Get Your Business Shit Together with Stephanie Veraghen and Renia Carsillo

Are you overwhelmed by your business and confused about how to make it all work?

This episode is just for you.

Today we’re talking business with two of my business besties: Stephanie Veraghen, project manager extraordinaire, and Renia Carsillo, digital marketing expert.

These two women have years of experience working behind the scenes to help businesses grow when they are stuck in the same old patterns. Patterns like 

• not understanding how to fully utilize their staff, 
• not developing repeatable, sustainable systems, and 
• relying on that Big Launch to fund their business and keep it moving forward. 

 

In today’s episode, Stephanie and Renia share business perspectives that allow you to embody your values and find liberation and fulfillment in your business. 

 

This episode is for you if 

• You’ve been deceived into thinking that operating a business is only about branding and selling stuff
• You struggle with doing it all yourself and knowing when to share the load
• You believe that effective marketing means sacrificing your values
• You don’t know where to start when it comes to hiring people, or you’ve been burned in the past

 

Stephanie and Renia also tell us about their new program, the Get Your Shit Together intensive. This 6-month program is designed for established businesses looking to create sustainable systems and strategies to take them to the next level.

Whether you’re a beginning solopreneur or a business owner pushing 7-figures, you’ll find some golden nuggets in today’s conversation.

Join me in today’s episode as we talk about how to honor ourselves and others with our business practices.

Listen to episode 360 now!

In episode 360 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

• [6:45] How Stephanie and Renia came up with the idea of their Get Your Shit Together intensive
  
• [8:49] The different strengths Stephanie and Renia bring to the table when they work with business leaders
  
• [12:53] Renia’s biggest pet peeve when it comes to how people approach marketing
  
• [17:10] The kinds of business that GYST is designed for and what it will help them accomplish
  
• [21:38] The 5 Pillars of Business and how to prioritize them
  
• [26:44] How sales boost and support all the other pillars of business growth and sustainability.
  
• [33:07] How the business industry has failed entrepreneurs by not being transparent about everything it takes to run a business
  
• [38:23] Why Renia believes entrepreneurs have an obligation to create jobs
  
• [47:58] How Stephanie and Renia help people learn what they should delegate out to others
  
• [57:23] What “time optimism” is and how it can impact your business flow
  
• [1:00:34] Tips for working with people, including hiring employees and working with difficult clients
  
• [1:11:40] Who GYST is for and not for, what to expect, and how to apply

Resources mentioned by Stephanie, Renia, and Elizabeth in the episode:

• Learn more about the Get Your Shit Together intensive.
• Take the “Assess Your Mess” quiz
• Learn more about Renia and how to Do Better Digital
• Learn more about Stephanie and her background as a business coach, brand consultant, and project manager
• Check out The Embodied Living Center
• Email us with questions or feedback.
  
• Don’t miss an episode of The Embodied Podcast.

Quote from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:

• “Forcing yourself to do things that you hate or don’t fit for you or you don’t have the capacity for is only going to lead to burnout and frustration.” – Renia Carsillo

How was this episode for you?

 

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

 

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

 

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussion on Instagram here.

 

Transcripts for Episode 360:

– What’s up, everybody. Welcome to episode number 360 of the Embodied Podcast. Today we have two guests with us, we have Stephanie Veraghen and Renia Carsillo. And these two women are both some of my business besties, as they say, but just two dear friends of mine as well. Women who have been supporting me. I mean, we’ve been supporting each other for a number of years now. And Renia is a digital marketing strategist/expert. Stephanie is a project manager extraordinary, specializing specifically in online businesses, but not limited to that. And together they are running a program called Get Your Shit Together. And they’ve been working together as well. And their program is all around, what are the things that help people get their businesses from a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to a couple million dollars a year. So this is a really specific kind of episode for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs in the online space. So if that’s not you, I don’t know if you’re gonna enjoy this one. You might dig it if you’re nosy and you like hearing me talk about behind the scenes of our business as well, ’cause we’ll certainly dive into that. Most of you know that I’m a mystic first and a business person second, and it just happens to be that I run a business, ’cause that’s what it takes to do my sacred work in the world in this lifetime. But these two are absolutely amazing at what they do. I’m so excited that they’ve teamed up. We’re talking about a lot of things in digital marketing in the online business world, some distinctions between working with contractors, bringing on employees in your business, things that help you grow, things that don’t, are pet peeves in the online marketing space. It’s a really great episode. I hope you will listen and check it out. Check out some of the resources the have for y’all, including a quiz that helps you figure out what exactly in your business shit, what business shit of yours you actually need to get together. So if you’re somebody who’s been overwhelmed in your business, isn’t always sure where to start, what to look at first, who to hire, how to spend your money, you might find some gems in this episode, so check it out. All the links will be at the show notes at uuntameyourself.com/360. And I can wait to hear from you, let me know what you think. What’s up, everybody. Oh damn, you know what, I was gonna be like, “Welcome to our first three-way on the podcast,” but we’ve actually had two other ones, sorry. But I still got to say three ways, so we’re still winning. Everybody listening, this is Renia and Stephanie, who are two very dear people to me, who’ve been in my life for a long time now. Stephanie has been my project manager since 2017. Likes she literally helps keep me organized and on task, which those of you that are in human design as a manifesting generator, not always an easy thing to do. And then Renia started out in Wild Soul Movement many years ago. And actually in 2019, she came to one of my weekends, and it was a conversation we were having about like embodying, like our queen energy, that afterwards I was like, “I want this woman in my life.” So then I invited her, and some of you know Trudi Lebron, I invited Renia and Trudi to be like a peer mastermind with me. And then Renia helped us redo the website last year. So normally we don’t have a lot of business-oriented conversations on the podcast, but Renia and Stephanie have teamed up to create an offering for people that I love the name of, it’s called Get Your Shit Together. And I wanted to talk about this ’cause I actually know we have a lot of people in the audience who listen who are business owners of like some degree or another, like a wide range of types of businesses and stuff like that. And listen, I’ve been in business for a decade now, and there is still shit I’m figuring out. There’s like always things I’m never gonna be good at. And actually these two people really help fill in those gaps for me. So I thought it would be a fun conversation to have plus I trust these two, they’re embodied, they’re wild souls. So how you all doing today?

– Doing fantastic.

– You always are doing fantastic.

– I feel you do feel that way.

– Okay, so you two have been also working together for a couple of years now too. And I’m really curious what made you realize, and I’ll send this question to Renia first and then, Stephanie, if there’s anything you wanna add on. What made you realize that people really don’t have their shit together?

– [Renia] I’m gonna answer this completely honestly and say, I’ve been behind the scenes in a lot of businesses that look really great on the outside enough times, to realize that nobody has their shit completely together.

– Totally.

– I think we saw, like we saw the same patterns over and over and over again, it was the same shit wasn’t together, the same kinds of things happening over and over again.

– What are those things?

– So not understanding how to utilize staff, not having repeatable systems in place, thinking that the only way to make income was to have a big launch, which is exhausting.

– So exhausting.

– Stephanie has actually helped me get some of my shit together. So Stephanie probably has an even bigger list than I do.

– What are yours?

– [Stephanie] Yeah, well, people come to me and they say, “My shit is all over the place,” which is why we ended up naming the program what it’s named, because they’re like, “I really need to get my shit together, everything’s a mess. I don’t even know where to start, I’m so overwhelmed. I’ve got a thousand things on my plate. Please help me.”

– [Renia] Well wait, so I just have to say, like Stephanie and I were calling it The Get Your Shit Together Program for like six months, and we’re like, “What are we gonna name this get your shit together thing?”

– You were like, “Let’s just call it what it is.”

– Yes.

