SHOWNOTES
In the latest episode of "The Front Row Podcast for Entrepreneurs", I dive into the power of adopting a fresh perspective and revisiting essential strategies that often get overlooked.
Recently I coached a group of entrepreneurs to adopt a beginner's mindset and we explored a checklist that every new business should consider. Surprisingly, even experienced entrepreneurs found immense value in going back to their entrepreneurial roots and reconnecting with fundamental practices.
Here are some key highlights from the episode:
Revisit essential strategies often overlooked
Identify core problems and focus on solutions
Engage in real conversations for invaluable feedback
Create a starter offer or beta version for validation
Refresh marketing strategies and embrace new tactics
Implement 90-day planning for focused growth
RESOURCES
Don’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you. If you have any questions about this episode, comment below or DM me on Instagram @jen_lehner
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00.480] - Gary Vee Hey, guys, its Gary Vee, nerd chump, and you're listening to the Front Row entrepreneur podcast with our girl, Jen.
[00:10.530] - Jen Lehner The other day, I hosted a planning session for some of the members in my VIP community. And typically, with this group, we do more or less traditional standard planning. I like to do a 90-day year plan, whether that's content or social media strategy or just business strategy in general, that's how I run my business and that's what I teach. But because I've done this planning session with this group a couple of times, I thought, let's do something different this time. Let's adopt a beginner's mindset. I put together a checklist that I think all new businesses need. We went through that checklist item by item to see how we checked out according to this list for quote unquote beginners, keeping in mind that most of the people on this call have been in business for years. These aren't brand new business owners. When we were done with the exercise, I think we all felt like we needed that, that we needed to go back to the very beginning where we started our businesses and remind ourselves of some nonnegotiables that you need when you start a business, just some really good best practices, if you will, for when you start a business.
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[01:37.100] - Jen Lehner Because we all enjoyed it so much, I thought, you know what, let me bring that to my podcast listeners and see if you can benefit from this as well. Let's just look at the checklist. This is for startup, like brand new business, what do you need to do? Well, you need to register your business with the state and get a local business license or a permit. Register for a federal tax ID. Open a business checking account. Very, very important to have a checking account that is separate from your personal account. I know a lot of people who are in their third or fourth year of business and they still have their business and their personal checking combined. Open up some payment processing that might be stripe or square. You want to set up fresh books for invoicing or something similar like Kajabi or ClickFunnels or ThriveCart or SamCart. There's so many out there, but you need to pick one. Then determine your ideal client. Now, this is an exercise that you did early on in your business. Maybe you took B school and you remember doing it then, or maybe it was before B school.
[02:54.760] - Jen Lehner But one of the first things you did in your business was probably some ICA exercise. Well, maybe you've been in business for 10 years. Does your ICA look the same? Has your audience changed? Do they look different? Do you want to pick a new audience? Have you maybe come to a point in your life where you don't really identify with the audience that you once identified with. Next, you want to identify the problem that you solve. People buy solutions, not products. What problem do your dream client struggle with and what is their desired result? And don't worry, I'm going to have this checklist on the show notes, so if you want to download it, you can. For right now, just listen and answer the questions as best you can inside your head. How about having real conversations with people? Did you do that when you first started your business? I know I did. I wasn't quite sure the direction I was going in when I first became a consultant. I just got a lot of people on the phone and on Zoom calls. Actually, I think it was Google Hangouts at the time. I just asked them some questions related to what I was planning to do, and I wanted to get their feedback on that, on pricing, on ideas.
[04:18.620] - Jen Lehner Then I remember when I was ready to do my very first online course, I wanted to do social media for realtors. I'm not a realtor, but I knew that it would be easy to reach Realtors. They identify themselves everywhere, so it's easy enough to get in front of them. But because I got on the call, I got on a call with all these different realtors, people I didn't know at all. I literally just reached out to people. I think, what was it called? Not Google Hangouts, but, oh, my gosh, Google Plus. I think it was Google Plus. And it was a social media... I can't believe I cannot remember the name of this. But it was a social media channel. I remember that was a really easy place in LinkedIn to just cold outreach to people who were real estate agents and ask them, would you be willing to talk to me for a few minutes and give me your feedback? Well, that was invaluable. It was priceless because basically what I found out was that I didn't want to do a course for real estate agents. Number one, I wasn't all that interested in real estate.
