85-How I grow and maintain a sustainable 6-figure business.

Welcome to The Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I am an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs, the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators. Just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love.

If you are looking to up level your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator in business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you. To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. 

We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. 

Hello, hello, and welcome back to my podcast. I'm so happy to be talking to you today and I've got some exciting news. So I am part of a summit, my friend and business buddy, Ola, she is hosting this epic summit called the teacher talk sales summit. And it's all about, you guessed it, sales and improving your sales, making more money without the ick and the sleaziness and that stuff that's taught out there in the bro marketing space.

So this is going to be a refreshing experience and event all about sales. And there are some amazing speakers. It's two days of speakers. An amazing lineup, teaching all different types of things within sales that will help you basically sell more and make more money in your business. And the best part is, is that it is free.

Can you believe it? So the entire summit is free. And yeah, I'll be speaking on day one. As expected on launching and how that can skyrocket your sales. And there's just so much good stuff coming, such great speakers, all in the space of education and business as well, which is really, really cool.

I definitely recommend you should join. It's in a couple of days, if not a few weeks, I don't know the exact date, but if you click the link below, you'll see the whole page with all the details and you can sign up for free. And then when you get through to that. When you sign up, you'll get to a page which has an upgrade.

And that upgrade is like a VIP ticket, which is, I can't be sure how much it is. I think the price is also going to just keep increasing. Just bear that in mind. But this VIP upgrade is basically you buying this product of many different products, it's called the teacher sales success bundle. And what it is, is all of the speakers that are coming to the summit have contributed a course or some sort of paid offer to this product for free to this bundle.

So it's a bundle. Think of it like a bundle for free. So you will pay a certain amount for this bundle. Once off, and then you will have access to dollars worth of courses and training from each one of us altogether. I have offered my educators income booster bootcamp as part of that, and it is really epic.

And you're going to get that plus a bunch of other stuff in that upgrade. So I do recommend grabbing that. I think it's just packed with value. And you would have to pay like at least, I think, 800 if you were to get that stuff outside of this event and outside of this bundle. So yeah, that's really exciting.

I think it's going to be an awesome event. And I hope you can join. I hope to see you there. If you cannot find the link to join, feel free to just email me or send me a DM and I can send you that link to getting your free ticket. Okay, so on to today's episode and topic. What are we talking about?

I made a post today and I thought it was such a juicy post and very, very key, especially with business owners who have been in the business space for a while. Not necessarily a while, but maybe they've, made money in their business. They're not completely new.

You've maybe launched once or twice or a couple of times, but you're not really seeing the results you want and maybe things aren't popping off as much as you'd like. And this topic is really going to help you, I believe. Because I have been in this game for a long enough time to know what your mind is going to tell you to do and what I would say you should do.

So this basically is how I have grown and maintained a sustainable note, the word sustainable online business that's actually make six figures every year without grinding and hustling and working extreme hours during the week and things like that. I think I work about 25 hours, maybe sometimes if I'm in a season of busyness, maybe 30 hours a week.

And how do I do that? What I have seen with clients and things like that, and this is what I often help my clients do. It's all about working smarter and not harder. I believe in that so much. I feel like we have so many paths we can go down and there's paths of least resistance with less work and smarter things that you can do. 

And then there's the hard path, which is just putting in the hours and like the slog and the hustle and the grind and things like that. Which I feel works for, you need to do it for a period of time in business. There's always a season of hustle that is required. I believe in that I have hustled, especially in the earlier days, but it's not sustainable.

You cannot be hustling all the time. You cannot be overworking yourself to the bone when there's a dip in the business or when your launch result doesn't do as well as you'd like. The most common thing I see people do is, get into like a fear based mode or like a panic session. They make all these stories up in their head of why their offer can't work why their niche doesn't have money, why they have to change avatars, why they have to change completely.

The launch strategy just doesn't work. They need to restart an entire launch strategy, and what happens is people often just start again. They literally start again. So they've spent like six months, creating this offer and selling it all year. Maybe I don't know how long, six months creating an offer and learning how to sell it.

