in the recent history. You know, consumer spending is down and that's why they do it. And then they jack. Inflation gets jacked up as well, like in an effort to control inflation. And then we have these periods now where like less people are spending money. So people are only spending money on the things they think they should be. Certain industries are getting killed and then it's just becoming generally harder and there's more competition. So what happens in these periods is businesses liquidate, businesses go under, businesses cut back spending, businesses run a heap of redundancies and there's a lot less money going out. But where this has gone wrong in the last couple of years is everyone had this great time during COVID it was like amazing. So we're like sweet. We're locked in. Basically. Interest rates were at zero, you're getting free money, everyone's getting houses, everyone's attempting to get a house. And then you know, the government are kicking the can down the road in terms of economic prosperity, they're making it harder and they're basically not facing the problems head on. And what happens is eventually someone needs to pay the bill for the economy and the government. And we're in this situation right now where they're making things very hard. And the downstream effect on that is we're having great Economical uncertainty. Times and times are very tough financially out there and only the strong survive. So, Steph, did that answer your question?

I mean, wow. Like, I got, I feel like I got an economics lesson there. But yeah, and I think, guys, like, times are tough right now, but we're not here to perpetuate that because we don't like to focus on what's not working. We like to focus on solutions of problems. And there are a couple of things. Like, there are a lot of businesses and if you go looking for them, you'll find them. A lot of businesses are doing really well right now. We're doing really well right now. You know, we have a couple of like heaps of our clients absolutely crashing at the moment in different industries and niches. Like, I think that when these times come, what it allows us to do. So, yes, a lot of businesses will close. A lot of people will realize they're not cut out for entrepreneurship. A lot of people will lose a lot of money. But what happens is that the cream rises to the top. And so if you are a good entrepreneur, if you are passionate, if you are committed, and if you are willing to make some changes over the next couple of years as we navigate this funky storm that will end, by the way, you will be in a position to absolutely clean up in a few years time.

Steph, I just want a little bit of a mindset advice here for, you know, let's say we've got a small business owner, they're doing all right, they're making some money, sales have really dropped off and business has gone down in the last couple of months. What kind of advice would you give them from like a mindset perspective? What should they be thinking about?

So entrepreneurship is like basically a game of resilience. It's just, it really is. It is honestly the hardest thing you'll ever do. And it's so easy to say that, that from sitting here, because sitting here today, I would say that it was the hardest thing I've ever done. But I would do it again in a heartbeat to sit here again today. But that doesn't mean that we haven't had such extreme pain. We've had so much extreme pain over the last eight years as we've learned to navigate this stuff. You know, a low sales month for me three or four or five years ago would have sent me into a month long spiral of hating myself and hating my business and thinking I'm not cut out for it and feeding all of the ego fears that I had. Right. Whereas now a Bad month. I'm like, ah, it's just, you know, not as good as the rest of the months. And next month be better, and it just isn't. We need to fix something, like, and let's go fix that thing. And it's just so unemotional. It's crazy how unemotional we can get now about these sorts of problems. So from a mindset perspective, like, you've got to start running this like you're running us. You know, a massive company, like a CEO. You know, you can't go home and cry because of a bad week or a bad day or bad month. Like, you've got to hold the ship together. You've got to rally the troops. You've got to get everyone excited. You don't want people freaking out on, you know, the shop floor. You don't want people freaking out in the office. You don't want people mass quitting because they're terrified the business is going to go under. You don't want people having uncertainty in your brand. You need a rally the fuck together and make some huge changes and pivot and weather this storm and come out on top. And the energy and the mentality that you need to get into in this phase is like, I can fucking do this and I'm not gonna let this thing, like, get the better of me. And, like, I saw a really cool quote from Leila Hormozi today that said everything that you do is just part of your story. And you get to choose from this point right now. How do you want this story to be told? And I think that that's so powerful because if you're going through a really hard moment in your business, you need to start thinking about, like, does the story end here? Like, do I go, ah? And then she went away and she gave up and she got a day job. Or does the story become. And she navigated that storm and she told herself that she could fucking do it. And then she showed up and she got it done, and now she's here and everyone wants to have what she's got, you know? And like, this gets to be a defining, pivotal moment in your hero's journey.

