209: Growth Is Supposed To Feel Uncomfortable

Melissa [: 00:00:00

Hey. Hey. Hey. Burnout to all out listeners. Excited to bring to you today one of my internal paying clients, one of their top favorite topics that I coach to inside of the academy, inside of my business coaching programs, all the way up to my mastermind, is around strategic goal setting. Because the reality is if we're not really strategic with our goals, let's be honest, they're just an expensive hobby. I hope you really enjoy this episode. And if you love it, know that I have got a brand new downloadable document that you can pull after listening to this episode.

Melissa [: 00:00:42

Check the show notes. We'll give you the information, and you can get the templates yourself to work out your goals on paper and make them real. I hope you enjoy it. Need some effective tactical advice that actually helps you get results and makes a real difference in your life and business? You've come to the right place. If you're finding yourself here today, it means you're getting ready to gain serious traction in your business, rapidly multiply your income and impact, and you're ready to make it happen while living all out. Guys, I'm Melissa Henault, your trustworthy corporate dropout turned 6 figure business burnout turned happy and healthy CEO of a multimillion dollar online business. And you're listening to the Burnout to All Out podcast. On this show, we're serving up innovative growth strategies, simple implementation methods to put them into practice, and action stimulating inspiration tailored specifically for the modern entrepreneur.

Melissa [: 00:01:49

Let's dive in. Hey. Hey, guys. Happy Thursday. We are doing some goal setting training today. I'm so excited about this. You guys should have gotten an email. We've got 2 different tracks.

Melissa [: 00:02:12

We've got a LinkedIn training track for our network marketers, and we have a LinkedIn training track for our online business entrepreneurs outside of network marketing. Just as a footnote, we already have a goal setting workshop in the archives for our network marketers on the network marketing track. If you're in network marketing and you watch this, like, there's gonna be tons of great nuggets, but know that you have one very specific to that industry and that business in your archives. This training is gonna be very specific to online entrepreneurs who are recruiting clients and selling specific products and services online, where we're gonna be talking about goal setting and tracking metrics and success and all that stuff. Alright. So with that, if you don't have your goal setting book, just know that it's been emailed to you. If you watch the replay later, it'll be filed up in the drive and you'll be able to print it and download it. Okay? Okay.

Melissa [: 00:03:10

So let's get going. Guys, first of all, this goal setting workshop is 2 folds. Okay? We can't talk about goals without talking about why you're going after them in the first place. So the first piece of this workshop is gonna be a little bit more around mindset and why the hell you're going after your goals in the first place because it's gonna drive you. And then we're gonna get into the actual goals themselves and a tried and true strategy I've been using since my corporate days as a leader in business. I'm gonna be teaching you guys the principles I follow in every business that I run. And I hope that by the end of this presentation, you have clear direction and a game plan for 2022, but you can also take what you've learned and rinse and repeat it every year. Because what I'm about to share with you, I do every year.

Melissa [: 00:04:08

As a matter of fact, my goals and metrics for my business are right beside my computer. Okay? I am gonna be teaching you exactly what I do. That is my motto. I only teach you guys what I'm actually doing. Right? And I think we're doing pretty well. We, like, crushed our 1st month goal this year. Okay? Alright. So here's the thing.

Melissa [: 00:04:30

Growth I wanna start by just saying this, and good morning, everybody. Growth is uncomfortable. When it gets difficult, what are you falling back on to keep you going? Growth is uncomfortable. In business, if you're not stretching and growing, then you're not getting uncomfortable, you're complacent, you're doing things that have worked in the past, and they're not going to get you where you want to go. Right. So my point in all of this is that growth in business is very much like growth at the gym. Right? Like, you only make progress at the gym because you get uncomfortable. Maybe you get a little bit sore, but that's how you tear down muscle tissue and build more.

Melissa [: 00:05:07

Right? So that's why I wanna start with a little bit of mindset today and really do a little bit of vision casting on why the hell you're going after this business in the first place, and then we're gonna get into the actual strategies because it's so important. There are highs and lows in entrepreneurship. And the one thing I can say for sure is that the entrepreneurs who rise above, the entrepreneurs who succeed have the mental tenacity and capacity and resilience to move forward even when it's tough. Right? And how do we move forward even when it's tough? Because we're crystal clear on what this is going to do for us. Right? On what this is gonna do for us. So we're gonna talk about why, and then we're gonna get into the what and the how today. Okay? And the why is simply, and I want you guys to engage. I want you to share in the chat.

Melissa [: 00:06:02

Okay? The why really is what lights you up? Why are you growing the business that you are growing? Why are you growing the business that you're growing? And I want us to I want us to really kind of talk about this because I am here to tell you, if you tell me it's for financial freedom, you will fall flat on your face because you have no emotional attachment to what that financial freedom is going to do for you. If it's to be my own boss, great. I want you guys to unpack this even further. I need to understand why you want financial freedom. What is this going to do for you and your family? Right? What does the unlimited income source do for you? What does the passive income source do for you? What does working for yourself do for you? If you say to yourself, I want to run my business this year because I wanna do life on my terms. I wanna book my own schedule. That's great. It's not gonna keep you going every single day.

