The REALITY Of Your Second Year In Business

Few launches, I sold 39 courses. That's about a 4% conversion rate for my 997 people email list, which is an incredible conversion rate for myself. Young in this business world and hungry for that elusive six figure launch that was being so heavily marketed to entrepreneurs, online business owners at this time, I didn't clearly understand the numbers and the conversion rates behind launching to tell me, Trina, what you had was great. It converted it almost a 5%. Stick with it. You don't need to recreate the wheel, you just need more people on your email list to sell it to. So I scrapped the entire thing and started recreating the wheel. I jumped into a new program created COD YouTube for Business was actually not totally recreating the wheel. It was a piece of my previous course brand boosting video that most people were enjoying inside of there and it was seeming to get more chattery about than the rest of the program. So I decided to take this little piece and sell something at a cheaper price point because I thought maybe the price point was the problem as well. So let me pull a segment of this course out and just launch that late February, early March. This is with a two month old and a two year old and four clients. I decided to host a challenge leading up to that launch as well. So for that challenge I had 80 people sign up. My email list at this point in time was about 2,000 people. And the only way I was really growing my email list at this point in time was YouTube with opt ins like YouTube channel checklist, equipment guide, doing all of those webinars that I did in 2016 and making those connections with other entrepreneurs. I seriously hosted so many people on my YouTube channel in 2017, I had at least 10 guest entrepreneurs. Whether I was doing JV webinars for them or I was having them speak on my YouTube channel to get them to share about me to their audience. This was really my main push of growing my email list in 2017, was making these connections with actual humans. I also, like I said, did a lot of live trainings on YouTube, basically like BI weekly webinars I was hosting to again drum up excitement, get people to sign up for these trainings to grow my email list. Okay, So I had 80 people sign up for that challenge and I had 10 people buy YouTube for business again at a low price point because I thought that was my previous problem. So 10 people bought out of the 80 people that signed up. That's a 12% conversion rate. That's like a freaking amazing conversion rate. That any person would want. But I didn't think so because guess what, that wasn't a six figure launch. That was only 10 people. How was I going to get to this seven figure business that I kept telling was what successful business owners did back in 2017. That was all the marketing, like become a seven figure business owner. So I immediately figured it was a fail. I mean, mean, even if I sold all 80 people that signed up for that challenge, I still would have only made just over $10,000. So again, the numbers were not computing properly in my head to get to that goal that I thought I needed to hit, which is seriously something that I was wished talked so much more about. I wish these numbers were explained to me a lot earlier and not just explained to me, but seriously dumbed down. For me, I'm not a number. I needed to know if I wanted to make this end goal, how could I reverse engineer to get to that? And if I only had 80 people in my challenge, it was literally impossible to get to this. So to strive for a six figure launch with 80 people, it just wasn't making sense in my head. And I needed it explained because I'm going to tell you, this lack of connection, of understanding the numbers is what kept me on this constant hamster wheel of chasing launches after launches, after launches, after freaking launches. Because I wasn't having a six figure launch that I thought that I needed to do. I didn't have the back end numbers to get to it. My conversion rates were great, my conversion rates were industry standard, but I didn't understand that. I just wanted that end number. None of the in between was talked about. The only thing that was talked about were business owners making a boatload of money. And they weren't explaining how they were doing that. This is ultimately what has led me to creating my program 10k on replay this year to break down to 5 figure entrepreneurs. How to get to 6 figures. Realistically not making these big goals that we're told to think big, think even bigger, but not told how to get there, not told what is the realistic path to get there, what are the numbers you have to have to actually get there because you just can't visualize it, you just can't have a mindset to get to it. And it magically happens. There are numbers that need to support that end goal. I'm getting fired up over this because this is what kept me, like I said, in this cycle of feeling like a constant failure and I don't want any more entrepreneurs to feel that way. And so that's why we really focus in 10k on replay. What is the realistic path to get you to consistent monthly income that will lead to a six figure business? What are the numbers on the back end, people following you, email list, subscribers, conversion rates? What are these numbers? What are these metrics? You need to clearly understand to get to that because you're not going to get to it if you don't understand those numbers first. Okay, let