[00:00:00] Hey, badass. Let's talk about the exclusive 10K month. Now cue an eye roll. I know a lot of coaches out there are talking about 10 K months, 10 K months. Why 10? Why not 12? Why not 18? Why is it always 10? I think 10 K months really represents. a financial milestone for a lot of people that kind of says, Hey, you know what?
[00:00:19] You're going to be fine. I use 10 K months from that perspective. It could be like your definition of feeling good. Could be eight K months, could be 12 K months, could be four K months, depending on where you live. 10 K months for me is a representation of. You know what? I'm earning really good money being able to work for myself, work from home, pick my hours, pick my clients, and you're typically earning the kind of money where you're like, cool, like I'm earning a match or maybe even out earning my previous corporate salary.
[00:00:53] So I think that's why it's such a big deal for people. But when I say 10K months in this episode, I really do mean 10K [00:01:00] months.
My First 10K Month Journey
[00:01:00] So I had my first 10 K month, AKA five-figure month, eight months after launching my business. Okay. So eight months into business from my very first post on Instagram, I made my first 10 K month.
[00:01:15] Actually I made 28, 000 that month because I had a really successful launch. Now, I could have been making this kind of money. In hindsight, hindsight's always 2020, right? I could have been making this kind of money a lot sooner. And I'm going to talk you through what that would look like.
[00:01:31] And some of the mistakes that I made that meant that it took eight months. Now I want to say this, obviously with the caveat that, Hey. Baby Rosie, you are doing amazingly. You are doing your best. You are trying things out. Good on you for getting started. Making 10k months, making a 28k month after eight months in business is amazing.
[00:01:54] It's exceptional. It's wonderful, okay? However, there are definitely things that I could have done to make it happen for myself sooner. [00:02:00] So a little bit of context sitting, I made 28, 000 through launching the career glob up. That was my career coaching program that helped people to get clarity, to learn how to market themselves and learn how to interview and negotiate their salaries.
[00:02:13] Okay. At that point in time, I had 3, 150 followers on Instagram. I'm just looking at back at some of my milestones, some of my stats, and this was in May, 2020. Okay. I put my very first post on Instagram at the end of September, 2019, basically open for business, decided to declare who I was, what I was doing, et cetera, et cetera, from October.
[00:02:41] So October, 2019, I got started and in May, 2020 is when I hit this 28, 000 a month right now after that, because I completely sold out my private coaching offer. And I had a massive freak out about getting prepared, sorting out all of the materials, the [00:03:00] documents, figuring out the program, because it was the first time I had launched a signature methodology.
[00:03:05] The next month after that, in June 2020, I had an income dip down to 4, 000. So that was just some, payment plans, some recurring revenue, maybe a few other things that I was wrapping up with previous clients, whatever. It went down because I was not showing up on social media. I was not creating content.
[00:03:24] I was not selling, I was not doing anything. I was just preparing myself to welcome all of these incredible private clients into my world. However, from that point from July, 2020, I have never, ever. In my business dipped below 10 to 20 K months over on badass careers. And of course, when you know what my business has bought in over the past few years, as you can imagine, they only went up significantly from there.
[00:03:49] Of course, this is pretty incredible for someone who had zero experience in business and had no idea what she was doing, had never posted on Instagram in an entrepreneurial way [00:04:00] before. I could go on, but knowing what I know now, I honestly do believe, I think I could cut the amount of time it took me in half.
Mistakes and Lessons Learned
[00:04:08] So here's some of the reasons I didn't hit 10 K months consistently sooner in my business so that you can learn from my story. And you can of course use these lessons to accelerate your own success. So the first reason is that I offered personalized coaching bundles when I got started. So that period from October, 2019 to May, 2020.
[00:04:32] I was offering personalized bundles. What that means is that you'd go onto my website and you could have one call with Rosie, three calls with Rosie, six calls with Rosie, and you could use those on a variety of different topics. We could prepare your performance review. We could write your resume. We could audit your job application.