Melissa [: 00:07:11

What's gonna keep you going every single day is a crystal clear visualization of actually what you are doing with the free time that you have, the lifestyle you're actually living, the output of the income that you're going to make. Right? It's the visualization and the emotional experience before it happens. Getting a little bit woo with you guys, but that is what's going to drive you forward to grow your business. Right? So what I wanna start with is we're gonna do a little workshop here. I want you guys to get your goal setting out. And the way I coach this is we're gonna do the first piece that we're gonna talk about, you guys are ultimately gonna put on the front side of an index card. And then the 2nd piece, you guys are gonna be putting it on the back side of your index card. Okay? So I'll be walking you through that.

Melissa [: 00:08:12

I love this, Anne. She wants to own her own home. Okay. That is amazing. Now, Anne, the next step is what I want you to start practicing every single day is for 5 minutes a day. Visualize yourself in that home. Journal about it. What does it look like? What does it feel like? We actually have the ability to live in the future and simulate emotion that creates the excitement that allows us to propel forward in motion.

Melissa [: 00:08:43

Right? So I want you thinking about what's the color schemes in this new house? What's the design? How are you going to decorate it? Who are you gonna have over first? What kind of parties are you gonna host? So it's these very detail oriented emotional attachments to your future that get you moving. Yes. Yes. Somebody's saying this is how we legit create our life absofreakinlutely. And I'm gonna walk you guys through some scenarios that have come to full fruition for me. Okay? Now, here's the thing and the reason I'm gonna challenge you here in a minute is I want you to think about short term and long term goals. Short term and long term whys. Okay? Why am I challenging you to think short term and long term whys? The reason I'm challenging you to think about both is because the number one fatal mistake most business owners make is that they make this huge audacious goal for the end of the year or long term vision with their business, but they don't reward themselves it smaller milestones along the way.

Melissa [: 00:09:51

Why is rewarding yourself with smaller milestones along the way so important? It's so important because you are giving your body and your mind some positive feedback of we're on our way, and here is a reward of a taste of what we're headed towards. Here's a little experience to keep the pallet wet for where we are headed. If you don't have baby milestones along the way, number 1, there's no positive reinforcement to keep you moving. Right? But number 2, how do you know you're progressing if you're not measuring milestones along the way? And if you're not measuring milestones along the way, you just have an expensive hobby. I'm gonna say that one more time and I'm gonna elaborate on it. If you don't have specific metrics and goals around your business this year, you're running an expensive hobby. Okay? You're running an expensive hobby. Okay? So it's very important.

Melissa [: 00:10:56

I believe and live by creating short term goals that you can check off every quarter or even every month. So I'll give you an example of one that I do right now. When we hit the mark within 10% of our sales goal, each launch, I spend a day at the spa. Okay? A full day. I don't care how much it costs, lady books it and I go. Right? And so that is a immediate positive reinforcement, right, to move the needle and holds me accountable to measuring what the hell is an actual measurement of success at this point in my business. How do I even know I'm tracking if I don't kind of reverse engineer my goals? Right? So I hope this is making sense. I love you guys keep sharing your goals over here.

Melissa [: 00:11:51

Alright? Your why. Okay? So what I want you to be writing down, what excites you today? Today. So not just the money, but what can you do with it that excites you? Okay? It may be to get laundry done. It may be meaning hiring someone else to do it. It may be investing in a house cleaner for a little bit more time. Right? It may be getting credit cards paid off. Maybe your initial goal this year in your business is to get some debt paid off. Right? Maybe it's to pay your credit card off every month, right, and not have a recurring debt on your credit card.

Melissa [: 00:12:35

Right? Maybe it's like me, short term goals are this, like, a day off at the spa on a Friday. Right? But what can you do to create some positive reinforcement today that you can ultimately measure and reward yourself for? Okay? I'll walk you guys through some short term examples I've been through over the last couple of years of growing my business. One of the first things I aimed to do was to be able to invest in someone to help me out with my business. Right? That was actually a positive reward for me. Right? So one of the first things I did was hire a VA a couple hours a week to do some things for me when I started getting revenue coming in. Then the next one was I wanted to pay off my college loan debt. Why? I could visualize that net of $1500 a month I was paying on college loan debt could go to vacations with my family or upgrades in our new construction of our home. Right? But having those short term goals is so important.