[05:21.980] - Jen Lehner And secondly, I had more than one. I had several of these real estate agents point out to me that where I was positioning this product, it wasn't going to work because the real estate agents who were doing really well and could afford what I was offering, they have a team of people who do their social media. They're not going to take a course. They're just outsourcing it. And then the people who are going to do the social media themselves haven't made a name for themselves. They're new in real estate and they really couldn't afford what I was offering. And so, it really wasn't going to work. It wasn't going to take off. So back to this line item, having real conversations with people on the phone, on Zoom, and the best of all, in person, having coffee dates to ask questions and just get feedback. Creating a starter offer. You just need one signature offer that can generate a baseline revenue for your business. This is all about creating and selling your first draft or your beta. Whenever I create a new offer or especially a new course, I always have a beta version because I don't want to spend 100 hours building out all the landing pages and the funnels and all of that, only to find out that people aren't going to buy it.
[06:48.560] - Jen Lehner So doing a beta offer of... So maybe you've been in business for 10 years, but if you're going to add a new offer, consider making it a beta offer first, meaning it's just going to be less expensive and a great opportunity for them and a great opportunity for you to learn and get feedback about how you can make the program better. And it's just going to validate your offer. And then once it gets validated, you can run with it. At this point, new in your business, you're going to establish your initial fees. When you do that, it's really good to think in terms of your first 10 clients. You don't have to stay at that whatever that rate is forever. But what feels good right now for your first 10 or so clients? Then you want to build a starter website. You want to create a lead magnet and a welcome sequence. I'll pause here for any of our folks who are new to online business. Basically, you want to put something out there that is going to lure your ideal client into your world so you could continue giving them value and really showing off for them.
[07:58.620] - Jen Lehner They say, wow, this person is really smart. I think this person can help me. Then ultimately, they purchase from you. That's the idea behind a lead magnet. You want to build your email list because as we all know, really, it's still all about your email list. I mean, it's been all these years, but it is still all about your email list because you can then control who you reach out to and when you reach out to them. Social media, we have no control. Someone else owns that platform, we don't own the platform and we're really at their mercy. E mail gives you a bit more control. You create a nice little PDF or a checklist or maybe it's a free Masterclass, something that really shows off your expertise and highlights whatever product or service it is that you're going to be delivering. The next thing we want to do, and this, again, was so great to revisit this because we only did this in the beginning, most of us, and that is an announcement email that goes to anybody and everybody in your network who could potentially be a client, yes, but also a referral source or a promo partner.
[09:11.540] - Jen Lehner When you first started your business, ideally, you sent an email out to all 47 emails that you had in your contact list, which included your Aunt Judy and your weird cousin Fred and everybody because you said in that email, hey, everybody, I'm getting ready to start up this thing. Although this thing might not be right for you, please keep me in mind as you talk to your friends who might need this thing that I'm offering. Really appreciate it. Kisses and hugs, whatever your sign off is. But the point is, when was the last time you included everybody to announce something that you're doing that is really exciting that may not be for them, but they will know someone who it might be right for. So, I know a lot of times we really don't want Aunt Judy and our family members to see what we're doing. I know sometimes it feels weird to me when I'm talking to someone at a party or one of my kids’ sporting events, and this happens a lot actually, where they'll say, oh, I see you a lot on LinkedIn. And I just want to cringe because there is a part of me, well, not a part of me, 100 % of me really would love it if I could just have my business people see my business stuff and my personal people not see any of it and just see me.
[10:40.630] - Jen Lehner Obviously, I'm proud of what I'm putting out there, but I don't know. I don't know what it is. It feels a little weird, but it's out there and it's just a fact. But when I send an email, it really is typically going to be to the people who have given me permission to email them. But on a personal from your Gmail account and those 47 people who are your network, but they're not in your CRM necessarily. These are your personal friends and family. Not a bad idea to let them know what you're doing and see if they could spread the word for you. What about just good old-fashioned networking? I know I've done a lot less of it since COVID. I mean, I feel fine to go out. I'm not nervous or anything like that anymore. But habits. I just became a homebody. So, I'm pushing myself now to get out of my office more, attend events, book some coffee dates. It's good for us. Marketing. Well, that's just a single line item on this little checklist, but we all know that could be 20 pages in and of itself. But refreshing our marketing and making sure that we're not doing things just to check it off the list, but that our marketing is actually doing something for us.
