The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 260: Ask Me Anything

Today, I am diving into the most asked questions from my audience. We asked you what your top questions were for me and today we are going to dive into all of the details! From making the leap into your business to shifts for scaling, we touch on so many topics. Trust me, you won’t want to miss this one.

Ask Me Anything

By: Melissa Lin

Welcome back! Today is going to be something a little bit different than normal. Let me know if you love this type of post, we might do more of them. Today is going to be an “Ask Me Anything” post. We shared a questions box on my Instagram, and typically I answer these questions on my stories, but this time we took the most asked questions and are sharing the answers here with you instead. If you have a specific question you want me to support you with, send me a message on Instagram and we can answer it on the next “Ask Me Anything” episode. Let’s dive into the very first question. 

WHEN TO LEAVE YOUR 9 TO 5

The first question was, how did you know that it was time to leave your 9 to 5? Do you wish that you had left sooner? I left my 9 to 5 in early 2018. At that time I had already been working on my business for quite a few years. I am the type of coach that will tell you there is no set timeline for you. You get to create your own timeline. I know there are some coaches out there that say the only way you can be successful is if you go all in on your business and quit your job. I don’t believe in that. I ran my business as a side hustle for quite a few years because I didn't feel ready to leave my 9 to 5. Part of it was my mindset, and part of it was because I was having so much fun. I was able to continue to grow my business on the side, so I didn't need to leave by 9 to 5 yet.

I had sat down with my partner, Ryen, who I am currently still with, and we started talking about when I was going to leave my 9 to 5 and when we both felt comfortable about it. We were living together, so I wanted his input to make sure he felt good about it. We decided that once we had six months  of expenses saved up from the business, then I would feel ready to leave my 9 to 5. I got to that pretty quick. Once I did, we looked at each other and said, “maybe just another month or two of savings.” That kept on going for quite some time. Part of it was my mindset, my fear of leaving my 9 to 5. I had a fear of change, of failure, of success, of judgment. I was absolutely terrified to actually put my resignation in. What's funny is I didn't even tell my parents until two months after I put my resignation in. I was on the fence about leaving my 9 to 5, but I'm so, so happy that I did. It was the best decision that I could have made for myself. I would not have a 7-figure business if I hadn't left my 9 to 5. 

When I left my 9 to 5 I was at the point where I was already bringing in enough income for my business to replace my old job, which was a big goal for me. We had savings. I don't want to say that's what absolutely needs to happen before you leave your 9 to 5, it’s just what felt good to me. You get to decide what feels good to you and what your timeline is going to be. 

I asked myself, what's the worst case scenario? The worst case would have been I left my 9 to 5 job and my business didn’t continue to grow and I had to go work at a coffee shop part-time while I continued to grow my business. That was the worst case scenario for me. I knew I wasn't going to be on the street. I had a home. Ryen and I were living together, so I had that support. I knew the worst case wasn't so bad. If you can live with that worst case scenario, then give it a try. Life is so short and I'm so glad I went after what I wanted.

I definitely could have left my 9 to 5 much sooner. I was already bringing in more income through my business than my salary at my 9 to 5. I was already doing well in my business outside of just the income. Another thing that really helped me make this decision was my time. I could not support any more clients while in my 9 to 5, so that was another reason for me to make the jump. If you're not sure when the right time is, ask yourself some of those questions that I had just gone through. Again, there's no one timeline. You get to decide when the best time to leave your 9 to 5 is. You can totally start and grow as a side hustle while in your nine-to-five for however long you want to. You can also quit your 9 to 5 today and grow your business if you want to. There's no right or wrong way.

FEELING STUCK IN YOUR BUSINESS

The second big question I was asked was, “I feel stuck and cannot get beyond an $8K month, any advice?” If you feel that you are at a plateau in your business, then this is what I want you to do. Whether you're stuck at $1,000 a month or $20,000 a month, what I want you to do is zoom out. Lean back and ask yourself what's actually holding you back. What is the thing that actually needs to shift? Is it that you don't have the time to support more clients? If that's the case, then we may want to start shifting from one-to-one to one-to-many. As I shared, one of the reasons I left my 9 to 5 was because I could not support more clients unless I had more time. Instead of leaving my nine-to-five I could have shifted into more group programs and more courses. If you currently don't feel that you have time to bring on more clients, then we want to look at your current business model and see how we can expand to a higher volume. How can you help more people? In order for your business to grow, you get to support more people. 

Maybe you're spending all of your time doing everything in your business and that’s why you don't have the time. Then maybe it's not so much that you need to move from one-to-one to one-to-many, maybe you need to hire your next team member. If you don't have the time in your day today to be doing your daily sales activities, then it might be time to hire your next team member for support. I typically recommend hiring your first team member once you're at about $3,000 a month. I would not recommend doing this alone, especially if you do want to grow your business and really take things to the next level. 

Maybe you're feeling burnt out. Maybe you don't feel energetically available for more clients. If that's the case, we may want to take a look at your current boundaries in your life and in your business and see what's leaking through. Do you find yourself always hopping into your Voxer channels and supporting outside of work hours? Do you see yourself popping into your Slack channel more than a few times per day? Are you getting back to clients within minutes of them asking questions? Where are your boundaries leaking? Where can we start to tighten up some of those boundaries? As you grow your business, your boundaries will be so important. 

