Whoo we're back. And I'm so excited. I'm going to spare you from my singing voice, but like I'm singing because this topic, you guys, my favorite, literally my favorite I've probably said that on multiple episodes, but like, okay, I love this work. I love what I do. And I just love pouring into you. But this topic like, gets me all in my feels. I could talk and teach and educate on this all day, every day, because like, this is so just in alignment with what I stand for, how I run my own business, how I help my clients set up and run their businesses. It's my jam. So we're going to dive in. We are diving all into the goodness nitty-gritty of a sustainable and scalable business and how. We can actually do this for ourselves and how we can prepare this for ourselves. Because it's like one thing to say, I want a sustainable business. I want a business that is scaling. I want a business that scalable, but like, what does that actually mean? What does that look like, Michelle? What are the steps I need to take to get there? So we're going to uncover it. All today. And I'm just so excited. So first of all, first thing that like we have to dive into is like, what is this kind of business? Some of you that have been in my world, like for a long time, this is like, if you read my content, this is like, what I stand for, this is like, what I want to be known for is a sustainable business, a scalable business, like recurring revenue, consistency, money. Ooh. Like this is, this is it right? So what kind of business is this? This is a business that makes money all of the time, has money coming in, months in advance without selling new offers or having to launch all of the time. And I mean, for example, say October is coming, okay. And then I'm in September right now. I'm able to look at October and I'm able to say, okay, before October starts, I see. And I know the business has already bringing in $10,000 in October before I even sell anything. Before I even launched the next program or before even open up one-to-one coaching again, whatever it is I might be selling in October. I already know October has some money coming in and that makes me feel hella good. That makes me feel like, oh my goodness, I can breathe. But let's take it a step further. To me, a sustainable, scalable, consistent business is a business that has recurring revenue coming in for months in advance. And I'm going to give you guys an example. If you were to scroll through my feed right now, you don't have to do that unless you want to I think I put a post out in 2020. I think it was like in November, maybe it was October. It might've even been October. I don't know for sure. Don't quote me if I'm wrong. I'm sorry. It was probably October, November of last year, 2020, before 2021 even started. I already had. $50,000 coming into the business. Literally months before 2020 was even starting. I already knew if I sold nothing else in 2021, I would have at least had $50,000 come into the business. Like talk about sustainable. Talk about like, Relaxing your shoulders breathing and being like, oh my gosh, I like can live my life and not have to like be upset just about where's the next client. Where's the next money. And like trying to always be in this rat race of like, I need more, I need more anymore. And like, I'm here for more, like I'm here for the big income goals, but it's also pretty amazing to feel so safe and taken care of insecure by your business when it's bringing in money all of the time and money. Months in advance now for actual freedom in business, taking time off, feeling safe and secure in your business because we, we all desire that, right. We became entrepreneurs because we want the freedom. This is, this is how we actually create that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna shoot like my truth here. To me, freedom isn't like planning a vacation with my fiance or my family, and then feeling like I need to launch the whole time while I'm on vacation, because I don't have money coming in like that that is not it. That's not the vibe. That's not the business that I want to run is like not actually being able to take time off. I'm here to have a business that like, I can actually take time off and I'm going to make money and I'm not obsessing about money. And I just feel so safe, taken care of. I can always pay my bills because like my business always is making money. Because whether I'm showing up or not, whether I'm launching or not, my business will always make money. And this that you get to have this, like, this is available for you. And that's what we're diving into today. Because personally, this is like the only way I want to run business. I've done it the other way. I have done business early on where it was chasing client after client, after client, literally every month, I will, I will never forget this feeling. And some of you might be sitting in this right now. There's nothing wrong with this. Literally, nothing wrong with this. But this is fixable, and that's why we're having this conversation today. I remember literally having this ball and pit of anxiety at the beginning of every single month being like, oh my gosh, it's a new month. It's October. And like, where's my money going to come from? How am I going to make money? How am I going to reach my 5k? How am I going to make 10 K this month? Like, where is the money coming from? And I would panic and I would panic and I would panic and I would panic it. It literally made me sick. I was stressed all of the time. I was not fun to be around. I was obsessing about the business and it really wasn't fun. Like it wasn't freedom. It wasn't what I signed up for. And I'm not saying that everything that we do in business feels fun or good all the time. That's just like, not true. However, I want it to feel secure. I'm somebody personally that I like crave security in every part of my