381. Not Making Enough Money? Here's How To Change That… w/ Natalie Ellis
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Welcome back to the Boss Babe Podcast. I'm Natalie Ellis and your host for this episode. I thought I would just turn the mic on and do a little mini episode and specifically talk to those of you who are not making enough money or as much money as you'd want to be. And we can talk about how you can start to change that and what that might look like.

This is a conversation I seem to have with a lot of entrepreneurs. Even if you've been in this for a long time and you've hit this ceiling and you just cannot seem to push past it. And a big goal of yours is to increase revenue, to increase profit. That's what I want to talk about.

And it's so funny. I was listening back to a couple of my other solos and I realized I just dived straight in there. I was listening to my Transactional Relationships one, which I love, by the way, but I turned the mic on. I'm like, here's why I left LA. And so I really am trying with my minis to...

to give more substance like I'm so direct into the points I'm really gonna try and just give more in these episodes because I'm literally like I can just sum it up in 10 minutes I'm in and out but I also know for some people it helps to hear things said in a few different ways I think that's what makes me and Lindsay a really good duo is she is so much better at talking than I am like I'm so in and out whereas I feel like she's really good at pulling out

the details so I'm going to try my best with that so always open to feedback and I've also I've been reading all of the reviews that all of you have been submitting and my team will tell you I post them in slack and I'm in tears reading the reviews I cannot tell you how much it means to hear from those of you that listen to the episodes and get value from them

like seriously, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It means the absolute world to me. It really supports the show, but just having that feedback is so motivating and just makes me want to continue delivering more and more value to all of you. So what we're going to do, we're going to get into money making. We're getting right into it as usual. One of the biggest themes I would say I hear the most in my DMs, emails,

and coaching calls is people saying I'm not making enough money yet in my business and I want to change this so this might look a few different ways you know it doesn't matter whether you've been in business for six months or six years this can still be a common pain point that I hear from a lot of entrepreneurs so it might feel like you're on the sales roller coaster like one month is amazing and the

It might feel like you're constantly changing your offer or creating a brand new offer, trying a new strategy, starting from scratch because you're just not getting results. So you think, okay, the offer is broken. Clearly it's not working. I need to start again. And you're just scrapping it, starting from scratch. And you just never feel like you get much traction because you're always starting from the beginning.

you might feel like you're always selling to the same group of people over and over and over again because you have no idea how to grow and expand your audience and attract really high quality leads into your funnel or your ecosystem.

You might even be like, Natalie, I don't have a funnel. I'm just always selling to the same people and have this huge fear that eventually I'm going to cap out and there'll be no one else to sell to. And you might feel responsible for actively bringing every dollar into your business. So it feels like a burden and it leaves you feeling really burned out. I've also been there. Like I said, this is not just for

newer entrepreneurs this can be an issue for entrepreneurs in the journey at all levels is the money piece whether it's you can't figure out how to bring more in or you can't figure out how to take it off your plate so every dollar isn't dependent on you so if you have struggled with any of these things my assumption would be that you don't have a sales engine in place and

listen you can't operate a business without a sales engine you do not want to and I really really mean that especially those of you like on this podcast I talk to people that want to build freedom-based businesses and generally what I mean by that is like you're not raising venture funding you're not raising money from angels you're not really trying to exit the company you're building a company that is wildly successful and abundant but it's

actually gives you the freedom that you're looking for. So that's who I feel like I'm speaking to. And so for those people, I just want to like underline, highlight, you do not want to build a business without a sales engine. So one thing I share all the time is the only way to build a profitable, predictable and repeatable business is to build a sales engine in your business. And a lot of people...

will build one part of it, maybe a funnel, and they'll miss the other two parts or they'll finally get an audience and they'll miss the other two parts. And so a sales engine is what brings all of the parts together. And that's what I'm going to dive into and help you to kind of pinpoint where some of the issues might be.