Melissa [: 00:13:37

My current short term goal was most recently to pay cash for a trip to Disney with our family, which I did, and we're leaving on Saturday. My next short term goal is to take my husband on a trip to Sedona for a week later this year. Right? So what are your short term goals? And in a little bit, we're gonna talk about how do you measure it And how do you know that you've arrived? Right? How do you measure it? How do you know that you've arrived? Now, the next one is, this is the bigger question, right? This is the bigger question. What excites you in the next 365 days? Right? So what excites you in the next 365 days? What is the profit from your business going to do for you? What is it going to do for you? I wanna see in the chat. I want you guys to share in the next 365 days. Be audacious. Throw it out there. What is this business that you're growing on LinkedIn going to do for you? What are some audacious goals? So again, I'll take you back to when I first launched my first big business.

Melissa [: 00:14:49

My first 365 day goal was to actually quit corporate. That wasn't something I could do in a month. I could reward myself along the way with getting my nails done or paying off debt. Right? But I couldn't quit my job until I retained enough earning monthly that I could. Right? Now, being the business owner that I am, I reverse engineered and knew exactly how much money every month I needed to be bringing in in order to quit. And that was how I calculated my retirement date and my milestones each month in growth in my business to make sure I was tracking along so I could retire. Yes. Pay off your mortgage.

Melissa [: 00:15:34

Okay. I wanna hear with from you guys. What is your 365 day long term goals? My next one after retiring from corporate was I wanted to move out of the city and actually be able to invest in a home with a big backyard. We did that 3 years ago. My goal last year, my 365 day goal last year was to take the net profit from my business and invest in a pool. We did that. Right? My next big goal was to pay for my kids to go to private school. Right? It's what the money is going to do for you or the lifestyle it's gonna allow you to live.

Melissa [: 00:16:15

Right? I want you guys to really lean into the emotion and the why of the business, not just a dollar value or time freedom. It's what are you gonna do with the time? What are you gonna do with the money? So my goal this year over the next 365 days, and you guys can hold me accountable to it, is to take the net profit from my business and invest in building a mountain home that will become an Airbnb. Now, I visualize it every day. Guess what I do every morning? For 5 minutes, I meditate and visualize being nestled into a warm leather couch with a fire in front of me with a monopoly board in front of me with hot cocoa and my kids and my husband playing a board game in the dead of winter with snow coming down outside, a hot tub steaming out back. You guys getting me? Are you getting me? Right? And this feeling that I've manifested this and I've made it happen. Now I know I can do it because I've done it year over year over year, right? Visualizing it and making it happen. Right? So the key is, how are you visualizing and prioritizing your why that's long term beyond the dollar value, because you will have wall kicking moments we all do as entrepreneurs. And it's knowing where you're headed beyond the dollar value that's gonna keep you going.

Melissa [: 00:17:51

Okay? Now your homework assignment with that is I want you to take what excites you short term and long term, and I want you to put it on the front of an index card that I want you to keep in your bathroom that there's no way you cannot see it when you brush your teeth every morning. Because I know some of you maybe aren't in the meditating, maybe you feel like you don't have the time. I want you to be able to see it every day. Okay? Alright. So that is the why, my friends. Now we're gonna get into what I call the what and the how. Okay. We know why we wanna do it.

Melissa [: 00:18:28

Right? But now we've got to get into the actual business planning. And that is, what are we gonna do and how are we gonna measure it and how are we gonna know that we've arrived? Right? Who's ready to talk about that? Okay. Alright. So we are now going to get into many of you may be familiar with this term, SMART goals. If you know what the word, the acronym s m a r t means, I'd love for you guys to put it in the chat. S m a r t. I want to see you put it in the chat. I love what someone's saying about massages.

Melissa [: 00:19:01

One of my goals last year was to make enough money to be able to book a massage every single week without even considering how much it cost. So I actually do an adjustment and a deep tissue massage every week. That's on top of the day I spend at the spa when our conversion events hit our financial goals. Right? So I love that. I love that. Okay. So you can totally do it. It's totally possible.

Melissa [: 00:19:31

I have my appointment on Friday. Thanks to Blady. She booked it for me. Okay. Now, who knows what smart means? It means s m a r t, smart goals. You guys can live by this. I don't care what business you're in. You can live by these principles.

Melissa [: 00:19:48

S is your goals need to be specific. K. Specific. Right? Yes. M. M means it needs to be measurable, you need to be able to measure your goal. Is it amount of revenue? Is it in amount of time? Is it a number of clients? Is it amount of product moved over a period of time? Right? But it has to be measurable. The number one mistake I see, especially folks in the direct sales space is they come to me and say, they have this, like, title they wanna achieve.

Melissa [: 00:20:19

That's all they know is I wanna hit this title. They have no idea how much product they have to move in their business to actually hit that goal. Same with my online entrepreneurs. They'll say, I wanna do $1,000,000 in sales this year. And I sit down with my private clients, and we sit down and start doing the math. They've never thought about the math of it, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that in a couple of minutes. They never actually thought about how many clients they actually need to bring in at what particular price point and how frequently to actually hit the revenue goal. I'll say it like I said a minute ago.

