If you know how to communicate the right message to the right people, and use that in your marketing, then selling becomes really, really easy. And you stand out. Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you could spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this.
Welcome to the thrive by design podcast episode 388. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, chief visionary officer over here at flourish and thrive. And today is one of my favorite things to do. And that is to recap our boot camps or challenges or anything that we do. And we just wrapped up our jewelry brand makeover boot camp. I am still recovering. As I'm recording this I had a super chill weekend after we closed cart last week, and I am exhilarated, exhausted, excited all the things for a very particular reason. And that reason is because we literally had one of the best boot camps that we've ever hosted ever. And I did things a little bit differently this year, as I had in previous years, I kind of went back to what we were doing in the beginning where we would host these boot camps or challenges for five days. And then do a masterclass after, instead of doing it for the shorter variation of three days, you know, the there was a trend going on for a while to do shorter challenges and boot camps. And for some reason, I was just like, let's see what happens if I add a little bit more value. If people are really engaged, how does that, you know, translate into supporting more people. So we're going to talk a little bit about that I'm going to talk about the content that I shared during the bootcamp and we're gonna talk about some of the big takeaways and stuff like that. So this is going to be a fun episode. If you participated in the jury room makeover boot camp, I would love to hear from you. So feel free to reach out to me on Instagram and tell me what you loved about that boot camp. Because I just I love hearing from you. And then it also helps us understand like, what you actually enjoyed the kind of value that you got out of it, and so much more, because I know that it's really easy for us to see what's going on inside of it. And then you know, we forget after it's over, and we're like, Should we do one of these again, and we want to know if we should. So you know, that's just me wanting to hear from you knowing a little bit more. So you can find me on Instagram over at Tracy Matthews, NY or you can reach out to us at flourish underscore thrive, make sure that you're following us on both of those channels as well. And so a lot of people have been reaching out to me on Instagram, asking for help wondering how we can help them. And there are lots of ways that we can help them we have lots of programs over here for people in the absolute absolute beginner stage, all the way up to people who are you know, scaling to multiple, seven figures. And so if you would like our support, we would love to hear from you. And the best way to do that is to jump on a call with Callie on my team and book a discovery call on that discovery call. We're just going to chat about your business and kind of get into the nitty gritty of what's going on, we're going to uncover some of the challenges, we're going to paint a big picture of where you're going in your business. And then we're going to identify and see if our programs can help you in any way. So if you're wanting support and you're ready to invest in yourself in your business, then here's your invite to book a discovery call with Callie you can head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash discovery call and booking a time that works for you. And let's see how we can support you through one of our programs. We help people all the way in the beginning, absolute beginning phases, startup phase all the way up to multiple seven figures in business. So regardless of where you are, we can help you especially if you're trying to really dial in your online sales or use your in person sales to leverage more online sales as well. So super excited. Let's do this. Alright, so I'm gonna dive in to this recap. So I want to thank everyone who participated in the jewelry brand makeover boot camp, I cannot thank you enough. And at the beginning of the bootcamp, I made a declaration that my big vision for the year and my mission for this year is to help 1000 People grow. Jewelry brands in particular are people selling a physical or Luxe product to grow or add an additional $100,000 in revenue to their sales number or another number that is meaningful to them. So that might mean growing their business to 100k adding an additional 10k a month to their business or Picking a goal and just sticking with it, whether it's bigger or smaller, you know, it doesn't really matter. Now, it was really exciting because at the beginning of this, we were really working with a very, very lean lean staff, I had to make some necessary endings at the end of last year and let a couple of people go off my team, which led us what we thought was a little bit short staffed. So we were a little bit concerned going into this feeling like we weren't going to be able to handle all of it was such a short team. But what I'm telling you, what I'm gonna tell you right now is that sometimes less is more. And we actually blew our own minds about how much more efficient we were with a smaller team. We did lean on some support of our community. So we had some student coaches and mentors who came in, and then graduates of our program, who also acted as coaches to help us inside of the boot camp for extra support. So I want to give a shout out to Lauren, who is our programs manager, slash Community Manager, to Chelsea who is joining our team Chelsea farmer, she is now going to be our client success concierge which we're really excited about having Chelsea on the team. She has been a longtime flourish and thrive member. And we're just excited to have her brilliance. One of the things that everyone was blown out was when I had her on, and she was sharing her experience about our Laying The Foundation program. And she's like, yeah, now I just like drop a collection on a Friday and I sell 20 grand, and this is Chelsea sells like $40 stock bracelet. So her price point is not high at all. So she's really dialed in how to grow a successful jewelry company without having to spend like every single waking hour running your business. And I asked her how she did it. And she's like, well, I just did what you told me to do, Tracy, because setting up the systems and the support and The Desired Brand Effect actually work. And it's awesome. So thank you to Chelsea, we had Dawn, our LTF coach who was really really pivotal and our jewelry ran makeover boot camp. She's just like, I like to call her like the mother of the community. She just like such an amazing warm energy and loves on you guys so much. So she's amazing. And then we had Toby who is also a graduate, she was popping in from time to time to support. She is a copywriting expert, and also a former jewelry designer who is now writing for jewelry designers, which is amazing. And then we had our student mentors, Casey, Gisela and Rosie, who were there in the community, and several of them came live as well, to support you. So I want to thank you to all the boot camp coaches who showed up. Now we had over 8000 people registered for the boot camp and the masterclass combined, which I think it was like 8300, which is insane. And it was about 6300, just for the bootcamp, we got an additional 1000 for just the masterclass. And this was the thing that I was really excited about. Because I think since the pandemic, and since Facebook has changed a lot about their platform, people haven't been so sweet on Facebook as much as they used to be. And so, group engagement has been down, the algorithms have changed things. So people don't see things. And so in the past like three, four years, it's been really hard for us to get engagement in Facebook groups, and we've almost like abandoned them. So every time I do one of these things, I'm like, you know, should we do the Facebook group, and we decided to do it this year. And the Facebook group was so engaged, we had 3500 People in our Facebook group, which was huge. We basically so almost sold out of our zoom rooms, the first three days, which was crazy, we had to upgrade into a bigger plan. And you know, we do a lot of math in the beginning of this, we know what like percentages of attendance are. And so, you know, we're always doing our best to try and figure out how many people are going to actually show up live and we try to incentivize people for going live. Anyway, we had an amazing, amazing run and show up right like, over 1000 People like a day, which was awesome. So I want to thank all of you who showed up, which is amazing, who shut up live every single day. And then obviously we have the replays available for later. So 1000s of people were watching those replays. So it was super fun to see so many people in our zoom rooms every single day. The cool part is that we welcomed 172 new students into Laying The Foundation and we had four people or maybe five people by now upgrade into our VIP which is our one on one coaching plus Laying The Foundation which is so exciting. And right now the energy in the diamond insiders is in saying the group is going off. People are connecting. We're seeing just the amazing energy of people just saying like my mind is blown. I've just finished Module Zero and I want to thank Jason and Tracy for this video or owning your success video has really changed my life or you know, I learned so much more about The Desired Brand Effect or you know, I people are setting up their business the right way in the first module and the second module and it there's Dang, oh my gosh, I didn't realize during this program was going to be so emotional. And the thing that I love about this Laying The Foundation program is that it helps you really get in touch with what matters and the things that are going to actually transform you and help you create a transformational brand that has a message that people to connect with that inspires community around your brand and creates transformation in all areas. And so it's pretty amazing what is going on right now. We love it. And so I just want to thank you all for who are playing full out in Laying The Foundation, you guys are doing a great job. It's so it's great to see all of you connecting. Now,
we also you know, a lot of people reached out, they're like, you know, I haven't really started the business yet I kind of have a hobby, and I was just kind of like lurking, I feel like I'm not ready for this. And so we did release our How to Start a jewelry business program. And we did get a bunch of people joining that program as well. So it was really fun to see people just saying like, well, maybe Laying The Foundation is for me next year or something like that. But for now, I'm gonna get my jewelry business started the right way, and jump into the Quickstart program, which is fun. So, now I want to just share a little bit more about what we talked about in the bootcamp because this is, you know, what it's all about, we worked really hard to put on, like, really valuable content. And, you know, it's always, it's always interesting to see it's like about like finding that balance about giving value like a ton of value without overdoing it. So people aren't, aren't overwhelmed or feeling like, Oh, I've got enough to work on, you know, we really want to inspire people to take, obviously take the next step