Two key things to get your online education business to 6-figures

 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, beautiful human. I hope you are having an amazing day to day. I am super excited to chat to you about a topic that I haven't really heard anyone else speak about like this, and. I think understanding this will be really key if you want to grow an aligned, profitable online education business that supports a life that you want to live.

Based on a conversation that I was having with my mom, who is. A business coach herself actually. So you can imagine all the cool conversations that we have together. Many, many hours of them. Based on this conversation, we identified that there are really two parts of me that are very strong without me even realizing.

And I believe these two key things are really what allowed me to take my business to six figures, you know, within two years, which for me felt pretty quick. And as I said, these are things that I haven't really heard anyone else talk about. It might be unique to my experience. I believe, yeah, that could be, it might just be from my experience that this has been a big part of my role or my journey, but when I look at other business owners and I see what they're doing, I see these two things.

Activated, and I see them doing these two things, embodying these two things in their business. I don't think there is a business owner that doesn't do these things, okay? I don't know how to call them. So let's maybe just call them sides of you or parts of you that you need to activate within you in your business.

Okay? So if you are growing a. Okay. You need to activate the creator inside of you and the destroyer inside of you simultaneously. Okay? You're probably thinking, what the hell does that mean? Michelle. Let me just explain. The creator is the version of you who can take something from your mind and bring it to life.

In this real world, bring it to life through content creation and offer creation. So as an online business owner, you always need to be generating valuable content online, and that means you need to be, you need to have that creative side of you activated most of the time. Because as an online business owner, you need to be generating content and you need to be creating offers that people want, that you can sell.

Okay, so creativity. Really becomes your currency. It's a very important part of your business, is being able to take something from your mind and bring it out into this world. The destroyer version of you is the CEO side of you that does not get distracted by shiny ball syndrome and says no to the things that don't align with your vision.

Okay. Let me give you some context on how this looks in business. And also how this whole thing came about. So I was, as I said, having a conversation with my mom, and we always talk about business together. And she's a business coach and an NLP coach herself. I was telling her my game plan for my new offer that I was creating, and I just created this offer straight out of my head, created a whole sales page for.

It took shape. It was this amazing offer that was being born. And in this conversation we started talking about different things that I could offer and different ways of selling things in my business. And she was giving me like different, like options, let's say. Of how I could sell it or what I could do to sell it.

And in that moment, a lot of people would often look at those options as potential ideas and many of them would entertain them and maybe go down those kinds of tangents to bring them to life or, you know, take action on those ideas. But what I did, and I did it with utmost love, as always, is I just said, And I destroy the ideas.

Why? Because I am hyper focused on my vision and my goal of my business, which for me is profitability. And it needs to ensure that I'm building a business that aligns with my style and energy that sort of suits my lifestyle and the ideas. That we were speaking about, I could instantly see that none of those ideas would help me reach profitability, and they wouldn't really align with my style of business.

I could immediately identify that and I could say, you know what? That's not for me. And I could just continue on my mission that I have in my head. Right? So she pointed that out in me. She said, you know, you have this, and this came from her mouth. She says, you've got this, very strong creator inside of you.

Who's able to take something from your mind and birth it into the world and create these offers and create these experiences for people. And then she said, you've also got this very hard-headed destroyer inside of you who is focused on your goal. And that anything that isn't in alignment with that doesn't get any attention from.

And I've always been like that. I've always done that. If I look back on the last couple of years, I've always been very quick to just shut down anything that doesn't feel like a hundred percent yes. Okay. And then we discussed shiny ball syndrome as being, as one of the main reasons why people just cannot get their business profitable or gaining momentum.

Shiny ball syndrome, if you don't know this term yet is essentially something that most business owners need to be very conscious of because it's a very subtle. A thing that can happen that can really take you off track if you aren't grounded in your own vision. So shiny ball syndrome is this.

Imagine having a really important project to get done and you know what you need to get done, and you've plotted out the steps to getting it done, and you've got this whole vision for. And then as you're taking the steps to getting this project done, you see all these beautiful crystal balls pop up along the way, and they're super bright, they're super shiny.