And in the first launch or maybe in the second launch, it not being exactly what they want. In terms of a result. They then think, okay, it doesn't work. I have to restart everything. And they throw the baby out the bathwater and they basically restart. And what happens is every time you restart and say, I'm going to do a whole new offer.

I'm going to change my avatar. I'm going to restart on my launch strategy. So I'm going to, instead of doing a video series, I'm going to go do a webinar. Every time you do that, you are starting again in some capacity and you are going from. Being working, working, working those six months to get to a certain point with, you've got lots of data behind you to show you a lot of stuff.

And then you start again and you start from, I wouldn't say from scratch, but there's a lot you have to restart. You have to rebuild those launch assets. You have to, maybe potentially rebuild the list. If you're changing avatar, you have to re redo all the market research. Maybe there's a new offer like there's so much that needs to do, to basically be restarted. 

And then they start again. So they were at like five, say on the scale to 10, they were at like, they got to number five and then they're not getting the result they want, so then they restart and they go back to zero. And then they go up to five or four or three and then they restart and they go back to zero.

And there's this whole thing of just restarting and just not refining, not improving what they currently have. And the biggest thing that I believe in is refining and tweaking and improving what you currently have, what you have built thus far. I have done that like in my business in the last five years, because remember, I basically started in a different niche.

Then I pivoted. I've still managed to maintain six figures every year, even in that shift without massive hustling and grinding. Like I haven't really burnt out from my business much maybe in the early years, like in the first two years, there was like close to burnout. And I really do believe it's because I'm all about working smarter and not harder.

I'm all about strategy. I'm all about looking at the data and I'm all about refining what works and tweaking and making things better. Improvements on what I've currently got, instead of just throwing it all out. And I've had launches that haven't performed well. I've had launches that have done incredibly well.

I've never made a loss in the launch. Thank the heavens. But I've had launches where it's like just over break even and things like that. And it's not really profitable. I've had launches where I've made 50,000 in profit. And so I've really had a full range of the experience and, I believe, the way I've been able to do it is because I haven't panicked and been like, you know what, this offer doesn't work.

This niche doesn't work. This, this, this, and just restarting. I've never really done that. And I'm not saying that isn't something that people should do. I think there's a lot of variables that should be taken into account, there are situations where there is no demand in that market.

The offer is not going to work. People don't want that thing. If you're selling something people don't want, you can't force it, right? There are situations where I'm like, cool, you're going to have to change your offer. This is not what people want. You get to a point where you see that this is just not what people want and you have to shift.

There is a point where you need to let go and recalibrate and try a new thing. I a hundred percent believe that. I think there's power in seeing that's where you're at and then make being brave and doing that. But I see so often business owners where the thing is working. They are just not looking at the data.

They're not making data driven decisions. And they are literally in a state of disregulation, and a little bit of panic, and then they go and change everything at once, or they go and just throw out everything. And that is what leads to that working harder, hustling, grinding thing, because you have to start again.

So you have to go and grind out a whole other offer, grind out a whole nother launch, all these launch assets, spend all that time again on a new thing. Instead of just being like, cool, let's look at the data of what I've got and let's work with that to improve it. This is what this is about. And this is what I would say if you're in this situation instead making all these stories in your mind about what is happening, because that's what often happens is our emotions and our feelings, we create these stories and they're not based in actual evidence. Most of the time. 

Oh, my niche has no money. No one has any money. The economy is failing. And it's not in service of you to even go down that road. If you're in business, that's not a belief that is going to serve you in business. You're in business, you're going to have to make money.

Otherwise you don't have a business. If you don't make money, you don't have a business and you're going to have to sell. And if you believe that your niche doesn't have money, that's not a place you want to be. At this point, you want to look at your data. So this is what I would recommend. 

Look at what is working because there's always stuff that is working. Look at what is working. Look at the data in your launches throughout the whole process, track the conversions throughout the whole process in say a launch that you're having. From the opt-in page, straight to the thank-you page, straight into say, you have a Facebook group, check if people are opening your emails, check what the click through rates are. Check how many people are attending your training, check the engagement. Track everything, right? 