with us, because we have seen over the years how transformational our program really is. And so we want to continue that vibe and that energy for the long haul. And so we covered a lot and so I extended the bootcamp to five days instead of three days, which is what we had done in the previous years for the bootcamp content, and then we usually wrap it up with masterclass. So, what we covered in the bootcamp is we helped you create a target or a goal to reach for, and think a little bit bigger about what success looks like to you. Because I think that's a huge hang up. I think people don't like committing to goals for a very specific reason. Primarily, I think it's because they feel like, if they commit to a goal, then they feel bad if they don't hit that goal. But what if you committed to a goal, thought of it as a target or something that you're moving towards, and then you actually grew as a result, you got more sales, you got more revenue, like whatever it is, things just got better for you. And so what we're always trying to do is to help you grow, because at the end of the day that we had a goal for Laying The Foundation for this boot camp and everything, we hit our we did not hit our enrollment goal, we came a little bit short of our top tier goal, I should say, we hit our must have goal and our stretch goal. But we did not hit our like hit it on the park goal. But I was still really proud of the outcome because this was the impact that we're having was is significant. And, you know, I would have loved it. If we were welcoming 200 new students into the program, we welcomed 172, which is still very close, that is the most that we've done in many, many years, since we completely upgraded the program. And with that upgraded the price because we basically added like 20 times more value, which helps our students get like 20 times better results, which is amazing. So that training number one was really giving you a target to work for, and a goal to reach for, and then seeing what that would look like in the next 90 days like so what is that goal for the next 90 days? How are we going to get there? Then, in the second boot camp training, we talked a lot about what motivates your dream clients to buy and how to find those core crossover connections that both you share and your dream client shares because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Right? Then we on day three, we talked about how to write captions and create content that connects I think there's a big misunderstanding. You know, when we go through boot camp like this, a lot of people want to jump straight to marketing tactics. And there's a lot of my competitors out there who talk a lot about marketing tactics, but they don't dig deep into why people want to buy it from you. And jewelry. More than many other types of products handmade products is something that evokes feeling and emotion it is sentimental it is something that people are more thoughtful about their purchases. It's not it doesn't sell as easily as other types of products. Like for instance, I think a lot of people would buy makeup all day it seems like a disposable product, even if it costs the same amount as a piece of jewelry, but jewelry is like more of a considered purchase. However, if you know how to communicate the message to the right people and use that in your marketing, then selling becomes really, really easy. And you stand out. And so this is the one thing that is so different that we offer than any other product marketing course out there, because jewelry requires a message, you can't just sell it like a commoditized product. And what happens is that a lot of y'all is out there are not marketing experts, you weren't taught the principles of marketing, you don't understand how to communicate those things. And so you're just posting stuff out there, and you don't understand why people aren't buying, this is the missing piece. And until you can get that right, and bring that into your marketing, then it will become challenging for you to ever really gain traction outside your friends and family network. And so for all of you out there who are already selling 1000s and 1000s, or millions of dollars a year, you've already got this, you understand who you're serving, and what makes your brand different, obviously, but until you get there, if you aren't at a place where you're happy with your sales, or you're kind of reaching those goals, then this might be the reason why. And you need to look at that. Then one of the new classes that we brought in was our revenue generation class. And so this one is fun, this is all about making money. And on that Wednesday, the third day of class, I decided to do something a little bit crazy. I just told everyone that we were because people kept asking you about Laying The Foundation, we haven't even really been talking about it that much. And so I was like, you know, everyone's asking, so I'm just going to share a little bit more about the program. So I invited people to join a little bit early with a bonus. And we had 30 People join immediately, which was awesome before we even technically open enrollment, which is amazing. But what that resulted in is a bunch of people saying like, Oh, I can't afford this program. So we did the revenue generation class. And the cool part was about it was that so many people leaned in to what I taught them, number one on how to be spending your time how to use that time wisely and specific things that you could do to make money quickly in your business by selling your jewelry, which people don't think about most of the time. They're trying to go for like a passive strategy, like on a post on social media and see what happens. And I will tell you, so many people in the group, were saying, Oh, my gosh, I cannot believe it. But I made $500 today, and many others who were, you know, just reached out, they someone sold, I remember someone in the community sold a $2,000 commission, like they were generating cash flow like crazy, just because they went out and did the thing I told them to do and got the sale. So next time we run this guy's if you want to make some money, join me for that revenue generation class. Because if you've been wanting to join this program, and you're trying to figure it out how to make the investment, I'm literally teaching you how to make the investment right there by generating revenue in your business. And so this is that's the core of what Laying The Foundation is, is really to help you make money in your business. And I know that a lot of people are listening to this, maybe for the first time, maybe you just found this podcast. And if you haven't downloaded it yet, earlier this year, I released a brand new, free download. It's called the jewelry business owners growth guide. And if you're someone who's wondering, like based on your stage of business, what you should be focused on to actually grow your business and your sales, and increase your profit margins, and become a wildly successful designer at every stage in business, then please download this guide, head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash growth guide, you can download it for free. Basically, what this is, is we break down the stages in business from zero to $3 million in sales. And so there's five stages of business. And within there, we tell you based on your stage, what you should be focused on to get to the next level. And I can't believe it took me so long to think of this resource to give to you it's a really, really good it's been like our most popular download that we've like literally ever created. So if you're interested in grabbing that head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash growth guide, you can grab it for free. And then finally, we wrapped up the bootcamp with our success mindset training, and this is always huge. We dug deep, like I was crying by the end of this and we stayed on I think this one for about two hours. We went deep into like mindset work. A lot of people were like really struggling with their belief systems about themselves about their ability to earn about what it really takes to become a successful jewelry artist. And we got in there and it wasn't like it was transformational, I guess is the best way to put it. And I'm just so proud of all of you who let me coach tutoring that because it's not easy to be on a public platform and, and to share some of the things that are holding you back that you're really struggling with. So we did the training. And then we also did the feedback session later, we were on for hours, like literally, I think I was like, live for three and a half hours that day because it was intense. So
that's what we covered in the boot camp. It was amazing. And then we wrapped it up with our how to stand out in a saturated market with a timeless jewelry brand masterclass. I love that class so much. And this time, because we really wanted to encourage an amazing community. With this cohort, we are bringing in 12 Bonus coaching and expert calls where you can come in every single week and get coached by me and my team of coaches to help you we're going to help you coach you around the content. Plus, I dropped a mid cart bonus of a hot seat with me. So if you joined on that day, you get to get your business picked apart by me and you get my eyes on your business, which I'm really excited about doing those, we're going to start in a couple of weeks. And then we also had a cart closing bonus, which was an all access pass to our designer panels, which we're going to be hosting in the spring. So basically, I'm curating some of the best designers in the industry, so that you can ask them questions about how they did it and how they grew their business. So this is going to be super fun. We're really excited about it. And we cannot wait for an epic Laying The Foundation cohort, we were just really, really, really thrilled. So some of the biggest aha 's and takeaways. People were just saying that they had crazy transformation in their business, they had, you know, given up hope, and were thinking about shutting things down, and they have this newly inspired energy behind it. I think another key takeaway is that if you actually try to make sales, you will make sales. And I think for a lot of people, there's such this big mindset, one of the things I talked about was where people are spending their time because people find anything to do besides actually selling their product. And if you want to have a business, a business generates revenue, if you want to have a hobby, you can sit at your bench and make jewelry all day, you have a choice, right? So the choice is yours. But what we want you to be focused on are the things that are actually going to grow your business. I'm not suggesting that you stop making jewelry, I'm not suggesting that you hire a manufacturer or something like that. I'm often misunderstood. When I talk about the difference between becoming a chief visionary officer, and operating out of maker mindset, it is a mindset shift of how business owners actually run a business. Now, some of the most successful designers and makers that I know that our independent designers that are small brands still make all the jewelry like my girl, Jennifer Dawes, she makes pretty much all of her jewelry, she sends out some things like stone setting and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, she's the one casting, she's the one on the bench. She's the one drilling the whole, she's the one doing the work, and she loves it. And she restructured her