What Does it Really Cost to Grow a Million Dollar Business
Episode 362: Show Notes
Welcome back to the show, everybody! Today we are going to be letting you even further into our business lives! As we continue to grow we are constantly asking ourselves, "What is the content that people want to hear about?" This goal of keeping you entertained, educated, and engaged is very important to us and we have always loved sharing our lives and work with all of you. When we started out, everything we did was fun, fresh, and engaging and it was easy to share this with our listeners in a natural way. As we have grown, things have changed and we have been more considerate in our choices but we want to carry on sharing stuff with you that is exciting, new, and informative. It has always been our best thing, being able to share something about a problem we solved or a strategy we discovered.
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As we enter year four of our biz we have to continue to look for these opportunities when we have had a different reality from where started out and many of our listeners. We want to help you now and set you up for success in the future! We have a feeling there may be some inaccurate perceptions out there of what is happening in our business. You are welcome to DM us on Instagram with your thoughts but we sense people find us less relatable than when we started out and were smaller. There have been challenges in continually connecting with our audience as our situation has changed, our team has grown and so on, but we want, more than anything, to stay relatable to all of you! We actually think we are probably in more similar situations to a lot of you than you may think! All this to say, we have resolved to let you in on some of this and share more of what is going on in our current lives than we have been!
Our Current Reality and Why It is Not So Different From Yours!
The reality is our business is probably smaller than you think! We have made $1.2 million in courses but that is a far cry from what we can take home. We are not yet a million a year company and some months we do not even breakeven! We have lost money, over-hired, let people go, run ad campaigns that went nowhere and had really bad launches. For a long time, we were focused on the income line, the sales numbers but we now want to think about the costs of becoming a million-dollar company. And we want all of you to think about that too! What are you willing to pay in order to experience that kind of growth? We have so much expertise in getting you to having a hundred thousand dollar business, we feel like we could do it in our sleep! But since we have not quite done it ourselves yet, we do not feel qualified to help you get to the 7 figures. We always want to give you expertise and not half-hearted info that we are a bit unsure of. All of this can be quite overwhelming and getting to that milestone is another whole level of stress!
As We Grow, We Take Less Risk
We have grown safer as we have grown larger. This is where we are at and sometimes these safer decisions have worked out and sometimes they haven't. It is easy to see these things in retrospect and we were much more gung-ho about decisions in the earlier days of our biz! That is all good and nice to look back on but we are in a different season our work and it is okay for things to change. We all have different risk tolerances and these can be according to your life situation, the stage of your business — it has everything to do with where you are at. Even between the two of us, we have different stability levels with family, mortgages, and finances. All of this can make a huge impact on business decisions and we have seen people who started out smaller than us, take risks that paid off and leapfrog our company in size and revenue. As much as we want all of that success everyone's journey is different and we are responsible for more than just ourselves.
Seasons of Growth and Seasons of Maintenance
We are still experiencing growing pains people! We have been through the periods of growth and maintenance a few times but have felt like we have been stuck in a season of growth and adjustment for quite a while now and have not quite found our new footing. Believe us, it can be quite a drain on your energy and mental faculties! In the past, we have shared our income reports and for obvious reasons, we have done less of that lately. But we want to continue to share amazing and interesting things with all of you. We always want our audience to be at the heart of what we do and you know we need that support! We were going to share all of this new content on our proposed new Instagram account but if you have been paying attention you will know that we scrapped that idea, so this will be a topic we will explore on Instagram but in a slightly different way.
An Invitation to Our New Social Media Experiment
So, we are laying out a goal and a journey and we want you to come along! This is a goal we want to achieve by the end of 2019 so we can move into the new year with it behind us. Our goal is to increase our profit margins to 30% month over month. So far our best month of the year has been 19%, so it is really going to be a challenge and one you are invited to join! Profit truly is the main thing, you cannot experience meaningful growth without it, and we encourage you to join us on with a renewed focus on profit instead of income. The fourth quarter of the year has historically been our best, so we do have that going for us, so let us take on this journey that we are calling #profitbosschallenge! You can take part in your own way, in whichever way you wish, as we go we will be sharing stuff with you, new content and reports. We want you to be on this adventure, it's success and failures!
No Question is Off-Limits, Join the Party
As you know, we are an open book, so get involved and ask away! The goal here for us is to be helpful to anyone at any stage of their business. Follow the journey, we promise there will be something for everyone and we have already started this process in some ways. We have already had to have a long hard look at our team, we hired for growth that did not occur as expected and had to backtrack. We have and will be cutting expenses and sharing all the details with you. Another exciting thing to look forward to is the return of guests on the show, yes we know it has been a while! They will be talking on this subject of profit and sharing strategies, perspectives and their own profit stories from behind the scenes. All of this is an experiment and a challenge and we welcome any of your feedback and questions that you have. So here is to the new adventure and we cannot wait to see you on the journey!
Quote This
If there is no profit left over at the end of the day you can't see growth in your business.
Highlights
Our Current Reality and Why It is Not So Different From Yours! [0:07:21.4]
As We Grow, We Take Less Risk. [0:13:04.8]
Seasons of Growth and Seasons of Maintenance. [0:20:06.3]
An Invitation to Our New Social Media Experiment! [0:22:55.2]
No Question is Off-Limits, Join the Party! [0:27:05.7]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
If you want to focus on more revenue without spending more of your time, build deeper connections and relationships with your clients, provide better results, and step into your expertise, then we need to chat. Send us a DM on Instagram @bossproject or apply for The Incubator so we can get started!