– [Elizabeth] Well, and Stephanie, I mean, the way things are systematized in our business now are miraculous. Like when we bring new people on there, even like, “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” which is cool, but there’s still plenty of things that are not together. Renia, there was something you said that I wanted to respond to, it’s slipping out of my brain. I’m sure it’ll come back later if it needs to come back. The two of you have separate kinds of genius. So I’d love for you to tell the good listeners, Stephanie, you go first, what’s your genius?

– My genius is systems and processes and workflows and organizing a command center, meaning their project management system so that it acts as a command center, so that when you are onboarding clients, you are working with your team, you feel ease.

– So here’s what’s amazing about Stephanie, people listening, we’re just gonna go on a little human design tangent if you’re a human design person. Stephanie is a projector and she does more than most, like generators and manifesting generators I know. And the reason I’m sharing this is because over the years, I’ve had a handful of projectors in my life who are like work courses. And I’m like, “That’s so interesting,” because that’s not really what you expect of a projector based on how projectors are typically described. And I know Stephanie’s into human design. So Stephanie, how do you think it is that as a projector, you’re able to hold like the client load you hold, like the complexity, like the amount of work and you always have so much energy. Like to me, you present as like an absolute anomaly as a projector. But I think it’s just a different expression. I know you have a lot of practices and things that you do yourself. So I’m curious how that works for you.

– [Stephanie] Yeah, I’ve always, even when I was younger, I’ve always had the capacity to hold a lot and a lot of resilience and just have that natural ability. And I have trained myself, maybe being a single mom, you have to maximize your time and get everything in and be very structured and very disciplined with it. So I am constantly anticipating what my next moves are and what I need to serve my clients with. So everything goes into a structure for me because that is the container in which I can flow and have fun and ease and actually have energy ’cause I’m not holding it all on my brain.

– Because if you do that, actually you do the projector thing really well because most of your clients come from referrals.

– Yes, absolutely.

– So you’re just like getting recognized, getting invited.

– Yeah, yeah, it’s been really, really great. I’m so grateful.

– But it’s all sort of a systems, huh?

– Yes.

– I used to think that systems were like the enemy. I was like, “I’m a wild soul, I don’t do systems.” And then I was like, “No, bitch.” Systems is why you could be as wild as you want to be. You need some structure and containment.

– Systems are sexy.

– They really are. I love it. So Renia, these words that you used repeatable and sustainable, that shit does not sound sexy, but it literally… Do you know it’s so funny, I really wanted to say, and I’m just gonna say it, it like makes my nipples hard. It makes me very excited.

– [Renia] I love it. There’s a song, I can’t remember her name, India Arie, that’s called “Steady Love.”

– Yes, I love this song.

– I love this song. And that is the way that I think about entrepreneurship these days, is like, “I don’t wanna be on the fricking roller coaster. I want a nice, steady, sustainable type of love.” I’m not 22 anymore.

– [Elizabeth] Yeah, yes. And I don’t even know that that’s an age thing, because even when I was in my 20s and I was doing that roller coaster thing, or even earlier in my 30s, it’s not like I had a capacity for it or I enjoyed it, I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. So, Renia, what’s your genius?

– [Renia] So I am an activator. So this comes from StrengthsFinder, which I’m sort of obsessed with, but I really own it as my particular genius. People come into my space when they wanna move. When something is ready to shift, that’s what they are here for. And we do that through the vein of really nerdy marketing shit. But that’s really what it’s about, is I help people move.

– Can you talk about, you’re like pet peeves on the marketing of like-

– Oh gosh, we could spend the whole time on this.

– I know, maybe we will. Here’s why I’m asking this question, for people listening, over the years, most of my private clients, I would say probably 75%, if not 80% of my private clients, since 2014, it’s just like seven years now are entrepreneurs, and most are entrepreneurs in like this space, like in this industry. And one of the things that I just noticed over and over and over and over again is people feeling pressured to do things that they’re not built to do, because they think it’s some like industry standard or like some requirement where there’s some FOMO, fear of missing out if they don’t do, like for example, social media. And I know you and I talk about this a lot, ’cause you don’t love social media. I mean, I actually kind of do love it, but I’m just on it. I know I’m built to be on it, and I do a lot of things there, we connect with so many incredible people from all over the world on social media. But there’s all kinds of things, like not everyone can do everything. Not everyone is built to do everything. And so in exploring the pet peeves, I’m not asking that so we could just sit here and talk shit and laugh about it, I’m asking that so that people could hear us say, you don’t have to do this if it’s not for you.

– [Renia] Well, I think that’s a good point of what probably my number one pet peeve is, is there is no one way. And every time I think there is a one way, something happens to us like happened last year, where we worked with a client who had a multimillion dollar online business and no website. It’s like, no, no, no, there really are no requirements. So the way that a lot of online course creators in the marketing space make money is by selling these cookie cutter systems, and you have to do this and you have to do this and you have to do this, and it’s just not true, there is no one way. And forcing yourself to do things that you hate or don’t fit for you, or you don’t have the capacity for is only going to lead to burnout and frustration. And I see a lot of people get a little bit of success that way and still hate things. It’s not even just that I don’t love social media, it’s like, I think we’ve bought into this idea that social media is the only way to do it, and it’s just not true.

– [Elizabeth] Yeah. Actually it’s funny ’cause this always happens in my life, on days when I have many calls, whether it’s Akashic records readings, podcasts, or interviews or whatever, there tends to be like a theme or like a thread through, at least a couple of them. And I was doing the Akashic records reading earlier today for somebody who, she had a bunch of questions about starting a business, she has a corporate job, she got a coaching certification, she wants to do coaching, but in the realm of like what she does in her corporate consulting work, but just in a different container and on her own terms. And this was one of the things that it’s so funny, it was like even coming up and coming through in the Akashic records was like, you just don’t have to, like it’s so much more important that you do what is going to work for you and be sustainable rather than freaking burn yourself out. Like literally in the Akashic records, her masters teachers and loved ones were like, “Please go down this list of things and just make sure you check off what works for you and what doesn’t,” because one of the other big things is like, “Well, why do you wanna come out of a corporate job?” She’s like, “I just don’t wanna have all this structure.” And that was part of the… I was like, “Okay, so make sure that you don’t set up a structure for yourself in your own business, that you also feel trapped by.” Because I both of you could probably speak to, I’ve seen that. And it tends to be like the multi-million dollar people, who are like cranking but they hate their life because they hate the way their business is set up.

– [Renia] So that I think is the fundamental thing that Stephanie and I are trying to solve with Get Your Shit Together, is this thing where we encounter these businesses, particularly in the like mid-six figures to early-seven figures, where they’ve set up a fairly successful company that doesn’t work for them. It makes them unhappy. It makes the people around them unhappy, because they are busy all the time or they don’t like the way they make money or they don’t like that they’re… Like running these launches that we have taught everyone in the online space that are the only way to do it, if you run it in that cookie cutter system, it’s exhausting. If you are launching these big launches once or twice a year, like we’ve all done it, they’re exhausting. I know there’s a way to do it to launch fun. And we do a lot of fun launches, but the way most people do it isn’t fun.

– [Elizabeth] And so Stephanie, you’ve been behind the scenes on so many launches. What do you notice or like the patterns or the common things with people who are forcing themselves? Let’s talk about this launch model for a bit. Yeah, is that enough of a question or do you need more?

– [Stephanie] Oh no, I can respond to that. Normally there is the anticipation of it, there’s the stress of it, there is the million parts and pieces to manage of it. There is the burnout of all the different emails for all the different campaigns that you’re running. And then if you decide to put affiliates on, then you’ve got a whole nother set of things that need to be created. It is a lot to manage if you don’t have… And a lot of them don’t have a full on launch team, so they’re doing it by themselves, an by the time they’re done with their launch, they’re fully exhausted and they don’t ever wanna do it again. But then they get some rest, pick themselves up and then they talk themselves into doing it again.