Yeah. I just want to touch on essentially that everything you ever do in business will stop working at some point. Okay. So you kind of need to take the mindset that you're adaptable, you're flexible, you're willing to change, you're willing to learn, and you're willing to try new stuff. And a funny saying, Steph and I only heard this recently, probably in the last six months. Don't die on a hill. And what that means is don't get so attached to your one thing that you think is the way that you're going to build your business forever. And as we've seen, we're going to give an example here. And we say this all the time, we joke in private. Don't die on the Instagram hill. And it's really common in the small business biz babe world that everyone thinks Instagram is this last bread when it comes to getting new clients and building your business. And if anyone's seen what the latest algorithm changes reaches down again, you can say what you want about posting better content and value and all those types of things reaches down, which means you're reaching less customers, which means you're reaching less sales. And for anyone that's built their business entirely on that, they are suffering right now because they are dying on the Instagram hill. And Steph and I always say you want to build the skills so you can transfer to any platform. Okay? So that's email, that's TikTok, that's Facebook, that's, you know, networking, that's outreaching. Whatever it is, if you know, copywriting and, you know, persuasive language, you can fucking dominate on any platform. Okay? It doesn't have to just be Instagram. So you need to be adaptable and you need to be flexible in business if you want massive success in it.

Yeah, I, I think that the other thing to add to that is just around the identity. Don't get so wrapped up in the label, right? So let's say Tim just sold his gym, which is amazing and so incredible, and now he's a business coach, which is a label, but we would never, ever be like, oh, he's just a business coach. And that's all we can do now for the rest of our lives. Like, you know, he's still a fitness guy, he's still a fitness bro. He's still a crypto bro. He's still got like all these other little gun bro, gun bro. He's got all these other tools. With Tim, you know, all the things, right? Like, guys, you have so many identities. Like, don't get so wrapped up in, like, if you're an Instagram coach, as an example, like, you might want to look at potentially pivoting because, like, what you do on Instagram is just marketing. Marketing on Instagram, you could do marketing on other platforms and you can learn those platforms, too. And then if you can teach multiple platforms that's gonna help you to be able to pivot at any point, anytime, to be able to generate new clients and, you know, more money and to be able to be a little bit more flexible in your approach. And so we're going to go through some of these tactics and tips, tips very shortly on how to get out of the funk of the economic cycle right now. And if you're a small business owner. Exactly. Some tactics and strategies that you could implement now, today, over the next few weeks to get some runs on the board again. Because honestly, like. But the biggest thing before we dive into this, the biggest thing that I can say is please stop attaching your business results to you. Okay? So you really need to detach from business. It's not like my business is having a bad month, therefore I am a failure. And the way that you will know that you are doing this, this is because you will feel shamed and embarrassed to tell people that you're having bad things happen in your business. If you're feeling ashamed to tell people or embarrassed to tell people, that indicates to me that this is a mindset thing, not actually a business thing. And if you get into a fear based cycle in your heart, in your body, if your, your nervous system taps into a fight or flight response, you will likely continue to avoid the problem and the problem will continue to get worse. Right? So it's like if we don't talk about our financial problems to our accountant and no one knows about it, it and we don't take any action, we don't fix it, we don't face it, it's going to get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. So the best thing I can get you guys to do is detach from the business. If you're not having the results you want right now, it's just a really cool indication that we need to change some shit up and try something different.