life. Like it is part of my human nature. Like I crave security in my relationships. I craved them in my friendships and most importantly, I crave it in my business. And so that is why I'm so passionate about a sustainable, consistent, scalable business, because I love that feeling of safety and security and feeling like I'm taken care of. And that my business literally. E it can never fall apart just because of the way in which the I set it up. And if you desire that keep listening, because we're about to get into the goods. So the thing about consistent and a sustainable businesses is they allow you to feel safe. They allow you to feel taken care of, and they allow you to actually live your life because chances are you started a business because you wanted to live. Right. So let's dive into the framework of what it takes to truly get consistent in business, to have consistent income and recurring revenue. And when I say recurring revenue, you can use this interchangeably. I've heard people say recurring revenue. That's usually what I call it, just because it, to me that like makes the most sense, but I've also heard people say stacking income, stacking revenue. Well, I might use them interchangeably here in this episode. Just wanted to let you know, I'm talking about the same thing. When I say recurring revenue or stacking revenue, it really is like looking at the month and like there's recurring money coming in month after month after month. And it's stacking meaning it's, it's growing on top of each other. It's not just like one payment coming in month after month. There's multiple payments coming in month after month after month, which is recurring, but it's also stacking. Hope that makes sense on the money talks. Because this is where the consistent money comes from. It comes from recurring revenue. It comes from recurring payments. And why do we need this? Why do we need this? Well, you don't need it. I want to use that word loosely. I don't love the word need. I don't love the word should, especially in like the coaching world, but if you desire consistency and sustainability and like making money with like out actively having to sell. And like just knowing payments will come in. Like, that's what this is. Like, that's what recurring revenue and sustainable income is. And this mindset of, I feel safe. I feel secure. I know money's coming in as much different than the thought and process of chasing the next big launch to fund your business, chasing the next client. Like I've been here. I, I literally used to only have one program and it doesn't matter how many programs you have. We'll talk about that. But I used to have only one program this about two or three years ago, and I literally remember I would put so much pressure on that launch to perform every single quarter, because that was like where all my money was coming from. And it was so exhausting and I was like obsessed with the launch because I had it in my mind that if this launch doesn't perform, if it doesn't sell out, if I don't get as many people as I want in this round, Then I'm not going to make any more money. I'm going to be struggling for months until I launch this thing again. Like that again, that's just like, not it. And here's the thing for me personally. I don't know how you feel about launching. I don't put a ton of pressure on my launches. They're like very laid back. I'm currently launching right now. and I think I put my face on my stories like twice, I be like, haven't even verbally talked about this program a ton. Um, obviously I've been showing up for it and talking about my fierce mastermind I'm currently launching, and I'm just sharing this with you because it doesn't have to be that much pressure on our launches because there's money coming from other places. Do I know my programs will sell out? Yeah, of course. I don't have to put that much pressure on them. However, I also have money coming from other places I'm going to sell other things. And like that all just feels really good, consistent, and it's just a lot less pressure and I'm not here to have a bit, have a business that makes me feel like it's like dooms day every single day. And I'm sure that you're not either. And so what's not it, is chasing the next big launch to fund your business, chasing the next client like that. It's just not it. Um, and so we're going to break down like the next couple steps of what this could look like for you. Like the big picture thinking of if I want a consistent, sustainable, scalable business, like what are the first couple of things I need to do? I need to be aware of like, to actually create this for myself. Number one is look at what's working, literally look at what's working in your business and like, keep that, compound the good, keep doing what's working. I think so often when we decide that we like want to change, change things in business, we like want to burn it all down and we're like, I'm going to start over and create all these new programs and like that doesn't have to be what you do to, in order to. Add in more sustainability and more consistency. First number one, look at what's working. Keep doing what's working. Let's for example, say your one-to-one coaching is working. It's always selling out. Great. Keep that like now, how can we add to that? How can we compound the good and add to that? Right? Number two is identify any gaps. So maybe identifying what's not working, right? Identify, what's not working. Maybe you had a program that you launched maybe two times, and both times you launched it, maybe you had one person join, which isn't a bad thing, or maybe you had no people join. Well, we have to go back to the drawing board. We have to identify. Something was off with that launch both times that it didn't work or maybe something's off at the program that we have to identify the gaps of what's not working. We're not here to like