– [Renia] Because they don’t know there’s anything to do, but launch.

– [Elizabeth] So I’m thinking about over the years, how I’ve just encountered so many freaking people who have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into, because to me, I mean, there’s so many programs that people take. Like I started out in the B-School community, and I think, Renia, you never did B-School, right?

– [Renia] I did, but super late. And by the time I did it very transparently, I was like, “Why?”

– [Elizabeth] Yeah. Stephanie, did you do it back in the day or not? Yeah, yup.

– Okay, so like, I think probably people listening, I’m sure there’s plenty of people who did B-School. Not to knock B-School or anything, but there’s all different types of programs that are similar to B-School. if you don’t know what B-School is, it’s Marie Forleo’s signature program. I don’t know if she is even still running it anymore, and it gives you like the bones of setting up an online business, but no one actually teaches anyone how to run a business. I feel like all these courses that people take, teach people, okay, how to set up your business, it’s basically like how to have a website, how to have an update, how to get leads, how to do you this, this, this, and this, but then it’s like, how do you actually run a business? How do you hire people? How do you train people? How do you vet people? How do you develop people? How do you manage people? Like I laughed so hard, and both of you have heard me talk about this for years. How many things I knew how to do, because I freakin’ worked at Cutco, because I went through a management training program, starting when I was 19 years old to when I graduated college, like one of my summer jobs was running my own office for the summer. I had to like hire and train and recruit receptionists and run trainings and interviews and like literally vet people. And I’m like, how does anyone… And even for me, it’s still freaking hard. And I had like years and hundreds, if not thousands of hours of practice of this. This is the shit that nobody teaches people how to do.

– [Renia] So I have a background, right out of college, I was in corporate as well, and I feel like that is a big root system. And I think Stephanie was in corporate. I know Stephanie was in corporate as well. That’s a root system that really helps. Like one of the things we do in the program is we teach people how to break their business into five pillars from sales and marketing to leadership and how to decide which of those need the most support at which times. And that practice is revolutionary for people, because everything is just like in one big pile until they think about breaking it down that way and learning how to prioritize. And I learned that doing commercial loans at SunTrust when I was a kid.

– No way.

– Yeah.

– [Elizabeth] So I love this thing that you said, what are the five pillars?

– [Renia] So sales marketing, operations, distribution, finances, and leadership.

– What’s distribution in like online businesses, that’s like product delivery and stuff like that?

– [Renia] How you deliver the thing, so if you don’t have a physical product, it might be your tech stack, for example.

– [Elizabeth] Okay, if anyone’s listening, they’re like, what the fuck is a tech stack, what does that mean?

– Sorry.

– No, this is what I’m here for, because this is me, like I know what these things mean now, but I also know I really didn’t in the beginning.

– [Renia] Yeah, the tech stack is just all the technology that you use to make your things run. So say you have a course platform, like a Kajabi or something like that, that you use with a WordPress website and Stripe to accept credit cards, that’s a tech stack.

– [Elizabeth] Got it. Okay, this piece, I am really into right now. And Stephanie and I, we were literally talking about this on our team jam today. This thing that you said, how to decide which areas need the most support at which times, because most people who were starting businesses like my business, your businesses, people who are probably listening to this podcast who are still tuned in, ’cause they’re like, “Oh this is relevant to me.” Technically you start out as what is called a solopreneur, right? It’s you with your skills and your dreams. And you’re like, “All right, let’s fucking do this,” but you need support. And most people, unless you are coming in with some kind of trust fund, inheritance, a spouse or a family member who’s like, “Yeah, take what you need, follow your dreams,” which listen, some people have that enormous blessing and a privilege. Like I didn’t necessarily have that, like my mom was like my safety net. So it was like, when I ran out of money, I could be like, “Hi, it’s an emergency.” And she helped me like… I took out some interest free loans from the Bank of Margaret de Alto throughout the course of my business building. And every once in a while, ’cause my mom’s really generous, she’d be like, “Hi, I’m turning this into a gift. Consider it an early inheritance.” And I always share that with people, because one of my biggest pet peeves when I was new, was finding out that people had sources of income or money or funding, even if it was the form of like credit or like a business loan or whatever. But they were letting people think that they were just self-sustaining, that their business was supporting them, and it was not. And I think a lot of people do that. And I think it’s really to see… Or people are like making money some other way and you don’t know. I always share that with people. Some people probably already knew that about me. That was super helpful. The one time I really thought I was gonna have to like go get a job was like right before Wild Soul Movement launched in 2014. And then like some miraculous thing happens, and I made $5,000 and I was able to like finish launching the thing, but I literally was like, “Okay, I’ve used every freaking resource I have, and I don’t know if this is gonna happen.” So this piece, basically I went on that tangent to get to the part where it’s like, most people are not in a position to do all the things all at once. ‘Cause shit is so much more expensive than any of us could possibly imagine it is. So how do you help people? And either one of you could take this or you could both take it. How do you help people determine, discern? And I know you will help people, handhold them through the program. But just like the overview of, how do you even help people begin to think about that when it’s so much and it’s so overwhelming?

– [Renia] I feel like Stephanie and I are gonna have very different answers to this.

– I love that.

– And with the geniuses of us being together. And I just want to say to your point here, nothing is more common than me watching a multimillion dollar launch, telling people how to do something from scratch when the way they are doing that launch is on half a million dollars in Facebook ads.

– That makes me want to blow up a building by the way.

– [Renia] I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait, you’re leaving out the part of “how you did it,” where you spent half a million dollars on Facebook ads over the course of this launch.” And I’ve been on those teams. We don’t do ads in our company, but we’ve been the other side of the strategy to someone on an ad strategy, and it just makes me furious. And I would always say like, sales always comes first. I think this is a mistake that we teach particularly new businesses, where we’re like, “Start your Facebook account and start marketing and get your branding together and build your website.” And the most effective thing that you can do is get sales. So sales always comes first because it makes every other pillar possible.

– Literally.

– Yes, so for me, like, do you have your sales shit together is always the first question. And for more established companies, it’s always, if you look at the last three to six months, do you have pretty predictable revenue over that three to six months? And even when I’m looking at million dollar companies, a lot of the time the answer is no, they don’t know what they’re gonna make from one month to the next, because there is no sustainable sales system.

– [Elizabeth] This piece, by the way, or just reminds me of how you were saying earlier, you worked last year with a multimillion dollar company that didn’t even have a website. Some of the most lucrative offers of mine over the years, I didn’t even have a page for, I literally like wrote a Facebook post or sent out an email and like with a link to an application. And I mean, let me not discount that people had already been listening to the podcast, like there was already a rapport and relationship built, but like so much of the fancies like branding. I think branding is important in the long-term eventually, but I think it comes later. So I appreciate that you said that. And then just from like the emotional energetic standpoint, another reason why, and I’m curious for Stephanie’s input on this too, but it’s like, ’cause you need the confidence. When you are making sales and making money, you will feel better, and that energy is gonna seep into everything. Whereas if you’re not making sales and you’re not making money, you’re gonna feel like shit, or you gonna feel overwhelmed or you’re gonna feel stressed, and that will also seep into everything.

– Yes, absolutely.

– Is your answer different from Renia’s?

– [Stephanie] Oh, it totally is.