Melissa [: 00:20:53

If you don't have specific measurable metrics and goals for your business, it's a really expensive hobby. It is a really expensive hobby. Okay? I can speak to my own personal experience on this. So when I started and I launched my very first business in coaching, I had no idea guardrails or concept on what to charge, and I just threw it out there. I charged $100 a person for my LinkedIn training. Right? Can you guys imagine that every master was once a disaster, right? I had nothing to base it off of. I hope that after today, you guys have a foundation to base your pricing off of your goals for the year. And in that 1st year, I made $1200 because what I put out to the universe was this is my worth.

Melissa [: 00:21:43

I have no specific plan. I have no idea how many clients or customers I want to attract because I have no financial goals. I'm just starting a business. I'm open for business. I'm going to coach people on LinkedIn, right? The next year, I got incredible coaching that I'm bringing to you guys that we're gonna talk about obviously today, and get really in the depths of in a masterclass I'm doing next week. But that is, well, how much money do you wanna make this year? How hard do you wanna work? How many clients do you wanna take on? Did you know there's really simple math that you can follow to actually reverse engineer how much you should be charging for your program or your private coaching based off of your financial goals. And I'm here to tell you, you can start and price high. You can.

Melissa [: 00:22:29

Right? You just have to stand in your power and know that you're worth it. Right? And come up with your financial goals. Okay? Alright. So with that, specific is s, measurable is the m. A, action oriented. So we may have specific goals that are measurable, but if you don't have a game plan of literally the action you're going to take to grow your business, it's not gonna work. Now, obviously, you guys are in this LinkedIn training. So obviously, you have a plan.

Melissa [: 00:23:01

You're using LinkedIn to attract clients. Right? Attract business partnerships. But how? And how are you holding yourself accountable on a weekly basis to do that is a deeper question. Right? There's the what and then there's the how are you gonna do it. Right? So the what may be LinkedIn attraction marketing, but then how are you holding yourself accountable to it every week, every month? How do you know when you're arriving? How do you know that you're hitting your goals? Okay. So that's what we're gonna talk about. R is realistic. Right? It's the realistic measurable goals.

Melissa [: 00:23:33

Realistic within reason. You want your stretch goals. I always throw stretch numbers out there for our team. And then if we hit within 10%, I'm happy. Right? I put our stretch goal out for our 1st launch this year. Our goal was a 108,000 in January. We did a 100 on the nose. I was happy.

Melissa [: 00:23:50

It was a reasonable goal. And it was a phenomenal stretch goal. And I take you back to pricing and saying that every master was once a disaster, right? I started with no financial plan, no goal or idea of how to price my business. Right? And then the next year, I knew exactly my revenue goal. I knew exactly how much monthly I wanted to pull in. I knew exactly what my operating costs were. I knew exactly what to price our program at, which is what we're doing and live by now. Right? It's very organized.

Melissa [: 00:24:20

I have stepped into my power and gone from being a messy entrepreneur to a true CEO who knows their numbers and has a path and a process that's measurable. It's gone from being a hobby, an expensive hobby, to a very profitable business that drives results for our clients. Right? Okay. T. The t is time sensitive. How are you going to measure it? How are you gonna hold yourself accountable? We're gonna be revisiting that towards the end because we're gonna use our positive reinforcement short term goals to reward ourselves based off of our time sensitive metrics that we're going to measure. Okay? I want you to share, like, be vulnerable. The coaches in here, this is a family.

Melissa [: 00:25:09

We want to be able to be authentic and share our audacious goals for this year and inspire others. Okay? So this is a question for you to think about. What is your current revenue per month? What is your current revenue per month and the number of either clients or products that are being sold each month. This is important for you guys to really do a state of the union. Where are you in your business right now? Okay. How many clients are you currently coaching? Or how many customers do you currently have? How much product have you sold this month? You need to know. And last month too, where is your baseline? K? And then I want you to ask yourself in the next 365 days, k, or let's just say by December 22nd December 2022, what do you want your revenue per month to be? What do you want your revenue per month to be? And how does that and we're gonna unpack this in a couple of minutes. How does that equate to how many clients you're bringing in each month? What's the shift between today and the end of the year? Put my hands right here.

Melissa [: 00:26:30

We're look at it. Here we go. Today, I can't figure I'm like a mirror image of myself today and the end of the year. And there's a differential in number, right monthly of where you are today and where you want to be. And the most simplistic way to move forward and create milestones on that is take the year end goal and where you are today and divide by 12 the incremental growth in addition or 10, since we're actually in February now, 10 months instead of 12. Right? The incremental addition that you need to make to get there. So simple math is that if you're making $2,000 a month right now and you wanna be making $12,000 a month by December, then you need to increase your revenue by $1,000 each month. You need a growth of $1,000 each month.

