Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, chief visionary officer of Flourish & Thrive Academy, and the host of the show today. And I'm excited to talk about something that I think a lot of people are curious about. It's like, what got you to one place in your business? How do you adapt that strategy to get you to another place. And so the easiest way to measure this is with sales growth. So I want to tell you a little backstory and behind the scenes, and I'm gonna get real raw and vulnerable with you guys here. But before I do, what I want to say is that entrepreneurship and growing your business, and taking leaps and bounds requires you to do a lot of introspective work, it also requires you to get the right support. And what I mean by that is that a lot of times, we operate in a silo, we operate in a vacuum. And it becomes challenging for us to see outside of that little microcosm of our business, to understand like what it's going to take to get to the next level. And so I'm telling you this because I was stuck, like really stuck for several years, you can listen to my episode about burnout from last fall. And I was really stuck. And my business basically was oscillating in the same place. And it was down from our best year ever, for about three years. And it wasn't until I completely restructured my team and my strategy, and got outside help and leveled up my leadership, did I break free from basically the insanity or the same mistakes that I'd been making over and over again. And so for the next couple of weeks, I'm gonna be talking about this journey of mine. But also, I'm going to be interviewing some people and how they grew and change their businesses to align with their vision of success, especially people who are doing great things in their business, like they, you know, already have a six or multiple six figure business they've been working on growing to the million dollar marker or people are scaling above million dollars. And whether or not you have any desire to do this, I think that you will learn these lessons. Because even if you have no desire to grow, you know, let's say a million dollar company, you still will need to level up. And I think some of the things that we're talking about here are going to be really powerful in what it actually takes to grow your revenue and sales, let's say from $100,000 Right now, to 500,000, or a million dollars down the road or multiple millions, right? Because I always like to say this because a million dollars for one type of company is not that much. And for other companies, it's a lot like when I was selling my demo fine line, and most of my price points at wholesale were like 50 to $150, selling a million dollars in revenue was a lot of volume. Now someone who's selling fine jewelry and selling pieces for $3,000 or $5,000. A million dollars isn't like that big of a stretch. You know, we had a student in our momentum program years ago who sold a $400,000 stone. So like her getting to a million dollars wasn't going to be that challenging, right? So this is all about, you know, meeting you where you are and and achieving your goals and figuring out what that looks like to you. So I'm gonna dive in in just a moment. But before I do, I just want to mention that I know I've been getting a lot of messages on Instagram, with people reaching out to me about their unique business models, and how I can help them. In fact, I just replied to someone right before I was started recording this podcast, who is starting up a fine jewelry company. And I know that sometimes you might want help, you may have been stalking some of our programs before you're not sure which program is really a right fit for you. Or you might be curious about more about how flourish and thrive can help you with your goals. I'm not sure that you know this, but we have courses and programs we have intensive accelerators. We also have coaching programs and consulting that we offer over here. And depending on what your specific business needs are, we can create a customized plan for you that can help you reach your business goals. So if you're someone who wants to move a lot faster, and you'd like some support in growing your business, I want to do give you an invitation to join us for a free discovery call on this discovery calls, you're going to meet with our expert, and she's going to talk to you a little bit more about your jewelry business goals, we're going to dig deep into some of the challenges that you're having in business right now. And try to really clearly understand why you aren't able to reach those on your own. Typically, when people join us on these calls, they have a challenge. Maybe it's growing their revenue or optimizing their business, like they're making money, but they're not profitable. That happens a lot like they're making, we work with a lot of people who are making several $100,000 a year, and they come to us and they're not profitable, and they can't figure out why. Or there might be other challenges that you're having. Maybe it's you know, finding and sourcing top talent for your team or other things. So whatever that might be, jump on a call with us. And let's discuss your business. And if one of our programs or our coaching packages or something like that, would be supportive to you, we'll let you know we'll talk a little bit more about what that looks like. So you can head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com, forward slash discovery call, you're going to fill out a quick five minute or so application and book in a time with our expert Kelly. So head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com, forward slash discovery call and let's chat about your goals. Alright, so today, I want to talk a little bit about what it actually takes to grow your business, you know, at whatever stage, so I'm going to use the marker of $100,000, to grow to 500,000. And then to grow to a million and beyond. So quick backstory, at every stage in business, entrepreneurs and business owners have the potential to hit an upper limit. So if you haven't read the book, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, that book is all about basically you hitting your glass ceiling, because you your beliefs about yourself, haven't risen to the level of where you're trying to go. Or you've like gotten to this level of success and like the strategies that you're using, to get to the next level of success, basically aren't working anymore. Jason likes to use that term strategies. And so the goal here is to help you break through that glass ceiling. And when you do that, you have to change the way you're showing up. So quick story in 2019. I had, we had our best year ever in business over here at flourish and thrive. And I don't really like to talk about this stuff. But I think that this lesson will be really valuable. I had realized I was again in a stage of burnout that year. And I was really in not a great place where I didn't feel like I was being supported by the leadership on my team in the way that I needed to. And I also wasn't being a very good leader. And so what that caused was a lot of anxiety on my team, and a team member who I eventually let go, who in retrospect, I wish I wouldn't have let her go. But a team member that I let go because I had this belief that she wasn't going to get me to the next level. I kept thinking to myself, the reason why we're stuck here is because of the people on my team. And while that can be true to a certain extent, the growth of your company really depends on what's happening in within you and the leadership that you provide. So hard lesson to learn but a very important one. I ended up letting this person go. And we I ended