– Well, first and foremost, they do need to be generating consistent income to come in for me to even be able to help them. Because when we go into things, we roll up our sleeves and dive in. So normally they come in and the clients are like, “I have no idea where to start. I’m overwhelmed,” they’ve got a team in place and they don’t know where things are at. So I start sorting, what’s your burning fires? What are the things that you absolutely must have? And then what are the things that you would love to have? And we get the fires put out first, we get everything organized and set up. They get some initial relief because they’ve got it all out of their head and into their project management system. And then we go to work on refining and building out the rest of their foundation.

– [Elizabeth] Everything speaks to that. And I bet people listening can relate to, for so many years I just had things slipping through the cracks, that I didn’t even know were slipping through the cracks or things that were duct-taped together, that I didn’t know were duct-taped together, ’cause people who were setting them up, like that’s how they were doing it. And I actually remember like Renia saying to me, which she knows I don’t have any kind of thin skin. So she just said it, she was like, “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me to get my hands on your website for so many years.” She’s like, “You literally have so much stuff, and you could be doing so much more.” And like, “You’re just missing out on so much because your shit is not organized.” And I’m like, “Yes, I know, help me, I’m ready now.”

– [Renia] Oh, fun times. So I think this is going to really piss off some new businesses out there, I know. But I actually think the dirty secret is that sales are the easy part.

– I would agree with that.

– I think that the operational piece and the financial piece are actually where people stop and can’t move forward more often than not, where they don’t have things together to deliver well. So it makes the sales feel harder than they are. It makes the delivery feel harder than it is. And that’s why Stephanie is so magical. She did that for me a couple of years ago too. And the financial piece is you can bring all the money you want in the door if it just goes out the backside. And the problem is when you get really out in the world, so let’s say your branding is really successful, you build an audience, people are watching you, that also means that a lot of people are gonna be trying to talk you into giving them your money. And it’s easy to just let money kind of slide out the door. Stephanie and I have talked about it a few times, like overdrawing a checking account. Like I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that.

– I’m the queen of messaging the bank and being like, “Hi, can you just give this overdraft fee back?” By the way, if anyone has that, you’d be shocked at how often banks will be like, “Yeah, sure.”

– So, because I used to be a banker, actually terrible story about banking, y’all. I used to get paid off of how little fee income I gave back. So I was the queen of like, “No, you can have your money back.”

– Oh man.

– Oh don’t go Elizabeth.

– Yes, that’s why I’m not a banker anymore. But anyway, you’re sort of overdrawing your business the way you overdraw checking account, where like that $3 charge now costs $40 because of the NSF fee where like you do the wrong thing or you hire the wrong person, and it’s instead of costing $500, it costs $50,000, because you’ve gotta have somebody go fix it.

– Listen, been there, still healing from it on some levels. It’s so infuriating. And it could be really something to beat yourself up about. So anyone listening, if you’ve done that, or you find yourself in that position, it’s like, you didn’t know what you didn’t know, it’s really not. This goes to what I was saying earlier, like you didn’t know, like how could you have done anything better if you didn’t fucking up. What were gonna say, Stephanie?

– [Stephanie] I will say that also. So in this entrepreneurial world in which we work, we’re so the, you can have this business, it doesn’t take much to set up, get yourself out there. And most entrepreneurs, they have a dream, they’re successful, they make the sales, they have no idea what operations entail or communicating with a team or leading a team or training a team, developing standard operating procedures. They have no idea that they even need these things to have a fully functional business. And so I feel like our industry in some ways has done a disservice to people who are starting out, because they have no idea, they don’t know what they don’t know about business. And if you don’t have your operations in place, it’s costly. Even the smallest of things, from like your standard operating procedures, to the way that you onboard your team members, whether they’re employees or contractors, all the back and forth and emails eats up time, which costs you money. And it doesn’t look like it on a daily basis that you’re spending a lot, but if you added it up, you would see that it’s a major money suck.

– [Elizabeth] I had an experience within the last year, where I hired someone, and Stephanie knows this, and we just didn’t realize that this person was taking like three times longer to do everything than, I’m gonna say, than it should, because I’ve had various people in this role over the years, and I have an understanding. And also before my business grew, there was a lot of shit I had to do myself, even though I wasn’t great at it, like tech-wise, especially ’cause I just didn’t have money to pay people. So it’s like, I have a really good idea of how long certain things should take. And especially like, if it would only take me this long, it should definitely not be taking a professional, like someone who this is what they do, two or three times longer than that. And I didn’t have a tracking system in place, and they were invoicing me only on a monthly basis. So this like huge invoice landed on me, and I was like, “How?” But that was on me. Like lesson learned, I’m not doing monthly invoicing anymore. Like even stuff like that where it’s like, someone might prefer to be paid monthly, but if it was an hourly person. So even like these nitty-gritty little things, like if someone’s hourly and I know, Renia, you have opinions about hourly and stuff, it’s like, no, like either weekly or every other week or whatever. And we need to also be looking at how long does it taking to do certain things. Yeah, there’s just so many moving parts.

– [Renia] I just wanna say, I’m fine with hourly for a lot of operations stuff. What I get really itchy about is hourly for marketing related things and stuff like that, because people are paying you for certain results. So like we work on retainers with all of our clients. We don’t do hour projects. We don’t do hourly rates at all, because people aren’t paying for our hours, they’re paying for the thing we’re gonna create. And I get really unhappy when I have to pay someone to fix their own mistake.

– [Elizabeth] This is something I was just talking about with somebody today. It’s like, “Cool, you didn’t understand the assignment or it wasn’t communicated well, either way, it got messed up and now I’m paying you twice to do this.”

– [Renia] Yeah. And my team are all employees. So the people on my team, I’m knowing I’m making an investment in their development, that when they mess things up or when they fail or when they’re learning, we’ve made a long-term investment in each other. To me, that’s different than like a contractor where if it’s your business and you have to fix a problem, you eat that, in my mind, like we do it all the time. So one of my employees does something that isn’t quite right and I have to go fix it, I’m not charging the client for that. Service marking.

– Do you need to say something?

– I to her about this a lot.

– [Stephanie] Well, and I would just like, well, what comes up for me in this conversation is that, Elizabeth, well, both of you know, from hiring contractors, again, this industry sells, you could be a virtual assistant, you could be a technical assistant, and all you gotta do is get your little website up there and go, no, my friends, you have to be in business. And if you’re a contractor, in my opinion, you are a business owner whether you think you are or not. And part of that is servicing your clients. So for example, you hire a technical person, Elizabeth, right, they don’t deliver, or there’s a mistake. There’s having the wisdom and business sense to know that like, “Hey, I’m taking care of you as my client. I’m gonna take care of that for you.” And a lot of customer service things I go crazy about, because those things aren’t taught in this world, it’s just get up and go and do the thing that you know how to do.

– So you both have kind of said, you’ve referenced like having a business. And I’m curious how you would each define actually having a business. Renia, I almost screen shotted this and sent this to you yesterday. I’m in this local entrepreneurs group, and someone posted, “Hey, everybody, I have my business set up, It’s not making any money yet, but everything’s in place, the social media, the this or that to that,” they were calling this a business, but they have literally not made a single sale. And the person was like, “And I wanna sell my business. Does anyone know how to sell my business?” And I was like, “You don’t have a business. You don’t have a business until you’ve sold something.”

– I mean, you might have a trademark or something that you can sell, I don’t know.

– You have a model. And she was like calling, “It’s a turnkey,” but it’s like, “Well, you don’t know if it makes money.” Business involves commerce.

– [Renia] I don’t know. There’s a lot of franchise that I feel like that’s basically… So I think that this is super important as someone who used to finance business purchases. So part of what we had to do was look at whether the business actually was a business. So there’s no shame in being a solopreneur, there’s no shame in being self-employed. But to me, owning a business happens when you have a little bit of revenue and someone else relying on your company besides just you. So whether it’s contractors or an employee or something like that, I tend to define people that are on their own as solopreneurs. And once you take that step into other people’s livelihood is reliant on you, that to me is what defines a business. I believe by the way that the holy obligation of a business is to create jobs.