Melissa [: 00:27:36

Right? So you can track that and hold yourself accountable. Next month, did you hit 3? Next month, did you hit 4? Are you celebrating when you hit that? What does that number mean? What does that mean in your business? How many more clients do you need to bring in? Do you need to change your pricing? If you're gonna shoot towards this goal, we're gonna talk about that in just a second. The other thing I want you to think about is revenue per month by the end of the year. You've got your total number of clients, but also what's your total revenue for the year goal. Right? I want you to think about that. If you're making incremental growth over the year, can you throw a number out there That makes you a little nervous? You know why we get nervous? It's our primitive brain trying to protect us. Some of us are afraid to put a number out there because we're fearful, we will not hit it. K.

Melissa [: 00:28:35

I'm gonna say that again. Sometimes we don't wanna put a number out there because we're fearful we will not hit it. That is our primitive brain trying to protect us from failure. Okay? I do not want you guys operating off of fear of failure. Rather, I want you operating out of faith. Because faith and that vision and that why are gonna take you way further. And when you're starting to write that number down for the next 365 days and you start to get fearful, I want you to say, that's cute. That's cute.

Melissa [: 00:29:14

That's my primitive brain trying to protect me, but I know I'm capable. I know where I'm headed, and I'm putting this damn pen to paper, and I'm owning this financial goal for this year because I know that I'm in it to win it, and I can achieve. And I have a vision of where I'm going, what this is going to do for me. Right? Was this making sense? Okay. So what is your 365 day revenue for the year goal or 365 day monthly revenue for the year? We would love to hear what you're committing to. We'd love to hear it. Okay? Alright. For our business, our stretch goal for the revenue for 2022 is 1,400,000.

Melissa [: 00:29:58

I know that. And what I'm gonna share with you in a couple of minutes is how we have it mapped out based off of our programs, the pricing, how many we anticipate will convert at each event. Obviously, your numbers don't have to be as big as mine. Right? I started 6 years, 7 years ago. Right? Maybe your numbers are 10 times bigger than mine, even more awesome, whatever. Okay. So the next thing I wanna ask you some questions before we get into taking some action. Let's see.

Melissa [: 00:30:31

Could you repeat how the incremental monthly growth method works? Yes. And we'll actually talk a little bit more about it in a minute. But the bottom line, I probably need to get a flip chart out here so we can actually draw some numbers. I might have to do that with our next workshop. I'm doing something similar in our masterclass next week, but we're gonna get really into the numbers. So I might try to see if I can get a big whiteboard up here to, like, share with you guys. So let's say I wanna do simple math. Let's say it's February and you're making $2,000 a month.

Melissa [: 00:31:02

And by December, you wanna be making $10,000 a month. Okay? Well, there's 10 months in the year to catch up, and there's a I'm sorry. A 12 did I say 12? You wanna be making $12,000 by the end of the month. I'm trying to make the math really simple. The bottom line is if you're going from 2,000 a month to 12,000 a month and you wanna be able to do that in a 10 month period, how can you chart monthly your progress towards that goal? Simple math here is that there's 10 months ahead, and there's a $10,000 differential per month in payment. So if you can grow your sales by 1,000 per month, and so you will work your way up to 12,000. So in February, if you're making 2,000, and in March, your sales are 3,000. And in April, they're 4,000.

Melissa [: 00:32:05

And in May, they're 5,000. Right? So that's, like, really simple math to be able to track. But the bottom line is, no matter what your number is, you can take your base number, right, and you can subtract it from your year end milestone monthly revenue, and that's the difference, whatever that total number is. Now you need to take that difference and divide it by the number of months you have left in the year. And that when you divide it by the number of months left in the year, it gives you bite sized nibbles monthly of what you need to grow to slowly meet your revenue goal over time. Now, obviously, we don't live in a vacuum. So what you may find is that you have these massive cash injections with certain clients that you gain because of a conversion event or a lead or a podcast, or there's a million reasons you're gonna see and you guys would see this in our business where we have highs and lows and sales. Yes, we have a projection.

Melissa [: 00:33:11

On average, we can do the math over the year. But the reality is in January, on a certain date, we open cart. In February, on a certain date, we open cart for a mastermind. This summer, I'm taking the entire summer off from launches. How many of you would love to be able to manage your business and forecast cast it in a way that you make your money around the time you wanna take off. Right? So we have it completely mapped out where we will do our conversion events, our launches, and they're around the summer. We're not doing one this summer at all, but we have a financial plan to make it happen. And my team knows as long as we hit our numbers through May, we don't have to do a launch this summer.

Melissa [: 00:33:55

But if we don't hit our numbers, we have to pull up by our boot straps and do a launch this summer. Okay. I love this. I love this. Alright. So some things to consider. Do you have the capacity for your goal? If you're making this huge audacious goal with clients, and we'll talk about this in a minute, do you have the capacity to serve them? Do you have enough hours in the day? And if not, maybe you need to change your pricing. Maybe your pricing needs to go up to meet your financial goal and the time that's in your calendar.