They seem like a solution to your problem. They seem like a great way to make money in your business. And so instead of continuing the steps that you have set out for yourself, that's getting you to the place you want to be, you deviate and you go and try catch these shiny crystal balls. Thinking that they will be better than your plan.

And so what often ends up happening is for those who are not in control of their shiny ball syndrome, is they end up going down tangents that don't get them to where they want to be. They busy themselves with all these little ideas that pop up in their head instead of committing to the plan that they set out for themselves, which is connected to their ultimate vision.

These crystal balls, these new ideas, these new strategies, these new opportunities, they can absolutely work for you. I'm not saying they never work, but often they are simply distractions that move you away from your North Star vision and goal in your business. Okay? Which is very unique to you and what you want.

And if there is one thing that I am good at as a business owner. Especially when I started stepping into that CEO version of myself is that I'm hyper aware of shiny ball syndrome and those amazing little distractions, and if they don't feel like an absolute yes in my body, like straight up in my gut, my intuition, then I destroy them and I shut them down.

So that is the destroyer in me, and I believe you need a destroyer. In you to grow a profitable business. Otherwise, you are going to go down a gazillion tangents and you won't ever have the focus that is actually required to lift your business off the ground. For example, if your ultimate vision, let's just say, is hitting a hundred thousand dollars a year, and say you want 70% profit margin and you prefer selling higher ticket offers.

Which are more expensive or premium offers because you prefer having fewer customers and you prefer selling in seasons and not all the time. And maybe you don't want a massive team. Maybe you just want a lean team of you, a virtual assistant, and I don't know one other person. If someone then comes to you and you've got this vision, right?

If someone then comes to you and says, you know, the best strategy ever is to be offering a $7 paid workshop, and then you sell lots of those, and then on the back end of those, you upsell them into your higher ticket. When someone says that to you, yes, it may be working for their business and other people, yes, it may be working.

What you really need to ask yourself is, does that align with my business vision, my revenue goals, or is that merely another business strategy and distraction that is going to tire me out. Expend my energy. And take me down a whole different path that is not even related to where I want to go. Unless you have a huge audience.

Selling $7 workshops is going to be tough and it's tiring. You'll often, you struggle to hit the six figure mark depending on if you have a huge audience or not. And. You'll struggle to have high profit margins if that was your goal, and you'll probably need to hire, hire more people to manage that customer service because when you've got a million people, a million load ticket customers, or like, I don't know, hundreds of low ticket customers, they still need good customer service.

Just because they paid $7, you know, they are still a customer. You need to uphold a strong quality service there, right? So then you need to hire people to do that. I want you to really think about it like that, okay? I want you to really activate and fiercely activate the destroyer inside of you.

You need to have a business vision, and you should tailor that vision to suiting the lifestyle you want to live. So you want your business to sort of, like match the lifestyle you desire, like match the exact day you desire, like the kind of work you want to be doing how many hours you want to be working, all of that stuff.

It needs to be tailored to that. And everyone's different. Everyone's got their own style and things that they love. Okay. So you want to do that and then it's imperative. That as those distractions and those shiny balls show up, you can connect to your intuition, you can connect to your vision, and you can say, this is not for me.

And maintain your ground in your game plan. Okay? Maintain your ground in the game plan that you set out for yourself. I want you to really activate the creator and the destroyer of yourself in your business. Because as business owners in the online space, in education, or in any industry, you assume the role as a content creator.

You need to have the vision to create free content, paid offers that are quality, that are effective, that solve problems that people actually want and need. And then on top of being that creator, which is really important. You need to be razor focused on your North Star vision, your business game plan, because I cannot tell you how many distractions and shiny balls will show up along the way that will try take you off your path.

Everyone you talk to will have an opinion about your business. People are going to tell you to do this and do that. Content online will say, this is your magic solution. You just need this and all your problems will go away. Or this is the best strategy. And someone will be preaching low ticket offers.