I think the number one way that you avoid a recession is solve rich people problems versus poor people problems. So if you're working with, and I don't mean any disrespect by that statement, if you're working with, you know, lower socioeconomic peoples, they are going to have less money to spend on your stuff. Stuff. But if you go to someone that's worth $10 million and you want to charge them $5,000 for something, they're going to not even bat an eyelid over the pricing. But if you go to someone that's a hundred thousand dollars net worth and you charge them $5,000, it's going to be a little bit more of a process to get them to hand over the money. So how can you, you know, as an overarching theory here or question, how can you solve rich people problems verse maybe your current market if you're just getting started, very hard to do. If you've got some runs on the board, easier to do because you need to start somewhere. And you're probably not going to go out and start charging 10 or 20 for a service or a product or something like that. So it's something that you definitely build up to over time. But if you don't put in that time in business, if you don't get the 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years under the under your belt, it's going to be really hard to start solving rich people problems. So you have to start somewhere. Alrighty, Steph, and this is probably one for you. So what are the characteristics of business owners who survive recessions?

The number one characteristic of somebody who survives a recession is, well, two things. But I would say they're resilient. Like, guys, you have to be so resilient. Like, and that's not to say that you can't feel the emotion. Like, yep, have a cry, get frustrated. You know, throw an iPad on the floor, whatever it is that you need to do to be like frustrated and hurt and disappointed and whatever. But then move on from it really quickly. Like, okay, so I'm feeling pain, I need to get myself out of pain, which requires action. So just know that the thing that is the gateway to your pleasure that you are trying to experience is to make a change. And so, you know, the first thing you have to do is be resilient. The second thing you have to do do is be highly open to all suggestions on pivots and change and be willing to take massive action. What about you?

Yeah, I think that's the main one is just resilience. I think you're just going to get kicked in the balls like literally daily in business. And like, are you going to develop steel balls or they're going to be soft forever. So the more times you get kicked in the nuts, the harder it gets to get kicked in the nuts. And I feel like Steph and I, especially me, I've been kicked in the nuts so many times that I don't even feel it anymore.

Yeah, we were kind of having conversation about this earlier and saying, you know, like, we've been some through some really hard stuff. Like I've had team members that I trusted and hired go away and Rip off my stuff and sell my programs. You've had, you know, so much team member stuff. I can't even like team drama to tell you, you know, we've had friends let us down. We've had clients let us down.

We've had two businesses, people try to steal from us.

Yeah, we have two businesses that were, you know, we had two events based off in person based businesses during COVID We've experienced a lot of pain in business. And all I can say is it does get easier. So if you're experiencing pain right now, you will get more resilient and it will get easier. But please know that it's going to keep coming and you are going to have to be resilient to keep pushing through it.

All right, we're going to get into 10 things a business owner can do to survive a recession before we get into this. I've got to say, if you hear this and do nothing thing, you're not going to survive recession. You have to take action with this list. You know, if you're listening to this and you're serious about business, any business isn't going as well as it should be. I'd be doing every single one of these things and I'd be going as hard as possible. Okay? Like we've talked about in the previous episode of Passive Income, you have to work. Okay? You have to do the work. And if you don't do the work, no success will come to you. So Steph and I are going to go one for one on these and we'll give you a brief strategy on how to do it. So I'll start out. So first one is network. And when I say networking, I don't just mean like going to a networking event once a year, okay. I mean once a month, once every two weeks, catch up for coffee, whatever you got to do. I mean catching up with people regularly. And this is ideal clients, this is peers, this is colleagues, maybe this is competition, whatever that is. But you want to be creating interpersonal connections with people regularly because you just don't know what that is going to lead and bring. And it might seem like a waste of time, like going for a coffee with someone or jumping on zoom or whatever it is, but. But people appreciate it. Energy gets passed between people. And energy is one of the main currencies in business. If you show that you are valuing someone else's time by catching up with them, providing value, having a chat, having a talk, doing some, you know, off the books counseling type thing, the people really appreciate that and I think, like, Steph's done this really well where she goes to networking events. She meets hundreds of women, you know, all the time, and she's getting her name out there face out there. And I could honestly say from Steph's point of view, like, some of her most successful times have been when she is doing the most networking.

Yeah, absolutely. And like all of our clients that do networking crush as well. Tim, just a really quick question on this. I hear the listener, I can hear them already saying, but how do I reach out to them? But what do I say? What do you say? How do you reach out to somebody? How do you invite them for a coffee? What's that look like?

