All right, welcome to this edition of Office Hours, excited to be with all of you.
I'm going to start with prayer, I'll give a brief background, the purpose of office
hours in case you're missing it, and how you can take advantage of it.
So I created office hours.
Many of you are coaching individually, one-on-one a couple times a month, but then there's the
entire rest of the month and questions come up or things on, or please mute yourself,
please mute yourself.
Other things come up and you get questions, office hours is the place to bring it.
It's also a great time just to come and glean from what other people are asking, and me
being me and the teacher in me, I can't help but share things I know each week that are
super valuable to move you forward personally, professionally, and in your business spiritually.
So I will also often share things.
I am going to bring in some experts in the very near future, an expert on Coach Accountable,
an expert on Canva, expert in copywriting.
So I will often bring in either my coaches or experts that I work with to add even more
value for you.
So if you come in with your questions, I'll usually ask that in advance, and then I'll
talk about it on a recorded version, like I'm going to do here with the questions that
were asked in advance.
And then I will stop the recording and I'll go back into the group and talk to those of
you that are live more directly to make sure the question was answered or maybe raised
additional questions, et cetera.
So it behooves you to be here live and looks like Tracy got bumped out.
Let me bring her back in.
Okay, trying to juggle because Earlene's not here helping me with all of these good things.
All right, let's start with prayer.
Father God, I thank you for the gift of life.
I thank you for the gift of serving people, of running a business, of creating freedom
and lifestyle, of serving you, of making an impact.
I thank you, Lord, for the privilege, the gift of business, the privilege of the platform.
I just pray blessings on every single Prosper Leader member that is here.
I pray that whatever is on her heart to learn, to grow, whatever she needs to hear, she will
get it, that you'll speak directly to her.
Let the words of my mouth, the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight.
I ask in Jesus name, amen, amen.
Okay, first question I got asked was money, like finances.
I don't know where money's coming all over the place.
I'm not keeping track of it.
My expenses are all over the place.
I'm not keeping track of it.
Not a good idea for business.
We want to keep track of your finances.
So what are some of the ways that you can do that?
Okay, you need some type of reporting and you need some kind of management in how you're
spending.
So I'm going to share my two favorite and then a few other possibilities for you.
There are, in previous office hours, there are a couple things about finances in there
where I did interview, but let's just start with the basics.
I use Coach Accountable as the number one tech tool for organizing all of my business.
So all of you are in my coaching portal, which is the Coach Accountable app as my clients.
So you're familiar with what it looks like and you can go in there and journal, set up
metrics for yourself, set up actions.
You're in a group in there, I'm sending you worksheets, so you have a little sense of
Coach Accountable.
If you have not gone in there to try it for your business, so not as a client in my Coach
Accountable, but in your own, let me know, I'll drop you a free link, try it for 30 days.
If you decide to use it, I think it's the most affordable tool that does the most things.
Anybody that's coaching with me, I typically get you on Coach Accountable.
Why?
I do all my client management in there, and what I'm going to talk about answering your
questions.
about finances, it's all in there. I schedule all calls in there. I can run courses in there. I can
run my groups through there. So there's just so many things. So answering the question specifically
for finance, I create all of my offerings and engagements in Coach Accountable. What is an
offering? An offering is your product or service. So an offering can be a course, it can be a
coaching series, anything that you're offering. I even make my calls in offering and I'll tell you
why. So an offering generates a link. So I create all my links out of Coach Accountable. This is
important for reporting. If an offering collects money, it has an engagement. An engagement then
is automatic. When they say yes to your offering, let's see, people are trying to get in.
Let me let, okay, there we go. Okay, so on the question then of organizing the finances,
within Coach Accountable, I create offerings and I create engagements. And so you could have
one offering, please mute yourself, you could have one offering that then you clone with multiple
engagements. Meaning I could have a $1,500 breakthrough intensive that is a single pay.
That would be one offering. The engagement would be single pay. It would collect the whole $1,500,
put it in your bank. The other offering, I would clone the same breakthrough intensive
with a different engagement, which would be two payments of $750. So hopefully that makes sense.
And so the reason that's important is then you have links. So I'm going to attempt to
show you this. I was not prepared in advance, but let me go grab it so you can actually see it.
And then the reason that is important in answering to your question is then I have
complete reports. So I know exactly what money is coming in. I can do a report for the week,
for the month, for the quarter. And then I will talk to you about what is going out as well.
So I'm just going to go in here for just a second and then I'll share the screen.