[12:02.660] - Jen Lehner So, it's good to go through this, have a newbie mindset and go through this list as if you were just starting your business all over again because you want to look at your marketing with fresh eyes. Because posting on Pinterest just because someone told you you're supposed to and just because you've been doing it diligently and you've got a VA who does a bang-up job and the graphics look great. If you're not driving traffic from your Pinterest to your website, to your email list, then maybe it's time to stop doing that. On the flip side, have you adopted some of the new powerful things that you've been seeing that you know are effective? Have you taken the step to incorporate any of those new tactics and strategies into your business-like short form video? Again, pretend you're brand new at this. The next thing you want to do is focus on enrolling your first 10 paid clients. Well, if you've been in business for a while, you've well surpassed that. But that's a great first goal to have, 10 paid clients. But if you've been in business for a while, maybe it's 10 new paid clients, paying clients, I suppose I should say.
[13:21.090] - Jen Lehner And then the next item on the list, collect testimonials and ask for referrals. How you been doing with that? Are you doing it regularly? Do you send one of those LinkedIn request thingies to every single person after you do business with them? Linkedin makes it so easy. And one way to repurpose that is to send out the link. In LinkedIn, it's like ask for a recommendation, I think. And you click it and it pre writes a short little letter for you and asks for the recommendation. So, it's a template and they give them a template, like suggesting what they can write, I believe, or you can suggest what it is you're looking for. I don't remember exactly. I just remember it's super easy, super convenient. Then once they do that, you thank them, obviously, and then ask, is it okay if I use this on my website and on other social media platforms? To which they will most likely say, absolutely. Now you could take this testimonial and you can stick it into Canva, turn it into a graphic, so many things you can do with it and use it everywhere. But the key is doing this regularly.
[14:38.140] - Jen Lehner Look at your testimonials. Are they five years old? Have you freshened them up? Refresh them, I suppose is a better thing to say. All right, so that's very, very beginning. The next part of the checkup list is not startup, but ramp up. We've been successful with all the things we just went over, so we're imagining, okay, we've done all that. Now, first thing on the checklist is to implement 90-day planning. As I mentioned earlier, that is my favorite way to plan. I learned it from Todd Hermann in his program, The 90 Day Year. But there's also a great book called the 12 Week Year, which is the same thing. It's written by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington. Highly recommend this book. But when you're in business, having an eye on the quarter ahead and having a really solid plan for what you're going to be doing in each upcoming quarter is very, very important. You want to get rid of 10 hours tasks next item on the checklist and hire a VA. You hear me say this all the time, but it's very, very important. If you're bogged down in all of those $10 an hour tasks, that means you're not spending your time doing the $5,000, $10,000 an hour tasks that will really move the needle in your business, doing that stuff that only you can do, the stuff that produces the real revenue, the joint venture opportunities, you creating an online course, you creating the strategy for launching that course or writing your signature webinar, your signature talk.
[16:25.300] - Jen Lehner That's the stuff that we're supposed to be doing and letting go of all of that admin work. Next item on the checklist, time blocking for, let's say, focus time, client work, buffer time, sales, etc. I learned focus time and buffer time from Dan Sullivan. I was in his program, Strategic Coach. One of the core teachings in his program is all about, I don't want to call it time management, we'll just say time blocking, where you make sure you get these things in. The idea is as time goes by, you spend less and less on buffer time. Buffer time is the time that sometimes we need to catch up on, even if we've outsourced our admin work, there's still things we need to do that isn't revenue producing, but we have to do it. Maybe it's watching a course of something that you need to learn or replying to a few emails that really you need to reply to, getting your desktop organized, that thing. That's buffer time. In the early days of our business, we've got a lot of that and we don't have as much free time. The idea is as we become better and better at this, we get more free time, more focused time.
[17:50.670] - Jen Lehner The focused time is when we do exactly that, like we focus and we create and that in turn creates more revenue and so forth. You could call it whatever you want, but making sure that you are blocking out time for each of those things and really keeping track of them. You want to make sure that your client onboarding system is just super rock solid and automated. Again, if right now you have an onboarding system and you haven't gone through the onboarding system yourself lately, I know I've got that on my list to do this week. It's been a while. I'm going to be going through several of my onboarding. I've got onboarding for my freebie, as I'm sure you do too. We'll call that. That's like the welcome sequence. But then I have a few products where I'm onboarding people and I want to go through that as if I am the client. I will go to the actual product and I will purchase it. I'll create a freebie link or something and then I'll purchase it and I'm going to pay very close attention to everything, the thank you page and every email that follows after that and any text messages that I might get because we're collecting phone numbers as well.
