Moving Day! Reflections on Our Craziest Year Ever
Well, we're finally moving to a bigger house. It's our first time hiring packers and movers and I must say, it agrees with me. :) I'm literally sitting here, drinking my coffee while people pack up the kitchen! Definitely keeps the stress levels super low as far as moving goes.
It kind of feels like the mark of a new era in a way. Our entire lives changed in this small house.
We went from struggling in the worst way... on a financial treadmill that was going backwards, resulting in incredible stress on our marriage and family from the weariness of it all, and total lack of direction.
To go from a small spark of an idea to a full-fledged mission, purpose, and a business that is changing thousands of people's lives - resulting in what will now be a multi-million dollar company, giving people employment and purpose.... and all in a single year's time!!
We're still pinching ourselves.
It all happened in a corner of our bedroom, and a small square in the garage. It happened in a 2000 sqft house with 7 people, a cat & a dog, and no dishwasher and pink carpet :)
Everything was birthed into chaos.
I guess the lesson in it all is that there's never a "good time." You never have all the tools and people you need and there's never enough time or resources.
Just gotta do the best you can with what you have.
It all comes down to putting one foot in front of another, and reverse engineering the outcome you want.
After the first month of our business... we said "ok, this sounds like a crazy, far-out kind of goal, but what would it take to make one million?" And we reverse engineered that.
It takes aprox. $2800 in sales per day to hit that.
Ok, we said... let's break that down. How many sales per day would we need? And since this all comes down to math, and we know a certain percentage of people will buy who see the product (depends on the industry), how many people per day do we need to see the product?
Great. That's our target. Now we need to maximize the other components to get the best results possible:
==> Advertising: the right image, the right copy, the right headline, the right call to action.
==> Audience: we must know our customer better than they know themselves. We know how they tick and what objections and questions they have and address it head on.
==> Offer: The first thing we learned about selling anything... is that no one cares about you or your product. They only care about themselves ... and maybe what your product can do for them. So lead with the transformation, not the special ingredients or the features of the product, etc.
After all those components were in motion and things were seriously beginning to work, we started evaluating the success of each day based on that $2800 per day target.
Each day we would say "woah- today was a $500k day!" "Crazy! Today was a million dollar day!! Let's look at what worked and make it work more!" ... and so on.
Eventually we were like "crap!! This is really happening and we've never done this before. We don't want to screw it all up. We need a coach. How are we going to find one?"
God doesn't give us things on a silver platter... he requires us to first act in faith and then he directs our steps.
After many months of having NO one on our circle doing what we were doing, after having nothing but books, blogs, courses and podcasts as our guide, we were listening to the 7 Figure CEO podcast and Casey Graham said on one episode that he was open to working with business owners looking to break the 7 figure mark.
So I took a step of faith and reached out. And within weeks we were flying out to Atlanta to be personally coached by him for 2 days. We had just hit our first 6 figure month and we were like "Casey! What do we do???"
We took viscous notes and put into practice everything he said to do. We originally wanted to hit the million mark in one year... Instead, we did it in six months.
Mind. Blown.
I have to think back about this journey because it all happened so fast and we really did work out butts off! But it's easy to get lost in the craziness of it all and numbers sometimes become just numbers.
So I'm taking a moment to reflect amidst the chaos, once again.
I share this because I think people are way too private about money and success and failure and the whole journey it took to get there. It doesn't help anyone.
So that's my long coffee rant this morning! Have a great day, everyone!
Awesome story! I siriously like to hear more about it and really need to kick my own butt to get things done.
Thank you for sharing this with us here!
Congrats Leah! That's awesome. I remember some of your comments over the last couple of years about the struggle and uncertainty.
Thank God for your bounty!
Yup. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? :) Sometimes we just need a little shove.
Sounds like you have achieved some well deserved success! Best wishes for the future of your business and your family!
Thanks, Kenny! I can only imagine what might possibly lie ahead in the year ahead :)