– Oh, interesting.

– So that’s a big shift for me over the last couple of years.

– [Elizabeth] Cool. And so I have a follow-up question I’ll come back to. Stephanie, what’s your definition like? How do you know if you have a business or if you’re just like figuring shit out?

– I agree with Renia, do you have consistent income? Are you able to live off that business? Does it help you feed your family or feed yourself? Are you responsible for other people? All of these components go into being a business.

– [Elizabeth] I think this is important though, because for some people, they don’t need or want like a whole big business, and people get to make that choice. So in terms of like, does it… I’m glad you said, does it feed your family or does it feed yourself, and that’s metaphorically as much as it is, like literally, because for some people like their side hustle, that’s still a business, you know what I mean? I think of a client of ours who, she works in the finance world and that’s her job, but she does beautiful, incredible, amazing fiber work. I didn’t even know that was a thing, like making textiles and weaving. And she has like all this cool stuff, and like, that’s a business, but it’s not the thing that like pays the bills, ’cause she also has a job. I don’t wanna invalidate anyone who might do something on the side or whatever, that is actually a legit business, and makes money and whatever, and is consistent, but you’re just not interested in making it like a whole big, huge company thing, quitting your job and doing all of that.

– [Renia] I wanna be super clear that I don’t, like to me, there’s no judgment in that. That’s why I like that difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur, like a solopreneur, you could do that your whole life. And I think that is amazing. Step into being an entrepreneur to me, is that responsibility for other people.

– Say more about this responsibility to create jobs. Like at what point, and like what’s the cap on that?

– Okay, so I wanna say two things about this. I have been in huge judgment that I am working through about this whole industry of online businesses and the practice of gig work, which I think is problematic in lots of ways. Not that it’s never good, but it’s often not good. So I made a shift a few years ago in this realizing that there’s only like a handful of things that make entrepreneurship really special. And one of those things is that there are not a lot of ways to create new jobs. Big corporations are actually pretty bad at it. You would think that they are good at it, but they’re actually pretty bad at it, they’re better at cutting jobs than making new jobs, and entrepreneurial folks are the most likely place for new jobs to come from. And one of the reasons why we have problems in the U.S. anyway with job stagnation is because we have fewer entrepreneurs than we’ve ever had before, which is amazing to me in this online world, but it’s dramatically different. It’s something like 30% fewer businesses have been started in the last 25 years than were started in the 25 years before.

– [Elizabeth] That’s wild, because I would think, but I think this goes back to what’s the definition of a business? Having a website, having a social media account, having branding, that’s not a business.

– [Renia] So entrepreneurs create jobs, and no one else is really good at creating jobs. And when you look at building community, which you know, Elizabeth, I’m really passionate that we have to get back to this building community over just individuals. And when you look at building community, one of the surefire best ways to build community is to build jobs. And when I started hiring employees instead of contractors, everything shifted for me, because families were now reliant on us, and we’ve been able to give like amazing opportunities. So like, I know you and I, you spoke about it in that mastermind with Trudy, where she talks about impact all the time in her work. A lot of the impact that you’re able to have as an entrepreneur is in the jobs that you create. And so I’ve just gotten really passionate about it because I’m not sure there’s anybody else who can save us when it comes to this jobs issue except business owners.

– Stephanie, when you think about that?

– [Stephanie] I totally agree with what she says. I’ve been a solopreneur for many, many years, and having my own business, I feel like I’m able to impact my clients lives, so it’s a different perspective, versus having a team that I’m impacting, not that I don’t wanna eventually go there, but I think with the lifestyle that I’ve had set up at being a single mom and being able to be free and manage my time and not have the responsibility of a team, it serves me. And now that my daughter’s off to college, I can now step into that place. So I think it’s all about where you’re at in the journey. And I think that impact can be made in so many places.

– [Elizabeth] Yeah, I’m with you. I’m working through this as well, Renia, like I have an enormous resistance to being responsible for people. I like to be able to… I’m almost like a hybrid. Like I certainly have a business, like I’ve had people working on a team with me since 2011 or 2012, but I’ve never made anyone an employee. Yeah, I have business trust issues, is the bottom line, and we’re working on it. I mean, and still, even when people do, I have so many friends who have employees, there’s just no avoiding, it’s like dating. Like there’s just no avoiding that you’re gonna end up in bed with the wrong person at some point or another, and be like, “Man, I wish I wouldn’t have done that. That wasn’t the best.”

– [Stephanie] Renia and I were just talking about this yesterday on our webinar about delegation and trust. Because a lot of times when you get in an entrepreneurship, you’ve gone after your dream, you’ve created it. You now have to hand your baby over to somebody and trust them that they’re gonna take care of it the way that you would or respond the way that you would. There’s a lot that goes into it. And many times I’ve seen working with clients, they will find ways to hold on to things that they don’t need to be holding onto anymore because it serves their pattern of not trusting.

– I’m in this right now, I’m like just giving stuff away, I’m like, “Take it, take it. We all know I’m not good at this, somebody take it, take it, take it, take it,” and realizing, ’cause sometimes it’s hard to be like, “Oh of course, I should not be doing this.” How do you help people determine what they should and should not be doing themselves? And by the way, your program, I know is certainly geared for people at a certain level of business. So whatever your answers are about to be might not be appropriate for people who like can’t afford to pay people, and there’s no shame in that. Like we’ve all been at that point in our businesses, so we know that it takes getting to a certain… And Renia, this is also reminding me of something that you and I have talked about with Trudy a bunch as well, which is like that place in business, it’s almost like, it’s not a stalemate, but it’s almost like a plateau or like a tough spot when it’s like, “Okay, I don’t necessarily have the budget to get the team that I actually need to grow yet.” So let’s do two-part question, the first part is, how do you, I lost it, but I was asking it, did either of you pull it, Stephanie, I feel like-

– [Stephanie] You were asking like, how do you know which things to focus on first?

– Yes.

– And I would say, well, I think Renia and I will have totally different answers. And I think this is what also led Renia and I to start working together on different client projects. So when people enter into my world, they are full of overwhelm and they have stuff scattered all over the place. So it is back to what I said earlier, what’s on fire, what is the must have and what is what you want to have. And then getting all that stuff in there and then going all right, now, what does your budget look like for hiring supports and after we determine, what the things are that are needed, it becomes very apparent who needs to be hired first, do you need a virtual assistant? Do you need a technical person? Do you need a sales person? What is it that you need to support your business?

– Renia, what’s your?

– [Renia] So I kind of fall into this, like Jim Collins’s zone of believing that the most important thing that the founder can do is focus on the most important thing. So I always think like sales is the last thing that I advise most people to give away because it is the most important thing. So give that away last, give away lower stakes things to start out with. And I would look at the things that you, I think a lot of people would say, look at the things you’re the worst at. People will give those away fairly easily typically because of pain. I want people to look at the things that they are like, “Eh, I’m mediocre at this, I can get it done,” because those are the ones that usually sucks the most time.

– Totally.

– So a lot of times that looks like, in my world, it often looks like building and copywriting, because they’re like, “I can build my own landing page. I can build my own sales page” and yeah, they can, because that’s what they’ve been doing all along, but it takes them twice as long and probably is missing a bunch of stuff than if they would just hand it off to someone else. And many people in our world, copywriting is the most painful thing to hand off, because if not done properly can really not come across with your voice. But it’s also, most people are not copywriters, even great writers, maybe especially great writers are not copywriters. And so often that’s what I’m trying to claw away from people.