Yeah. One of our new favorite things to do is a connection call. So we'll jump on. And this is usually with a pr, not like a prospect or anything. And we just say like. Like, you know, give me three wins, three things you're struggling with and how I can help. And we'll jump on a zoom for an hour and do that like once a week or once a fortnight with someone in terms of a prospect or like an affiliate partner. Just be like, hey, I'd love to catch up and see if there's anything we can do to help each other with their businesses. You just need to get creative and find out what they are actually wanting. So what do you think they need and how can you provide that to them? Go into these chats not expecting anything. I think if you go into networking, you go into a networking event like a lot of the biz babes do, and you expect to get. Get, you know, 10 clients just from going to an event, you're going to be sorely disappointed. So go in with the expectation that you will just give and get nothing in return. And the people that do that are the ones that win the most in business.

Absolutely. Yeah. The second one is outreach. So now more than ever, it is important to start building connection with your community. You'll notice that our first two points are all about talking to people. Because, guys, you cannot just sit behind your laptop and on your Instagram and just like, wait for people to come and find you and hope that one of the reels that you've made hits an algorithm, right? You suddenly get to make millions of dollars. Like, that's not how business works. Like, your net worth is your network. And so we have such an incredible network now that every time we have a problem, we know exactly who to go to and exactly who can solve it, and we get it solved instantly.

30 minutes.

Within 30 minutes, like, we're like, oh, we want to drive some ads to our podcast. We, like, reach out to somebody. We jumped on a zoom call. Now we have an entire strategy built out. It was completely for free or for a connection call. We were like, whenever you need something in the return, just let us know. We're super happy to help you. Like, the networks that you have are so important and I think that people are too scared to go out and make networks. So outreach is everything. Outreach to your community, outreach to your followers, outreach to people who are liking your stories, outreach to people who are commenting on your stuff. Outreach to people in Facebook groups. You just think, look, fucking cool that you just think, like, hey, I think we would have a connection. You know, I outreached Hides, one of our good friends, Heidi, who's famous. If you know Hides, you'll know her. She's. She's famous.

She'd be loving this.

Yeah, she'll be loving this. And so, like, I knew that we would get on. I knew from listening to her on the radio that we'd be friends. Obviously everyone thought that about heights, but I made the. I made the effort where a lot of people didn't. A lot of people didn't make the effort. I went to her events, I put myself in the way of her. I would message her. The minute she quit radio, I was like, hey, we live around the corner for each other. Let's go for a walk. This is really big for you. You must be feeling really big emotions. Let's go chat it out. And she said that that was one of her most memorable moments with me because I gave a fuck when no one else did. And now we're best friends and we help each other out so much. She's just got some PR for us. We don't even pay her for it. Like, she's so generous and so awesome. And it all starts from building relationships and that starts with outreach. Guys, you have to talk to people.

Alright? The third point here is improve your product or service. And I know that's very vague, but honestly, like, it's probably in a couple of the points in the previous podcast. Guys, you can go and try to make a new service, a product offering or whatever it is, but you could just improve the one you've got. So how can you improve the customer service? How can you improve the client experience? How can you get them better results? How can you get them more happy with what you do? Like, they're just four points there where you could probably list up 100 things on each and go and implement. And if you think about every 1% change that you improve or implement that has like a massive downstream and knock on effect. Okay. And even if you talk about this from like a digital marketing point of view, it's like, can you improve the headline on your website? Can you improve the sub headline? Can you improve the benefits? Can you improve the buttons? Literally you could go through your website and that's just one part of your business that you could go through and improve and improve the conversion rates on that and that's going to have a huge downstream effect effect on your business. So a lot of the times as entrepreneurs we get the mvp. So minimum viable product and or minimum viable service and everyone just kind of runs out and they're like, I'm going to build this thing, it's done. And then cool, thumbs up, everyone's happy. And then they start selling it and then their business turns into a massive sales and marketing machine, which we've seen hundreds of times over when it should actually just be a customer service machine or a product machine where they're trying to build the best possible product, which literally in successful we do every single week. It's like, how can we add something that's going to make our clients lives easier? How can we improve the onboarding? How can we improve their showing up? How can we improve the results? So like, you know, us versus other coaching programs that are sales and marketing machines and all they're trying to do is sell more people into it, whereas we've taken the other option and we're still growing through recessions because we give a about our clients and we're trying to make our service and product better and better and better.