But I'm going to go in and just grab an example of an offering. Many of you bought for me,
so you know exactly what it looks like. But okay, let me go back to you and share the screen.
Okay, so in Coach Accountable, I create individual offerings and then I bring those
into a collection when I have more than one. So an example right here is a business
breakthrough intensive, which has a single payment of $1,500, two payments of $750. Many of you have
done that. You're very familiar. That generates a link. And that link, you're all hooked up
to your Stripe or whatever. It's hooked up to your bank. All the money's going in your bank.
And so what your clients see when they click on the link is it looks like this. They get a couple
choices and they can move forward. Yeah, I want the single pay or I want the two pay. And you can
have a whole description in there so they know exactly what it is as they're making a decision.
Okay, so that being said, I create all my offerings and engagements in there so then I can generate
all of the reports. Okay, so that would be one way, Susan, to always know no matter what it is,
small, big, whatever anybody's buying, if all your links are in one place, you're going to have a
really good tracking system. Okay, so that's first part of finances. Now, why do I choose Coach
Accountable? It's a subscription. So your payment is based on active clients that you have in there.
So it's really, in my opinion, for all the things it does, the most affordable. Meaning that,
well, I will share that again.
this really quick.
And again, if you want to try it free, just let me know,
and I will send you the link.
So let me go back to Coach Accountable.
And you will see that there is a subscription.
So what are you paying to use Coach Accountable?
So if you have two clients or less,
you're paying $20 a month.
If you have, this is active clients,
meaning clients that are paying you.
If they're not paying you, you make them inactive.
You can still have them in there, communicate with them,
but you're not paying for them.
So five clients, active clients, it's costing you $8 a client.
10 clients, it's costing you $7 a client.
20 clients, it's costing you $6 a client.
So in my opinion, I mean, that's just
built into what they're paying.
And now your client gets the best experience
because they can set up actions, metrics, a journal.
You can send them worksheets.
They're in contact with you.
It makes you a very professional coach.
At the same time, you can have all of your links in place.
Now, I do work with someone.
I'm going to bring her on to do a teaching on Coach
Accountable, so I'm not going to spend too much time on that.
You can also pay her to set everything up
if you don't want to mess with all of that,
which is a beautiful thing.
So I can connect you with her.
But in answer to the question about money,
you now know where exactly the money is coming from,
what's selling, what's not selling.
And by the way, you get an email as soon as someone buys.
And built into that, you have it set up
that they get an immediate screen, hey,
congratulations, whatever you want to say,
so they know it went through.
Automatically sends them an email.
You can write what that is.
Hey, congratulations.
So they're getting, as soon as they buy from you,
you're getting an email.
They're getting a screen.
They're getting an email.
And you can do records, reports.
And so you know where every penny is coming from.
Put thumbs up if that answers that part of the question,
Susan.
I can see you.
Perfect.
OK.
And then we've got to look at how our money is going out,
which is a different system.
Because I think that most business owners
have no good system of managing their money.
And they never get ahead.
They just keep putting anything they make into the business.
They don't have any money for themselves.
They're not ready for taxes.
So once a year, they get killed with taxes.
I use what's called the profit-first system,
the profit-first system.
And the profit-first system, you can read the book,
Profit First.
There is some trainings already in the Prosper Leader
membership about that.
But the bottom line of this, it takes a minute to set up,
but it's worth its weight in gold.
You have five accounts in your bank.
Now, this is business accounts, all right?
We're not talking about your personal account.
And you should definitely have your business and personal
completely separated.
The government frowns very much on commingling funds.
So if you don't have a business account, that's step one.
Do not commingle funds.
Not good on tax audits.
You're done.
All right.
So for your business accounts, I open five accounts.
I went to my bank.
I told them why I was doing this so that they
don't charge me fees.
I even took the book with me, and I opened five accounts.
Well, one account I already had open.
It was my original business account.
We're going to call that account income, OK?
So all money that's coming in that we just
talked about through your offerings and engagements,
that's all going into your income, OK?
And then what you do is you have a strategy
to divide that income.
It's a percentage.
And you divide that income between four other accounts.
So systematically, always, OK?
And so I'll pull mine up.
I'll share my approximate.
You would come up with your own percentages.
And it may be ballpark around here.
But you're going to name each of these accounts.
So it's right on my phone.
This is so easy to do, transfer in between.
It takes minutes.
And you always, here's the really joyful part, OK?