So without a sales engine, ultimately what I see all the time is people either reaching burnout where you feel like you have nothing left to give your business or burning down your business and starting over again because you believe that your offer was broken or something fundamentally in your business was broken. And for some people, it's not just burning things down once, it's over and over and over again. So I don't want this to be you. I have worked with thousands of entrepreneurs over and over

over the years and most often when they don't have a consistent repeatable sales engine and they don't have a profitable business it's not because they don't have paid ads a big team a compelling offer the right messaging it's generally the sales engine piece every single business that needs customers or clients needs a sales engine so let me first say you're not the exception to the rule you need one too

So if you need customers or clients for your business to exist, you need a sales engine. So the great news is there is a proven formula to build a sales engine. I actually teach this really deeply in Freedom Fast Track and inside our membership to society. But today I'm going to give you a good chunk of all that stuff.

you can start putting in place to make more money in your business so that you can really get building that sales engine. So before I dive into all the things that I would really, really recommend, there's one shift that I want you to make that you might actually not be thinking of right now, right? So a lot of people think about the revenue they want their business to make, right? Whereas if you want to build a freedom-based business,

You want that freedom of time, of location, of finance. You want freedom like all those levels of it. We're often asking the wrong question if we're asking how much revenue we want our businesses to make. And I share this with a lot of my mastermind clients and one-to-one clients too. It's a system that I have a lot of people do. We actually flip it on its head.

I know this firsthand because for so long I was chasing revenue numbers and it was always about growing month on month, year on year. And I wasn't really thinking about the bottom line. And I have been in situations where I have quadrupled my revenue and my profits pretty much stayed the same.

Like, let's talk about that. So let's say I'm making just over a million dollars in my business and I'm making about 700K in profit, right? Then if you think about that business for X-ing, you're making $4 million in revenue, but let's say the profit was just over a million dollars. And listen, those are big numbers. I know that, but just stick with me here.

You could be, and I've been in this exact situation where I've quadrupled my revenue and the profit has barely changed. But let me tell you, quadrupling the revenue in your business, let's say from going one to four million, which by the way, I have done in the early days.

that is a lot of work a lot a lot of work and generally the back end of the business completely gives up like the systems don't work anymore it's chaos you're hiring so quickly like it's it's a big jump and it takes a lot and so I've been in situations where the business has continued growing year after year after year after year

And when I've really looked at it, I'm like, wait, I am still making the same money that I was when I was a solopreneur. Yet I'm managing this huge team. I have so much on my plate. I am exhausted. I'm not doing the stuff I love anymore. And I'm making the same amount of profit. And what I realized was I was scaling for scaling's sake.

I was scaling because I thought that's what people did. Like, oh, well, you know, when you get to 1 million, you then go to 4. Like when you sell out a program, you add more. When you sell out your one-to-one, you add more. Whatever it was, right? I just thought that's what you did. And I didn't really stop for a minute to assess, is this really what I want? Like how much money do I personally want to make? And how do I want to be making it? This is a really important question to ask.

how much money do you personally want to be making and how do you want to be making it because no matter how your business scales you know you will be working in the business but you'll be working on different things if you're a solopreneur you're generally wearing so many hats in the business whereas if you have a huge team you're working more on managing team and different things right so you're always gonna be working on something but what is it that you want to be working on

And I wasn't asking myself those questions. And actually, as the business grew, I was getting further and further away from doing the stuff that I actually loved. And I wasn't making any more money. So it was like, wait, this doesn't make sense. This isn't adding up. So I just want to share that to say, we really get to flip the script a little bit and decide within a freedom-based business how much money we personally want to take home.

So what I recommend is you start with that number, you sit down, you say, okay, this is the amount that I want to personally take home. And based on the profit margins that I've had over the last few years, or, you know, average profit margins for my industry, maybe you want to work with 40% as a profit margin, I

How much money, how much revenue does my business need to bring in if I assume, say, 40% profit margin and I want to make this much money? So that's the kind of calculation that I would be doing, right? And that just flips the script because instead of focusing on that high level number, you're focusing on your profit number.

Now, this could be a whole other episode, but one thing I will say is you can often make more money without generating more revenue in your business. What I mean by that is, let's say you want to take home more money. Often, you can make some changes in your business, whether it's to software, team, ad spend, there's so many things you can look at that you could make some adjustments and actually be taking home

more money without having to drive more revenue in your business. Not everything is a sales and marketing problem. So I just want to give that context to say this is a really good thing to sit with. I'm going to focus on a good chunk of the sales and marketing stuff and I'm going to kind of touch on some of the operations stuff. But I also think that's really important context setting to say this is where I think you should really focus your energy if you do want to make more money.