Melissa [: 00:34:23

And then how will you know you're on target and trending towards those goals monthly? Right? We talked about that a little bit. That's what we're gonna talk about here. Alright. So I'm gonna get into the what. We're gonna get into this next sheet in just a second, but you guys might wanna take a couple notes on this before we get into the action, the a. The a, SMRA, the action, which is the action you're gonna take. And I wanna get into a little bit of the measure, a little bit more of the measure, the s and the m, specific and measurable. I wanna talk about this for just a second.

Melissa [: 00:34:53

Okay? Okay. 2 things to consider. I want you guys to write this down. Number 1 is what is your revenue goal for the year? And number 2 is what is your profit goal for the year? These are different. Okay? Your revenue goal and your profit goal are different. Revenue is cash in. Profit is less all of your expenses including taxes, right? Operating expenses, your investments in development, like this program, right? Anything you're investing back into your business. So if you're shooting for $50,000 a year, like Fiona is, now if that's your revenue goal, what's the actual profit from that? Right? So that's something I want you guys thinking about.

Melissa [: 00:35:35

Right? Okay. And the average online entrepreneur, your profit margins are about 40 to 50%. Right? 40 to 50%. Okay. So I want you guys to keep that in mind just as being a good business manager there to to keep that in mind. Now, let's say so for instance, if you wanna hit 500 k for the year, your profit margins as an online business owner are gonna be about percent. Let's just make it simple math for this exercise. You're gonna make about 250 that you're bringing home in net profit outside of revenue after expenses.

Melissa [: 00:36:11

So want you guys keeping that in mind. That wasn't something I thought about when I first launched my business, right? Those are things to think about. So some of you might need to bump your number up now, right? Or some of you thinking, okay, maybe I need to bump my number up a little bit, right? Okay. So this is what I want you to think about. How many clients or products do you need to sell to hit that revenue goal? We're gonna reverse engineer our goals. We're gonna reverse engineer our goals. Okay? How many clients or products do you need to sell to hit your revenue goal based on your current pricing? So if you let's say I'm just gonna stick with the 500 k. Let's say you wanna hit 500 k in sales this year in revenue.

Melissa [: 00:36:54

Okay? You can skin a cat a lot of different ways, can't you? How can you make that 500 k? Well, if you price your coaching services at 10 ks a client, you only need 50 clients this year. However, you can also make 500 ks by finding 2 50 clients and pricing your services at 2 ks. You guys follow me on this, you can recruit more clients into your business at a lower price point and still hit the 500 ks. But you have to think about capacity. How are you going to serve 250 clients at 2 ks to meet a 500 ks revenue goal for the year? You guys, there's lots of knobs you can twist and turn. But this is reality. This is where hobbies become a real business because you're actually looking at the numbers and asking yourself realistically, okay, I wanted to make a half $1,000,000 this year, but I'm pricing my program at 2 ks. And there's only 24 hours in a day.

Melissa [: 00:38:01

How am I gonna make that happen? Or do I need to raise my prices? Or do I need to change my financial goal and be more realistic with where I am with my pricing? Do I need to drop my revenue goal for the year to be more realistic? Is this making sense to you guys? Alright. Capacity becomes a real concern, right? And so you need to be realistic with that. You don't wanna bite off more than you can chew. Right? Okay. Now is the how, which is the a, the action. How are you gonna do it? How are you gonna do it? So I like to talk about the 3 i's in growing a business online. Okay. And that's on here on your sheet.

Melissa [: 00:38:43

You need to spend a third of your time in each eye. You need to spend a third of your time in each eye. The first eye is introduce. How will you hold yourself accountable to growing your network weekly? Right? How on a weekly basis, you guys are in LinkedIn training, so you should be able to hold yourself accountable to spending a third of your literally a third of your time growing your network. Yes, a third of your time introducing yourself on LinkedIn and and building that credibility. Right? The second I is invite. What are you doing to hold yourself accountable to presenting your products or services to people? Inviting people to take a look at what you have to offer. Or how are you manifesting getting into the position of being earning the right to ask people if this is a good fit for them, if this is something they need or want.

Melissa [: 00:39:34

Right? To take a look at what you have to offer, to create interest. Right? So for instance, we do a lot of conversion events, And we'll talk about that. But we do our launches where we give people some time with me, some FaceTime, and then we open the cart and invite them in. We invite them in. I have it mapped. I have it scheduled. I have it my moments of invite all year long. We just had one in January, we'll have one in February, we'll have one in March.

Melissa [: 00:39:59

You guys can see I know the pricing. I know the conversion rates. I know everything. Right? And I want you guys to be there too. Okay? I want you guys to get there too. Okay. So the 3rd eye is invest a third of your time in your business. This is your action for goal setting and really building your business this year is how are you holding yourself accountable to the teachings and the trainings for yourself to reach your year end goal? And congratulations, you guys are in an academy where you're learning a lot of that stuff, right? And how are you continuously investing in your clients, so that you're not just recruiting and bringing clients in, but you're serving the ones who've come.