And check the sales conversion and the number of people on your list. All of this data is going to give you a real picture. Once you've tracked the data, then you want to look at, okay, what is working? And there will be a lot of stuff that is working. You'll find, okay, this actually is converting really well.

People are signing up. This is at like 35 percent because there are these KPIs, which is what I help my clients work with is certain conversion points that you want to reach within your launches that shows you that it's working. That shows you don't have to work with that anymore.

You can move on to the next thing. Like it's doing its job. And once you look at what is working, you want to then double down on what is working. Can you do more of whatever that is? Can you learn of why that's working? And maybe that isn't working. And can you build in some of that into that? Things like that, right?

So that's the thing that you want to do. Then, after you're looking at what is working and doubling down on that, you can then look at what is underperforming. So based on the goal numbers that I like to speak of with my DBA students, and clients. There are certain goal numbers you want to reach.

And if you're underneath those numbers, it shows you that that part needs to be worked on. And then you can isolate the problem. You can say, okay, cool. My opt-in page is performing at 20%. Now the goal percentage for that page is 30%. So now you're 10 percent under your goal.

So you now see, okay, I can isolate that problem. I can improve that one piece of the puzzle. Let me improve the headline. Let me improve the messaging. Let me change the sub headline. Let me redesign it a little bit. You do tweaks to improve it. And then you get yourself up to 25%. Then you get yourself up to 30%, then you may get yourself up to 35 percent. 

Those small tweaks will make a difference. And that's what you want to do throughout your whole promotion, your whole launch is to optimize and try and increase those numbers. But you're working with what you've currently got, right?

So you've got the data, you just need to improve it. And then the next thing is when you have looked at it and you're like, cool. These things are underperforming and things. How do you improve it? And you do it by tweaking. Often the words that you are using to speak to your audience on those pages are very important.

They will make or break someone from choosing to opt in versus leaving that page. So then you need to change the messaging, change the words, try out a new angle, try something different to test it. So messaging is often a place where you need to be tweaking. And then also, once you've done messaging in your launches, when you're selling and you realize that people aren't buying, maybe that's the problem. Then it's more of an offer thing and maybe the positioning of the offer.

That doesn't mean you need to go and change your whole offer. It's just the positioning of the offer, the packaging of the offer. What can you change with the positioning and the packaging of the offer and the messaging, all of that, which kind of formulates how you position the offer, right? What can you do to change that?

And test that. And If that gets taken up better by your audience instead of going and saying, cool, this offer doesn't work. Let me restart a whole new offer and start from scratch. So it's literally just building upon what you currently have. And it's so easy, after a bad launch or a dip in sales or something like that, to just say, nothing's working.

I'm going to just restart everything. And I have those thoughts as well. I'm not even going to lie to you. If I have a launch where it's like, meh. It's not what I wanted it to be. Then I'm often like, cool, maybe I should just restart my entire business. And maybe I should just go into something completely different.

And then I'm like, cool, that sounds like a hell of a lot of work. And I don't want to do that. Why would I want to restart when there's so much going for me, I've got so much data, I've got so much content. I've got so much under my wing that I can work with. And it's just about redefining your messaging, redefining your positioning, your packaging, that's really going to make a big difference. 

And the premise of this is just working smarter. You can always choose to let your emotions run wild and you to make decisions based on your stories in your head that then take you on a path of overworking and hustling, or you can decide to work smarter and strategically. And make data driven decisions that are going to take you down a path where you're probably going to reach success much quicker because you are firstly running your business through the data, not your emotions and feelings. And you're refining on what you've got, instead of starting again.

Every time you start again, you are going to have to funnel a lot of energy into that thing, to get it off the ground, to launch again, to like, see the data. It's exhausting just thinking about it. And I do believe, as I said, there's a time and place, there are situations where it is a good idea to change offers.