[19:10.340] - Jen Lehner So, I want to check every piece of that. Refining your Signature Offer. So, in our startup phase, we created our signature offer. Now it's time to refine it. How can you make it better? Now is the time when you want to start thinking about increasing your fees. And then one of my favorite things to do is to fill your client roster at once. It's great to do this at the beginning of the year. So, you send out an email that says, let's say you're a web designer, you send out an email that says, I have 12, let's see, is that right? 24 slots available for the year, two each month. And I am going to fill those spots now and send out an email and watch what happens. So maybe you fill up 80 % of your spots and now you only have a few spots to fill. But how good would that feel going into your business, going into the year, knowing that 80 % of all your clients were already booked? They sent you in their deposits, you know exactly what to expect. And man, what freedom that gives you to really concentrate on all the other things that you need to do to grow your business because you've already gotten all your clients or most of your clients.
[20:29.010] - Jen Lehner And this, by the way, is doable with any service or offer that you have. If you're offering direct service to someone, absolutely, whatever it is you do, coaching, retreats, spiritual guidance, therapy, all of it. You can book it out a year in advance. Grow your network is the next thing on the list. So, referral partners, finding referral partners, joining or creating a Mastermind, making sure you have an emotional support system. I'm super lucky that I have a couple of Masterminds that we don't pay. It's very informal. It grew organically. And we're there for each other all the time in a Voxer chat. So, we're there to just pop in and say, what do you think I should do for an upsell? Or, Will you look at this email and tell me if it sounds goofy? Whatever. Or just, hey, I had a terrible launch and I'm feeling like I want to just jump out a window. Hopefully you don't say that after a terrible launch. I've had a terrible launch and I'm thinking about just closing down my business. Whatever your thoughts are, so important to have people because our partners are supportive. My husband is the most supportive guy ever.
[21:52.310] - Jen Lehner But there are certain things he just would never be able to understand, like what a launch is like. Just like in his work, there's so much I don't understand. But so many things unique to an online business that a lot of people outside of this really couldn't understand. So, it's really nice to have that network. If you don't have one, think about joining maybe a paid Mastermind. I have to say that I have been a part of some fantastic group coaching programs, some wonderful Masterminds, and the people who have led these Masterminds and these group coaching programs have been wonderful. But honestly, it's not even about the leaders of the groups, it's about the people who are in them. In some cases, I put myself in a room with people who were much more further along in my career at the time, people with a lot of, I don't know, clout, name recognition, fame, basically people I probably wouldn't be hanging out with unless I had joined this Mastermind. And you know what? That really worked well for me because those people introduced me to other people, which opened up all sorts of opportunities to be on podcast, to speak in front of their audiences, and really accelerate my business quickly.
[23:03.200] - Jen Lehner So, if you've been thinking about joining one of those high-ticket Masterminds, don't forget that that's a big part of... They're going to make all their promises that they make that hopefully they deliver on for whatever it is you're going to get with the price of that Mastermind. But I want you to also think about what might not be written on their sales page, which is having access. Look and see who else is in the Mastermind with you. I mean, you've heard it before, but I'll say it again, and that is, I mean, from other people, you don't want to be the smartest person in the room. So, if you're going to join a Mastermind, look and see where the other people are in their business and then go for it and don't look back because it's scary sometimes to spend those big bucks on Masterminds and group programs. But truly, the ROI is through the roof if you make sure to take advantage of it. If you're going to join a community and then you don't show up for anything, well, obviously, there's no magic wand that's going to give you back your return.
[24:07.510] - Jen Lehner Okay, pick one new attraction strategy to focus on. Maybe do that quarterly or monthly. Maybe you just focus on SEO or you just focus on paid ads or OPA, other people's audiences. So, you get some guest posting spots or speaking or interviews, JV partnerships and so on. Grow your email list. I mean, that's a never-ending chore, right? But we want to keep growing our email list. We want to focus on one main nurture strategy. Once you nail that, then time to move on and not move on, but add maybe another couple of nurture strategies to the mix. So maybe you start doing a weekly newsletter or a blog or a podcast or YouTube channel. Promote your signature offer multiple times a year. You know, I hear so often like, God, there's no cash flow right now and it's feast or famine. Well, how often are you putting offers out there? Don't worry about getting on somebody's nerves. I mean, they'll unsubscribe from your email list if you're not right for them and vice versa. But you can't make money if people don't have a way to pay you. And the only way they can pay you is if you put the offer in front of them.