Yeah, we record a new module, I'd say like every two weeks cycle or update one. Like update one, you know, like we'll go, okay, well maybe it wasn't clear enough or maybe we could get better results if we try this. Or we've just tested this and now we're going to update it because this is now working and so we're constantly updating our stuff. The next one is to create better offers. Now I'm going to just talk about this from one perspective and that is very similar to what Tim was just saying. But in order to create a better offer, you probably have to solve more problems and this might require you to generate a new skill set. So for example, I was just saying before about one of our clients who in last episode I was talking about this, she has a business where she helps people build out Kajabi courses. Something else that she could now potentially solve or as an add on or as an additional product to be able to continue to sell to people is she could do Kajabi websites, she could do Kajabi CRM setups, she could do like low ticket courses, she could do webinar funnels for people, she could do. There's so many different problems that she could solve within that that aren't just the course build phase that Kajabi offers, which is awesome. And it's like how can you just improve your offer? How can you just make better offers? Like it's going to take her team an extra, whatever a couple of days to build out a Kajabi website. But if she can make extra five grand in a couple of days, it's probably really worth it. But it's also going to be a one stop shop for the client because now they're getting all of their problems solved in one spot. So if you guys, if you're a social media manager, as an example, one thing that I'd like recommend adding on right now for you guys is like do a reels day, like go and record people, go and do B roll days and, and record B roll for your clients. Like that's a really easy add on. It solves a problem that they're not being able to get to. It solves you a problem too because you can have heaps of content to be able to create for them as a social media manager. But how can you make a better offer and include more stuff like every single time Tim and I, you know, want to make extra sales or we want to bring somebody else into success school. We want to, you know, get people excited about, you know, when you sell the same thing every week for years, you have to get really inventive about creative, about the ways in which you invite people in. And so you'll regularly see us like running, running cool shit like here's a free marketing order. You sign up now, you get a free one to one with Tim or if you do this or if you do that, like in this time, this day and age, you've got to be constantly improving and making your offers better, making your products better and solving more problems for people. The more problems you can solve people in a faster, shorter period of time, the more money that you will make.

All right, our fifth way guys is ask for referrals. And I find this one is so severely underdone in the business world that no one actually does it. So what you want to do is just get a list of all your clients. And you know, Mike Malkowitz created a process called essentially finding out your seed clients. And that's you plant seeds and you, you basically make pumpkins that way. So he finds the best seeds or the best clients. And what you want to do is you want to list out all your clients that you fucking love working with, like 1 to 20. And then you want to list out your clients that pay you the most money, 1 to 20. And then you want to look for the commonality between the two. And then you're going to pick your page best 10. Then you want to reach out to them and you want to say something like, hey, Steph, I've really loved helping you with growing your business and you know, we've added an extra 20k a month to your revenue. How cool is that? I was just wondering if you had three friends that might be interested in having a chat to see how I could help them. And then you just literally plan that seed with your clients. And if you do this regularly and you do this on your marketing list, it can become a really valuable tool. So I did a business coaching program once, and this was their main way of growing businesses. And they grew six and seven figure businesses just by doing this one thing. Asking for referrals. The problem with referrals is everyone just thinks, like, if my shit is good enough, people will just refer me. Very few amounts of people actually just naturally do that because they're just so, let's just say, involved in their own life, that they're not even thinking about anyone else besides themselves unless they are actually prompted with it. So if you want referrals and you want growth, you have to ask for them. Okay? And you have to ask your clients for referrals.

Like I was at Look Smart alterations the other day getting something altered. And every time I go there, which is a lot, because I'm a short, curvy woman with weird shape. And so I go to Looksmart a lot.

Beautiful shape.