me take a step back from that. So. But bucks moments. And the other thing I started doing in 2017 as well as I look through all my stuff is I started planning further out. I started doing 90 day plans, which is something that I do to this day. And like I mentioned with 10 count replay, we do with our clients every quarter. This really helped me figure out how I was going to place everything on my calendar along with kids stuff, baby stuff, you know, all those appointments that you're doing and making sure I wasn't overloading myself, even though I continued to. But we're talking about the Trina Little haunted era. Where you going? Get back now. So what became so dark? Having Cohen at the end of 2016 and then honestly putting all that stress on me that I just talked about, trying to figure out why I kept failing at six figure launches and thinking I was a failure because I couldn't do it. I honestly believe pushed me into postpartum depression and I honestly didn't realize it for a while. But looking back at my power sheets from that year, it's very clear what was going on and the progression that was happening through that year. In fact, one way that you can easily see it happening is the progression of my hair color in 2017 just continued to get darker and darker and darker as I continued to just become more depressed that year. We were also building a house at this time. So I mean, do we even need to mention all the stress that goes into that? And my husband was the sole provider at that time. Yes, I was making some money, but I had gone from $80,000 to 2016, 10,000 and by the end of 2017 only 24,000. So I wasn't even making half of what we left at. And let's just throw being in this teeny tiny two bedroom apartment with a two year old and a newborn. It was a lot to deal with and to handle while still showing up on video every single week, still showing up my business every single day, putting on a face to keep moving forward and I mean it took so long figure out what was going on Because I'm from a small town, we don't talk about our feelings. We didn't talk about depression. This was still in, like, 2017. So postpartum depression was a little bit more relevant, but it wasn't where we're at right now. And a few of you have asked me to talk about mindset shifts that I had in my business during this entire journey to get me to where I am right now. And Honestly, still in 2017, mindset wasn't even something I was thinking about or working on because I didn't believe it. Again, being in a small town, that was kind of like mumbo jumbo kind of stuff. Like, if you got to do it, you do it. It's not about mindset. You just do it. But by the end of 2017, I did get on antidepressants. And you will see in tomorrow's 2018 era, the progression of my hair color and the opposite way. And you can see where we're at now. Pretty blonde, feeling good, no longer on medication and no longer dealing with postpartum depression. Cohen is now going to be six. And so that was a really huge journey for me that year. I would say 2017 was probably the toughest year overall in my life up to this point. But there's a few more things that happened in that year that I do want to share with you because like I said, completely transparent, spilling all the entrepreneur behind the scenes tea. So let's talk about launches again. I really want you to see how I have grown not only as a business owner, but the way my graphics have changed, the way my branding has changed. Because, listen, you evolve. The more you do it, the more you start to learn more about yourself, the more you start to learn more about your target audience, what you like, what you don't like. And you don't get to this point if you're not doing it. Because if you look at my 2017 stuff, oh, freaking cringy, my friend, compared to where we're at now. But I want you to see, I didn't start out as this Trina, bright pink, you know, happy, bubbly. I didn't start out here. The next big launch that I had in 2017 after that February launch was in May. Turn that sucker right around to do it again. And this time it was a brand new course again because I only made 10 sales the last time. There's something wrong with it. Even though it converted 12% of the people from that challenge into the course wasn't good enough. Let's recreate the whole thing. This program that I launched though, was the first time I pre launched. I pre launched this program, meaning I sold it before anything was created. I didn't even make any of the videos. I made an outline of what was going to be and I pre launched YouTube boot camp. Fun fact, since I launched that that year, somebody a few months afterwards ripped the title off and pretty much stole the exact logo and had a course called YouTube Bootcamp. So that's fun as well. As a business owner, the other thing that happened for this launch, since I was making consistent income with my four clients, I hired my first person to write launch copy for me. And this is the very first time. And what has kicked off a very long friendship with Ashlynn Carter over at Ashlyn Right rights. I reached out to her to do my copywriting and while she planned out my entire launch copy, she sold herself. She bought the program and then she ended up hiring me as her YouTube strategist. And that was in 2017. We are still working together to this day in 2020. That's like a five year client. By this time, this launch, I had around 3,000 email list subscribers. I also upped the pricing for this and gave like a VIP option, more of a group coaching style option. 