The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 184: How I Signed New Daily Clients While on Vacation

Today, I am diving into everything you need to know about how I was able to sign new clients every day while I was on vacation. I am going to share what types of clients I enrolled into my business while on vacation recently and some behind the scenes of my business that makes this possible every time I go on vacation.

How I Signed New Daily Clients While on Vacation

By: Melissa Lin

Welcome back to another episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast! I'm really excited to chat about today's topic, as I am for every other topic that we've done here on the podcast. This is one that I get asked about all the time, especially when I'm traveling or if I'm on vacation and you, my audience, can see that I'm doing things. My Instagram stories show that I'm out. Maybe I'm skiing for the day or maybe I'm out exploring for the day. I get so many questions about how we're able to continue to sign new clients, fill our program spots, sell, and do all of these things as I’m out enjoying my life and doing all of the exciting, fun things I have been doing recently and also spending time getting ready for the house and moving into our new home that we've been building for the past year. This is exactly what I'm going to get into in today's episode.

It's so cool that you can create a business that supports your lifestyle, right? I've created a business where I can, and I do, take a whole week off every single month and do whatever I want to do. Even during the week I normally take at least a day or two off without any calls and I spend my time doing the things that I love, whether that’s going for a ski day since I live in Seattle and I live pretty close to a few different mountains, or just doing things that excite me and things that I love doing. In the summer time that's going to be getting back into sailing because we are really excited to get back into that. Anyways, that's what we're going to get into today. Today I’m going to be diving all into what types of clients I enrolled into my business while on vacation, some behind the scenes of my business and how it runs, including sales activities while on vacation, different ways to structure your business so you can be more hands-off while on vacation, and so, so much more.

Types of Clients I Sign on Vacation

The first thing I’m going to get into is what types of clients I enroll into my business while on vacation and what that looks like. I had two pretty big vacations recently. For one I spent a week over at Big Sky Resort in Montana with Ryan and his family. We did an entire week where I really only worked maybe 45 minutes a day, and that was mostly supporting my clients. When I do travel I still love supporting my clients, and I'm going to go into details on what that looks like. I'm going to go into how we prepared for that and what that looks like. It’s very normal for me to take vacations once per month and still be able to grow the business without needing to be in the business all day long as I'm traveling.

I remember maybe two or three years ago when I was traveling in Spain for a week for the first time, I had never been there before, and I blocked off an entire day from exploring so that I could do things in the business. Of course now I have made so many different tweaks to my business that this is no longer the case. Whenever I travel now I make sure that nothing is on my calendar. Back then, this was a few years ago, my business looked very, very different. It was not where it is now, and I did not have nearly the amount of support and team members that I have now supporting me and my business, and it definitely wasn't structured the way it’s structured now. I remember being on calls all day long and I had team members and clients telling me, “go enjoy your vacation.” The point of the story that I'm sharing is when you go on vacation you get to go and live your life. You get to do the things that you want to do. That's also a big reason why you started your business. You do get to have fun along the way. You do get to go and enjoy your vacation, even if you are growing your business and trying to move it to the next level. You truly can do both and you can have it all.

Now let’s get into the structure and I'll walk through some of the types of programs that we typically fill on vacation. We've moved most of my programs, not all, but most of my programs into an evergreen rolling model. What that means is that people can pop in anytime throughout the year as long as we have spots available. Most of our programs can support X amount of people depending on where you're at in your business and what that looks like. At the moment during both of those trips that I mentioned, both the ski trip and then also, I don't think I mentioned this, but I was recently in Scotland for a little over a week, and for both of those we were filling spots for both my Academy and my Mastermind. We signed new clients for both of those programs on both vacations and all of my clients were supported all week long, even as I was traveling. The two big programs that we typically sell when I’m on vacation are my Fierce Business Academy, and this is my program where we support online coaches and service-based business owners to start and sign their first two clients, then scale to $5K a month; The other program is my Six-Figure Fierce Business Mastermind, which is the natural next step for those that graduate the academy to help you scale to $10K months. This program really focuses on expanding from one-to-one to one-to-many by creating group programs, more passive offers, hiring your first few team members, adding in systems, and really streamlining your business so you can be more hands off and go and enjoy more of those vacations that I'm talking about. We also sold a few passive courses on both of those vacations as well through some backend funnels that we had, so that was completely hands off. The clients came from a mix of a few sources. A few were organically on Instagram. One of the Mastermind clients that we enrolled had been on my email list for over six months, so we spent lots of time nurturing that client. A few came through our sales funnels that had learned about me earlier that week right before I went off on vacation. We sent some voice messages back and forth and they enrolled. I'm going to go how I have the time on vacation to have sales conversations, what that looks like, and all of the behind-the-scenes next.