Thank you, baby. I go to Looksmart a lot to get my clothes altered. And every time I go there, like, they know who I am, but like, they forget that they've asked me this. Every time I go, they ask me for a Google review and I love them and I think they're great and I've given them a Google review and that's fine. But like, I love that they ask every time because they're not scared to ask for the Google review, you know, And I think that if they didn't prompt me to do that, I don't think I did it the first time they asked me. I think I did it on like the first, third or fourth time they asked me. It wasn't because I didn't want to. It's because I'm so self absorbed in my own world. The minute that I turn around and walk away, I'm like, oh, I've got to go to Kohl's. Oh, I've got to pick this up. Oh, I've got to do this. And we just get so absorbed in our own world. It's not because I don't want to give the review because I think it's bad, it's because I just haven't been prompted enough. So that's such a good one. Just keep like prompting each other more. So number six is to learn ads. And the reason that ads are becoming more and more important is because, well, Instagram, Facebook meta, YouTube, Google. At the end of the day, guys, they all just want to make money like their businesses and they're trying to make money and so of course they're gonna prioritize the people who pay to play. And so, you know, you don't have to run ads, you don't have to learn how to do ads. You can learn how to make organic content and you can learn how to, you know, try and play a game with the algorithm, but it's a lot easier to learn ads. And what the thing I love about ads is that, you know, when you go viral on social media, it doesn't necessarily reach the audiences that you want to target. You could get a lot of, you know, for example, a lot of Indian men or a lot of people from the Philippines or whatever. Right? Which may not be the people that you're necessarily trying to target. And so it's not particularly helpful to necessarily go viral. But when you run ads and you put that same amount of time and energy into learning ads, you can get really targeted audiences. Like I'm talking really targeted. Like one of our guys that we just chatted to recently, one of our connection calls, he runs a business for tradies and they make like $400,000 a month just doing trades stuff with dudes. Like it's super niche. And you know, all their ads are just two men who have, you know, plumber or electrician or whatever in their Facebook page and that's it. They just, they just run ad within certain ages. Like how friggin specific. You can't do that on Instagram, you can't do that with organic content. And so it is so freaking powerful to learn to run ads. And all of our clients are currently learning this process after much fighting on Tim's behalf. And it's been phenomenal. They're getting leads again. And sales. It's super easy. It is the most passive way of generating leads and clients that you will find.

All right, number seven, a little bit beaten to death, but make more offers. You've probably heard this hundreds of times. So Steph sent me probably about three girls Instagram handles about a year ago. And she was like, check these girls out. And I was like, cool. Check them out, follow them, start watching their stories. And all three of these girls making like seven figures a month. Crazy money. Seven figures a month. Just think about how ridiculously that's a.

Million dollars a month.

Million dollars a month. And the commonality they had between all of them is they were making offers every single day on their Instagram stories. And I thought, that's fucking pretty cheeky, you know, Making offers every single day on the Instagram stories. But it works. And how many people, coaches, business coaches, mentors, whatever it is, they've always said to me, the more offers you make make, the more money you make. Case in point, we know three girls making a million dollars a month selling on stories because they're making new offers every single day. So maybe they're doing a high ticket, maybe they're doing low ticket, maybe they're doing one on one. Like, whatever it is. But the key point here is you need to make more offers. So Steph and I did this last week. We started making offers in our story. What do you know? Have a guess what happened. We got calls booked. Okay. I made an offer, an email, got six calls booked. I made an offer on my story, as Steph did, too. We had a couple calls booked. Our KPI is 10 calls booked a week. We did that basically on organic and email without any ads. And we just add ads on top of that, which is cream to the crop. So how I'm encouraging you guys, how can you make more offers? Where do you make more offers? Are you going to make more offers on email? You're going to do it in your story? Where are you going to do this?