And I've owned businesses at all.
levels from zero to struggling in debt to multi-seven figure, this is a beautiful system
wherever you are. And the good news, wherever you are from day one, you will start having a profit.
That's why it's called profit first, which business owners never have because they do
bank balance bookkeeping. I have money in here, okay, I'll pay for that expense or whatever.
And they never are factoring in profit. Okay, so you're going to have your income account,
you're going to have an owner's comp account, which the percentage I have right now is 35%.
So 35%, so $1,000 comes in to my income account, $350 goes into my owner's comp,
that's what pays you, that's your salary, okay. Then I also have 35% and I'm working to get that
down to 30, but operating expense, okay. So you take $350 goes into operating expense, that's your
money that can be used on anything business, okay. That's your tech, your hiring, your whatever,
you're paying everything for your business out of operating expense. So you know if you have money
to afford it or not without going into debt. Then I have 18% goes into tax and then I have two savings
account. And so tax is one of the savings account and profit is the other savings account, okay.
So I have three bank checking and two that are savings of the five. And right now, just starting,
you can start wherever you're at 1%, 2%, 7%, 10%, okay. But you want to have whatever it is
that systematically there's money going into the profit account, okay. I recommend starting maybe
five, six, seven percent, okay. And so that profit account, you are required because you're in
business to have fun and to enjoy being in business and have money and do cool things.
So that profit account, every 90 days, you must use that profit account on you, okay. Which is
really fun. If it's small, it might mean you're going to get a massage and a manicure. If it's
bigger, you might be taking a trip. But it's coming out of the profit account and you don't feel bad
at all. Initially, you might want to take half of the profit account and put it toward your emergency
fund if you don't have that and then spend half. That's cool too. Or half to pay off any debts. But
you have to spend some on you. You're in business to have fun. We are not martyrs. We are not slaves,
right. So between those two things, Susan, I think it answers your question. You'll know all the money
coming in and you're systematically having the money go out by design, not by default. Everything's
not just pulling everywhere and you're like scrambling. I can't figure out why you don't have
any money, okay. So that is the answer when it comes to finances. Now let's move to lead generation.
So there's several ways to generate leads, okay. And one is do it yourself and one is do it with
someone and one is done for you like anything in life, right. So the do-it-yourself, we call that
organic lead gen, okay. And that can be done in the simplest, okay. So if I was starting and I have
no money to invest in lead gen but I desire to really grow my business, then follow the system
that I'm teaching you about LinkedIn and the miracle hour that I have been talking about, okay.
So you know, I started calling it the wonder hour. Okay, so the way I believe in doing this
is you have your time with God. So you're completely full and then you have your time
that you're going into. I like LinkedIn if you're going for professional in business people,
okay. Most of you I met on LinkedIn but Facebook is great as well. I've done, I did Facebook lead
gen for, I don't know, almost 10 years. So it's also good. I'm enjoying the caliber of LinkedIn
very much. So whatever it is, whatever your specialty, if you're TikTok, if you're, you're
going to decide which platform matches you. So let's talk about LinkedIn and
what you're going to do during that hour, and I've talked about this before, so I'm going to go really
fast and then you can answer questions. I'm going to go in and I'm going to post, okay, and then
it's very, very important that you engage with 10 or 15 people right after you post. So within that
first hour that you're posting, it will increase your deliverability and engagement by almost 20
percent if you're doing that. So I'm doing three things. I'm posting, I'm going in, I'm commenting,
liking, etc., and then I'm adding people because I look at that, that you are, picture a room,
okay. I'm old school where I used to fill up hotel rooms, okay, and so I like to picture a hotel room.
So I'm starting with a little tiny conference room and there's five people and I get to talk to five
people and that's how much business I'm going to get, right, and I expand to the bigger conference
and now there's 25 people because I invited and they came. My audience is bigger and I'm going to
stay with them and nurture them through my email, okay, which is separate than this conversation,
but you're going to nurture everybody, okay, and then you're continuing to invite and have
conversations and DM. Look at this as online networking, what you would do if you were
networking live, right, and so now you've got a conference room of 50 people and 100 people
and 1,000 people and 5,000 people and obviously your business is going to be at different levels.
