Fail Fast, Scale Faster

Speaker 1: [Music] I think a lot of people have this idea of a job to safety net because you get a paycheck every month. I don't think it's very safe that you have a boss that can fire you at any given moment for any reason. It's actually safer for me to build my own thing that I own and I can have complete control over. I'm not going to fire myself. That was a huge reason that I ended up making that jump. I'm Melanie Bar. Welcome back to the Sheila tip podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk about everything from having the courage to make life and career leads to the details of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech innovation. I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges. I live in the city now, but I grew up in a town of a thousand people. I've navigated major life leaps. a senior level corporate career, worked in professional sports, and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business, technology, family, and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheilit community. I also love a good workout and dose of self-care. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. So, turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go. Welcome to the Sheila podcast. Thank you for joining us, gentlemen. You've helped startups scale in major ways. When did you first know that this kind of work was part of your purpose? Something that resonated deeply with me was being able to spark exponential results. And so that's something I've done for a lot of businesses. If a business is early stage or they're smaller, making changes is a lot more impactful versus working for somewhere like Walmart where you make a small change and you test the color of a button. So, I liked that aspect of it.

Speaker 1: But also the bigger aspect of it for me too was being able to see how that exponential growth changed the lives of the business owners that I work with as well. Cuz obviously sparking such huge growth for a business changes the lives of everybody involved. So something about that really excites me and it still does to this day. So that was definitely a huge part of the reason that I do the work that I do. Do you enjoy working with startups?

Speaker 1: Yeah, so I've worked with a bunch of startups. I've worked with a lot of companies that are starting out at zero. At this point in my career, I work with more established businesses that at least have product market fit, are usually sitting somewhere between six to seven figures in revenue. So, they've established some success, but they're ready to take things to the next level. They're still small enough to be able to make big changes and drive large amounts of growth quite quickly, but not completely at zero.

Speaker 1: and the growth. Getting ready for the growth, you need a mindset shift. How do you suggest entrepreneurs prepare for that? The biggest thing is to switch from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. A huge limiting factor for a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses are these self-imposed limits that people put in their heads. I actually just spoke to a business owner a couple weeks ago and I was like, "Yeah, I think you could easily get to $100,000 a month."

Speaker 1: and she was like, "Oh, no. That's that's just like too much. That's a lot." She wanted to grow and and she sought me out because she wanted to grow, but at the same time, thinking about hitting those goals was like, "Oh, there's no way that could happen to me." Being able to reframe your mindset like, "No, this can happen and it can happen to me. Why not me?" versus, "I'm going to have to sacrifice everything to get this. I don't really deserve this." So I think that's a huge part of the mindset shift. I also think sometimes business owners limit themselves because they think my team's not ready. I'm not ready. My operations might not be there. And so they might not move forward doing anything. I see that happen so many times, especially with earlier stage business owners, is they think that they have to figure out step 100 before they've even solved step one. A huge part of success in business is being able to roll with the punches and solve problems as you go versus trying to anticipate every single problem that you're ever going to have and solve it proactively before it even becomes an actual tangible problem in your business. I've spoken to a lot of businesses that have been around for 5 to 10 years and their revenue is so low given the opportunity that they have in the marketplace. And it a lot of time it's for reasons like that. If after 10 years you're not ready for this, when will you be ready? So I I definitely think that's a huge part of it. Share with us a campaign that you created that didn't just perform, but it really connected with people. I would say the first thing that comes to mind is the campaigns that we did through my work with a fitness company. A lot of fitness businesses run campaigns that are more dealbased. Oh, you'll get a discount on your monthly membership fees or things like that. But we ran several campaigns that actually played more to the issue because women were the vast majority of our customers, especially that middle-aged women were dealing with. And so, for example, like bone density, issues with energy, things like that. So, we created a campaign targeting fit after 50 and we saw so much success with that that we literally had women crying because they were so happy that they found something that transformed their fitness. Not only was that campaign successful from just like a revenue and leads generated standpoint, but it was also really cool because the community that was built from it and you had all these women coming together that had their lives transformed because of this campaign that they were brought through on Facebook. It really is that personal connection and finding ways that you can help people because a lot of times we're on social media and we're looking for things because we're looking for the health whether it's our business or our personal lives or for our health and marketing can speak to that. I can see how that campaign would be successful. A huge part of the reason that campaigns in general are successful is demonstrating that transformational value. Not just the features or the benefits, but go from here to here. And so to be able to see that transformation in real time is so cool. And that's a huge part of the reason why I like to work with the businesses that I work with is because I work with primarily service- based businesses. So they're all about transformation through the services that they offer in one way or another. So, it's really cool to be able to speak to that in in campaigns, but also to see that in real time with their customers and clients.