[00:04:54] We could do a mock interview and so on and so forth. Okay, so you essentially booked [00:05:00] time with me and you could use that time, those call bundles for whatever you wanted when it came to careers. Now. Because I could help people with these things, I was helping people do things like get into master's programs.
[00:05:13] I was helping them to get promotions. I was even teaching them how to grow on YouTube. Like I had a few people reach out and say, Hey, I know you're doing career coaching, but you've also grown a successful YouTube channel over with not even French. Can you help me with that? And I was like, yeah, sure. You name it.
[00:05:29] I was coaching on it because let's be honest, I was trying things out. I needed the money and I was doing my thing. However, This really kept me stuck because for each and every client, I would have to create custom materials, custom homework, and I would often, because I didn't have the materials available to teach them how to do things themselves, I would often have to step in and just Do stuff for them because it would be quicker and easier or so I [00:06:00] thought at the time and so I ended up doing a lot of work around these calls as well and it was customized personalized tailor made work for each and every person so for every 20 hours of calls I had.
[00:06:15] I was probably doing 20 hours of work all around that as well. Let alone, the admin, the logistics, the content, et cetera, it was taking to acquire these clients in return for very low prices when I got started as well.
The Importance of a Signature Offer
[00:06:30] So now knowing what I know after having launched the career glow up and having that 28 K month in May.
[00:06:37] I would focus on creating, designing, and selling one signature offer from the get go until I made my first 100K at least in business. It is so much easier when you sell one good offer and you are in control of what's inside that offer. You know what they'll be working on in week one, what they'll be working on [00:07:00] in week two, what they'll be working on in week three, so you can get prepared.
[00:07:04] And it's a very clear scope for your clients. Here's what we work on. Here's what we don't work on. And here is what you can expect throughout the program. And that's what you sell. And then every single client you sign goes through that clear methodology. And so once you've done it with one person you have all of the materials that exist already.
[00:07:24] And so you can have just the calls with the second person, the third person, and so on and so forth. It just makes life. So much easier you create and design once. And of course, with each person that comes through, you're tweaking, you're testing, you're improving, but you get to be the leader of the application of your expertise, what you're going to lead them through, in what order and why.
[00:07:49] And when I was able to package. Up that methodology into the career glow up and sell that's when everything changed [00:08:00] and that exact offer carried my business for years and years. And it's the reason I was able to scale to seven figures so quickly because you keep it really valuable. And really appealing and really transformational, but on the backend for you, it's really simple.
[00:08:17] You start to get very good at delivering this offer. And so it's easier. It takes you less time and you just get to take on way more clients without all of the follow up and flow on effects of having to customize things every single time for every single call. And your price can obviously also be a lot higher because when you package up your value, the outcome is understandably larger.
[00:08:44] They can see that value. Your program starts to get its own name, its own reputation. Like people would ask, Hey, when are you opening doors for the glow up? Hey, I want to be a glow upper. And it becomes its own thing. It just becomes [00:09:00] So much easier to sell and so much easier to deliver. So I would offer a signature methodology, one offer, one program with all of my messaging funnels, everything I ever created going towards selling that one thing.
[00:09:15] And I would do that until I had made at least a hundred, two hundred K in business, because there are already so many other skills and things that you need to be focused on and learning about. Keep your life simple, keep your life profitable and focus down on the one.
Focusing on the Right Priorities
[00:09:30] The other thing that held me back majorly when it came to hitting consistent 10 K months is that like a lot of beginner entrepreneurs, coaches, content creators, I was completely focused on the wrong things.
[00:09:44] I had all of the wrong priorities. I spent precious time building out a full website. That's just such a waste of time, but I had seen other more advanced bigger coaches, with [00:10:00] bigger audiences, and they had websites. So I made up this rule in my mind oh, you must need a website. You don't need a website.