continually do things that aren't working. We're here to fix them and move forward. And the quicker that we do that, the quicker we're going to start to see results. Number three is fixing your product suite. In order to scale. Like we do have to have some kind of product suite, and I'm going to sh I'm going to say this, like, if you're somebody that just wants one to one clients, by all means like, literally just do one-to-one coaching, but we do have to look at whatever your goals are. Let's say your goal is $20,000 every month and you only want to sell one-to-one coaching. Well, then we've got to look at the investment of your one-to-one coaching. How many clients you actually want to be working with at any given time. And how are we going to scale that? For example, let's say your one-on-one coaching is 5,000 a month and you at any given time. Have room for four clients. We know then, okay, it's your goal to always have four one-to-one clients paying $5,000 a month for three or six months at a time to really hit that $20,000 mark. So we have to look at the product suite, what we're selling again, what's working, what's not and identifying those gaps, but really looking at the product suite. I mean, most of you listening to me have one offer and are hoping to have more than one. Maybe you have two right now and you're wanting to branch out even more. We have to look at the actual product suite, your offers. Do they make sense? And what's working, what's not working. How can I make this work better? Ultimately the customer journey within your product suite and we're going to talk about that here in a moment. I'm going to get to that. Um, I'm not there yet, but your product suite and your customer journey are going to be something that's linked together so that you can optimize this and it can work out really well for you. Number four, this gets overlooked like overlooked, overlooked, overlooked, retaining your current clients. Number four, retaining your current clients. Client retention is so overlooked and it should be prioritized. Literally people that already pay you, most likely want to pay you again. Especially if they had a good experience in there in your world, they felt super supported. They got amazing results, whatever it might be, whether it was financially, physically, all of the above, or you were a great service provider, they got everything that they wanted from your work. Most of the time, they don't want to leave your world. But what we tend to do is we're like, well, three month program is over. Love you guys see you later, and we have nowhere for these clients to go. So it's really, again, looking at your product suite, identifying your customer journey and elaborate on that in a moment, identifying the customer journey and like, okay. Once this three month program ends, what's next for these clients? Is it next for them to come into one-to-one coaching? Do I have another program that's then going to get them to this next level? We lose a lot of money when we don't work on retaining clients. And not every client's going to stay with you. People will stay with you for, let's say, three months and then go off and do their own thing or hire other people like this is normal in our industry. I'm not trying to say like, you should be trying to have every single client stay with you. There's also going to be clients that come into your world that you don't want to stay with, like that you don't want them into your next thing. And that's totally fine. Like not everyone is meant to be in our world for extended periods of time, but if you could retain your clients for longer periods of time, They're going to get a greater result. Um, and you're going to have longer client success rate, and you're going to have people paying you for a longer amount of time, which if they're on a payment plan, especially, or they're paying you in full either one, that's one easier money, easier sale, but also consistent revenue that's coming into the business. Now I wasn't going to get into this point next, but I'm going to, because it's just relative, because we talked about product suites. We talked about clients, retentions, recurring clients. I do want to now talk about the customer journey. So when you look at your product suite, you can't see me, but I'm drawing a circle like my finger right now, literally he's drawing like an air circle. I want you to think about what offers you have right now. And I'll give you guys an example of like my own product suite, right now. I have one-to-one coaching, which is like my top tier. That's my highest level client that I work with. Those clients work with me for six months. Many of them stay with me for a year or two years. Like my one-to-one clients are like, they're the shit. All my clients are the shit. If you're listening to this, you know, I love you so much. And I'm so grateful for you. So I've got my one-to-one coaching and then a tier below that is my elite mastermind, which is a six month mastermind. Um, it's not currently launching right now, but we'll come back probably in the fall of 2021 that normally comes out two times a year. This year it's only coming out one time a year. Um, that's my like highest level mastermind. It's really a combination of one-to-one coaching and. Mastermind feel below that I have my fierce mastermind and then I've got find your fierce. Okay. So if you were to look at my one side of my circle, I have find your fierce, which is like my bottom tier for newer coaches. I've got my fierce mastermind, which is for women that want to make about 5, 10, 15, K. I've got my elite mastermind women ready to scale 20, 30, 40 K months. And then I've got my one-to-one coaching, right? So I've got a pretty built out product suite. The reason it's built out the way that it is, if you're sitting there, you fall into one of those categories, most likely, but here's