up taking the advice of someone that I'd hired as a consultant. Her advice, actually was really bad. And I ended up hiring a bunch of the people that she recommended, and found out later that she was making kickbacks from those people wasn't in integrity, and a whole variety of other things that were just preposterous and sad. And so during that process, I found another person to help me run the business. And she was one of those people that was expensive and not worth it, like came to the table with a lot of experience where I would have expected her to be able to grow my my team. And she was great at certain things like she was amazing at coaching. But her fee did not align with the value that she was delivering. And I was starting to get into the hole because our revenue wasn't matching what she was commanding as a feat. And she wasn't providing the deliverables that she promised and so on and so forth. So there were some great things about hiring this person. But it wasn't the right fit. And so I went into this was the beginning of 2020. We had a not a great launch that year, because the ads team that we hired from this marketing person completely messed up our ads strategy. It wasn't great. And so we were rolling into the year, not doing very well and then COVID hit and so that put me into a massive trauma loop and spiral. It felt like everything was out of control and chaotic. And for years I didn't feel like I could get a grasp of what was happening. And so I had to go through A major three year long process of like, bringing in consultants, hiring team firing team trying all different sorts of things, until I finally got to a place where I was stepping into a place of true leadership again, like, and what I mean by that is like, taking responsibility for the hard things that I needed to do my business to move it forward. And I'm telling you this, it's kind of weird to say, say this publicly on a podcast when people are coming in to potentially be coached by us, hopefully, like, it wasn't super apparent on the outside, like, I think we did an okay job like on the outside doing it. But the inside of the business was really chaotic and hectic. And what I realized through this process is that my business was never going to grow, until I stepped into the leadership role that I needed to be in, in order to lead my team. And so what I had to do was, we were in not a great position towards the end of last year, I actually was thinking about closing down the company, because I was very unhappy with the direction of the business and what was going on inside of me. And remember, like, what's happening inside of your business is always a reflection of what's happening within you. And so I played around with some different scenarios, like if what would happen if I close the business or if I just let it burn to the ground, and then what would happen if I came in and just showed up differently. And I went through all the scenarios I, I envisioned and went through all the feelings of how it would feel if the business actually failed, and got on the other side of that, to decide that No, I didn't want it to crash and burn, that maybe closing it down will be an opportunity at some point. But it didn't feel right right then and there. But I did need to make some changes and step into a leadership role. So with the support of my partner, Jason, we took a look at our numbers and our books and cut like half of our team. And it was hard. And it did not necessarily go that great. One team member left in a huff was very angry, he was not doing his job. And we called him out on it. And he basically left without completing his duties, and handing things over which left the company in an even worse position. And then on top of that was demanding bonus pay. And we started laughing because we're like, you didn't actually do your job. So no, you're not getting bonus pay, we're in the past, I would have gotten to this place of feeling guilty, so wanting to pay it. And then we let we have to let several other team members go and restructure and hire some new people to take on basically one person taking on multiple roles. And just by restructuring things and rethinking how we were operating the functions of the business. And looking at it, we have launched into 2023 with the best year in Flourish & Thrive Academy history. Because I changed the way that I showed up, I held my team members accountable, and started working with my team to develop the systems that were actually going to allow us to scale. So there have been hiccups, I'm not going to lie, we actually just launched our T yc. program. And we had a little hiccup with our ad spend. And we didn't spend enough money on the front end. But we rallied again, together as a team to hit our goal of student enrollments for that, and our baseline goal, which was literally incredible. And what I will tell you is that when you can build a team that really is aligned with your vision, meaning they believe in what you're trying to do, they're there for it, they understand why the goals of the company are important. It's not just about making money, it's about creating impact, and about having the marketing dollars to be able to invest in reaching more lives. And all those things like we work together as a team to actually make that goal happen. And so when you're stepping into better leadership, and starting to work on your business, instead of just in it, everything changes. So we still have some work to do over here, we are hiring a couple of key roles. And if you want to learn it, if you are listening to this podcast and you're looking for a full time position, or a part time position in either marketing or content, or some other things head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash careers, because we might have a job description posted right there for some of the roles that we're hiring right now. I stopped accepting mediocre work and started only accepting stellar team. And a lot of my journey in this process in understanding what needs to happen is that if you make a mistake in your role, then we're going to hold your feet to the fire and accountability for it and that we accept work. That is like a plus work. And so we're still working out some tech issues on the back end, which has been a struggle because we're in a marketing CRM that is not intuitive, and we're looking to change that right now. But the way we're going Things are awesome. And so I wanted to talk a little bit more about what it really takes to step back a minute to reevaluate what's going on in your business. Or just to get to a place where you can scale. My friend Lee told me once that what it takes to get from 100,000 to 300,000, and then from 300,000, to 3 million is basically completely different. So it's that basically structure of scale that needs to change inside your business, that changes everything. Because when someone is doing about $100,000, in revenue in either it doesn't really matter what kind of business but especially a jewelry business, maybe it's maybe more like 150 to 200, you are kind of just getting to the place where you can start thinking about hiring, study team, right, you might have a couple of marketing Bas, or people who work a couple of hours a week. But if you're getting to that place where you need ongoing support, maybe it's someone to help with the making of your jewelry, or maybe it's someone to help with your marketing. Or maybe it's someone to help with your sales process. Or maybe it's someone to even help with your shipping. All of these things like you don't have a lot of extra funds to pay for those things until you get to a certain place if you're paying yourself a proper salary.