[00:10:06] You don't need a website. I can tell you in terms of traffic data and sales. My sales were coming, especially from that point, especially as an online personal brand where people need to trust you, they were coming from conversations, they were coming from my content, they were coming from social media. A website is cool if you want, like a year in, three years in, whatever, when you can have the luxury of thinking, oh I want to scale from 1 to 3 million now, maybe I should focus on SEO sure, whatever, build a website if you want, but you definitely don't have to, and I can't believe I spent time and energy and money doing that. I also developed lead magnets constantly.
[00:10:45] I created all of these PDF freebies, resume checklist, LinkedIn checklist, like all of these kinds of freebies. I developed a whole mini course helping people to find the icky guy, find their purpose. Designing, writing, filming, editing, [00:11:00] all of that, that, looking back, is procrastination. That is trying to help me feel like an expert.
[00:11:07] That is me just trying to find myself, really, and trying to add value, but splitting it out, doing it in all the wrong ways. I, again, I didn't know what I was doing. In hindsight, of course, I would create one juicy lead magnet that reflected my signature offer, and I knew that every single person who signed up to that lead magnet was interested, potentially, in my offer, right?
[00:11:34] But at the time, lots of freebies, lots of lead magnets, just complete waste of time. And again, I just told myself all of these have tos oh, I guess that I have to do an email newsletter. Maybe I should start a weekly email newsletter. Maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do that. And I was activating all of these marketing channels.
[00:11:51] Which is just a lot to learn, a lot to manage, a lot to figure out as a beginner, and doesn't make that much of a difference. [00:12:00] That's just another example of spending time building things out. When I'm running blind, I didn't even know what I was doing, my messaging wasn't even that good I just ended up redoing everything anyway, and I also put extreme pressure on myself.
[00:12:15] And again, this comes back to comparing your chapter one to someone else's chapter 20. I put extreme pressure on myself, looking at other people's YouTube videos, for example, and seeing that they looked really professional with amazing lighting, and they were wearing blazers, and they looked really Amazing and mature and trustworthy.
[00:12:34] And I was trying to replicate that and thinking to myself, okay, so my YouTube videos need to be incredible. So I was doing things like I literally built out not like a photo studio, those rolls of paper that photographers roll down with the background colors. I. put one of those on my wall in my house, this massive black bar with colored [00:13:00] paper on it, so that I could roll it down and have a clean white background, for example, at some point, like I was just doing things where I was trying to over orchestrate it and create YouTube Videos at the level of a professional film director when actually people don't care and they just want the value.
[00:13:22] They just want you to help them. So again, there were just this pressure and this procrastination. I could have gotten started with 10K months so much sooner if I had just focused on what mattered. If I could start again, I would have focused on amazing content, having conversations with people, and serving my clients in my one signature offer from the get go.
[00:13:48] And I probably would have been hitting 10K months a lot sooner because my program was like two grand, so that's only five people per month. And That would have given me more [00:14:00] money sooner to hire sooner, and I could have outsourced things like video editing sooner etc. I actually ended up hiring a video editor to help me with my YouTube channel.
[00:14:14] In January, after only having launched my business in October. So it was at the end of January, to be fair, but say I had existed for about four months and my channel launched in March. I was only making three K months. It was just so stressful, but I physically couldn't keep up with my own self inflicted demands.
[00:14:39] And so I put myself in a very stressful situation hiring this. Freelance part time video editor when I wasn't making 10 K plus months. And so that felt really scary. So it was just a big mistake, focusing on all of the wrong things in the wrong order and the wrong timing. Now then not the [00:15:00] wrong things as such, but definitely the wrong order.
[00:15:03] They were not a priority. And that's something, things like email newsletters, things like your welcome sequence. Things like, improving, your long form content, all of that, like websites, all of that can come way down the line after you have mastered one social platform could be Instagram, for example, having conversations with people and coaching people.
[00:15:26] That's all you should be focusing on. And that's so much more profitable.
Setting Boundaries with Clients
[00:15:30] Another massive mistake that I made is that I had. Zero boundaries when it came to my clients, especially those early day clients, I wanted nothing more than to see my clients win. And I also probably at the subconscious level was trying to build my own confidence and trust that I could get people to win.