The offer isn't working or, you've chosen an avatar that is not wanting to buy this thing. Like they don't want to invest. So of course there are situations where it is a good idea to let go of whatever you were trying to do and to do something different. But I believe that you need to stick with something for at least A couple of launches a year, whether it's a year, year and a half, however long it takes for you to get at least like three launches under your belt. And work with what you've got instead of completely re changing, like maybe you can pivot in a little bit of a different direction.

For example, in my first business, I was helping online ESL teachers. And then instead of me restarting and going into a whole different thing, I decided to help teachers in business. So that's a small pivot that shows you're still working with what you've got. I could still use my email list.

I could still use that and stuff, but I'm just changing subtly. And that is what I often recommend as well. I believe this is really key. If you want to grow a sustainable business where you're not hustling, hustling, hustling. I see the people who are hustling, hustling, hustling are because they're changing offers all the time.

They're changing avatars often every six months. They're like, cool, this avatar isn't for me or this offer doesn't work or the launch system that I'm using doesn't work. But really, is that the case or are you just not being effective at selling and articulating the value and marketing your offer that you have. Is that maybe what it is?

Maybe you just haven't refined the skill and maybe you just need to double down or maybe you haven't got the confidence and you need to start really owning your space and owning your expertise and owning your confidence. So many other things besides all the stories that you're telling in your head.

And maybe just, maybe you are just a few tweaks away from making all that money that you want and having that really amazing 10 K launch, a 20 K launch, a 30 K launch, whatever that number looks like for you. Maybe you're just a few tweaks away from that. And when you start again, you go from zero, you go from one. And then that is exhausting.

And that is what's going to lead to burnout. That's what's going to lead to you not having a sustainable business, not finding joy, all of that good stuff. Maybe you are like that picture, I'm sure you've seen it where there's like a tunnel and this guy's digging underneath the tunnel and you see, he's been digging forever underneath this tunnel.

And there's this pot of gold just like a few inches away from him. He just needs to dig a little bit more. And he's going to hit that pot of gold. But if he stops and he restarts, or he decides to give up, or he wants to change offers, or he wants to do this or that. He's going to literally go all the way back and he's going to have to keep digging, start from scratch and that digging to get to that pot of gold.

You don't want to do that. So work with what you've got, be strategic, look at the data. Make data driven decisions, think about working smarter, not harder. Think about the path of least resistance. Don't make any decisions in an emotional dysregulated space. And yeah, double down on the things that are working for you.

Improve the things that are not working for you. Yeah, don't throw the baby out the bathwater. Don't restart every time. Yeah, that is what I would say on that. And I really believe, call it the lazy way, but I feel it's the simple way to having a business. Keep it simple. I often say that just keep it simple.

Having 10 offers and having to sell different things all the time. That's not sustainable. That is exhausting. At least for me, that is exhausting. Having one to two core offers and I don't know, a few things that you sell and you sell them well. That for me is what leads to that sustainability.

I have seen people who are seven-figure business owners, literally burn out and burn their whole business to the ground so many times. Do you know how many massive successful business owners who are. Playing a big game, they are spending a lot of money on their business. They're making a lot of money.

I'm not sure how profitable it is, but they are burnt out because they're constantly in this must launch, must grow new things, must add new offers, and I'm always wary of that success. Is that really what you want? Do you really want such a massive business that is exhausting or do you just want to lean mean freedom machine, that gives you your time back and is simple and feels light and isn't so heavily complicated. That's what I want, and that's what I have, and that is what I help at least my coaching clients achieve, right? 

I hope this helped you. I hope this resonated with you. Another reminder. Get inside the teacher talk sales summit. The link is below this episode or shoot me a message if you want the link. It's going to be so good, especially for those of you who are wanting to improve on sales and doing sales without the gross ick. That is what we are here for, and I'm really looking forward to that.

So I hope you have an amazing day and I will chat to you again soon.

 Bye.

  Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you love what you heard today, then be sure to share it with me by leaving a five-star review so I can continue delivering these goodies. If you aren't already following me on social media, then come tune into some daily inspiration on Instagram by following @_Digiteach_ or visiting my website at digiteach.biz. 

I appreciate you so much and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.