Supporting Clients While on Vacation

So let's get into the behind-the-scenes on how my business runs, including the sales activities while I'm on vacation. You may see that we're signing clients left and right, yet I'm on vacation. How am I doing all of this as I’m out traveling? What I will say is we do have a lot of systems created. We’ve spent the last few years really building these amazing funnels, these amazing systems, and really streamlining our sales process so it can be as easy as possible, because it does get to be easy. It can be easy and I absolutely love what I do. I have so much fun in my business every single day. So here's a little behind the scenes on how my programs were supported. Most of my programs have some type of coaching call each week, regardless of if I'm on vacation or not, so my clients are supported. My clients are number one. They're one of my non-negotiables. Every single day I support my clients and they're always supported regardless if I'm traveling or not. I'll share how each of my programs were supported when I was traveling.

My first program we'll chat about is Fiercely Scale. This is my highest level mastermind where I help my clients move from six figures and scale into multiple six figures. This is a very hands-on program, we have a private Voxer group, mastermind Voxer, private calls with me, and also team calls where my actual team members come and support my clients as well. While I was on vacation my clients were supported inside of Fiercely Scale with a team call with my Facebook ads manager. In my next program, the Six-Figure Fierce Business Mastermind, which is my program where we help our clients scale to $10K months as I had mentioned earlier, they were supported with a co-working session that was led by a support coach. Then in my academy, the Fierce Business Academy, which I mentioned earlier as well, they were supported with a weekly group call with a support coach. So even though I was out traveling, my clients were still being supported with calls and still being supported daily inside of our Slack container or Voxer container depending on what program they’re in. Even as I'm traveling I still like to poke in and say hi and also check on my clients because I absolutely love, love, love doing that. It’s truly my favorite part of the day.

So that’s a little behind the scenes on how my business was still running and supporting clients while I was on vacation. That’s one of the non-negotiables for me and my businesses. Regardless of what's going on, we get to support our clients, clients are number one. Then another big non-negotiable for me personally and my business is, of course, content creation, adding some type of value, and then also is sales. I’ll get into what that looks like in just a second, but I personally do go into all my programs and support my clients daily. What this typically looks like while I’m on vacation is 15 to 30 minutes in the morning and then 15 to 30 minutes in the afternoon/ evening when I do have some time. I carve out that time to sit down, hop into the containers, and support my clients.

Sales Activities While on Vacation

Now let's get into some behind the scenes of sales activities and what this looks like. We are still selling regardless of where I'm at, regardless of what I'm doing. We had things that were pre-scheduled and we also had some things that weren't pre-scheduled. So for example, most of my social content was pre-scheduled, so captions that sort of thing. The only thing that wasn’t 100% pre-scheduled were my Instagram stories because I was recording some of that as I was traveling. However, most everything else was pre-scheduled. I would say 90% of my content in terms of captions and things like that was pre-scheduled and automatically posted for us. So those sales activities were hands off. We also had some other things pre-scheduled, such as emails that went out and then also some things going on inside of our programs. At the end of our clients’ 6-month program they do have the option to re-sign or upgrade into the next container and that's all automated. The podcast was pre-scheduled and ready to go, it’s always pre-scheduled. That's one of the value pieces. Again, a non-negotiable for me is getting that value out for my audience.

In terms of just sales activities, the things that weren't scheduled were the things that really needed to happen live. So, for example, I was going back and forth and answering some quick questions in the DM's with some people who had some questions about our programs. That obviously can't be pre-scheduled, so I set time aside and did that a few minutes per day. I really made anyone who had questions the priority, right? They definitely get the priority if they're coming to me asking questions about how to work with us and that sort of thing. Anything else usually got pushed out a few days just because I was traveling and I do get to set priorities as a business owner and also for me so that I'm not stuck on social media all day long. Anytime I go into social media I'm very, very intentional. It's a very, very big boundary for me. Anytime I go into Instagram, for example, I know exactly what I'm going to be doing. I'm not going to be sitting in there scrolling. I'm either going to be following up with somebody that said they were going to give me a response by a certain date or go in and answer a few quick questions. I always have some type of intention before I hop in. So again, that was something I really couldn't pre-schedule.

As I had mentioned earlier my Instagram stories were also not pre-scheduled, but everything was. It was just those few things and that I was doing a few minutes every single day. The way that I like to do this, and not everyone does it this way, which is totally okay, is I like to take snippets and videos of what's going on throughout the day and then post them on Instagram later that evening after experiencing everything and being with everybody. I personally don't like to take time throughout the day and interrupt my experience and things like that with posting things on Instagram stories, so I may post things a little later, or even the next day. Again, this is your permission slip to do that as well if that's what feels good to you. There are no rules, and that's such an exciting thing about running your own business. You get to do what's going to work for you and your business.

Let’s chat about the sales process. I did not do any sales calls even though we were signing clients every single day as I was on vacation. I actually haven't done a sales call in over two and a half years. I don't do sales calls anymore in my business and my team does not do sales calls either. I know a lot of people have team members do sales calls for them, but we don't do that. We do most of our sales either via email through funnels or by chatting over in the DMs on Instagram or Facebook, whatever platform that we are on. So all of our sales were happening every single day via email or social media. I absolutely love it this way just because it gives me so much flexibility in my business. I can still answer questions the same way I could on a sales call, but in a voice message with somebody who is showing interest or has questions about how to work with us. So we don't do sales calls and we haven't for quite some time. If you want to learn how we do this, we definitely teach our clients different methods of how to do this. It’s not that you need to do it this way, it's just what works for me and the lifestyle that I want to create in the business that I run. It just gives me so much flexibility. Again, for some people it's not their jam, and that's okay. They want to be on sales calls all day long, and that can totally work too. We do teach our clients how to do sales calls, because prior to this I definitely did my fair share of sales calls for quite a few years, and both work. Anything can work as long as you work it.