So you're continuously adding, okay, so if it's, you know, in terms of LinkedIn, you're
connecting. If it's Facebook, they're friends, whatever the vehicle, you're increasing your
pipeline. Consistency creates momentum. There's no way around that, none. You don't know which
post is going to go viral and which one's going to fall flat and we all have all of those, but
what I can tell you is if you're adding, you're increasing your pipeline and you're adding value
every single day, you are generating leads. Now I'm having conversation on DMs. Those DMs are just
like if I was meeting someone at a picnic or at a business networking event, okay, it's another
human being struggling just like you, like you're connecting as human beings. Don't be sleazy,
salesy, all that stuff, but have conversation, meaningful, valuable conversation and
invite them to a call with you. I do two types of call, a 15-minute call, which is a connect call.
The whole purpose is just get to know each other and I try to do more listening than talking
during that 15-minute connect call. That 15-minute connect call is also your screening
if this is a good lead for you, okay, and so you're finding out if it warrants moving to
a 30 or 50-minute call where you will actually present. Now sometimes it's so clear they're
interested in what you're doing, they're asking questions, you honor the 15 minutes and you say,
look, I know I promised you 15, I'm trying to stick to that. If you have time, you can say,
I happen to have a slot right now, do you want to continue this conversation or shall we schedule
another one? So you're very honoring about that, okay, and sometimes they just turn into amazing,
amazing calls and you're showing up with an attitude of give and receive. You're not there
just to take. So sometimes I give phenomenal, like I had a call that was 15 minutes, we connected,
we loved it so much, we went to an hour, I just enjoyed her so much. We took a break and how do
I monitor the people you connect with on social media? Okay, good, good point. Okay, so you know,
I have this great relationship for an hour, we ended up talking another hour, I just loved what
she did. I realized she's a service I want to use, I'll probably have her on here, she gets you booked
on podcast. I sent her two full-on who bought from her high ticket clients already, okay. So I am all
about reciprocity. I am receiving great leads, I am giving leads, okay, and I'm always looking like
that. I'm looking from a very organic, generous, so those calls go both ways. I'm truly learning about
them and if you
can give a referral or an introduction,
had a call yesterday.
And she is an African-American woman veteran
who that is her clients.
She helps them write books.
Well, one of my coaching clients is Melissa Washington,
who is African-American and the head of Women's Veterans
Alliance, right?
Easy for me to say, hey, let me write an email
and introduce you.
Now, what do you think?
Once I said that, I wasn't asking anything.
I'm listening to her, what she's doing, how can I serve.
I'm now connecting her.
They have so much in common.
It's perfect.
You know what she said?
I'd like to work with you coaching.
As soon as I finish out this that I'm doing,
I want you to be my coach.
I didn't even give her my prices or what coaching is.
So understand that lead gen is about activating the flow.
Everything I teach you, it's Holy Spirit led,
but it's having regular conversations.
Now, what happens?
I want you to commit every single day.
I have some people like Earlene in accountability.
She has to text me every day, did she post on LinkedIn,
every single day.
Because you've got to create this habit.
What happens when you're busy?
Man, I had such a busy day yesterday that started,
I think at, I don't remember, 730 or 8 in the morning,
and I was book solid all day.
I did not know how I was going to do this.
All right, I'm going to share my inside secrets.
Sometimes when you're in a pinch, what did I do?
Let me see.
Before I share the screen, let me pull up something.
I'm going to walk you through what I did just
so you can see it.
So hold on a second.
Let me just, oh shoot, I hate it when it asks me to sign in.
I may not have time to do all of this.
OK, I don't have time to do all this,
because I don't want to take your time.
I'm just going to tell you.
I'll show you.
I wanted to show you, but I'm just going to tell you.
So what did I do?
I know I'm in a pinch.
I think about the thought of what I want to talk about.
And if you have kept a list of possible topics
and possible stories, that makes it even easier.
So I knew that, oh, I know how I'll show you.
So let me tell you what I did.
And then I know I'm jumping around,
because this is off the cuff.
So what did I do?
I needed to eat.
My blood sugar was low.
I made myself a bowl of whole grain cereal with fruits.
And I pulled out my notes on my phone.
And I pushed on the mic.
And I started talking out my thoughts.
And my thoughts were on daily discipline.
So I just talked it out.
And it was on my notes, so I could copy and paste.
You all following me so far?
All right.
So from there, that was quick.
I ate and did all of that in about 10 minutes.
And then I went over to my good friend, ChatGPT.
And I am in a thread right now.
And I want you to think about threads in your ChatGPT.
I'm in a thread about the AI masterclass
that I'm doing on Saturday.
So when you stay in the same thread, which
you see on the left column right here,
I'm clicking on that thread.
It remembers everything about this masterclass, everything
we've talked about.
So here it is.
Here's what I did.