If you're not energetically available for more clients, it could also be because your actual programs cannot support more clients the way that they're currently running. If that's the case, then we may want to take a look at tweaking how the program runs so that it can support more clients. If you're feeling stuck right now in your business, take a look to determine what's actually happening in the business right now. 

DETACHING FROM THE SALE

The next question is, how can I start to detach from the outcome of my sales? I love this question because this is something that I actually dealt with in my early years in my business. I was so attached to sales in my business that I took it personally when someone said “no.”I thought it meant something about me or my program, but it didn't. This is where we get to start to detach from the sale because it says nothing about anything. Maybe it's just not the right time for them, or maybe they're not the right fit for the program. That's okay. 

When it comes to business, we want to try to detach from the outcome as much as possible. If you're attached, you will see yourself feel good when you get sales and then start to feel bad when you don't. That means you’re letting your potential clients run how you're feeling. You cannot grow and scale a business if you're allowing others to run how you're feeling. If you're consistently going on that up and down roller coaster, it will start to impact your business. Something that really supported me with detaching from sales was finding things outside of business that made me feel good. This is something that helps me control how I'm feeling. I can find ways to feel better, regardless of what's going on in the business. You are so much more than just your business, and we don't want that to control how you're living your life.

MY GOALS FOR 2023

The next question is, what are some of your 2023 goals? I'll drive into both business and personal goals. For my personal goal, I really want to improve my skiing skills. I've already had one big breakthrough day, and I have a feeling another big breakthrough day is coming. I would love to start to get comfortable on blue runs. I am definitely more comfortable on green runs right now. I plan to practice and spend some more time on that. I would love to be skiing down some blue runs by the end of the season. Another big goal of mine for 2023 is movement every single day. I am pretty good about getting a morning walk in, so some type of movement every single day. Another goal is to add in a bit of travel. I also have some home goals. Ryen and I are starting to do some backyard decorating. We're going to start to really get into some landscaping this summer. We've got some fun things planned. 

As far as business, we've got some pretty big goals. We're launching a new program, so I have some goals there. I really want to take things to the next level. This means supporting more clients inside of our programs. We have plans to hire about two more team members this year as we continue to grow. I have some goals in terms of podcast numbers. I am wanting to double our podcast downloads this year. I want to get in front of more people and impact more people. We're also wanting to bring our sales numbers up as well. Our goal for this year is three million. That's such an exciting number. It's on our vision board and we're working towards it. We're on track for it, so we’re excited for that as well. So those are some of my life and business goals. 

DAILY SALES ACTIVITIES

The next question is, what sales activities should I focus on each day? I love this question because I absolutely love sales. There's no one right or wrong way to sell. Selling is serving; selling is helping others solve the problem that they have. We get to sell every single day because we’re a business. Selling means you're getting your offers in front of more people and we want to create the opportunity for people to buy from you every single day. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to hop on Instagram every day and say, “hey, I’m a business owner. Come buy from me today.”That’s not necessarily what selling looks like. It is one way to sell, however, that doesn't need to happen every single day. There are so many different ways to sell. 

I'll share the ways that we sold in our business this week with you. What I love about how I sell is, I am able to sell without spending tons of time on it and without showing up on social media 24/7. The first way we sold this week was with our weekly podcast newsletter. We send this out to our email list every Monday. At the bottom of the newsletter we have a call to action to apply to work with me. We also had a call to action to apply to work with me and my team on both Instagram and our Facebook group, so we sold a few different ways on Monday. On Tuesday we sent out some private invitations to our programs to those who had applied to our program. I review applications every single day. If it looks like a fit, we will send out an invitation to come and join our program. I also shared one of my reels that had a sales call to action. This helped us get in front of more people by sharing it with my audience again because people do need to see things multiple times. On Tuesday I also shared my free class, which is a funnel that sells into one of my offers, on my Instagram stories. We sold a lot of different ways on Tuesday, but none of it took much time. Those are all things that you can delegate to a team member if you don't want to do those yourself. On Wednesday we emailed my list about our current coaching program we have spots available for. We also followed up with all the offers that we had sent out on Tuesday. So there are a few quick ways we sold to our audience without being on social media all day long. You can sell without spending hours and hours in your business. The goal is to continue to grow and create systems so that your business is running for you. If you haven't sold today, this is your quick reminder. Go spend 15 minutes on some type of sales activity, you'll thank me later. 

MY FAVORITE WAYS TO RELAX

The last question of the day is, how do you like to unwind at the end of the day? The way that I like to unwind currently, and this does change depending on the season of the year, is with a bubble bath and then binging my favorite TV show. I'm the type of business owner that deeply believes that your way to unwind gets to look however you want it to. You don’t need to wake up at 5 a.m. every single day and only read personal development books to be successful. Add some play in. Do some things you absolutely love. 

I also like to do a little bit of reading. I love thriller, crime, detective with a drop of drama romance involved. If you have any recommendations, feel free to send them my way. I'm always looking for more books, I go through them pretty quickly. I also like to lay in bed for a bit with Pearl. So that is how I like to unwind. It definitely changes season-to-season. I also like to add in some gratitude as well. I love to journal a few minutes in the morning and in the evening, so I like to do that as I unwind at the end of the day as well. 

Today was such a fun “Ask Me Anything” post. I definitely plan to do more of these. Make sure to hop on my Instagram and keep an eye out for next time. You can also leave us a review and drop a question there. Thank you for hanging out with me. We will see you next week!

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