How to Become More Hands Off While on Vacation

So that was a bit of the behind the scenes on how my business ran while I was on vacation, some of the sales activities while I was on vacation, and things like that. Now let's get into two different ways to structure your business so that you can be more hands-off while on vacation. At the end of the day I want you to be able to enjoy your vacation and create new memories and get those experiences as well. The first thing I want to say is really zoom out and ask yourself, what are some of the things you're currently doing that can either be automated, delegated, or deleted? I'll give you some examples of each.

So first some examples of things that can be automated. If you have an application process in your business, that can be automated. The notifications of acceptance into your program, that can be automated. Your entire onboarding process can be automated. You can also automate a ton of things like social media, pre-scheduling those things out. There is so much that can be automated in your business. The really cool thing about automation, and this is super nerdy, but I absolutely love this stuff, is that it also creates a very seamless client experience. It creates a very smooth onboarding process. You're not needing to reach out ten different times to your new client sharing, okay you need this, then you need this, then you need this. We have it completely streamlined so that they receive their welcome email and they’re automatically onboarded into our course hub. It's very clear and in as few steps as possible so it isn't overwhelming and it’s not too crazy techy as well. Again, automation can really help you streamline some of those things that you're doing in your business.

Things that can be delegated include admin tasks, support emails, scheduling out different things like your program calendars or when your client calls are going to be. You can have people support you with social media as well. For a lot of people, that’s one of the things they outsource first. Some other things include copywriting, creating content, and creating emails. There are so many different things that team members can help you with.

Lastly, some things that can be deleted. I would say anything that's non-urgent and anything that’s not moving the needle forward for you in the next few weeks or even a few months. Those things can be either pushed to the very bottom of your list or deleted completely. For example, if you want to watch a podcast in 2023, a whole year from now, you probably don't need to be spending time on it now. Spend time in the areas that are going to move the needle forward now. Another big thing I would say is really structure your business in a way that's going to support how you want to be living. So for example, if you want to be working a two day work week, then schedule out your coaching calls to your clients so they do land on those two days. Schedule things out and let people know what those expectations are. Add them into your course calendars so that people know when things are going to happen. Again, you get to make up the rules. With me, for example, I pre-schedule. We create and open our calendar one month out. I personally like to batch my coaching calls and batch different things in my business, so I always have certain days that we open and certain times that we open for coaching calls. Our clients know when these are going to happen and how that looks because we send out emails and stuff that they can subscribe to. We make it as easy as possible for our clients.

The last thing I want to leave you with is when you are getting ready to go on vacation, if you want things to be happening in the business while you're on vacation, let your team and clients know that as well. Set that expectation. Let them know that you're going to be going on vacation and what those expectations are. For example, my team and I always have a meeting prior to me going on vacation. Even if you are a solopreneur, have a meeting with yourself. Tell yourself, okay, these are the things that need to happen before I go on vacation. If you have a VA that's supporting you as you're starting to grow your business, get together with your assistant and tell them these are the things that you're going to need support with as you're on vacation. We have a meeting prior to any time I go on vacation so that we can make sure all questions are answered and that everyone is clear on what each person's role is as I'm on vacation. We also let our clients know. So for example, I was in Scotland earlier this month and I was on a plane for over 14 hours, so I let my clients know, “hey, I will be traveling tomorrow. I will be on a plane and I'll be checking Slack or Voxer once I land and I get settled in there. You will be hearing from me, but there might be a bit of a gap.” I also let them know that I will be traveling and also will be checking in and supporting them throughout the day two to three times as I normally would. So we let them know what's happening, we let them know what the expectations are, and so on and so on. We also let them know what the time zone difference is going to be because that definitely didn't change quite a bit as well. I think it was about an eight hour time difference, so it took me a few days with jetlag and things like that, but I definitely got into the groove of things and continued with my usual support as normal. I love supporting my clients regardless of where I'm at in the world and it’s just so cool that we can do that as online business owners.

So today we’ve touched on what types of clients I enrolled into my business while on vacation, behind the scenes of how my business runs even on vacation, including sales activities while on vacation, different ways to structure your business so that you can be more hands off while on vacation, and so much more. We will see you in the next episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast!

Topics we cover include:

Sales activities while on vacation
Structuring your business so you can be hands off on vacation
Supporting clients while on vacation

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(08:24) The types of clients I typically sign while on vacation

(13:53) How my clients were supported while I was on vacation

(17:28) Behind the scenes of sales activities in my business

(23:20) Ways to become more hands off in your business

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