Listen Now:

When you want to make more cash in your business, you might be tempted to just keep launching new stuff over and over again… right?

WRONG.

In this episode, we’ll talk about the 3 different things you should be focusing on – and how to blend them together – to consistently grow your income month over month.

Your Podcast Strategy

Poddit – Our favorite platform to find and connect with podcast hosts.
PitchPage.pro – The easiest way to create a digital one-sheet for podcast prospecting
Episode 24 – How Podcasts Generate Leads For Your Business with Brent Basham
Episode 53 – The Real Secret to Podcasting Success with Mark Aisquith

Your Pricing & Growth Strategy

Episode 34 – Sales Strategies for Normal People – how to own your value and sell at a price that doesn’t make you want to puke
Episode 52 – Fast Cash vs Long Term Growth: Where to focus and when
Episode 17 – Answer These 5 Questions If You Want to Scale

Your List Build Strategy

Episode 32 – How to host a list build and still run your business
Episode 30 – Real Time Creation: Watch As We Create a Challenge for an Interior Designer (live, in real time, unscripted)
Episode 36 – How To Engage Your Audience For Maximum Results During Your List Build
Episode 37 – How to Successfully Use Upsells to Monetize a Free Event
Episode 50 – Which List Build Is Right For Me?
Episode 10 – How to Engage Your List (after your list build) To Create Raving Fans
Taking Events Online with Virtual Summits featuring Dr. Mark T. Wade (Business Building Blocks)

Alyson Lex 0:01
Before we dive into today's episode, check out our content topic generator full of 128 content topics designed to easily populate with your business information. So you can do your Facebook Lives, your blog posts, your social posts, your emails, any kind of content you want, easily. Without staring at that blank page, you can get that at System to THRIVE comm slash content. And now we'll dive in. What do you do to grow your business? Do you keep plugging along and hope that magically something's going to happen? that's going to change the game for you that that magic contract or that magic client is going to just show up? Or do you approach your business with intentionality and understand the three ways to actually make more money and combining them together is actually what's going to really make the difference for you. So today, we're going to talk about that, we're going to break it all down and show you how to make it work. And it's really going to be a lot of fun.

Jennie Wright 1:07
It is going to be a lot of fun. And Alison and I have a little bit of the giggles. Today, we're going to do our very best to keep that at bay. But it's going to be a little hard. We just have a little bit of the giggles. So it'll be good. Okay, here's, here's what people know, this is what people are doing right now. Right now people do the plugging along thing like Allison was saying, right, they stay at the same income level for a really long time. Or they might see that swing where they had a really great year. And then they see like a lower, you know, a lower income year for a couple years. And they're also trying to consistently do the work to find the new leads. But it feels sort of like that, start stop the break and then the gas, right. And they're not really putting in, or potentially not putting in the consistency to sort of make this happen, right, it leads to that feast and famine, it creates that. That lack of consistency that we're sort of trying to talk about. And the key to all of this, is to really look at, you know, not doing that. Because if we do this at all, it really it all leads to this, like lack of confidence, but where if you have the start to stop it, it makes you feel like you're not so great. And you're actually like really, really great. So if you had the consistency, that machine that keeps feeding the leads into your business, it's going to make a heck of a lot easier. So there's three keys to maximize how you're going to do this. And we're going to share how to do those together. Number one, sell to more people. So if you think of this as a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a three way system, this is how it's gonna work. You know, we've talked about this a lot, we've talked about it ad nauseum and various episodes, have a list, build, do a lead magnet, get on some podcasts, get out in front of new audiences and bring new people into your world. One of my favorite things, and one of the things like Alyson loves to do and we talk about this live is the podcast tour. This is not an idea I came up with on my own Alison's The one who actually got me into this, I just happen to be the one to tell you about it. So a podcast tour is where you're spending a couple hours every single week, pitching podcasts in your niche, okay, it's not pitching every single podcast that you can find, that maybe has one keyword that matches your niche is pitching one, one style of podcast, right, and then going after those, trying to get yourself on as many as possible that fit within your niche. Because if you if you aim to like get on 20 to 25, but they're all over the place, from spirituality to business to parenting as a result, you know, that's not going to really help you in the long run, it might feel really good at the time. This is not gonna help you in the long run. So take a look at that. Your aim is to try and book yourself into about 20 or 25. That would be a really good goal for a podcast tour. And we want to recommend that you use services, like pot it dotnet, which is one of the services that Allison I use. And we're going to link that on our resources page. We also use a brand new one that we think is incredible. It's called pitch page dot Pro. Pitch page dot Pro is great for creating that sort of one sheet that speaker one sheet that you can give to people as a Hey, I'd love to be a speaker on your thing. Here's my one sheet, here's what I talked about. And it makes it like a one stop shop. So the potential podcast host can go and take a look at that page and be like, oh, they've talked about this. They've talked about that they've appeared here, they've appeared there. Oh, here's a couple samples. So tech, so I absolutely recommend that you check that out. And, again, we're going to link all of this in the resources page. Okay, so that's something to think about.