Melissa [: 00:40:44

Many times, you're so excited to get the sale, And now you're moving on to the next sale. But what is your business plan to serve the clients you have today? Because I can tell you from our own experience, there is no better client than a renewed client because they've loved the program and gotten results. It is a much easier sell for a client to renew with you than it is to go find a cold lead and convert them. It takes a lot more time. So the challenge with that third eye is in that three eyes, you should spend a third of your time growing your network, a third of your time inviting earning a right to ask people to take a look, take a consult call, those types of things, run your conversion events. The 3rd eye, a third of your time needs to be broken into 2 categories, investing in yourself as a business owner, and investing in your clients, Making sure they're getting the transformation they invested in, because nothing will grow your business more than word-of-mouth of success of your clients. Right? Okay. So I hope this is helping make sense for you guys.

Melissa [: 00:41:49

Alright. Now one of the things I want you guys to think about is I talked about conversion events. Right? So we're talking about action. What action are you taking? You can recruit clients a number of different ways. Right? But one of them, for instance, let's go to the 500 k goal. Let's say your action and finding new clients is going to be straight up recruitment on LinkedIn. Right? And this is where you guys have to do the math. You know the price point of your offerings.

Melissa [: 00:42:19

Right? Let's say you wanna bring in 50 clients a year at $10,000 a pop. Let's say you run some kind of group coaching program. Right? And in order to hit your $500,000 a year goal to pay your net profit of 250 k. Right? You need 50 clients at 10 ks per pop. Now this gets into the calculation. Well, how do I map that out? Well, if you need 50 clients, you simply take that 50 and divide by 12 if you want monthly milestones to track. So what is your total number of clients you want to attract? And then can you divide that by 12 and give yourself a milestone every month? So in this scenario, you would need 4 new clients a month recruited off of LinkedIn and closed into your program at 10 k a pop in order to hit your 500 k goal. Is this making sense? Right now, something to consider that we keep in mind is there are really slow months.

Melissa [: 00:43:25

Okay? The summer is super slow, we learned conversion events suck in the summertime. I'd rather bust my ass around the summer and not do them during the summer. People are out and about, especially post COVID. When the virus disappears for a little while, people go crazy and they're trying to make up all their travel over the summertime. It was a disaster trying to launch last summer won't do it again. So you may need to look at how you're charting your monthly sales and compensate if you're you know, they're seasonally areas that you're not gonna really hit your financial goal. How can you make up for it somewhere else? We find that January March are really great months to launch, and so are October November. So we have audacious goals those months, Right? So we're not in it for a hobby anymore.

Melissa [: 00:44:15

We are legit business owners who know how to forecast and plan. So maybe you tweak your client goals around certain low months, right to meet your revenue goals. Hope this is making sense. Okay. Now, for those of you who are doing more kind of conversion events like I do, and maybe you're using LinkedIn to recruit people into an opt in for a webinar that there you will pitch them, right? Then you've got to get really savvy with understanding a couple of different things. Right? First of all, you have to decide how many conversion events am I willing to do this year. And let's say you have a 500 k goal. Let's be simple.

Melissa [: 00:45:01

Let's say you have a 500 k goal. Then if you're committed to do 4 conversion events a year, simple math, you need to do a 125 k in revenue each launch. You do 4 launches, a 125 k each. This is where you guys are gonna have to sit down and do your own math if you're gonna be doing conversion events. Okay? Now if your goal is for conversion events for the year, I'm gonna funnel them through LinkedIn and have people register for my conversion event. How many clients now do I need to convert to a sale in my conversion event in order to meet our revenue goals. Okay? So if you do the math, I'm just keeping it to our example. If you want to hit a 125 k for that launch, and you're pricing your program at 10 k, then you need to do the math on that.

Melissa [: 00:45:56

You need 13 clients to opt in. You need 13 clients to opt in simple math, take the 125 divided by your price point, and get the number of people that you need to actually commit to your program. Okay? Now, I'm gonna take it one more step, which might make some of your heads blow, but I'm gonna go there anyway. You need to know your conversions, your conversion rates. We've learned that conversion rates are much higher with organic leads, people that we've built rapport with over on LinkedIn, then a cold lead off of an ad. The reason I'm saying this is because you're gonna have to reverse engineer how many registrants you need to show up to that event in order to convert to the number you need. So for instance, why were we within 8 grand of our sales goal for our launch this 1st month? Because we knew exactly what we were shooting for. We knew we needed a certain amount we needed.