[25:26.880] - Jen Lehner So don't be afraid. You created whatever your thing is, your service, your product, because you felt like it could make a difference to someone that it could help someone. Well, it's not going to help someone sitting in your Kajabi portal. You got to get it out there. So, you know this, but I'm just reminding you. All right. Once you've created your signature offer and it's doing really well, well, now it's time to create your next offer. I'm talking after about a year, year and a half. You're fully booked, your program is going so well. At this point, you might want to consider turning it into a course or a group program, or maybe you add a bite size offer or an exclusive, really fancy schmancy offer like a premium offer, a very high ticket one to one coaching program, or high-ticket group coaching, or retreat, or VIP Day, VIP weekend. I just got a great response back to my offer where I sent out an email saying that I was offering VIP... It's a VIP Day, but really, it's more than a day because you arrived the day before and we spent all day together and you leave that night or the next morning.
[26:48.880] - Jen Lehner So, it's really could be a weekend. But anyway, you may have gotten the email, but I purchased my dream beach home in Sullivan's Island in March. One of the things I'm so excited about is having a place to do wonderful client retreats and workshops. I love workshopping somebody's business where we can just really dig in and create something completely brand new, whether it's an online course or a podcast or just strategizing for the whole year and building out the funnels. So many great things you can do when you hunker down like that. And then your client leaves with, gosh, months’ worth of work done under their belt by the time they board the airplane. But more importantly, they have the confidence and the clarity to know what the rest of the year is going to look like, what they need to do to continue to grow their business. It's one of my favorite things to do. You might want to consider a Big Daddy launch if you haven't already done one. Maybe we could say Big Mama launch. I'm talking about the Jeff Walker PLF type of launch or a Kelly Roach type of launch or a live challenge, that thing and go really all in.
[28:09.940] - Jen Lehner We're not going to have fast this. This is when if you're going to do Jeff Walker style where he does four videos, Maybe, you don't just do a couple of rough videos, one take videos in front of your grainy old laptop. Maybe you actually hire a professional videographer or you go to a studio. Not saying you have to do that. I'm just saying you really make these videos really great because it's those videos that are going to convert your product for you. Doing live challenge launches, it's a lot of work, but it can be so incredibly lucrative. You want to obviously have all your SOPs created and always be creating SOPs. Better yet, your VA is creating SOPs for you. You're tracking metrics, you're implementing profit first. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the book Profit First by Mike McAllowitz. It's a game changer. I know a lot of us, we marketers, we use that phrase all the time. It's a game changer. But the truth is this legit changed my life and my business. So read that book. That's all I'm going to say. If you don't have a bookkeeper, what are you waiting on?
[29:30.330] - Jen Lehner Get a bookkeeper. I use bench. Co and I'll put a link in the show notes to my affiliate link for that because I think with my affiliate link, you and I both get a couple of months free or something. But they're based out of Canada. It's a beautiful interface online and it'll give you these gorgeous reports. I just email my receipts and they get categorized and put in the right place. And my accountant has access to bench and can get anything that she needs for my business. I've been with them several years, love them so much. And I can always see... Oh, and you also get a bookkeeper who you can talk to. I don't know if it's once a week or once a month, but you get a call with a bookkeeper as well. How about taking four weeks off a year? At this point in your ramp up, you should be able to take four weeks off per year because remember, at this point, you have at least one virtual assistant, you have a team, you're able to leave your business, your business is beginning to run itself. That's where we are here, ideally in ramp up.
[30:38.230] - Jen Lehner Then lastly, you want to always be in development of surprise and delight ideas for your clients. Even turning these into a system, for example, we have an automation that when a member of our VIP community hits their anniversary date, they get a little bot that says, hey, it's your anniversary, and we'd love to send you a gift. Which one of these things would delight you? Then we have a choice. We have a little catalog that pops up of items that we think they might like. So, some branded things, like I've got hoodies and Tumblers and coffee mugs, Yetis, but also gift certificates. Maybe they just want an Amazon gift certificate or something. But it's automated. It's so easy for us to set up, and it really makes our members feel appreciated. I'm sure no doubt heard before; it is much easier to keep the clients you have already happy instead of going out. There's math behind this. I don't remember what the math is, if you know, email me, but basically, it's just much less expensive for you to keep the clients that you have, keep them happy as opposed to getting new clients all the time.
[32:03.920] - Jen Lehner And surprising and delighting and having a system for surprising and delighting is so important. All right, well, that wraps up this episode of the Front Row entrepreneur podcast. And it's been nice spending time with you. Let me know if there's something special you want me to talk about. And if you aren't already a member of my Front Row community, please join us at Front Row classroom. Com. It's free. And we're always doing tutorials in there and networking and sharing great ideas. So, I hope to see you there. See you next time.
