Suzanne Chadwick 0:00
Hey, lovelies, welcome back to the podcast. awesome to have you here. Today, I am talking all about how we're up leveling the business and what you can think about if you're wanting to uplevel yours as well. Now, I think sometimes we have this feeling that we want to uplevel the business, we want to create better systems and strategies, we want to have better sales as well. But we're not really sure what the steps are to be able to do that. And I think it's really important to think about, very matter how you're going to think strategically about doing it. And I think, you know, I talk a lot about giving yourself the time and the space, to think strategically giving yourself the opportunity to get away from the everyday bits and pieces that you need to be doing and really be thinking about, okay, what is it that we want to do? How are we going to do it? When are we going to do it? And what is it going to look like? And so I think that when you realize that you want to uplevel something in your business, it's really easy to feel overwhelmed. So I wanted to share a few things that that we've been doing and planning for and how we're looking at them in the business. Now the obvious one to start off with is our tech upgrade to heartbeat. And I do really see it as an upgrade. And I'll explain why. So first of all, the reason that I wanted to move from Kajabi is because we had reached our limit with the number of products that we had, and I didn't really want to upgrade to the next payment level. And I really wanted more. So you know, I wanted communities in the same place. And it would have just cost us a lot more to number one upgrade to get more products. And secondly, each community if we wanted to communities to be with our products, each community cost a separate amount of money. So it just would have added up to something where I was just like that is not what I really what I want to be paying for. As far as our tech goes now. Kajabi is great. So this is nothing on Kajabi. If you're starting out, and you've got a couple of digital products Kajabi has been fantastic for the last few years, like we've had it for probably before. And I mean, we've done over 1.5 million in sales through Kajabi, if not more, over the years, you know, just with our programs. But I really wanted to create not only a one stop shop for our courses and community, but I wanted to create a community first platform. And so I really wanted to create a place where everyone could come together, not just our individual course communities. And we also wanted unlimited courses and membership options too. So it doesn't mean that we're going crazy and creating like millions of products, because obviously, we want to make sure that we're keeping the business streamline, we're keeping our products and services streamlined. But we could also be adding in things like free downloads and videos and mini courses that we can just give our community as we create them too, because I do create a lot of content. And so before we would have things in Kajabi, and then we'd have things on the website, and then we'd have like Facebook groups, and it just felt very disjointed to me. And it was it's been hard to keep engaged community with all the different Facebook groups that I've got like it splits my attention. It feels very hard to constantly be engaging with different communities, which is why I really wanted to bring everybody into the one place as well. So I've been looking for a new tech for a while now. And we had taken a look at you know, circle and mighty networks and school. But it was just after a client randomly shared on a coaching call that she had seen this new product called heartbeat. And I went and took a look at it. And I just knew intuitively that this was the right platform for me. It just felt really fun. It felt engaging. I think for me, looking at it, you know, we can have our main community, we have all of our events there. We can do DMS. So I'm Jenna and I and my VA are always messaging each other in that platform. And so now it's just one place for all of our courses, community DMS events, etc which I'm really loving and and heartbeat are always improving things as well which I you know, I think is great too. So I feel like even more is going to come and the price is like a 10th of what Kajabi is. So I felt like from a monthly expenses perspective. It was a good decision for For us as far as future growth goes, and really thinking strategically about where I want the business to be in the next year, or two or more. So what I thought I would take you through today are just the different planning stages to the project. And as I said, my amazing VA, Jenna, who really did the lion's share of the work with migration and move and who has been amazing, you know, we've been working together to make this happen. So I've broken it down into a couple of phases. And I'm not just going to talk to you about the tech upgrade. But I'm also going to talk to you about other things that were really up leveling in the business and the way that we're thinking about it and planning it. So with the new community, phase one was really the setup of the new space. So I have a lot of content. So that took a long time to bring over because you know, I've been building courses for years now. And then we had to manage our stripe subscriptions. Migration as well. Now, this is my MRR, which is my monthly reoccurring revenue. And it's super important for us to get that right. So I think that was where I was the most nervous where we had to create a new portal in stripe, then we had to move all of our subscriptions over to the new portal. And not only that, we then had to go and cancel all of the current subscriptions in the Kajabi portal, cause we obviously don't want to get our clients being charged twice for things. So we did all of that. But I have to say that was the most nerve wracking part of of the move. For me personally, when it comes to the money side of things. The second phase was really looking at the community building engagement. Now I already know that bringing people on Facebook can be hard. But we really wanted to create a destination community, not something you're in all the time, but something you check into and engage with on a regular basis. So I made sure that there was already content in each section of the community. You know, we have our main community chat, we have our course groups, we have DMS in the community and the events as well. So we're planning out a launch month, where once everybody is in the community, we'll host weekly events for that month just to get people engaged and connecting as well. And so we're really just thinking about what that can look like too. And I think that when you're doing something like this, the beginning of this journey is really important, because you want to make sure that people see the value in being in the community. But I also find the really interesting thing is that getting people to engage and comment can be sometimes hard when it's brand new. And you know, if you don't have a lot of activity happening, then people are a little bit hesitant to comment. But at the end of the day, somebody has to go first. And once we kind of get more people involved, then we can get that ball rolling to. And I feel like once we get to that stage, it's going to be really, really great. And I also think it's important to understand that you, you know, maybe bringing over people from an old community where they may have been there for years. I mean, I've had my courses for years. And so it's also managing my expectation that not everybody is going to come over. And also that, you know, some people may have done the course several years ago, and they've moved on. And so really thinking about how we're building the new community, how we're continuing to serve active clients, how we're re engaging with people that want to be part of the community, but really looking at now how do we continue to grow new clients, new community, etc. And I feel like this leads really well into phase three, around new clients, because getting revenue getting back into revenue generation is important. So when you're in transition, it can be really hard, especially when you've got a digital product business to keep sales ticking over because you're almost holding off a little bit and waiting, because you don't want too many new clients coming into the old portal. But then the new portal isn't ready yet.

So we're really prepared and looking at you know, the fact that in February and March, we were going to take a hit to revenue as we were in this migration and transition as well. And so I think that that's something to think about if you're ever going to do a tech migration and transition is to just know that you may be reinvesting into the business from a time perspective, from a financial perspective, but it may also hit your revenue too. And so now the focus is really ramping up our main products, which is BBA, so Brand Builders Academy, at the amplify personal brand mastermind, the bold speakers collective and one on one coaching. And so that's what we're focusing on right now as far as really our asset optimization goes which I've spoken about in previous podcasts. And looking at now that the tech is sorted, and we just really need to get to a point where we let Kajabi go in the next sort of three to four weeks so that we can have a clean break and focus all that energy and time into heartbeat. And really take a look at you know are launching again, getting more clients and then focusing on growing those elements of the business again with this new tech too. So that's one part of the business that we've upgraded and up leveled, which I'm really excited about. And I feel like it's been a really good decision. Like, I can have my one on one clients in a heartbeat, too. And so it just feels so good to have community courses. You know, one on one clients, DMS events all in one place, I'm super, super happy with it. And if you do want to check out heartbeat, then and you're interested in using my affiliate link, you could go to Suzanne chadwick.com, forward slash heartbeat, and you'll be able to check it out as well. Now the other part of the business that we're really looking to uplevel and upgrade is the podcast. And I shared with you ever since hearing Omar say that, you know, with their 2 million downloads a month that they do daily episodes, I am not committing to daily, but I am currently looking at how we get a lot more content out. Because as I've shared before, I feel like I've really held back on sharing because we've been sticking to a one podcast a week schedule. So sometimes I want to share something with you. But I'm like, Oh, well, we've already published the podcast. And maybe I'll do that later. And then I don't do it. And so I really want to start to take a look at how we're being more strategic with publishing more episodes. They might be shorter episodes, but it just means that I can share more with you. And so being really planned with it, I don't kind of want to be hectic and rushed with it. But the minute that I made the decision, I kind of went and recorded a whole lot of podcast episodes, and we've just banked them. And so now I'm like, okay, every Monday, maybe I'm going to go and record, you know, a certain number of podcasts episodes so that we can just bank them and have them there and start to see how often we can publish we're going to do on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at this stage, and then just see how we go with it. And I definitely want to be recording a lot more. So I've set up my DSLR camera in the office now, which means that I've got a better setup to be able to record more video. And that then means that we can obviously be sharing and distributing the video content across platforms on a more regular basis, too. So really looking at the podcast from a strategic level. It's like, okay, what do we want to do? Well, we want to grow our listenership. In order to grow our listenership, we want to get more downloads. So if we create more episodes, we'll get more downloads, which will help us in our rankings, which means that we will be more visible and be able to connect with more clients. And we already know that we get a certain percentage of our clients through the podcast. So statistically and strategically, the more listeners we have, then the knock on effect should be that we get more clients through the podcast as