How we helped Amanda Overend from Books & Pieces triple her profits in under 12 weeks
Think it’s impossible to see a big change in your business quickly? Find out how we helped Amanda Overend from Books & Pieces to triple her profits in under 12 weeks.
Back in August 2019, Amanda Overend had been running her business, online store Books & Pieces, for seven years. By this point she was working long hours in her business, but was turning over very little.
Her youngest child was about to start school full time, and Amanda had decided it was now or never. It was time for her business to make proper money without eating up more of her time. So Amanda made the big decision to invest in our 12 week business transformation programme, Double Your Profits, and we started working together in September 2019.
What did we do?
From experience, many small businesses usually have just one or two problem areas that are stopping them from achieving the success they want and deserve. I’ve worked with a business whose pricing was too low. And another who was targeting the wrong customer base. As soon as we fixed those issues, both businesses took off. One female business owner made over £10,000 within a month of fixing her target audience!
In Amanda’s case, she had got plenty of things right. Her marketing was well-planned with regular email marketing that performed well. Her products appealed to her target audience and were well-priced.
But there were two things she lacked: cashflow and time. She was spending so much time physically keeping her business running that she was just, in effect, standing still. She had no time or energy to devote to sales. She also needed a steady influx of new customers to feed into her marketing funnel.
When we start working with freelancers and business owners we ask them to start tracking their time and their finances – and we examine how they connect. In Amanda’s case this enabled her to quickly see which of her products were more profitable and what areas of the business she could let go. It also showed her that she was spending far too much time fulfilling her orders – picking the products from boxes, and packing and posting.
Amanda researched outsourcing options for fulfilment and we went through the numbers to see if it was a viable idea. Outsourcing fulfilment was a long term goal for Amanda but she’d never considered it could happen this quickly.
When we ran the numbers though she could see that the extra cost was more than outweighed by the time she freed up – time she could spend on sales to bring in more customers. Amanda was learning Facebook ads at the time, and was achieving encouraging results. So Amanda took the leap, and did this:
What happened next?
Freeing Amanda up from fulfilment had two important results for her business:
- She finally had the time to properly spend on sales and marketing.
- There was no limit to the number of orders she could process in a day (within reason)!
With time to spend on her Facebook ads, Amanda’s sales finally took off. And just a short time later she had tripled her online sales – a goal she hadn’t dreamed of hitting for months, if not years. She was delighted.
But that was just the beginning. As more cash flowed into the business, Amanda could invest more in Facebook ads. And as a result, her sales grew. And grew.
And when lockdown hit and online orders surged, Amanda was perfectly placed to make the most of it, with Facebook ads up and running and fulfilment in place. As a result she dramatically scaled her business.
And she didn’t just increase her turnover. One of the weekly modules in Double Your Profits shows you how to increase the profitability of your business. So despite paying for fulfilment, Amanda’s profit margin had increased enormously, so her business was much more profitable.
Things have continued to go well for Amanda since, and she is now looking at adding new income streams to the business. In a beautiful moment of recognition of how far she’d come, last December Amanda was looking at her monthly finances and realised that she was turning over more in a day than she’d been bringing in in an entire month just two years before.
Why was Amanda so successful?
Amanda is a big success story, but her achievements are replicable. There are three key reasons why we believe Amanda was so successful, and how you can too.
1) She did the work
As simple as it sounds, Amanda just followed the process. We know Double Your Profits works – it’s been proven many times over – but it can’t work if you don’t. Amanda did all the exercises and turned up to the calls each week, and her diligence paid off.
This is a common pattern we have seen in so many of the courses we’ve run, not just Double Your Profits. The people who trust and stick to the process and do the work get the results. And if you join any of our programmes (or invest in anyone’s courses) we urge you to d the same. Just do the work and you’ll get the results, just like Amanda.
2) She made brave decisions
Outsourcing fulfilment was a big decision, especially as Amanda still wasn’t earning much at that point, but she weighed the decision carefully and we crunched the numbers to check it could work. Then she went for it. Had she been less brave she might have waited to outsource – and missed the lockdown boat.
We’ve seen this again and again in the people we’ve worked with. Those who hold their nerve and take actions that scare them – like CV writer Laura Harmsworth who significantly raised her prices after working with us – reap the rewards. In Laura’s case she actually got busier after re-packaging her offering with our help, and has increased her prices every year since… without losing work.
3) She invested in learning
Joining Double Your Profits was a big decision for Amanda – as it is for all the people who join. The ideal customer for Double Your Profits is a business owner who isn’t earning enough money. So paying a significant amount for help is a big step.
It’s a step we ourselves made many years ago when we were in the same situation. When we started working with our first grow-up business coach we were investing more per month than we were turning over. But we’d done our research and knew she was good… and that we needed her.
So we understand and respect how much trust people make place us when they make a similar investment in our courses. It was this willingness to invest in the right knowledge and support that helped Amanda get out of the rut her business was stuck in, and finally make it the success it deserved to be.
What does Amanda say about working with us?
Here’s what Amanda says of her experience working with us:
“Initially I wasn’t sure that Double Your Profits would work for a product business – I thought it was just for service-based businesses. I was also concerned whether I could commit the time to action, and do everything in the programme.
But actually I found the programme really easy to follow, and I’ve enjoyed the fact that we’re drip fed the coursework, because you don’t feel too overwhelmed. You can just go and do it as and when you can, and come back to it if you need.
I love the weekly calls, and I love that Hannah questions our businesses and her no nonsense, pragmatic approach. Hannah is really honest and very practical, and having her as a coach has been really useful for me and helped me to focus on profit.
My aim for a successful business was to triple my average online sales and to be able to outsource fulfilment. And, just six weeks after starting Double Your Profits, I made the decision to outsource fulfilment and, as a result, I tripled my online sales.
It’s been amazing. Not only have I already achieved two ambitious business goals, but it’s made me realise it is possible to do more, and that I CAN reach my targets. By focusing on the money, processes and systems and just getting on with it, and doing things that are right for your business, you can make a big difference.
Double Your Profits has really helped me take an absolutely massive leap in essentially the space of a month.”
Love help transforming your business like Amanda? We’re currently enrolling places in our 12-month programme the TLC Business Club. Find out more here.
Photograph By Ursula Kelly