Alyson Lex 4:51
I want you to think about what you can do each and every day to bring those new leads into your business. Can you create a referral program can you help Measure funnels Can you step up your social game? Look, you already know all of this, people talk about it all the time. The key here is to stop just consuming the information and start implementing it. Because way number one to make more money is to get more leads sell to more people. All right, unless you address this issue, the other ways that we're going to talk about will also struggle. Okay, so the second way to make more money in your business is to sell at a higher price. This does not always mean just randomly raising your prices for the services you currently provide. Although that's an option if you think your market will bear it. And I know that we've done an episode on this. I think it was with Katherine Calhoun wasn't Jenny, where she talked about how to raise your prices? Yes. without feeling physically ill.

Jennie Wright 5:55
Absolutely. It was actually Catherine Cohan. Yeah. Okay.

Alyson Lex 5:59
But also consider can you create a premium level of the service that you're already offering? One of the things that I do in my business is I have my copy clients. And if they want first dibs on my schedule, they're going to pay a little more. And that's okay for them because they want first dibs. I'm offering the same product. It's just the timing is a little different. And I can charge a little more for that. If you have a self study course, can you turn that into a group coaching? The only thing you're adding? is you. We'll talk about that more on way number three, just as a little teaser, can you increase your average transaction by creating add ons? Hey, awesome, you want this sales page? Cool, I can do that for X amount of dollars. How's the rest of your funnel? It's the Do you want fries with that model that McDonald's does, right? That's the upsell their fries are their big moneymaker, their fries and their drink. That's why they want you to buy the value meals. Finally, think about whether your market will bear a raise in your price. If you're already at the top end of your market, this may not be the time to raise your prices. But also think about when the last time you raised your prices was inflation happens, guys, cost of living is going up. Those prices should be keeping up at a bare minimum with cost of living.

Jennie Wright 7:32
There's something else to consider here as well with if you need to raise those prices. If you raise those prices, are you going to market yourself out of your niche of your ideal client. So as an example, if you're providing a service, and the going rate is 20 $500, for that service, let's just say it's building funnels or something as an example. And you raise your prices incrementally as you go as your skills increase. But the bar is still at that 25 or 26 or 20 $700. Mark as an example, are you are you raising yourself out of your of your market? Are you pricing yourself out of your ideal clients ability to pay for you. Now, that could be bad, but it could also be good. Because if your ideal client is growing, you know, if you change your your ideal client is ever so slightly from the more newbie that needs a funnel, and they're not going to be able to pay that much to the higher end client as you grow your skills, and they're able to pay the five or six of the $10,000 for a funnel, then that becomes really cool. something to consider. So I just wanted to kind of put that in there as a cautionary tale, but also something to think about.

Jennie Wright 8:42
Step number three is to sell more things to the same people. Now, this was something that I love to talk about, it's actually something that Alyson is incredibly good at talking about, I think I've sort of sat at her knee and listened to this quite a bit, which is why I'm able to now talk about it. That's cool. So the easiest person to sell is to somebody who is already your customer. And that is the product. That's the reason why, you know, you build that know, like and trust factor up because they already trust you because you've already done something with them in the past, they already know that you can bring a ton of value, and they don't need to be sold on you. Just the solution. It's going to cost you way less time and money to get better at those relationships, if you've already spent the time building them, right. So there's a lower acquisition cost if you're doing this. And it's so much easier than trying to find a whole new set of people and then trying to go through that process all over again. That's going to be a big issue. So I really want you to think about that. The other thing that you can do in this respect is create additional service lines. So what does that look like? So maybe you build funnels, but can you also pivot a little bit and add a service line where it's like you build membership sites? Or can you add something new where you're building I don't know. little mini three page websites. Look at those different possibilities. The next thing is creating additional products that solve the ancillary problems. So your main thing solves one big problem. Now, what are the other little problems that come up that your ideal client goes crap, okay, you solve one big problem. Now I've got a couple other things that are niggly, and I've got to take care of, maybe you can solve those as well. And then next is making sure you have different price points that meet people where they are right now in their journey. So that can be that you have a low low tier product, a mid tier product, maybe a little bit of a higher mid tier product, and then a higher end product, making sure that you're serving all of the different types of people, because the people who can afford something at the low end scale, you could sort of skill them up to where they're ready to work with you in the near future. And that's something to think about as well.