Client growth

Speaker 1: Share with us the work you do and tell us about a client that you work with and how you help them to scale and grow. So, the work that I do is marketing for service-based businesses and we operate a little bit differently than a traditional agency. So, we primarily operate with a partnership model. So, we basically get compensated when our partners grow. And so we take care of full-scale marketing, everything from paid ads to email marketing to social media and everything in between. A job training service company that we worked with, this entrepreneur that owned this company was stuck at around $6,000 in monthly revenue. So very small. And it wasn't even consistently $6,000. It was here and there bobbing between four and like maybe $6,500 a month. I met this guy and I saw that his offer was incredible. I was like, I can't believe that you're stuck at only $6,000. That's like unheard of. And he's like, I just don't know how to get the word out. Lights pop off in my mind when somebody says that cuz I'm like, this is exactly what I like to work with is a company that has a great service. they have something great to bring to the market and they just don't know how to get it out there. Because once we do get it out there, it's going to be like gang busters. You're going to immediately skyrocket. And so, literally within the first month of working with them, we had just launched Facebook and Instagram ads. And we hit $36,000 in revenue. So, it was six times improvement on their revenue. And it was just so fast. In one month, we greatly increased that revenue. It just speaks to the power of marketing because I think you can have an excellent service, an excellent product, but if you don't know how to get it out there, that that's where you're going to struggle. And that's a huge part of what I do is come into businesses that are at kind of an impass with their business where like we're stuck at this point. We need to hit that next level. So that's what I'm really passionate about doing and that's a good illustration of that. And was he ready for that growth? Was that growth surprising for him? Yes, that's an excellent question. I think this goes to show the success of various entrepreneurs and how much that depends on their problem solving ability because he was the one making all the sales. He was the one handling all the operations and 6xing your business overnight is like huge especially when you don't have a massive team and all your processes built out. So, I think in a way it was shocking and he was like, "Oh my god, I don't know how I'm going to handle this." But the differentiator between somebody like him and other businesses that I've worked with in the past is he was like, "Okay, how can we handle this?" So, he opened up more classes to teach all these new students. He hired more salespeople to handle all these leads. And so it was to my point earlier like rolling with the punches and solving problems as they came along cuz it's all good things. It's all growing pains. But of course as you grow you're going to need to hire more people. You're going to need to accommodate more sales whether that's administratively or operationally. So it was shocking and exciting for him but he was also very much okay let's set it up so that we can capitalize on this growth. With so much on your plate, how do you stay focused to move throughout your day? That's something I've had to recalibrate on even in the past year, honestly, is I've always been the type of person that will take absolutely everything onto my own plate. Just having that issue of delegation and being able to take a backseat on certain things. And delegation is a huge part of how I've been able to stay focused and really identifying like what are the revenue driving opportunities that I need to focus on in my business like that I need to focus on? What are the largest things that I can focus on that are going to move the needle the most for me? And really everything else I've either cut out because it just wasn't helpful at all. Or maybe it'll be helpful when I get to the next level, but it's not helpful now. Or something that I can just delegate because it's like if I spent my time here, I'm going to bring this much revenue into the business versus if I spent it here, I'm going to bring less. So why don't I just pay somebody else to do that and I'll reallocate my time and my resources over here. So for me that was a huge part of it was just identifying those big needlemoving tasks and adjusting accordingly. If you are a driven individual which most entrepreneurs are being able to delegate and let go mentally of anything within your business is really difficult. And I think another thing that really plays into that is a lot of entrepreneurs are passionate about the work that they do. So they don't want to take a backseat on things that maybe it would serve their business overall for them to take a backseat on. So I think that also has a big part in it. We all make big leaps at times in our lives and business. Share a time that felt risky but turned out to be a game changer for you. Going off and building my own business and committing to it full-time was easily the biggest risk I ever took in my career and my life. And obviously that feels risky because you don't have this perceived safety net. But I also think a huge part of the reason that I did end up taking that leap was reframing the way that I thought of that quote unquote safety net. I think a lot of people have this idea of a job's a safety net because you get a paycheck every month. you have your role delineated, what you have to do on a daily basis. It just feels comfortable and it feels safe. But I don't think it's very safe that you have a boss that can fire you at any given moment for any reason. And so I reframed the way that I thought about it to be like, it's actually safer for me to build my own thing that I own and I can have complete control over. I'm not going to fire myself. I can grow this as big as I possibly want to. And so I think that was a huge reason that I ended up making that jump was just being able to justify it to myself and change the way that I thought about that. Share with us how AI plays a role in what you do and how can it help businesses scale. I've seen a lot of business owners talking about, oh, AI is going to take people's jobs away and AI is going to ruin people's businesses. And I would actually disagree with that. I think AI is just transforming the way that we're doing business. I think a great thing to compare it to is the internet, right? To that end, I think AI is a tool, but I think ultimately it doesn't affect the principles of business. I think it just makes things easier in different ways and changes things. It it really helps to accelerate some of the things that me and my team are doing. But I think at least at the stage that AI is at now, it's better for just general outlines, general ideas, because I still think there's nothing quite like a marketer that really knows how to write and to speak to people's pain points and to construct a story. I don't think AI is to that point yet. I haven't seen AI really be able to reach that same level, that really highlevel marketing execution, which is what me and my team do. It makes some processes easier cuz it can give you a jumping off point, but I still think it's one of those things that it's just a tool at the end of the day. I think there's been so many tools that have come around and I think anybody that's been in the business world has probably used so many tools throughout especially the past decade.