the thing. My product suite allows you to stay and grow with me. Meaning say, you came to me at find your fierce. You wanted to start making around two, two to three K consistently in your business? Well, next once that program ends after 10 weeks, the next step would be the fierce mastermind to get to five to 10 K months. And then after that, once you master that would make sense to go to the elite mastermind or jump into one-to-one coaching. Do you see how long you can stay with me? One as a coach, that's like amazing. I get to coach you for a longer extended period of time and like be a part of your journey, but two you'll get a greater result. Being in someone's world for a longer amount of time having the consistency of coaching. And I'm also creating a pathway for you. It's a pathway for you to grow inside of my coaching and my offers. I also have other things like miracles and money, visible, um, and my sold program, like I have other ways that women work with me outside of the signature offers. Like I've got a, I've got a really built out product suite at this point in time. This did take time to build. We're going to talk about that in a moment, but this is just an example of a product suite and a customer journey. You want to do them cohesively. Because here's the thing. If you just have a product suite with random offers, it really defeats the purpose of your customer journey. And we lose a lot of money. We lose a lot of client retention when we're not mindful of, well, if I have this program, what's next for my client? What's next for her. Where can she go next to have an even greater result? Right. And I'm going to give you guys like, not every single one of my clients goes through my whole product suite and all my offers. I literally have women messaged me and I go right into one-to-one. Happens all the time. I literally women messaged me and they go right into the fierce mastermind or they go right into the elite mastermind. Like that's just how it works like that, there's like no rules to this. However, when women do start in one or the other of my programs or my offers, they have a place to continue and go. And do you see that the money circulates and how my offers sell out so easily behind the scenes because I have clients and current offers wanting to buy the next thing, wanting to be in the next thing, wanting to be in the next thing. It's way easier for me when I launch, when I sell I'm selling a ton behind the scenes, I don't have to sell a ton publicly because I have clients in my world that want to continue and stay that bumps up revenue. That's sustainability, that's consistency, that's recurring revenue, stacking revenue. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. So the biggest takeaway that I, that you get from today's episode is really. A product suite, if you don't have one that's okay. We can build that. Like that's what exactly what we do inside of my fierce mastermind. If you're trying to like gauge well Michelle, like I'm at this step, I've made some money. I have some clients. Like, how do I now start scaling? How do I like identify what's next in my business, building out my offers and really starting to scale and mastering my customer journey. That's my fierce mastermind. That's what we do inside of there. Um, if you want to get on the wait list for that, it's coming back again. We start in October of 2021. Just go to harttoheart.co spelled just like the podcast you can get on the wait list there, or you can message me on Instagram and reserve your spot early. We can chat it out. Anyway. Now the next point, when it comes to, to consistent income recurring revenue, like where does that money actually come from? It comes from payment plans and it comes from you having different offers, different programs like stackable income and what that actually looks like. So I mentioned this just a bit earlier, but to simplify this recurring revenue, stackable income. Different offers. I'll give you guys an example. Say, let's just say my fierce masterminds currently running, and I've got one to one clients. I've got payments coming from all different things right now, but like, let's just say that's where money was coming from, okay. And let's see, I'm going to give you guys just an example. Let's say I had five clients in the fierce mastermind on a payment plan paying a thousand dollars a month for three months. Okay. Let's just say that was it. That's $5,000 coming into the business for the next three months, just from that program. And then let's say I have one-to-one clients paying me on payment plans as well. Do you see where we're stacking that? So it's 5,000 plus whatever the payment plans are for the one-to-one clients that they're paying monthly. And then I've got voxer coaching, I've got a, you know, I've got all these fun, fun things and where the payments are coming from, but do you see how it, not only there's recurring revenue, but it's stacking and it's growing and that's ultimately what that looks like. And then the next point is we do have to evaluate where our money's coming from. Like if you don't know where the money's coming from in the business, it's going to be really hard to actually plan, actually make more and actually be sustainable in business. Something I just want to add here, like I'm a planner in business. I like to know what's coming next, but I also leave room for like, intuitive and creative things for me to create in my business. I'm going to give you guys an example. Right now, we're about to be heading into July as I'm sitting here recording this, and I'm not really actively launching anything in July that I'm planning of, but I know ideas and such will come up in July. And I know that's where the money will come from. I know my next couple of programs are coming after July. I'm not worried about. I do plan, but I also do leave some room for fun and