Alyson Lex 10:54
Don't just keep selling one item to new people, every time I see this mistake a lot, you have one product. And your whole goal is to sell this to new people.

Alyson Lex 11:14
Don't just keep selling one item to new people every time. This is a mistake I see a lot of people make over and over again, they have one product and their whole goal is to optimize the funnel and make better ads and all of these things to this to new people for the same product. But Jenny just talked about why your existing people are the easiest to sell to they're already buying from you. Have you ever been on a cruise, I have pre COVID. And the thing that they do is they spend like the last three days of that cruise selling you another cruise. They're already you're already on the boat. And they know that if you're on the boat right now, you are way more likely to get on that boat again. So they spend a lot of money and effort and energy selling you another cruise. Alright, so I want to break this down for you real quick. LTV or lifetime value is how much each customer is on average worth to you over the entire time that they're a customer. If you sell a $67 product and nothing else, the lifetime value of that customer of every customer is $67. But add in a $100 upsell that half of the people take the lifetime value of your customer is $117. Because we take the 67 original product, plus $50, which represents half of the 100. See how we kind of did that math. And it comes to $117. Now if you add in on top of that a monthly membership that people pay 20 bucks for and they stay an average of six months, that's $120 that's now $120 have lifetime value for each customer that purchases that monthly membership, you can end up with a lifetime value of $237 for a customer, which is three and a half times what your previous one was just by adding two offerings, all at very low prices.

Jennie Wright 13:39
So to be positioned right there, you have to be marketed the right way, which you know, you can absolutely do and they have to be the right thing. That's the other part is making sure it's the right product at the right time in their journey. If you do that, then it's gonna feel more, it's just gonna feel more complimentary for them. And I like that because I went through a period of my business where I was constantly trying to have to find market and onboard people. That's exhausting. It's really exhausting to always be in sales mode. And I mean, I have my I have my moments where that still happens, obviously, because you're in a promo, you're out of a promo. But it does make it tiring. So everything that we talked about today is supposed to help make this a little bit easier. Go back and listen again, if you need to take a look at what these three different points might mean. And we've done the work for you. We've created a plan. And we want you to sort of follow this plan. But before we do any of that I'll say something else that she wants to share.

Alyson Lex 14:39
So the example that I gave with lifetime value of a customer was really for a product based business. And when you mentioned what you do, I kind of realized like I ignore the service providers out there which shame on me I am and so especially if you provide a high touch service that's premium, like I do, like Johnny does. Think about how fast that lifetime value grows. If I let's let's pretend that I charge $1,000 for a piece of copy. If I'm consistently finding new people, and my conversion rate, my sales rate is 80%. And it takes me X number of hours to find that person. And I've got to do all of this advertising or sponsoring or promotion or work to find those people put a value on my time. Okay, think about how much it's costing me to find each new client. Now, let's say I charged $1,000 for coffee. And Jim Bob, was one of those people I promoted, I found him I on boarded him, just like Jenny said, spend all of this time and effort and invested that into the relationship with Jim Bob. Now I can go and try and find Sally Sue, and spend all of that same time, effort and energy getting her into my world. Or I can send Jim Bob an email that says, hey, Jim, Bob, I'd love to support you what you got going on. It's really that simple. And now I have doubled the value of my relationship with Jim Bob, for a micro fraction of what it would have cost me in money, effort and energy to find an onboard Sally Sue. Does that mean that you shouldn't be looking for the Sally Sue's No. But it means that by ignoring the Jim Bob's that are already in your universe, you're leaving cash on the table for someone else to come in and swoop? Someone who will follow up and keep them in their orbit. I just really wanted to kind of break that down for you.

Jennie Wright 17:05
No, that was great. Because you're right. If they're not, if you're not taking advantage of that opportunity, somebody else will. Absolutely. Because they're going to need more coffee, they're going to need more whatever it is that you do. So find a way to be useful. And to continue to be useful in their journey, their customer journey, whatever that journey is. so messy. Remember, when I said a little bit earlier that we made that plan for you? We've got a plan that's going to help you implement what we talked about today? Well, here it is, because this is actually really interesting. Step number one, we want you to look critically at your pricing, and see what your market can withstand. Can you know can it withstand an increase? Are you under charging? If so, look at raising your prices. Now you don't have to go hog wild and raise them by 200%. You can raise them incrementally at a pace that feels good for you. Number two, what are the additional products or services that you can add on to your current offerings to increase the transactional value each time somebody makes a purchase from you? Step three, figure out the lifetime value of your customers. What additional price point products can you put into that offering basket to increase that lifetime value of those customers over time? Step Four. We need you to audit, audit your follow up of your current customers. Are you keeping them in your orbit? Are you you know, just taking care of them that one time and then forgetting them and letting them out of your you know, letting them go? Are you letting them get pulled in, in a way by somebody else who will do what you do? Maybe not even better than you but they're just there. Right? So don't let that happen. And then number five, don't just do this all at once. review this regularly. We recommend that you do this every six months or so odd like maximum every six months to make sure you're consistently optimizing the opportunities that you have. And also reevaluating. Because if you look over everything that we just talked about, every 3456 months, the landscape will change for you. You might have a new program product or service that you want to add on new opportunities have come up perhaps your JV with somebody or you've increased you know the prices of your thing. And now you have a new offering that you want to create.

Jennie Wright 19:30
And then as a special today, Allison is taking over the takeaways. She's got some really great ones today. So Allison, it's all yours.

Alyson Lex 19:38
All the takeaways. This is like my favorite segment, I think, because we always have such good information. So you notice I started warming my way in buy it with a bonus and now I'm just taking it over. Alright, my takeaway number one is I want you to follow the plan that Jenny laid out. Go back, listen to it, write it down, follow it. Really, I mean, go back. Listen. Now, Okay, number two. Earlier in the episode, I talked about just consuming information, especially when it comes to lead generation. And what happens is we get stuck in this information consumption world, we get stuck with the FOMO, I don't want to miss out on the newest tip trick or strategy. And we stop implementing. So go back real issen to this plan, write down the steps, turn off the podcast, turn off the information, and go implement the plan right now. Alright, and then takeaway number three, I really want you to know your numbers. When I broke down the math on the lifetime value of a customer, I made them all up. But you can't do that. Alright, so I want you to know, hey, X number of my people purchase this kind of thing. This is really where I need you to do some digging and some investigating. And if you need to get some help, I'm sure there are people that can do that, we'll try and find someone who can dig into your numbers and figure this stuff out. Because once you have the data at your fingertips, that's when you're actually able to make the decisions that will move you forward, you can see what's selling, you can see how many people are doing it. If you notice, all of a sudden, hey, a whole bunch of people that buy this, also buy this, well, maybe you can create some marketing. that's intentional for that. And so the data is not just about the data for data's sake, it helps you make decisions to move you forward.

Jennie Wright 21:45
I'll take that last one. I wrote this one as Allison was talking because I think it's important. And Alyson said, go back and listen, go back. And listen, mine is make a move, make a move, stop doing the things and make a move. So when you're done listening to this podcast, if you go ahead and take your earbuds out, and you get back to your life that's on you. But if you do this and don't take something out of this, that's going to actually work on your business, then you're going to have a problem, okay, so make sure that you're taking this and you're doing something, as opposed to doing what everybody else is doing, which is listening and doing nothing does nothing for your business. On that note, if you haven't already, please do consider following the podcast. so you don't miss any of these episodes that Alison and I are creating for you, and all the information that we're doing, and that we're sharing and bringing experts to the table for you. And the other thing is, please do think about grabbing that content topic generator. You can grab it at System to THRIVE comm forward slash content, I believe, and I'm just making sure Yep, Ford slash content. So go and grab that as well. And we'd love to hear from you. So please leave us a review and let us know what you think of the podcast and how we can do better in the future and share things that are going to help you even better even more, I should say. Thanks so much for being here and we'll talk to y'all soon and we'll be back again answering another big question.