Speaker 1: Tools like high level that have come around and consolidated a bunch of different functions that maybe were all separate before. So tools and tech are always evolving, but it's really just about how you leverage them and apply them to the same principles that have always been the same. And I think you really have to lean into it, too. That's something that's challenging but also exciting about new tech being introduced is there's always something new that you have to learn. Literally, every few months or sometimes quicker, crazy new tools come out that you have to learn how to use and adjust to because if you don't, your competitors definitely are. You're just falling behind. I definitely think you have to embrace them and use them as much as you possibly can while also understanding the overall plot and the roles that these tools play in your business instead of just falling for every new tech that comes out and just jumping on the bandwagon. For someone listening who is full of vision but stuck at the start, what would you tell them?

Starting Out

Speaker 1: As cliche as it sounds, I would say just start and be willing to fall on your face. One of the biggest lessons that I ever learned and that I always try to impart in others is understand that failure is part of the process. You will fail a lot and you're going to fail at the first stage and you're going to fail at the 10th and the 500th. It's just going to be in different ways. the more you can accept that and be willing to get back up without lacking any enthusiasm, the more you're going to succeed. So, I say just accept, hey, I'm going to start this thing. I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to fall in my face and I'm going to get back up and I'm going to do it again. So, I think that would definitely be the biggest piece of advice I could give. Yeah.

Failing Fast

Speaker 1: Fail. How fast can you fail? Because every time you fail, you learn. Yeah. A thousand%. That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned in marketing as well is the faster that you can learn and test and see what works and see what doesn't work and then keep pivoting, the more success you're going to have. Thank you so much for joining us today. Please share with us how and where we can find you. Connect with me. LinkedIn's the best place you can connect with me there at Jensen Savage. You can also look me up at jensensavage.com or my company savaggrowthpartners.com. Thank you for joining us today. I'd love to hear from you. Reach out to me at hello@shbiluiltit.com on our shebuilt website or at she built it on social. Thank you to my editor rich duffelino who always makes us sound good. Until next time, let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave.