Is there £10,600 sitting unclaimed in YOUR business right now? Or could you triple your sales in weeks?
Find out why too many businesses are losing money that should be theirs. And how you can transform your own profits in just three months.
Starting your own business isn’t easy. There are so many part of your business that you need to master – many of which definitely don’t play to your strengths. You also need to juggle your business with other time commitments, such as a job, children and a partner.
And to make it even more tricky, you’re always too close to your business, too emotionally invested in it, to see clearly what needs to be done to really make the most of the opportunities that are within reach.
I know all of this because I’ve walked the walk myself. When I started Talented Ladies Club with my friend Kary we had a clear vision for what we wanted our site to look like creatively, and we had big mission to make the world a better, fairer place for ambitious mothers.
But looking back, we had no clue how we’d ever make money with our business. We were, in hindsight, hopelessly naive.
So it was inevitable that we’d spend the first few years toiling away for free. Because while Talented Ladies Club never lost money, in the really early years it didn’t make enough to pay us any kind of salary.
Today it’s a different story. Talented Ladies Club earns a healthy profit every month, and I can now afford the help of a global team of freelancers who work for the business.
So what changed?
Over the past few years, Talented Ladies Club has changed, drastically. But in order for the business to change, I first had to.
And that meant hiring someone with the expertise and the distance to see what I couldn’t see in Talented Ladies Club, and encourage and chivvy me in the right direction.
When I hired my first serious, ‘grown up’ business coach, Talented Ladies Club wasn’t making enough to cover their monthly fee. Luckily we had enough savings in our business bank account to pay for a few months, but I was sharply aware that the investment needed to pay off fast.
And it did.
The first couple of months, our monthly profit/loss accounts were in the red thanks to paying out for the coaching. But (slowly at first) our income increased as we made the changes they recommended.
And once our monthly books were in the black, we didn’t look back. Indeed, three years after we first started making proper money we were earning 26 times more profit! And our profit has more than doubled since then.
But we’ve earned more than just money in the intervening years. Our business experience and knowledge has grown exponentially.
Indeed, if I were to start Talented Ladies Club again today, it would be a very different business, right from the start. And it would have made money much earlier on.
But one thing wouldn’t change: I would still hire outside help. (I’d just do it sooner…)
You’re ALWAYS too close to your own business
I know now that however much business expertise you might have, you can never have the perspective you need on your business; you’re just too close.
So even though I now help other business owners make a similar transformation to the one I have enjoyed, I still invest in business coaching every month.
And I fully credit Talented Ladies Club’s continued growth and profitability to ongoing coaching.
So what has this got to do with you?
If you’re a business owner or a freelancer, you might be where I was all those years ago. You could be working hard, but not seeing results you want and deserve. And you might be stuck trying to work out why that is.
And if you are, it’s not your fault. In fact, if you’re a solopreneur running your first business, it’s virtually inevitable.
But there is something you can do about it. Like me, you can get the right help and make the changes you need to unlock your business’ potential.
Business coaching should always be an investment (not a cost)
Yes, it’s going to require investment. But trust me, nothing motivates you more than knowing you have skin in the game – that you’re paying a LOT for advice and support.
And the key thing to remember is that business support, such as coaching, should always be an investment. Over the past few years I have worked with four business coaches, each helping me with different areas of my business. And I have got a healthy return on investment with each one.
Every coach has helped me – sometimes straight away, sometimes over the long term – to earn far more than I paid them, thanks to the changes they showed me how to make.
And now I’m paying that forward. Over the past three years, I have been working directly with small cohorts of entrepreneurs and freelancers, helping them make equally spectacular changes to their own businesses.
Changes that ensure they’re not losing money that should be theirs.
How Kayleigh found an extra £10,600 in her business in just one month
When I started working with Dr Kayleigh Fawcett Williams from WILDLIFETEK she was struggling to sell a wildlife technology course she had developed.
And it’s not like she hadn’t tried. Kayleigh had invested £4,000 in a marketing consultant, and a considerable amount in Kajabi software.
But despite marketing her course for 18 months, sales were sluggish. It reached the point where Kayleigh was considering reducing the price of her course in desperation.
Following an initial call with Kayleigh, I could see exactly why her course wasn’t selling. It wasn’t that it wasn’t great – it was. And it wasn’t that there was no need for it – there was.
The problem was that, like many businesses, Kayleigh was making the mistake of trying to appeal to too many different people with one marketing campaign. And the result? It resonated with no one.
To try to dig deeper into who Kayleigh’s perfect customers were, I asked her two questions:
- Who needs your course most?
- Who has the most to lose by NOT buying it?
It was the second question that delivered the gold Kayleigh needed. Because we identified that while lots of people might quite like to learn how to use technology to track and observe wildlife, graduates who wanted to break into the conservation profession had a lot to lose by not learning from Kayleigh.
Indeed, most graduates have a very narrow window in which they can pursue their dream career… before they fall into the trap of getting any semi-decent job just to pay the bills. And get stuck there.