All right. So like I said, there is a proven formula to build a sales engine. We're going to get into that. But I do recommend that you start reverse engineering and thinking about how much money you want to make.

So then going into the tactical and practical, the first thing that I think you should do in your business is identify your needle movers and get laser focused on them. So, so many times I see people focused on all the wrong things, the vanity metrics, the wrong leads, the shiny things, multiple platforms. I really recommend zooming in on the things that actually move the needle for you and identify just one or two numbers, one or two metrics you need to know

that will actually move the needle in your business so if you have a webinar that sells people into your program then the number you want to focus on is webinar registrations because you know if you get those registrations you can really predict how much money you're going to make or let's say you have a consulting business you know that that number for you is sales calls booked because

because you know when that sales call is booked, you know what your percentage to close is, you know what that's going to look like. Or if you have an e-com business, maybe that's traffic that lands on your website because you know if you get a certain amount of traffic landing on your website, how much money you're going to make, right? So it's really, really important to know these numbers because if you don't know the one or two numbers that make the difference for your business, like I see people giving away scorecards all the time and it has like 20 KPIs on it

that is a recipe for a mess and it's a recipe for confusion and it doesn't mean those numbers aren't important but if you don't know what the one or two needle moving numbers are in your business you'll start focusing on so many numbers that you get really confused and you don't really know what's going to move the needle and what your growth levers are a growth lever generally you know if someone says I want to increase my revenue I'll say well what's your growth levers

And every entrepreneur should really know them and you should be able to identify, say, five growth levers. But if you don't know these metrics and you don't necessarily know your numbers, that's what's going to be challenging. I also really recommend that...

that you stop doing more and instead do less better. So keeping yourself busy does not mean you're productive or actually moving the needle any closer to your goals. It is so easy to tell yourself that just because you've got a full schedule and a booked calendar, you're working really smart and effective. That's just not the case. We can be busy or we can get results. Like I say this so many times, I have been a busy idiot and I'm, you know, I'm not trying to be mean to myself, but

I was so busy and I wasn't seeing those results in my business. So like I said, we can be busy or we can get results. Making more sales and more revenue or more profit...

often means doing less to go deeper versus wider. Like we've heard the phrase inch wide, mile deep versus mile wide, inch deep. I really, really believe in that. I think that is a huge, huge needle mover in your business.

Okay, the next thing is getting your offer in front of more people and the right people. So again, I hear time and time again, someone's run their webinar once and then they throw in the towel after doing it and think, well, only one person or no one bought this offer, so it's not worth it, it's not working and they throw in the towel. I wanna share with you, you really need to practice, practice, practice, optimize, optimize, optimize to actually see what works.

Mastery does not happen overnight. And if you expect mastery to happen overnight, you might as well throw in the towel now. Mastery is going to happen by continuously showing up to understand the data, to make those small tweaks and shifts,

and sticking with it, right? You cannot run a webinar once and then make a call on whether it performs or not if, you know, a certain number of people don't turn up. You have to invest the time in and have enough confidence to do something again and again to dial in your results. For me, I've always loved doing webinars as part of my marketing because...

I love teaching and it's a way that I can deliver tons of value in like 60 to 90 minutes. Then I can make the pitch at the end. People can decide real quick whether they're in or out. So that's the way I've personally loved doing things like running longer challenges and events. That's just not been my kind of style. Like I said at the beginning of this episode, I'm so direct. I'm like,

here's everything you need to know and I find it quite hard to like fluff things up to make it last longer so I always knew from the beginning hey this is going to be the best thing I can learn how to do and I wasn't very good at them in the beginning like I definitely didn't create my first slide deck hit record and crush it like that was not the case

I just had to study so hard like with anything to get good at it and I'm not saying webinars have to be yours you know there's so many ways to sell different things so many ways and I really recommend just finding the way you want to sell and just mastering it and yeah you do need to make sure enough people are seeing it and that those people are the right people so thinking about where you're posting the link to whatever you're promoting

who's actually seeing your posts are these angles and hooks the right ones that are actually appealing to your ideal customer or your ideal client and like I said there is so much here to dive into but I just want to make sure you're asking yourself one question well actually no let's do three questions I want to make sure you're asking yourself these three questions I think all three of these are really important one are enough people seeing and hearing what you are sharing

Are these people the right people who will ultimately be a good fit for your product and service or service? And am I giving up too early or have I really put it out there enough to make a judgment call? That's what I really, really want you to ask yourself because it's my belief that most people aren't

aren't really investing the time and energy into making something work. They're not going the distance with it. And I really, listen, I'm all about preaching freedom, but I never want to preach that business is easy. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. And there's a really big difference between talking about a business that gives you freedom and can really help you build a life that you love and everything being easy. Like it's just, it's not that.