And then against that, another person will preach no high ticket offers is the way to go, and then another will say, no, you must do a low cost membership. This is the solution. And then another person will be like, no, you must sell lots of different things. And then someone else will be like, no, you should just sell one thing.

And can I tell you that? It is absolutely bloody exhausting and confusing. And as a business owner, you are going to be bombarded with messaging from the whole world on what you should be doing. And most of the time, most of the time, it is just a distraction taking you away from your vision and your goal most of the time.

Obviously not all the time. If you are really wanting to step into your CEO self, I need you to consciously activate the destroyer inside of you that says no to everything that isn't aligned with your business and your game plan. If you have at the moment, if you have no strategy or game plan or vision in your business and you're just absorbing free content online like a chicken with your head cut off and you're feeling super confused and overwhelmed by all the very conflicting information that's on the internet, then what I would recommend is finding a business mentor.

Who you resonate with, who's got the results you want? Who's got the business model that you actually want to learn? Because there's so many different business models and invest and commit. And then once you have invested in that mentorship, follow the mentorship, okay? Follow it. This is a whole other thing.

Don't then go and find three other people, three other business mentors that are telling you conflicting information. All the time because really there are a million ways to build a business. All of the ways can work, but you need focus and commitment and you need to actually choose a way and then focus on that way to actually make it happen.

You should be choosing a mentor to guide you, and you should be choosing a game plan and strategy to focus. And then set yourself up with a business vision. What is your revenue goal for this year? What kind of profit margin do you want? You know, is it 50% where you 50% profit, 70%? What? What are you looking at in terms of that?

Do you want a big team or do you want a lean team of like just you and someone else? Do you want a lean team? Maybe you're an educator and you want to hire other tutors underneath you to teach for you. Maybe that is a vision of yours. You know, there's so many different ways of doing this. And then you need to ask yourself, what selling strategy works for my energy?

So do I want to sell? All the time, every day. Or do I prefer to sell in seasons? So I'm actively selling in a launch season and then I'm resting in a non launch season. Okay. There are like so many ways you can run your business, but you need to figure out what works for you. Okay. And that's really important.

And you get to customize your business exactly to your strengths and to your energy, for example. I don't actually like selling stuff all the time. I have a particular type of energy where I like having launch seasons where I'm actively launching and selling, and then I have more resting and recharging seasons where I'm delivering on my service to my students.

I'm not, I'm not enrolling new students. I typically work like that. Okay. I like to be on, and then I like to be. And that's important for my energy levels. I think it's because I'm an introvert by nature and I need to recharge a lot after a launch. But other people have amazing energy and they can sell a new offer every month that lights them up and they're just like super energized by that.

And their creativity is flying and they're doing an amazing job with it. And that's beautiful. Everyone is different and your business needs to be tailored to how you operate, right? And so you do. This is why business is such a beautiful personal development journey and such an inward journey because you really do learn about yourself in the process and things like you did not realize are going to show up along the way, and you're just going to learn so much new information about.

That's going to be so eyeopening for you, and then you can then optimize your business based on that. So it's really an amazing way to learn who the hell you are, like really at your core. You need to know your vision. You want to learn about yourself and how you operate and what you like, and, and then you want to set up a game.

To sort of move yourself towards hitting that vision. So remember you set up your vision. I want to have this amount of money per year. I want to do this, I want to work this many hours. And then you want to say, okay, what game plan's going to get me to achieving that mission? What business model is going to help me achieve that mission?

What pricing is going to help me reach that vision? All of that jazz, right? And then, and then you activate the creator inside of you, and you create content, and you create the offers, and you bring that creative version of you to the table, which is really important. And then even more importantly, you actually stick to the plan and you destroy any distraction that is in your way.

And in the early days, you are probably going to struggle to identify what is a shiny ball distraction to what is a real opportunity that's really aligned with you and your vision. And this is something that you intuitively build as an, as a business owner. You build that muscle to be able to identify.