creative and growth in that way as well. And like, to each their own, I have clients that are super strategic, super planners, and we plan out every single launch and like every single month and everything is accounted for. And then I have some clients that we leave some wiggle room and we play, obviously we plan, but we also plan appropriately based on what they desire. Okay. One thing I just want to add in there, little side note, number seven, identifying. Your offers and closing the gaps. So kind of similar to the customer journey, giving your clients options to stay, but also like closing the gaps in your offers. For example, my program's like miracles and money and visible, I also created a third one on sales and selling. Selling with ease, selling out programs like in advance, launching easier, laid back sales. I created that you want to get inside of that by the way, just messaged me on Instagram. It's so good. Everything I create is so good, but if you're wanting to master that just message me. But I created that program because it was a gap I had to close because it was something I was getting asked all the time and I didn't necessarily have like a niche offer on it. Obviously I cover that in like my masterminds and stuff, but I also knew that there were women that like work with other coaches, don't want to like fully be in one of my full programs, but wanted to learn that from me, I closed the gap and created that program. Do you guys see that? And it felt good for me to do that. I'm not going to create anything I don't want to create, but looking at your offers when you're creating them, making sure that they close a gap for whatever it is you're a master at, whatever it is that you teach and bringing that to life. Now. It's a juicy episode. This is like a lot, it's a lot of good information. So if you have questions from this episode, cause we're, we're covering a lot. It's like a lot of coaching and strategy right now. Feel free to message me on Instagram. We can chat it out because I know I'm, I'm spewing a lot of really good information out and I know sometimes you, you hear the information it's like, okay, but what's my next step. We can talk about that. Any who I know I'm going to get asked this question so I'm going to answer it. Michelle, how long is this going to take Michelle? How long is this going to take? Here's the thing. It's not something that's just like going to happen overnight and we're not going to do this and be messy about it. Like we're not here to just like, half ass things in business and like create a bunch of offers and like throw them up on Instagram and be like, hope people buy. Like I'm just throwing out all this shit. No. Here's the thing like realistically, realistically getting to a place of like significant, consistent recurring revenue built out full product suite, because we also have to give ourselves like time to launch the programs. Like we have to be realistic with like, whatever we have the energy and the bandwidth for, at any given time and like what we're launching when and like what we're creating. And when, if we have team members, if we have helped with our creation, our designs, or is it just us? Like, we have to be realistic, okay? But realistically, to build out a full products, we have launched all the programs and like really start having clients like and all the things, usually can take anywhere from six months to 12 months. That's like normal, right? But this isn't like a timestamp. And I just want to like, share that with you. It's like, this really can happen so much sooner, but it does depend on you. It depends on you. It doesn't depend on me. It depends on you and how fast you move, how fast you take action and like what we're selling and when, and our creation process and being very, you know, strategic about how we're going to do this inside of your business and doing it correctly. One,so that it feels good for you, but also that it works. Okay. And it just takes time to build like, just like anything in business. Like it's not going to happen overnight. Realistic timeframe, you know, usually about six to six months to a year. Um, but building the foundations of all of this, you know, really can happen. We can plan this out in like a day and then it's just the implement. Launching it, creating it, timeframe, all of that. That takes a little bit of time. Again, there isn't a timestamp. I've literally climbed to do this so much sooner, literally so much sooner I did this so much sooner. So it just, it just depends on you, how quick you move and you know, what you do with the information that, and the things that you're creating. You know, this last thing already then gave away is still happening. Oh my gosh. I have sang to you as twice today. Ooh, I'm a terrible singer, but you're welcome. If you leave a five-star review, you will get a Freestar BS on me, free Starbucks, just screenshot it, send it to me on the social media is your next Starbucks on me. And one thing I just want to say you guys, you leaving five stars. Like I can't emphasize this enough it just means the flippin world to me. So I appreciate it so much. Every single review I read does not go on notice. Like it just means the world to me, like this podcast is such a passion project of mine, and I just wanted to reach so many women. So when you leave a review, it helps the growth of this podcast. And I just can't tell you enough how much it means. If you haven't left one yet, please go ahead and do so subscribe, leave a five-star review, screenshot it, send it to me on the social so I can buy your next coffee on me and I'll see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed the show. And if you did remember to hit subscribe, to stay updated and head on over to my Instagram at Michelle Hartman, for all things, business fun, money, growth, and expansion, and I'll see you next time. Right?