Melissa [: 00:47:02

I can tell you. We needed 1300 people to register for the event for an estimated 2 and a half percent conversion rate, knowing those numbers would convert to a sale. Do you guys see how I've gone from being a hot mess entrepreneur to knowing my numbers? It's never guesswork anymore. It's never a surprise. And I don't want you guys to spend a year in surprise. I want you to own your damn numbers. I want you to know how to do the math. I want you to be able to track it and crush it this year.

Melissa [: 00:47:37

Track it and crush it. Okay. So what we know in this example is that you need 260 registrants in order to convert at let's say an average of 5%, because let's say half your leads come organic, half of them come from ads. I'm just throwing it out there. You need 260 people to opt into your free workshop in order to convert the sale. I hope this is making sense and helping you guys out a little bit. Alright. So let's wrap up and have some call to action.

Melissa [: 00:48:06

So you do need to make sure that your goals are realistic. I think the exercise of looking at your year end goal and then thinking about pricing and thinking about capacity and thinking about how many clients you really need to take in is going to help you assess if your goal is realistic, right? It's got to be stretched but realistic. T time bound and the SMART time bound. How are you going to measure your success? I think that I've given you guys a path to really start thinking about what's my year end goal? How can I divide that by 12 in growth to meet that goal? And how do I measure it and make sure I'm on track? And I've got a monthly tracker for you guys here. I'm a show it to you in just a second. So in summary, let me just kind of summarize this with a bow. Number 1, you must be super clear on why you are doing this in the first place. I want your short term wise and your long term wise on the front of your note card.

Melissa [: 00:49:08

K? On the back of your note card, I want you to go back to the first page of your SMART goals workshop, and I want you to write down on the back what is your current revenue per month, and then what is it in 365 days? And what is your final financial goal, revenue and profit? And I want you to revisit these every day while you're brushing your teeth so that you are very crystal clear on your specific revenue goals, profit goals, knowing your numbers, measurable through tracking it monthly, which we'll talk about here in just a second. Action oriented, so knowing exactly how you're gonna get there. We talked about the 3 i's. Realistic, do you have a realistic price point, realistic stretch goal, realistic capacity? And then T time bound, which really goes along with measurable, you need to be able to measure it and track it, showing yourself that you're winning along the way and celebrating it. So with that, Jackie has put together a little tracker for you guys, which I live by. We do it in our own business, where you guys can take your goals monthly and write them on the sheet of paper, and you can have it in front of your computer so that if you've got a team you work with, my team gets our numbers every month. They see the p and l. They see what we spend, what we make, what our overhead is, if we're in the red, if we're in the green.

Melissa [: 00:50:41

But I want you tracking your revenue per month And I want you putting in here what your goals are, what's your goal? Where are you today? State right now, State of the Union in February, and then go to the end December where you want to be. And then the difference between those 2 in revenue is that some total growth you need to be taking this year, take that sum total, divide it by the number of months you have left, and add those increments in each month. Okay? Shoot for your goal. Again, I'll remind you of this super simple, simplistic example would be if you're currently making 2,000 a month in February and you're making 12,000 a month by December, 12 minus 2 is 10, there's 10 months left, divide that by 10. That's 1,000 in growth per month, that needs to be in here. Now you're the only one who knows the price point on your business. So if you're charging $500 a pop for whatever it is you're offering, then you need 2 more clients per month to hit that additional 1,000 in growth in in revenue. I hope this is making sense to you guys.

Melissa [: 00:51:54

I would love to see you guys do the work on this. I'll actually just throw a challenge out there for those of you who are in the workshop right now that anyone by next Friday, you guys take screenshots and share with us in the group, and I will be raffling off and sending somebody a awesome gift for participating and setting goals. So with that, let's see. Thank you for your calendar and sharing how you got where you are and what you learned along the way. Running, owning a business is not for the weary. That said, what an amazing personal professional opportunity. Absolutely. You will feel so much more in control when you know your numbers.

Melissa [: 00:52:34

You will feel so much more in control when you know your numbers. Clear some time, clear a path to work on it, and get clear on your pricing and your capacity and your willingness to create the events you need to create the income that you are striving for. Okay. With that, I'm signing off. I hope you guys enjoyed this workshop. Thanks, guys, so much for listening in on today's podcast episode. And I can't wait for you to see my upcoming guest in the next episode. You are going to love this keynote speaker.

Melissa [: 00:53:11

Hey, here's the deal. If you like this, please subscribe and leave a review. And you want the latest online business growth strategies and exclusive LinkedIn pro tips sent straight to your phone? Text the word update to 704 318-2285. That is text the word update to 704 318-2285. Can't wait to see you guys. Come find me over on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, what you're learning. You guys reach out to me over on social because I love hearing what's resonating with you. When you reach out to me and you send me those personal DMs, they really do impact the content I continue to bring forward to you.

Melissa [: 00:54:03

So again, come find me, melissa_henault over on Instagram, melissahenault over on Linkedin and Facebook. Can't wait to see you guys over there.