She also observed that many desperate students were paying for volunteering opportunities in the hope they’d learn the skills Kayleigh was teaching, with little real chance they’d be allowed to touch technology worth thousands of pounds.
Once we’d identified a definite niche audience, Kayleigh was then able to change her marketing messages. I also encouraged her to be bold in the messages she was putting out. Graduates genuinely needed her course, so she needed to be quite blunt in the realities of their situation.
And finally, I dissuaded Kayleigh from lowering her price to try to attract students. In fact, I thought her pricing was too low.
This was a big leap of trust for Kayleigh, but she made it. And it paid off big time. Shortly after, Kayleigh made over £5,000 in one weekend closing her early bird offer. And two weeks later when she closed the doors on her summer school she’d earned a total of £10,600.
Here’s what Kayleigh said of the experience:
That money was well deserved. But Kayleigh would not have made it without the outside perspective of someone else, someone with considerable business expertise.
And that’s a scary thought. Because there are a LOT of Kayleigh’s out there. You might even be one!
Is there money in your business that you’re not accessing because you’re too close to your business? Or don’t have the expertise and encouragement to do some tough work and make brave decisions?
How Amanda tripled her online sales… by working LESS hard
Another business owner who was sitting on unclaimed money was Amanda Overend from Books & Pieces.
When I first spoke to Amanda she’d been running her business for seven years around her young family. But with her youngest child starting school she was ready to finally see if her business had legs.
When I spoke to Amanda, it became clear what the biggest bottleneck in her business was: it was her! Amanda didn’t have an enormous amount of time to work on her business, and what time she did have was tied up in labour intensive but low value tasks.
Amanda told me it was her dream to one day outsource the storing, packing and posting of her products, but that seemed a faraway dream. However, by showing Amanda how to set up some simple systems, including tracking and analysing her time and money, we were able to help her realise that she could afford to outsource fulfilment sooner than she realised.
In fact, by freeing herself up of the fulfilment she would gain valuable time that she could spend growing her sales… and in time those extra sales wool more than cover the cost of fulfilment.
So, after some careful sums, Amanda excitedly waved off a lorry carrying her stock. And very quickly she was able to hit the big business goal of tripling her online sales – something she thought she wouldn’t be able to do for a long time.
And it got even better. With more time, Amanda was able to invest more time and money in Facebook ads, which grew her sales even further. And when lockdown happened Amanda was perfectly positioned to make the most of the increase in online shopping.
During lockdown Amanda’s sales grew higher than she’d ever dared hope they could, and this was down to the time and money she could afford to spend on Facebook ads, and the freedom of having a company fulfil her orders. She could never have handled that volume herself, even if she’d managed to get the sales.
Today Amanda’s business bears almost no resemblance to where it was one year ago when she first started working with me. And it’s set to keep growing (and earning more) thanks to the changes she continues to make.
Just like Kayleigh, Amanda’s success and profits are very well deserved.
Could there be an extra £5k in your business you’re missing right now?
So could there be money and opportunities in your business right now? Last year, I conservatively estimated that most small business are missing at least £5,000 of opportunities a year in lost sales and customers.
Just think now: if you got your pricing, targeting and marketing right, could you make an extra £5,000 a year in your business? If you had a well-built and fully-functioning sales funnel could you earn more? (We bet the answer this is yes!)
And if you could establish easy systems in your business, could you find more time to work ON not IN your business – and earn more?
And just think further for a moment: if you don’t fix the gaps that are leaking that £5,000 that could be yours now, you’ll lose at least that every year. Which means that in five years’ time you’ve lost an eye-watering £30,000.
So what can you do right now? There are two things you can do: nothing or get help.
Do nothing and you’ll get exactly what you’re getting now. And if that’s comfortable for you, then that is fine. But if it’s not comfortable for you, then you’ll just be piling more discomfort and frustration on top of any dissatisfaction and disappointment you already have.
Or you can get help. I am so glad I made the leap all those years ago and invested in help. That help doesn’t have to be from me, but if you would like to learn more about how I can help you, you are welcome to book a free 45 minute call with me.
In the call I’ll ask you three questions to establish what you want and what might be stopping you, and share insights you’ll find invaluable.
I’ll also tell you about Double Your Profits, the 12-week programme that transformed both Kayleigh and Amanda’s businesses – and the businesses of many other entrepreneurs and freelancers.
So if you’d like to stop losing opportunities and find out more much missed money is sitting in your business right now, book a no-obligation call with me here. I’d be delighted to see how I can help.
Why you need to book your call now
If your business isn’t working for you as you hoped – if you’re working hard but not earning enough – then something needs to change, and fast.
As calligrapher Alejandra Gonaldi discovered, just working harder and harder isn’t enough. If you want different results you need to do something different – and fast. Because every month you don’t take action, is a month you’ve missed more money.
There’s another good reason why you should take action now, too: on 1 September the price for Double Your Profits goes up.
So if you’d love my help to transform the financial success of your business, then please book your call now and, if the programme is right for you, you can get my help AND save money!