30 people enrolled in that launch of that presale course. It wasn't even created yet and I sold 30 people. Me thinking about that right now is insane. I'm like, that is incredible. I can't believe that I did that. Not 2017. Trina, she still didn't have that six figure launch, right? So again, thought it was a total failure. This is why again, it is so important that us business owners that have gone through this and dealt with this need to explain to those of you that are growing your business to understand those numbers so you don't constantly beat yourself up that you are a failure if you're not hitting this goal that you have because if that goal is not attainable because the back end of your numbers don't add up. It's like you want to have 5m and ms, right? You want to have 5m and Ms. The bag that you got only has three. You can't make it happen. Like there's no magic that can happen if the bag you bought has three M&Ms, but you wanted five. Like it just doesn't compute. Also, my list of 3,000 people, they were starting to get fatigued. I was launching to them like every other month. They were also at a fractured audience because I wasn't getting clear on Who I was talking to, I wasn't clear that this was actually YouTube for business owners. I was talking about YouTube strategies to grow a YouTube channel. But I wasn't always tying it back into how it helps your business. It was also me trying to convince business owners that they needed YouTube again. Facebook ads were still super hot, super cheap, cranking out money to business owners. Snapchat Instagram stories had just started. Everybody was doubling down on Instagram. I wasn't doing a good enough job educating my audience the power that YouTube could have in their business. I was just giving them the tactics, the how to's and not explaining the bigger picture. By the end of this year, I was still comparing myself to what everybody else was doing. I thought, why hadn't I hit a seven figure business in two years while having a baby and a one year old? I thought it was asinine that I couldn't do that. Yet what I actually didn't realize now that I have friends that are business owners that had gotten to that seven figure mark, they were pumping loads of money into Facebook ads because at the time in like 2016, 17, 18, Facebook ads was an ATM machine. You pumped in a million dollars, you're gonna get $2 million back. And I wasn't playing that game. I didn't have the money to put into Facebook ads. I was doing all of my traffic and building my audience all organically through predominantly YouTube. Another thing that happened in 2017 was my opportunity to go to my very first, first YouTube workshop. And this was a big investment at the time. Like I said, that year alone, I only need $24,000. And to go to this YouTube workshop was $3,000. It was away from my kids for the first time. But we made it work so that I could go to that week workshop on YouTube. It was a freaking scary investment. But I knew I needed that additional training. I knew not only for me to learn more, but for me to have more confident in myself. Teaching YouTube was important during that week. A few other added benefits came from that trip. I was able to be around other people like me who were doing similar things than me, who were trying things and who understood the business game. And we could have conversations about that because prior to it I was just having zoom dates, right? A few minutes here and there, but able to have dinner with people and really dive into what they were working on and what wasn't and wasn't working and seeing bigger picture what people were doing in their business. I also came home from that workshop and ended up getting a job opportunity from the person that hosted that workshop as well. And I began health helping him build out his YouTube program and working with his clients. But more importantly, I basically became like a part time employee. I wasn't a part time employee, I was a contractor, but I was working part time for him and I was making consistent monthly income what I'd been striving for right now with that opportunity. What do you think would happen in 2018? What's that next era in my business when you start to feel comfortable in your business and I started taking medication for my depression. Well, the air tours is going to continue tomorrow with year three in my business which was 2018 and I'd love to hear from you if you're enjoying this journey. This is in my business when you start to feel comfortable in your business and I started taking medication for my depression. Well, the air tours is going to continue tomorrow with year three in my business which was 2018 and I'd love to hear from you if you're enjoying this journey, this video series. So let me know any major takeaways that you're having down in the comments below. And like my whole purpose is for you to know this all doesn't just happen overnight. I haven't had that big breakthrough yet. It is coming and I'm going to share that with you when we get to it. But I have not even had my big breakthrough yet and I think so many business coaches that we listen to or business gurus that we listen to, they we don't always share the crap that we go through in the beginning or what it was like those first couple years in business that so many of you are at. So I really hope this is helping you. See you tomorrow.