– Can you explain the difference for anyone who’s like, I don’t know what that means?

– [Renia] Okay, so a writer is someone who entertains or moves with story on a page. So they can move you emotionally, and probably in creative ways, whereas copy is fairly formulaic. There are certain things that you need to do in order to move to an end result. And there are certain patterns that need to emerge on certain types of copy. So you do different things in an ad versus in an email versus on a landing page. And that formulaic thing generally will drive a writer nuts. So just like an artist doesn’t wanna be like told they have to make their art in a certain way, a writer is an artist, and a writer will really often have a very difficult time shoving themselves into the box of copywriting. So writers make terrible copywriters often.

– [Elizabeth] I love copywriting so much. I’ve loved it. I mean, I was fortunate enough back in the day when I did Marie’s mastermind, Laura Belgray was like in it, she was our mentor basically. And I already had like a natural aptitude for it, literally from my Cutco, I think you both know the story. Like the very first sales video I made that, I remember some people will know the name, James Wedmore, he started out by doing like video marketing stuff. And I remember like, I made this video and he’s like, “This video is great. Who wrote your script for you? Like who did the copy?” And I’m like, “I did.” He’s like “What?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I just used my Cutco, seven steps to a sale.” Like literally no joke, you guys. It’s like a build rapport. So I just like translated like the seven steps, like literally the Cutco demo, where you show up at someone’s house with your bag of knives, you compare. There was like, build rapport, create a general problem, create a specific problem. Like let them try the product, like give them an experience. And so like, handle the objections, all built in the video for my first fitness program, which was called “Tighter in 10 Days,” which the name now makes me wanna cringe, but back in the day when I was 28 years old, so freaking funny. But I love that. I love that definition too, Renia, like writers move people through story, but like a copywriter, gets people to take an action with their words. They compel people on some level to do something or make a change. What I love about copywriting so much, and I think this is why it’s really important for people who are not good at it to get help with it, because I’m not even great at it, but I just thought for me and for my line of work, the only thing I’ve ever given away the copywriting on is like podcast show notes, ’cause that’s just like very practical, like just tell the people what’s gonna be in the episode. That doesn’t need to be in my voice. The podcast is in my voice, but everything else I’m like, there’s like a soulfulness and a mysticism. It just feels so important in my business that that actually has to come through me energetically. But if I had no understanding of copywriting whatsoever, I would not feel that way.

– [Renia] So I think that there’s a point there about what you do for your business too. Like if your business is like, well, like selling apparel, it’s maybe not needed for you to write the copy.

– Exactly.

– Even if you are good at it. I think that what happens with these things that we’re sort of okay at is that we can’t hand them over because we want to be great at them. We’re like, “Oh, if I just did a little, if I just took another course, if I just like, I could make this into a strength.” But if we just lean into the things that we are really great at, it’s like I’ve had to finally just lean into that. At least for the next couple of years, I am probably the client manager in my company because I am exceptionally good at that.

– [Elizabeth] You’re so good at it. As someone who’s been your client, I’m like, this is literally the best experience. I feel I’ve never felt so taken care of. Y’all, listen, weekly emails to be like, “Hi, here’s what’s going on. Here’s the checklist. Here’s the things we need from you.” Like I it wasn’t me. I was like, “Thank God.” I felt managed, I felt handheld, I felt supported. I needed all those things, especially ’cause what you do is so freaking overwhelming, and there’s so many moving parts.

– [Renia] I love it when you say that, because I need reminding of that. And I think we all do sometimes in our work, like that reminding of other people feel overwhelmed by the thing that feels easy for us.

– Listen, it doesn’t even strike you as your genius. And that’s the other thing I was thinking, ’cause I know you and I have geeked out a lot on the book, “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks. And one of the things that I just keep thinking of is it’s not even like the things that you’re so-so at. The zone of excellence is the enemy of the zone of genius. ‘Cause especially when you’re actually like pretty good at something, it’s even harder to justify getting somebody else to do it, but it frees you up to do the thing that you’re like, nobody else in your business can do, nor should they be doing.

– Yeah, I love that.

– Okay, Stephanie, I just wanna check in, we’ve been ranting and raving over here about a couple things, what’s your two cents?

– [Stephanie] My two cents is the same, I think also is that delegating off things that, Renia and I were discussing time optimism. And thinking as a business owner that you’re like, “Oh can just sweep that up as opposed to giving it off to a team member,” like I got that.

– Y’all are reading me to filth right now.

– Why should I pay the money for that if I don’t have to, and I can just do it. That is like-

– [Elizabeth] Time optimism. I’m having a whole moment, I could just do it. How many times have I said that to you, Stephanie, and you’re like, “Are you sure,” ’cause you knew damn it, and then like three weeks later, the shit’s not done, and I’m like, “I need somebody else to do that.”

– I’m like, “Hey, just checking in on that thing that you said you’re gonna-

– I am called out.

– When Stephanie says that line, “Hey, I’m just checking it,” it makes you like, “Oh.”

– We’ve instituted What up task Wednesday, where Stephanie sends me a voice note to be like, “It’s What up task Wednesday? Like what can we take off your plate?” And I’m like, Aaah.”

– So the time optimism, conversation goes both ways, not only does it go, I’ll just take this and I’ll do it, because it will be super fast and I’ll get it done super quickly, it also goes the other way with delegating out to your team members, “Well, this thing only takes like 20 minutes.” So then you definitely get it over to a team member. Well, yeah, it takes you 20 minutes because you’ve been doing that thing for the last 10 years. Somebody new has just come into your business and they’re learning all the little nuances that you know about already. Like I know if I go into my WordPress site, that this little thing does this thing, and I need to look out for that. Somebody going in does not know that.

– Listen, and then they break things, and then we call Renia, SOS, seven o’clock in the morning.

– I do sometimes get voxers from y’all that are like, “Help.”

– “Sorry to bother you.”

– [Elizabeth] And by they way, I’m fully realize and recognize and appreciate that like we have a special relationship and that like, those calls don’t get answered for everybody.

– [Renia] Yeah, it’s funny ’cause I really accidentally hurt one of my employee’s feelings today with this, I’ll tell y’all, like they spent, unbeknownst to me until later, like half the day, figuring out this email formatting thing, and I was like, “We’re on a deadline, let me get in there and handle this.” And I got in and I did it in like four minutes.

– Oh my God.

– And this person just was like, “What is wrong with my life?” And I felt awful because it’s… There is this context that we get when we’ve been in it for a long time, that we just forget what it’s like, because we all struggled through when we were first learning. But you have to forget that or you wouldn’t be able to go on.

– This is making me want to ask this question, where do you all stand, ’cause I’m sure this comes up, hiring. I know you said one of the big things in the program is like helping people work with staff. I still go back and forth on this, depending on the thing, like opinions, conventions, best practices. What have you found to be most consistently successful, especially ’cause you both work with so many different types of businesses and types of people with different offerings, train someone like you want someone trained up, who already knows how to like work in your systems, your platforms, your tech stack or whatever, or do you want to train someone so they do it the way you like it done or is there a mix, there are hybrid, where do you stand on those things?

– So I feel like we may have different answers here as well, but I feel like most people that I work with these days don’t really have the option of hiring the really experienced person, because they don’t have a clear understanding of what that person costs. And to give you all a very 2021 in this moment answer, if you want a wiz at running your tech stack and who can do some like light HTML and CSS, which is like styling your website and schedule all your emails and do all that stuff for you, if you were hiring that full-time, it’s $125,000 a year hire for a person who has all that down already. And most of the companies that we work with don’t have that kind of budget for one person. So it is a necessity that you be able to train people into your systems.

– This is a great point.