I said, remember, you always want
to tell it what to write, what tone, who you're writing to,
and what the call to action is.
I'm going to go step by step Saturday.
If you haven't registered for the masterclass,
make sure you do that.
You've got to be registered.
It's free for you guys as Prosper Leader members.
So here's the instructions.
Write a short.
I didn't want this to be long.
The tone is very engaging.
It's for LinkedIn.
From, this was my thought that was in my head at breakfast,
life and success are cumulative.
Look, I messed up.
I didn't even finish the quote.
Don't worry about it.
ChatGPT's got your back.
Then I pasted what I said by voice on the note.
And so there it is.
I just threw up what I wanted.
And then I told them that the call to action
is my upcoming masterclass.
It then produced a beautiful post
that looks like this.
like this from what I did.
So it took me five minutes to say the voice memo.
It took me five minutes to put it right here.
We're at about 10 minutes.
I went into LinkedIn, and I will teach this on Saturday,
but I use an app on LinkedIn called Authored Up.
So I went into Authored Up, and the reason that I do that
is because it allows me to format.
So if you notice, I will now paste the chat GPT in here.
I can bold.
I can italicize.
I can underline.
I can bullet.
I can do a lot of things, OK?
And so I did that, OK?
And so then I could end up with a post.
So this is another five minutes.
I'm simply cutting and pasting.
So I went through that process.
Let me just grab my post so you could see it in completion.
I'm going to really go into detail on Saturday for this,
OK?
So I'm going fast right now, OK?
And so too many things are jumping in,
and too many people are having conversations with me,
so I can't get to it.
Give me a second here.
OK, so there is the exact post that
went from me eating breakfast.
Notice that there's bold.
There's italics.
Look at this.
There's promoting.
There's hashtags, and there is a picture.
Pictures, you want to use vertical.
Horizontals do not perform well on LinkedIn.
I'll do a whole LinkedIn strategy session with you,
but you want to have pictures of you.
Now, I do not love posting pictures of me,
and it can be selfies, OK?
I do not love that.
But it is what is very important and what
because people build trust by seeing your eyes
and knowing you.
And every time they see you, their brain
is building a connection and a relationship
and a know, like, and trust.
So if they're seeing you every day,
they're building know, like, and trust.
That's why I put my picture.
I don't enjoy doing that, OK?
But that's what's important, OK?
All right, so that was a roundabout way
of talking about lead gen, doing it myself.
I also, for four years, have hired organic lead gen.
And so I used to do very little on posting,
but I've been much more serious about it
right now in addition to the lead gen that I hired.
And that's a very spiritual reason.
I believe we have the privilege of the platform right now.
I believe it's really important that we put out hope,
inspiration, our voice, the spirit of God,
that we're talking to women, that we're showing up,
that we become a voice, OK?
So I am deliberate.
Even if I have to do emergency measures like I did yesterday
to make sure that I post, I do show up every day.
I have an organic lead gen that I have paid for four years
who does all of the adding names,
bringing my ideal client into LinkedIn,
finding them, starting the conversation.
I have trained her to have my voice exactly.
She answers questions better than I do about me,
how I would answer them, OK?
This is your leadership in training her or him.
And so she's well-trained.
She does the DMs and gets them to have a call with me.
Many of you came that way.
Susan, I believe, no, you were a referral.
I don't know if you came that way.
I think you came as a referral.
Tracy, I think you came that way.
Many of you have come to me that way, OK?
All right, so that would be paying
for lead gen and or the combination.
The third way that you can pay for lead gen is advertising.
It's expensive.
And you need to already, I believe,
have something that's working before you sink a lot of money
into advertising.
In other words, don't pay for lots of trial and error.
when you have a product or service that sells, that you're confident how to sell it, if you get
on the phone with someone that you know people are buying, then you can throw some money at it.
But that would be my last resort. I wouldn't go first there. I mean, you know, if you want to do
tiny stuff, you know, and you want to spend tens or hundreds or whatever promoting an event,
it's a hit or miss. Try it if you want, but that's not true lead gen, in my opinion,
and it takes many thousands to have a post that is generating for lead gen, okay? Minimum two
to five thousand dollars, and you're playing in a market that people are spending tens and
hundreds and millions. So if you play small, I wouldn't expect a whole lot, but if you find an
ad that performs, hey, keep sinking more money into it. I'm all for that. Okay, that was a lot
because we covered finance and lead gen in general terms. I'm going to stop recording
and come in and talk to you and answer your questions more specifically, okay?