[00:15:50] And that meant that my people pleasing was off the charts. Like I would have clients pay me a hundred and fifty us dollars for a single power hour call with me. And then [00:16:00] I would offer, it wasn't advertised, but I would offer to spend the rest of the day working on their LinkedIn profile for them.
[00:16:07] Or I'd add extra calls in for clients who wanted more support without charging them extra, because I felt like I owed them because that already invested in me, but they invested in such a small package that we didn't have just objectively enough time to get. What they wanted to get done. They might've booked three calls with me and expected resume, cover letter, LinkedIn, interview prep, job search support, and just objectively, that's a minimum six to eight call program, which I didn't really know at the time.
[00:16:38] And so I wouldn't want them to. Go away. Disappointed that in three calls, and I was busting my ass, but in three calls we had quote unquote, only covered resume cover letter and LinkedIn and networking because we still had interview prep to go. So I'd offer them free calls and just things like that.
[00:16:55] Same thing when I launched the career glow up, when I first launched [00:17:00] that program, it was like 1500 us dollars. And I would spend the whole day for each client writing their resume and cover letter for them. For example, like by the time you add up all the calls, that kind of activity, that kind of work, is that program even profitable?
[00:17:19] You know what I mean? So just had zero, zero boundaries. And if I could do this again, This would be my mantra. Clear is kind. Clear is kind. Clear contracts, clear communication, clear scope, clear expectations. They don't upset your clients. They give clarity to your clients. Your clients respect you and they understand the scope.
[00:17:42] They understand what they can ask for support in and where that support may not be available. And they might need to, you can help them identify where they can go to find their own extra resources and that kind of thing. Once I changed this, I had a lot more time in my day to work on [00:18:00] my business, serve more clients, and of course have the energy and the mental capacity and head space to serve my clients at a higher level because I was able to really give them all that I had in the reasonable scope that we had together, plus.
[00:18:17] My clients were actually showing up for themselves and getting better results more quickly, because guess what happens when you trust people and you empower them and you tell them that they can do it. They show up for themselves and they get it done as well with your support.
Teaching Clients to Fish
[00:18:32] And this links to my next big mistake, which is fishing for my clients instead of teaching them how to fish.
[00:18:39] So these early days when I'm spending my precious time and energy writing resumes for them, doing cover letters for them, overhauling LinkedIn profiles for them, writing master's programs, motivation, letters, writing scripts for video pictures to get into these masters programs. Editing [00:19:00] the videos of these video pitches for them to get into these masters programs.
[00:19:05] That's really generous. That's really great, right? However, the moment they stopped working with me, guess what? They can't replicate the same quality videos. They can't replicate the same quality resumes or LinkedIn profiles because I hadn't given them the gift of teaching them how to do it themselves as well.
[00:19:23] I was acting as a consultant, not a coach. And so if I could do this again, I would equip people with the skills up front to do most of the work themselves from the get go, teaching them that life skill, freeing up more of my time, and then just helping them to polish it, helping them to make some key decisions, helping them to put the cherry on the top of the cake.
[00:19:46] And when I started it. Behaving in that way. That's how I went from getting paid 300 for a couple of calls to write a resume that took me six hours to create and have calls [00:20:00] with people and understand who they were and all of that kind of stuff to getting paid, for example, 300. For a 30 minute resume review because the client had done the work themselves.
[00:20:12] Once I understood where my time as a coach was best spent both myself and my clients were winning in the long term. Again, I'm not here to shade baby Rosie. I was doing the best I could at the time with the information that I had. I was piecing together this whole business thing off the back of free YouTube videos and podcasts and We all know that can only work for so long, especially when you're trying to consolidate information from like 10 different people.
[00:20:40] And it's just like a bad idea, but it's actually quite simple business design and business model tweaks that I could have put in place from the get go. That would have made my life so much easier.
What I Did Right
[00:20:51] Now let's talk about a couple of things that I did do really well. And I'm not sure if this was too obvious, Particularly [00:21:00] conscious or just using my intuition.