Oh, this aligns with me. This aligns with my business vision. This is a yes. Inside my intuition is saying, this is right for me, and I go with that as opposed to seeing something that is just a distraction, that's just going to take your time and energy and, and put it somewhere else and is not going to guide you to where you want to.

And the more that you're in your business and you're taking action and you're playing in the arena, the more that you build this muscle inside of you, the more you can say no to all the stuff that isn't aligned, and the more focus you can actually bring to your business, because that's what the destroyer does, it just gives you that razor focus.

And anyone who's got a profitable, successful online education business or any business has said no to a gazillion things and has been so grounded in their vision of what they want to do in the world of how they want to do it. And they are actually quite stubborn about it, which I would say I am.

And you are so rooted in what it is you want to create. And you've got the steps that you need to take and you commit to those steps and you just commit to take patiently waiting. Instead of going down a million different rabbit holes, you patiently focus and, and, and do the thing that's aligned and you, it takes time sometimes to see the results, but you get there, you definitely get the results.

That is my two pieces of value for today. Are you activating both the creator and the destroyer in your business? Can you do better at being more grounded in your vision, in your game plan in your North Star? I talk about about the North Star with my students, my DBA students. It's really important to have a North Star vision of the business you want and the life you want, and then taking the steps to actively go there.

Knowing your North Star is going to help inform you on what things you must say no to and what things you must say yes to, because everything needs to take you to the North Star. So if your North Star is working, I don't know, five hours a week and making, I don't know, a couple of thousand dollars a week or whatever it may be. Is selling a low ticket, $7 workshop going to get you there?

Or is it better to create a more high ticket offer that you sell? That's going to inform your decision on what you do is your North Star. Have the vision, create the North Star, activate the creator in you, take action, create and activate the destroyer in you. And say no to the stuff that's just going to take you off your mission.

And can you be relentless in that pursuit? Can you be stubborn? Can you be focused? Can you just commit to, this is what I want to create? And then all those beautiful shiny crystal balls that seem to be the solution to your problems. They don't even, they just bounce off you and they fall away. They just bounce off you and fall away and you carry on charging forward because you are focused.

This is the message I wanted to share with you in this episode today. I haven't really heard about anyone speaking about it like this. My mom is to credit for the, the creator destroyer. And that conversation was really insightfull. And if you found this to be, you know, insightful, useful, you know, just please share it with me on Instagram.

Share it with me on an email. Let me know your thoughts on this concept. Let me know if you think you need to be activating more of that destroyer inside of you because. Maybe you're saying yes to a lot of things that just are not in alignment, and that also means in your personal life as well. So even like, say you're trying to build a business and you're trying to be you know, ambitious and do all these things, but you're hanging out with people who are super uninspired, who complain all the time, who blame everyone.

Maybe that's somewhere where you need to start saying, no, this isn't an alignment. This isn't where it's, this isn't going to get me to where I need to be. Let me go hang out with some people who are. Taking action on their dreams, who are ambitious, who are taking responsibility for their life and making shit happen. You can even apply this in your personal life when it comes to your business.

This was amazing. I love chatting with you today. As always, thank you for choosing to listen to my podcast. I hope you have been loving it so far. I must say I'm totally obsessed with podcasting at the moment, to the point that I am literally podcasting in my head before bed.

I am staying awake thinking about podcasting topics and like what I can talk about and I'm actually podcasting in my head and it's really crazy, but this is a sign that I'm energized by it and I'm loving it and I hope you can. Feel that and you're loving it too. That's really important for me. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day and yeah, I hope to connect with you really soon. Until next time, byebye!

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you're wanting to get mentorship from me in your online business or your course launch, then the best, most comprehensive and supportive place for you to get that is inside my signature business program, the Digiteachers Biz Academy.

This is an all in one business program that gives you the strategy, the tools, the how to, the mindset, the community support, and the mentorship from me. In launching your course and growing your business, pop yourself on the wait list and you'll hear when it opens for enrollment again.

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.