business with our help a couple years ago. And so that she could get back to that. And so what I am here to help you do is to design a business at any stage that you're at, that is aligned with what success looks like to you. And to make that a reality. So if you want my help, I'd be happy to help you. And then another one of the biggest aha was with it was that your mindset matters. I think I mentioned this before, but we had the longest calls were these mindset calls where people were people were like on there for hours and hours listening to their friends getting coached by me. And just really understanding how when you show up your business in a different way, how that affects everything. And so I want to remind you, that you can have anything that you want, I want to I'm gonna wrap this up with two of my favorite things about this, that it was really about you, the community, everyone who participated. This is the most engaged community that we've ever had in one of these boot camps. And it's like thrilling to me that people make these personal connections they want to stay connected after. And if you participated in the bootcamp and you want to stay connected with our community, we have a free Facebook group, you can head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash Facebook, and people from the boot camp are connecting in there. If you didn't join us for Laying The Foundation. Obviously if you did join us for Laying The Foundation. Then we have our diamond insiders which is run by flourish and thrive and our coaches, our free Facebook group is a pure lead group. So it's moderated by flourish and thrive but the conversations are really led by the people in the group so it's a very different vibe. If you want to boot camp vibe it's the vibe is more like the diamond insiders etc. So that community piece was amazing. And then also I just think connecting with people All like I felt like I got to know a lot of people's names they were showing up every single day, showing me they were, you know, just really leaning in and doing the work and reaching out to me and talking like, I just I want to thank you all for doing that. It's been incredible. So thank you so much. If you participated in bootcamp, we love you. And I'd love you even if you didn't join us for Laying The Foundation or participated in boot camp. I'm just so grateful that you're listening to this podcast and you allow me to come into your earbuds every single week. Now I want to read something, a couple of these. So one of the students in the boot camp said this, I am freaking out and excitement right now. I want to give Tracy and her team A big thank you for all the trainings. Beginning of this boot camp, I thought there was no way that I was going to be able to afford to join Laying The Foundation, I decided what did I have to lose and I started implementing the things I was learning to try and make some sales, hard work paid off, and I was able to join, I can't wait to dive in and learn all the things which is so exciting. And this one is what I really wanted to read. This is from Casey, she is was one of our student mentors. Guys, I have something to share coming off the wrap zoom party, I noticed there were a lot of talk about soul sucking jobs towards the end of the call. And I can definitely relate to this. So what she's speaking of is people in the chat of our zoom install talking about their how they wanted to leave their job. I currently am and have been a bartender for 15 years of my life. And I can honestly say that I crush it. I'm very good at what I do. I'm in a lead position at my job and I have them for seven years now. I work outside in accounting at a wedding venue where it's cold and often gets down to low 40s. Just last Saturday, I got written up for the first time ever, I was written up for wearing the wrong pants. Instead of wearing the proper slacks. I wore a pair of fleece leggings so I could keep from freezing and keep performing the duties with a smile. Yes, I broke the rules. But I did it to stay warm. So I could last into the late night again outside. There's nothing like feeling like you're doing a great job and something like this happening. And it's so discouraging. You make a decision and take care of yourself for once. And the man in the man comes down on you. I'm an Laying The Foundation so that I can go all in on myself and my jewelry business, and hopefully soon be able to say goodbye to my bartending forever. It's been a great job, and it served its purpose, but it's no longer serving me. And I want to live a life where I don't have to live by somebody else's rules. My rules my way equals happiness. Anyone else have a soul crushing job stories? Like her question? So I mentioned that because that ended up being like a big theme like people building someone else's dream doing something that they weren't excited or thrive, like, thrilled about and so much more. And so what I really want to support you all in doing is to build the business of your dreams no longer have to rely on someone else to support you to make a living. And that's what I mean by working for someone else that you're supporting yourself. You have full flexibility you don't have an income cap that you are growing a business that is aligned with your vision of success. So thanks so much. I hope you enjoyed this boot camp recap. And I thank you all once again for participating in the jewelry brand makeover boot camp. If you have a jewelry designer friend who might enjoy listening to this podcast, please send them a link to one of the shows that you really enjoyed. And as always, I really appreciate your ratings and reviews. They help us reach more people just like you. Thanks so much for listening today. It's Tracy signing off. Until next time