[00:21:03] I somehow managed to patchwork it together, but looking back, some things that I did exceptionally well for a beginner straight off the bat, branding, badass careers. It was fresh. It was unique. I stood out. I sounded different to anyone out there also showing up before I was ready. I. Didn't feel ready to put myself out there.
[00:21:25] I felt like an imposter. I felt scared. I was petrified of what my previous colleagues would be saying about me, all of the mindset issues you can imagine. I had them, but I did it anyway. And for that, I will always be thankful for the previous version of me. And although it wasn't the right time or in the right order, I am glad that I made.
[00:21:49] That first hire for that freelance part time video editor, because it taught me how much time I can free up with money and [00:22:00] when to put money into things like a team member versus when to do it yourself at different. Phases of business because when I had that first 28k month, I actually hired my best friend.
[00:22:14] I said to her, I can only afford you for six weeks, but I need your help. I need your help with social media captions, with marketing, with all of these things. She was in a job that she absolutely hated. And I said to her, okay, look, I can hire you for six weeks. It can be a kind of career transition project, and then I'll help you, get into your next role kind of thing.
[00:22:33] And again, it was scary because I had to believe that I could make that money again, but I knew that between delivering all of the coaching and all the client work for all of these new clients, it was going to be very difficult for me to keep up with social media, with captioning, with scheduling, with all of those kinds of things.
[00:22:51] And again, while I wouldn't necessarily advise that at that moment in time, it was Right now, looking back, I am grateful for that [00:23:00] attitude because firstly, I get to work with my best friend every day because she's still here five years later and has just grown and evolved. She had no like marketing, social media experience at all.
[00:23:11] And it has become my head of marketing and operations across the badass brands, which is just incredible. But secondly, it did. Free up my time so that I was able to start getting things right and putting the right strategies in place. We can't always be perfect and get it right from the get go, but that freeing up of my time allowed me to do the thinking, allowed me to invest in the coaching I needed, allowed me to get that clarity so that I never had to worry about hitting a 10K month or 20K month ever again.
Setting Up for Early Success
[00:23:45] Setting up your business for early success is going to be work. Well done. People get frustrated. I think when they feel like they're working on things behind the scenes and designing strategies and putting business models in place and [00:24:00] setting up the system in place. Even some of my private clients sometimes say, can we just get started?
[00:24:04] Can we start posting the content? Can we do that? And what we do is we on purpose will intentionally design an incredible business with one offer, one lead magnet. One automated email sequence, one, one, one, one, one, one brand, one message, et cetera, et cetera. We get everything set up from the get go. Why? So that when you turn it on and you press play, every single piece of content is working for you.
[00:24:32] Every single piece of content is bringing in the right people. Who want the right things and are primed with the mindset of, Oh, this isn't just like a cute relatable account. I can follow that here because they are into personal development. They want to learn and they want to potentially one day work with you.
[00:24:51] So it just makes life so much easier from the get go. It's just a few months of putting the right things in place and setting up for success. And then [00:25:00] once you turn it on, Life is amazing, because all you have to think about is content and clients, and the success snowballs from there.
[00:25:07] You have the money to outsource if you want to, you have the money to pay the web designer if you want to, and everything can happen over time. in the right order. So I would love to hear from you about this perspective, about this simplicity, this focus.
Conclusion and Call to Action
[00:25:28] Send me a message over on Instagram and tell me a little bit more about what you're focusing on.
[00:25:34] Right now, it might be your one offer, your one personal brand movement, your one content strategy, your one platform that you were going to master and make your first hundred grand plus off before even thinking about it. Introducing another content platform. Tell me a little bit more about that so that we can celebrate your simplicity and [00:26:00] focus and building your empire on your terms in the right way, in the right order to maximize your success and profitability from the get go.
[00:26:10] So as always, love hearing from you on the gram and I know you would've gotten some amazing value and lessons out of this episode. So come and tell me all about it. All right, until the next episode, stay badass, rain on, and keep building that empire of yours.