– [Stephanie] Absolutely. I will say also, a lot of people will get into a, they’re looking at, “Okay, I have this much money and I want to hire a VA,” and they overload the VA with responsibilities that they are not equipped to handle, nor is their skillset anywhere near what that job description entails. It can look like, oh, it’s administrative, but then they end up becoming the operations person, and they have no business in that seat. They fall down, the business owner gets frustrated that the person didn’t perform when they didn’t have any business being in that role in the first place. So really looking out at, for the hourly rates, if you decide to bring on a contractor, depending on what that hourly rate is, yes, there’s a fluctuation, so you could save virtual assistant, And in our world, that can mean so many different things. But if you’re hiring somebody around 20 to $25 an hour, that’s basic stuff, and you are the task master. They are not generating anything, you are leading them and feeding them. If you want a peer that you are bringing to the table, it’s gonna cost you way more than that to have somebody come in and handle your stuff for you, as Renia was saying.

– [Elizabeth] Well, and I think this is the catch-22, because I see people posting in spaces and there’s like, Hey, everybody, I’m looking for someone. I need to hire someone for this position, someone reasonable or someone affordable.” And it’s like, but that position might not be affordable for you right now, because like what Renia said, like it depends, there’s always gonna be a range, but then the other part of the catch-22, and I really find this, Stephanie, you mentioned it earlier, there’s so many people who have become like virtual assistants, for example, or online business managers is another like popular role, because they saw that as an opportunity to be able to like work from home or be with their family or whatever. They don’t actually have the skills to do either thing, but they say they do. We’ve had this happen a couple of times, where someone like presents themselves like they could do all these things because they think they’ll be able to figure it out when the time comes, and then the time comes and they can’t. That really bothers me a lot. Like even in our hiring processes, we’ve started to like ask for client recommendations. Like if you say you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing for like three to five years, and there’s not two people I can call who will rave about how well you do that thing, that’s a problem.

– [Renia] I tell people this when we’re doing calls with prospects and stuff all the time, if you’re going to hire a web design, marketing, any digital anything type company, speak to clients that they’ve had in the past, do not hire them without speaking to clients they’ve had in the past. And if they won’t let you do that, that is a huge red flag, and you should look elsewhere.

– [Elizabeth] Huge red flag. ‘Cause I even think about the people I’ve worked with over the years, who somehow like the way things have gone down, I would not be a person that you could call. I had someone work for me for four years, and the way it all unraveled towards the end in the last few months, and Stephanie was there for this, I was like, “I’m not gonna be able to be a recommendation for you,” which after four years is really not great for the person. Because if someone’s going to be like, “Where’d you work for the last four years?” Yikes.

– [Stephanie] Yes. I’ve also seen situations where you’ve checked references and it’s the person’s aunt or sister as a reference. This place is the Wild Wild West, I swear, you name it. I’ve seen it over the years and I’m sure y’all have too.

– I’ve learned to just get really specific, like ask. “Cool, how did they do with this, this, this, like this type of thing, give me an example, show me a picture, like whatever.”

– Yeah, it’s really your responsibility as a business owner to get in the details and check out your people.

– To vet. Renia, what were you gonna say?

– [Renia] I was just gonna say, I wanna give some real talk about knowing a couple of things about industry. So you need to know the job tenure and market for your industry. So like where is it at right now? So for example, when we all started, like when I started in digital in 2008, not a lot of people really valued digital marketing and SEO and things like that yet. And so there were a lot of people just kind of, we were all running fast and loose figuring stuff out and there weren’t a lot, it didn’t pay very much for the most part, unless you were at like the very top of a corporate fancy something. So I think a lot of people got conditioned that that’s the way it worked. But here we are 12 years later almost, and now it’s the opposite market. There are more jobs available and more contracts available than there are people who are skilled to do them. And that means that the prices are higher because there’s scarcity there. So if you are looking at digital marketing, for example, finding someone that has a decade of experience, that means they had to start in 2008 when it was brand new, and there are very few of us, y’all. So you’re gonna pay for that. You’re gonna pay for that experience, but you don’t have to have that for everything. Your VA doesn’t necessarily have to be a hundred or 200 or $300 an hour person, maybe that is a $50 an hour person, but your digital strategist is a $200 an hour person, because you need that context there. It depends on the thing they’re doing too. Like checking your email may be a lower value than planning your brand strategy.

– [Elizabeth] And I also wanna note for people, and again, I know we’re kind of just… I want everyone to go check out Renia and Stephanie’s program. I’m gonna have you all, as we wrap up, give specifics of who it’s for and who it’s not for, ’cause I think there’s probably a lot of people listening who it’s not for, and there’s probably a handful of people who it is. And so my goal for the episode though, was to just like talk around and about so many things, that whether it’s for someone or not, they still were able to be like, “Oh, it almost feels like we just got to dish and be like, hey, y’all, we’ve been running businesses in this industry for a decade now. And we’ve learned a lot of shit, and we got some pet peeves, and like here’s some important things that we know, nobody teaches us and we’ve all had to learn the hard way.” So if we can save anyone at any time, that would be amazing. I lost my train of thought again. I keep going on tangents because I get so excited about this stuff. And I’m usually talking to the two of you on Voxer. So when I lose my train of thought, I just pause it, and then I’m like, “Okay, I got my thought, I’m back.” Let’s just go to that part. Like who is this for, who is this not for? Oh, oh, this is what I was gonna say. The term you get what you pay for can be deceptive. Because the other thing that is rampant in this industry that makes my blood boil is people saying charge what you’re worth, or you need to raise your rates. Like I’ll never forget, Stephanie knows, we had someone on our team who was not doing, like she was mediocre at best, and she was talking about how she needed to raise her rates. And it was like, “But why? You don’t really even command what you’re currently charging. The answer, because you want more is not just to charge more money when you’re not actually delivering at that level.” And so a lot of people do that. Like someone who’s more, ’cause Renia, you said like this might be a $200 an hour, this might be more like, just ’cause someone’s charging that does not mean that you’re gonna get that result or that outcome, because a lot of people are really, really, really over promising, under delivering or like overestimating what they’re capable of, and then they can’t. So again, that’s why having people like Stephanie and Renia in your life, who can take you through something to teach you how to like vet and hire properly and stuff like that, so you won’t be wasting a lot of money with the wrong people is a really helpful thing.

– I just have to say like also, don’t get twisted this idea that you have to raise your rates to the point where you make yourself unhappy, because that has happened to me in the past, where like raise my rates, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you raise your rates to where you price yourself out for the people you most like to work with. Like Stephanie and I like to work with founders. If I was charging as a digital marketing agency, “the rate that I am worth,” I would be working with Fortune 500s, because that’s the only people who could afford my rates. And I am not interested. I want to work with founders. So it’s not about “what I’m worth,” it’s about who do you wanna work with too?

– I also, from a spiritual standpoint, no one can charge what they’re worth, you’re all fucking priceless. You cannot put a price tag on you. None of us would have any clients if we were really charging what we’re worth. I love you.

– Amen.

– Okay, so who’s it for and who’s it not for? Who is Get Your Shit Together for? And when does it sit, like just tell us all the things, cause I know our… I think this podcast goes up a little late. Like you heard, at the time this podcast goes up, you all are like kind of rolling out, like people would need to apply like now.

– [Renia] We are in the middle of applications at the time this podcast comes out. And Stephanie does logistics better than I. So I’m gonna let her do the logistics. Yes, she does logistics better than most people. And I’m gonna say, so this program is for founders, I wanna be clear about that.

– [Elizabeth] Can you define founder in case anyone’s like, “I don’t know what that means.”