well. So that's what I mean when I say you know, you want to be strategic in your planning and understanding why you're doing things. But then also setting yourself up for success. You don't want to kind of be like hectic with it all, and not have a plan for how you're going to do it in a sustainable way. Because if it's not sustainable, you won't continue to do it. So I've written down a long list of our episode topics in Asana, which is where we manage our podcasts. I'll also be dipping into coaching questions as well that I've had from clients and talking about those on the podcast. So if you have a question that you want me to answer on the podcast, then feel free to DM me, which that'll be fun to do. And then really just booking out those podcasts, shoot days recording episodes, and really taking a look at, you know, the video content that we're creating as well and how we're going to distribute those. So the first thing is the tech upgrade. The second thing is the podcast, you know, goal is to increase downloads, increase listens, become more visible. And the third upgrade or uplevel that we're really looking at is around sales strategy. So taking a look at what our sales strategy is right now, taking a look at how we're being a lot more focused on our conversion rates, how many people are coming to the website? How many people are coming to sales pages? How many people are coming into our funnels? What's our conversion rate going to be? What do we want it to be? If things are not working the way that we want? How do we be a lot more, you know, deliberate on how we're shifting and changing those, what are we going to test? What are we going to try and just really being in that asset optimization phase from us from a sales perspective? And really take a look at what else could we be doing? What other things could we test and try that we think could really work as well. And so that is definitely something that we're upgrading this year. So I feel like with those three things with the tech upgrade with the podcast upgrade and with the sales upgrade, those are three really cool things that I know we're going to drive to ain't in the business. And I think that, you know, I've been in business for 10 years. And I think that things are always shifting and changing, things are always moving. And you have to continue to educate yourself be up to date with where the market is going, how people are buying, whether what you've got, you're selling the way that you want, and what you might need to change and shift about it. You know, a really simple thing that my signature course used to be brand builders Academy, which I've always loved. And then after I did my mindset certification, we changed it to the bold Business Academy. And we've had it as a bold Business Academy, probably for about a year or so. And for some reason, it just never sat with me, I never, like it never felt as good as Brand Builders Academy. And then I had one conversation with a girlfriend and she was like, I would buy Brand Builders Academy over the board Business Academy, because I feel like I know what I'm buying when I buy a brand builders Academy. And so within like after that conversation, I just made a decision, I changed it back. And I think really listening to your own intuition, and making sure that you're creating, and selling the things that feel really good to you. You know, when I talk about building a brand that you love, this is part of it, I find clients don't sell what they have, because they're not loving their branding, it could be the name of the product, it could be their visual brand, whatever it might be, there is something that's holding them back. And I feel like I went through that as well. So I really wanted to get out of requested branding. And really focus on selling brand builders Academy, which I love, I've always loved I know my clients get amazing results in it. And so even something as simple as a name change can totally change your energy around how you're selling something, you know, we had the sell more mini course. And for me, I'm like I really liked say simple sales as a name. So we've changed that as well. And I think sometimes we overthink and we're like all but I don't want to change it. But if you're not loving it, if you're not selling it, if you're not talking about it, then there's something energetically that might be stopping you from doing that, I think it's really important to be able to put your finger on it, and be able to say this is just not feeling great for me. And so I'm just going to go change it. So I think this is where your intuition and connecting to the energy of what you're selling is actually really important. And I just want you to be thinking about whether there's any element of your business, that is not feeling good, my tech was not feeling good to me. Yeah, the podcast was not getting the results that I wanted. Our sales need a rethink and a bit of an upgrade and uplevel the name of brand builders Academy was not sitting well with me, one of the things I talk about a lot is making faster decisions and having a really great decision cycle where you can look at what's not working, assess it, make a decision and move on. And I think that that's what we've done recently is we're moving a lot faster with our decisions. And I think it's helping us to grow the business in the direction in the way that we want. So those are three areas of the business that I think we're really focusing on up leveling. And so I think it's worth taking a step back from your business and doing an assessment and really taking a look and saying, what do we want to uplevel in the business? And what would it look like to do that, like what exactly needs to happen?

What are the actions that we need to take? What's the timeframe? And then how do we schedule this in and get this done and be somebody who is decisive in your business. And I feel like there's been times where I've been really indecisive and it has been such a time suck. It's taken so much time so much effort, and not really gotten me the results that I want when I've sat in indecision. And so I think that's something to really think about. What do you want to happen, what's not happening and how are you going to shift that.