Yeah, you've got to change it up. Like, this is such a powerful point that I'm just going to drive home a little bit more. But, like, could you do one month of coaching? Could you do a one off call? Could you do an audit? Could you add in a WhatsApp support, support for a week. Could you like. There's so many ways that you guys could just make additional offers and use those offers to upsell into bigger offers later on or whatever. But you've got to pivot. You gotta just add some stuff, add some spice, add some flair, do some stuff like it. Do a mix of done for you and done with you. There's so many cool things that you get to do, but you just need to be creative. And when Tim talked about earlier dying on a hill, this is where you don't want to die on a hill. You want to be able to be flexible and create new offers, to be able to generate new sales and it give people new reasons to come back and work with you or, or, or to tap back in, which is really cool. Number eight. This has always served me so well, but it's just basically give more. So I have done this forever. Whenever sales have been low, whenever lead gen has been slow, whenever things have felt tricky and tough for me in business, the first thing that I will do is go and create something that is of insane value for free. You know, that could be a mini course. I could, that might be a masterclass class. You know, our master classes are high value. Like we don't hold a lot back. That might be, you know, a webinar, that might be a challenge, that might be an in person, you know, day, that might be whatever. But I will provide some sort of free or really massively high value something or other. Because one, it feels good. Like I got into business and I got into this type of business because I want people to win. And I get more momentum when people are winning because I'm so tapped into my purpose, I'm so tapped into what I'm passionate about, but also because if I help someone win, what do you think they're going to do? They're going to rave about me. They're going to tell someone, they're going to tell their friend, they're going to be like, oh my God, check us out. And when they are ready, you are going to be the person they come and buy from because you helped them so much. So if you're in a lull right now, if you're finding it tough right now, tap back into like what got you lit up in the first place. What can you give give? What can you show up and provide? If people are struggling in the economy right now, how can you give back and know that that will return a dividend as well over time and later on? But that's not the reason why you do it, but it will help.

All right, guys, point nine is focus on your profitability. Okay? Really overdone in the business world. But you know, I want you to print out your p L. Have a look at your bank statement. The way I like to do it, very tactically is I print out my bank statement, like literally print it out on, on ink and paper and I go through and just highlight anything that looks a little bit weird or could be reduced. So then once I highlight some stuff that could be reduced or look a little weird, I ask myself, can I get more value out of it? And that's the first thing. So every dollar I spend, I want to get at least two times ROI in terms of value. So if I'm spending a hundred dollars a month on an email marketing software, am I making 200amonth from it? Obviously, yes, because email marketing software is cheap as shit and high value if you have an email list. So I print out, I go through, I find anything that could be optimized, could be improved or could be reduced. Okay? A lot times it's me underutilizing the value of the thing versus actually cutting it. There'd be like little things like tech subscription services that are a little bit expensive or CRMs or something like that, but you can go through and increase the profitability of your service. Sometimes the greatest business and the hardest business decisions you ever make are the hardest decisions. And what I mean by that is maybe firing a team member, replacing them with a new team member that provides more ROI, cutting hours, cutting processes, cutting procedures, doing an 8020 on all the business activities. Anything that you are doing in business can be looked at, can be refined, can be reviewed. And that in the end does increase the profitability of your business. And at the end of the day, it's not about revenue, it's about profit. And there are so many gurus and mentors out there spouting this seven figure shit that are making no figures profit, okay? And the name of the game here is you got to make profit money.

In the bank, baby. The last one, there's one written down, I'm actually going to change it because the one I'm going to give you as the last one, guys, is if you have a mentor, sure. If you are part of a coaching container, if you have a coach, now is the time to ask for help. We even have people who apply for success school who, you know, are still incurring coaching containers with other coaches and they're like, yeah, I'm just Not getting what I need from this coach and I'm like, cool. Have you asked, like, have you really gone and asked the amount of times like when shit hits the fan in our business, we're the first people who are onto our coaches being like, we need you, we're open to anything. Give me what you got. Let's fix it, let's do it, let's do it. Like, we're straight onto it. Like, don't slink back. Like, guys, if you're having a hard time right now, don't hide. Don't, you know, make that mean something about you, that you're a failure, blah, blah, blah, and hide from it. You know, don't check out and not do work for a week. Don't sweep it under the rug. Like, it's not a big deal. Like, you are paying people, whether it's us or other coaches or mentors that you're paying to be part of. Ask for what you need and don't go in with this mindset of like, they're not going to be able to help me or I don't know how to get any support. Like, like going there being like, I'm going to be so open minded because I'm willing to do what it takes to change this and turn the situation around. And I can guarantee you that you signed up with that coach for a reason. They have some pieces of advice. They want to help you win. Like, they really, really do. So the number one piece of advice I would give you here is like, if you're really struggling, like, you got to reach out and ask for help. Like, please stop saying silent. You know, don't try and fix this on your own. The best way to fix this problem is with so many minds and so many people and support, support systems around you to help you, lift you out of this. It's okay to ask for help, it's okay to be supported. And especially if you're paying for it as part of a container that you're part of, please get the support that you need.