– So people who lead a company in some way, shape or form. So you’re like the CEO, the COO, whatever you call yourself, you’re in charge of the company. And specifically we have a particular zone of genius with people in the mid-six to early-seven figures zone. So somewhere in the like 500, this isn’t perfect numbers, but like 500ish to like 3 millionish. That’s where Stephanie and I, like we’ve both worked with much bigger companies, but we have just a shit ton of experience and love for people in that zone. And where we like to say that it is a particular sweet spot, is like, if you’ve gotten to the point where you can spend six months figuring your shit out so that you can have the life you wanna have for the next 60 years or whatever, that’s what this is about. It’s not a place to come in if you need money today, it’s a place to come in to build sustainability for the rest of your business life.

– Nice.

– [Stephanie] Yes, yeah. So what it looks like is, you have consistent cashflow, you have a team, you’re ready to build a solid foundation on which your business is going to scale, and take a look and roll up your sleeves and you’re ready to do the work, like no bullshit excuses at this point.

– [Renia] Yeah, I want to be super clear. We have agreed that if people don’t do the work, we will kick them out.

– [Elizabeth] This is what you all wanna do. This isn’t like a show up event.

– [Renia] Because we love them. Yeah, we want them to be successful. And we don’t want to just take people’s money for the hell of it.

– [Stephanie] No. And in this program, there’s the accountability piece. She and I both love being hands-on and walking with our people. I mean, there’s a lot of moving parts on each side for what we each do. So we’re walking alongside of them to make sure they get it done. The accountability piece is in there too. I know a lot of online courses that you get a lot of the content, but you don’t get the accountability in there. So we’re going to make sure that it gets done.

– [Elizabeth] I can’t even describe to anyone listening how valuable that is, because that’s what’s missing in a lot of things, the piece to help you actually get it done. Like I cannot even tell you over the years, how many programs I’ve invested to the tune of four or five-figure investments where I didn’t really get my money’s worth, but I have no blame on the person running the program, because I’m the one who didn’t do the work, or I did a little bit and then I was like, “Okay, I’m good.” Which I guess I can, because there was no accountability built into that, but it also wasn’t a promise. So I actually love… It feels quite high integrity to me that you all are also including accountability and making sure people get things done.

– [Stephanie] Integrity is important to both of us. And we’ve really looked at what are the things that were missing from the programs that we’ve taken in the past? What are the things that we can offer? What are the things that businesses really need? And another component that we’re bringing together is the head and the heart. So not only do we set up your practical pieces, we have techniques. I’m a heartmath trainer. So I teach techniques to help people, I with challenging people and situations, by regulating their nervous systems and being able to respond versus react when challenging situations arrive, which we have all day long, we’re dealing with our businesses. And these techniques are only two to three minutes, and they’re game changers. And you can create a whole culture around this, because if you teach your team how to self-regulate, you’re all not triggered and going into meetings and having a trigger field meeting, you can actually have a different type of conversation.

– [Elizabeth] I’m laughing ’cause Renia and I have worked with a couple of different, like the same people over the years, and we really could have used some of this heartmathing with some of these people.

– Yes, .

– We’re very triggering, but like we were super triggering for that, like it was just not a good energetic fit. Great. Okay, where do people go to apply for this magical program that I’m so excited you’re doing?

– They can go to realignyourstrategy.com/GYST.

– G-Y-S-T as in Get Your Shit Together.

– [Stephanie] That’s right. We also have a Let’s Assess Your Mess quiz. So if you are trying to figure out what kind of business shit you’re waiting through or dealing with, or where you’re at in your business, we’ve identified four types of entrepreneurs and where they are when they’re scaling. So you can go take that quiz as well. And Renia, you give the link to that ’cause it escaping me.

– [Renia] It’s an easy one too, it’s realignyourstrategy.com/quiz.

– There we are

– [Elizabeth] Easy. And I just want to say one more thing for anyone listening, take that quiz either way, whether you think this program is gonna be for you or not, it’s humbling. And here’s what I love so much about Renia and Stephanie, first of all, again, Renia has in been the Wild Soul world for at least six years now, Stephanie does all this heartmath and amazing stuff, has a master’s in transpersonal psychology. Like they can hold space for you, is also what I want to say. And this is something that I find lacking in so many business programs. Business is very emotional, especially for most people are service providers. There’s gonna be a lot of coaches, there’s gonna be a lot of healers, there’s gonna be a lot of people who are like impact-oriented, and are doing things that they want to help people, they wanna make the world a better place. And of course, running a business like that is a spiritual path, like you’re gonna get triggered, you’re gonna get initiated. Like you’re gonna be humbled over and over and over and over again. And so this program, like stuff like that will come up, and these two are gonna be able to hold space for you. They’re gonna be able to help you navigate the emotional experience, especially Stephanie, She’s amazing. Like sometimes my calls with Stephanie, we have a weekly call, I’m like, “I just need to talk.” Stephanie’s kinda like my business therapist too. And she’s also a certified coach. There’s just like the multilevel, not level multi-layered, multi-dimensional support here is why. Again, we don’t really have business conversations on this podcast, but I was like, yo, people need to know what you’re doing.

– I just want to speak to that really quickly as well. When you are in with your peers, to understand what you’re going through, because they live in that business, it’s a totally different situation.

– Totally, that’s great. Like you will feel shame at some point or another, but you really just don’t have to, which is cool. I’ve also been in business programs where basically like, if you’re not like everybody else, they’re basically shaming you, whether they’re doing it consciously or unconsciously. And for me, most often that would happen around my values and around things I wasn’t willing to do that everyone else was doing, because it just bumped up against my values and integrity. So these two are really gonna honor your values and your integrity and prioritize that with you, and build around that with you as well. So, all right, y’all, we almost took the full 90 minutes, I usually don’t go this long. I mean, clearly, we love talking about it. Anything I didn’t ask you, anything you didn’t get to say that you needed or wanted to?

– [Stephanie] I just wanna speak to the logistics, the program really quickly, it is a six-month intensive. We do have a kickoff retreat at the beginning, and then we’re gonna move through five phases, and then we have a celebration retreat at the end.

– [Renia] We need you to come to my favorite town.

– Yes.

– [Elizabeth] What’s your favorite town?

– [Renia] It’s called New Smyrna Beach, it’s on the Atlantic Coast of Florida.

– Oh, great.

– [Stephanie] Yes. So we’re really excited to have you.

– Renia, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you like burst out of excitement like that before.

– [Renia] So I have a friend who very strongly believes that it’s like an energetically special place, and I think that she’s right. People always feel good when they go to, Stephanie, you know.

– [Stephanie] It’s one of my favorite spots too. There’s a French bakery, is amazing.

– All right, well, I got to come at some point, invite me. All right, everybody, I hope you enjoy this. I hope this was helpful if it was relevant to yo. I know some people probably just listen just to be like, “Hey, I’m curious,” so whatever it is, find Stephanie, find Renia, check out their stuff. Renia, are you still doing the podcast?

– [Renia] I am, but we’re on hiatus right now because we’re rebranding, so we’ll be back in January.

– Okay, but there’s still amazing episodes banked up, so like if you were getting a lot of value out of what Renia was saying. Also, is the podcast linked at realignyourstrategy.com?

– [Renia] Yes. If you don’t mind me just saying one thing, so we do something called, a framework I created called Do Better Digital where like, if you feel gross about digital marketing, that’s another thing that we’ve talked a lot about during this, and we will be doing in the program, where like your values don’t get to the set aside in doing these things, they’re integrated into what you’re doing, and that’s what our podcast is all about.

– [Elizabeth] I love that. And there’s already existing episodes, so go check out Renia’s podcasts. We’ll put links as always, we’ll put links to everything in the show notes. So, all right, I guess I’ll let the two of you go now. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening, we’ll see you later.