When I talk about a sales engine, I talk about three specific things, right? It's having a really, really irresistible offer. Like if you dig into it, like is your offer really irresistible? Is it so, so good or could it be better?

And then your funnel, do you have a really solid funnel that converts? That's the second part. And the third part is traffic. Are you putting enough traffic through your funnel? Those are the three elements of the sales engine that I mentioned, right? It's having an irresistible offer, having a highly converting funnel and having predictable traffic. I can almost guarantee you that if you're not making enough revenue in your business, one or all three of those things are off.

your offer isn't irresistible enough your funnel isn't converting well enough or you're not putting enough traffic through it and I see a lot of people teaching those things individually like how to have a good offer or how to build a funnel or how to get eyeballs on what you do but if you're not putting it all together that's where people really struggle that's why we created um

freedom fast track is to teach all three of those things it's not open right now it's not an evergreen program it'll open again i think we're planning october um so if any of you are interested to get on the waitlist you can just dm me and i can get you on the waitlist but uh that's why we teach that but also you know we have more curriculum on this inside of the membership the society which i'll put the link in the show notes but that's really what it is like you can join those and go deeper or you can also

So find out this information by digging into what you've already got, like going through your offer and really auditing it. Is this a really solid offer? Going through your funnel and looking at the data, is it converting? And if you're not sure of any kind of, you know, what conversions should look like, Google is pretty good at like giving you a standard on that.

if you're not in any of the programs that that's a good way to find out and then also look at the numbers to say well are enough people actually seeing what I do are they opting in like am I getting the traffic piece so you can really start to identify where are the gaps for me is it the offer is it the funnel is it the traffic or is it all of them so again I have I

covered like a lot on the wide side on this episode because my sense is if you're not making enough money, everything I've covered, there's something in there, which is probably the reason. Like I talked about reverse engineering, that profitability number, like are you, is it about making the revenue or is it that you're actually not profitable enough and you want to take more money home? Can you think about that? Can you be really identifying your needle movers and know what numbers move the needle for you?

Are you, you know, so busy that actually are not being as effective? And if you simplified, you could actually amplify. Could you be getting a really good offer in front of more people? And then just assessing when it comes to the sales engine, is it the offer that sucks? Not really sucks, but is it the offer that's like not dialed in enough? Is the funnel not converting? Like is the offer, does the offer just suck? You know, is it just not there yet?

which by the way doesn't mean you need to start from scratch it just takes a little bit of refinement and doing some market research and just making it a little bit better you know is the funnel not converting highly enough do you need to boost those conversion rates or is it the traffic are you not getting enough eyeballs and i really really believe if you figure out which part is not working for you in that sales engine and you fix it it's like

like closing the leaks in the bucket that's when it will really start to fill and you'll really really start to see a lot of traction so like I said if you want more strategies and all this I've got so many resources I'm going to put a bunch of links in the show notes actually I can probably link the waitlist for fast track in the show notes like I said freedom fast track won't actually open again till October but it is worth getting on the waitlist because last time we had to close a week early it was insane it like it

yeah but you can also join the society I'll put the link for that and I've got tons of free resources too so I'll put everything I've gotten for you in the show notes and also just before I go again if you would not mind subscribing to the podcast wherever you're listening so that you can get notified about episodes

That would really help because I think something changed with Apple where people aren't getting the podcast downloaded the way that they used to. So apparently that just helps. So anyway, I hope this has been valuable. I'm really trying to pour more into these solos.

because I for me these are just so helpful like when I'm driving I love to just put on a podcast like this and be like okay let me look what can I think about with my revenue so hopefully that's really give you some food for thought so hopefully that's really given you some food for thought and you can start to pinpoint what might support you in making more money and if you do and you get some results uh dm me because I would love to hear about it okay I will see you next week

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