So Steph wanted to miss this one, but I got to throw it in. It has to be said. So, like the. Honestly, the best way to beat the recession is to become the goat in your industry.

What is it? Goat.

Goat is the greatest of all time. And that's basically just saying, like, be the best in your industry. So if you run a VA agency, strive to be the best VA agency. If you're a business coach, strive to be the best business coach. How do you become the best? Okay. You obviously study what the best have done previously in history. You do courses, you do upskilling, you get better. You get better results. You do better. So you want your clients to be literally actively raving about you. Like, I get this in fitness. And people say this to me all the time, you're the best strength coach I have ever seen, okay? And that's after trying lots of. Of gyms and people and stuff around the world. I used to get that shit all the time. And the way I developed that, as I moved to America, I became a strength coach. I studied everything. I got 2 degrees, 15 certifications, and 15 years experience in it, okay? So if I wanted to still be a fitness coach, I'd be trying to be the fucking best one possible. I wouldn't just be sitting on my hands, you know, wondering why my business has gone to shit.

Quick story for you guys, I think you'll enjoy. When I first met him, he was obsessed with his business. Like, obsessed. Like, he's. He's obsessed with business now, but it's definitely calmed down a little bit bit. He was obsessed. And bear in mind, he's making barely any money. I think he probably had 30 or 40 clients paying 50 bucks a week. You know, what's rent and everything came out. There wasn't a lot left, although we thought we were rich, which is hilarious, and so sweet. Every couple of weeks, I'd be like, tim, what do you want? And he was like, I just want to be the best. I want to be the best strength coach in Australia. I want to be the best strength and conditioning facility in Australia. I want to be the best. And that was his driving force. And when I got into entrepreneurship, I was like, we're going to run the best work workshops. All the influencers are going to come to them. They're going to be aesthetic. Everyone's going to come. We're going to get pr. We're going to be newsworthy. We're going to go Australia wide, you know, And. And when I got into business coaching, I was like, how do I be the fucking best of this? How do I become the best of this? Like, what do I need to do to be the girl that people go to to get the support to grow their business? And if you can just think like that every day, like, I just want to be the best. What's going to take to be the best? I just want to be the best and figure out what that looks like. So for Tim, a really cool little story here. Was that one of the metrics? How Would you know you had the best strength and conditioning facility in Australia. And one of the metrics that we came up with was Google reviews. Yeah, you know, Google reviews were something that Tim really wanted to like. If he had more five star reviews than any other gym in Australia, then he would know that he was the best. And I think. Right, yeah, for a period of time, we did have all the five star reviews. Like, I think we had. Like how many of you had 250, 260 or something? Yeah, five star reviews, views. And so, like find that metric and then go after it. Like, you have to want to be the best. You can't be okay with being mediocre and then wonder why you're not making money or why people are picking somebody else over you. If you want to make the most money and you want to survive any economic cycle or any recession, if you're the best at what you do, people will pay for it, regardless of economy, regardless of cycles, regardless of where they're on their life because they want to work with you. And so become the goat. I love that.

All right, guys, super valuable episode. If you got something from it, please let us know. Send us a DM at Steph Gordon. Couple underscores on the end, maybe nine. And then at Real Tim Frey. As always, guys, if you're new here, don't forget to follow the show on whatever platform you're on. Leave us a five star review. It is greatly appreciated. Until next week, guys.

We'll see you then.