SPI 446: How to Start and Sustain a Successful Business with Racheal Cook

SPI 446: How to Start and Sustain a Successful Business with Racheal Cook

Pat Flynn:
Look, starting a business can be hard. There’s a lot of moving pieces, there’s so many choices, different things that we can do. What content platform, what do we say? Who do we target? How? All that stuff. But more so than just starting a business, we also want to sustain a business, and I would say that there are more people who start a business and fail than people who don’t start a business. And it’s oftentimes those people who start and stop that never try it again, and we don’t want that to happen either. So today we’re talking with business leader and coach Racheal Cook to tell us not just how to start a business, and it’s not just like all the moving pieces and the different components, it’s actually what happens in here, in the place that I’m talking to you right now, your ear, in your brain.

Pat:
We need to understand the right mindset and approach and continue that mindset growth to have sustainability in our business, and that’s what we want to get into today with the business coach herself, Racheal Cook, R-A-C-H-E-A-L Cook. You can find her at Rachealcook.com and that’s E-A-L in her name Racheal. This is going to be really important, because we need to know how to build a sustainable business. So, strategies, systems, and support, all those things to make it happen, that’s what we’ll talk about today. Again, Racheal Cook, you’re going to love it. Cue the intro.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast, where it’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host: In his old age, all he wants to do is go fishing every single day, Pat Flynn.

Pat:
Hey, hey. What’s up y’all? Welcome to session 446 of the Smart Passive Income podcast, thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Pat Flynn here to help you make more money, save more time and help more people too. Today we’re speaking with Racheal Cook, MBA, consultant, coach, has helped so many people make a lot of more money and ultimately have more freedom in their life, that’s ultimately why we’re doing what we’re doing, right? We want more freedom, we want more choice. And although you might be wearing all the hats in your business, we’re going to talk about a number of strategies and ways that you can break out of that mold and continue to have success in your business over time.

Pat:
Because we don’t just want to start businesses, we want to sustain and continue to grow and keep that success over time, and that’s what we’re talking about today with Racheal Cook. So, here we go, this is a great one, especially if you’re just starting out or you’ve been doing this for a while and you’ve been feeling a little burned out. This is the one for you. Here she is. Racheal, welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast. Thanks so much for being here today.

Racheal Cook:
Thank you for having me.

Pat:
Really excited to chat, and before we get into all the amazing things that you’re going to share, because we have a lot of people who are just starting their businesses listening, people who already have businesses who want to learn and grow in scale, I know you’ve helped, especially women, which is really incredible, and I want to unpack that further for sure. I want to know more about your origin story. How did you get started with business? Was this something … you were a kid and you always knew you wanted to do this, where did this all start?

Racheal:
It’s so funny. You said, “When you were a kid, did you always think you wanted to be an entrepreneur?” No, I was raised by two entrepreneurs. So I always was behind the scenes in a business, but like most kids I fought against what my parents wanted. So, I started off as a music performance major playing French horn, and when I was in college, I started my first business by accident. I actually had several different businesses in college. One was catering all of the recitals for my performance major friends where … It’s a big deal if you’re a junior or senior performance major, you have to have this big concert, totally solo concert.

Racheal:
So I was like, “Well, I can cater the reception, your friends and family have all come in town.” So I started doing that on the side, and I also started a tutoring company by accident, because I realized that not many people were good at things like accounting and economics. So I started tutoring basically all of the student athletes, and had a tutoring company on the side. So I switched from music to business, got a scholarship, a full ride to complete my MBA and graduated, went straight into consulting after getting my MBA.

Racheal:
After a few years in consulting, where I did the 80-hour work weeks, a lot of consultants, know that whole road warrior lifestyle where you’re on the road five or six days a week, and when you’re finally home, you’re just like exhausted and all you want to do is crash. So I burned out from that life. In fact, I got very, very ill. I had to take medical leave of absence because I was so ill from that lifestyle. That’s when I started my business. It was an accident. I was literally on the yoga mat at my favorite yoga studio, and I was going, “What am I going to do? My medical leave is almost up. I think that lifestyle is just going to make me sick again.” And my yoga teacher said to me, “Hey, Rach, I know you don’t want to go back to that, but my studio is struggling. Do you think you could help me out?”

Racheal:
So, I’m sitting here having that light bulb moment where I realized, “Oh my gosh, I have been working with all these small businesses in that they had under 200 employees, but here are these owner-operated businesses that in 2008 did not have access to someone like me who could look at their numbers, who could look at their marketing systems and their operations and figure out how can we make this business work. So she literally was the key that turned into the business that I have today, 12 years later. I have been working with owner-operated businesses, specifically with women business owners, and it has just been an incredible journey over the last 12 years now.

Pat:
It’s incredible. What would you say your super power in business is at this point?

Racheal:
At this point, it’s really helping, especially women business owners to create a strategy for more sustainable success. Because what I tend to see is, a lot of people are hitting burnout very, very quickly, and the statistics are behind me on this. Like one of the biggest reasons why people give up on their businesses is not because they’re not smart enough, it’s not because they’re not driven enough, it’s because it is hard to be in it for the long haul. That’s why I’m here today, because I’m really passionate about helping more women, especially to create the change we want to see in the world, but we can only do it if we’re thinking with a longterm view. We can’t constantly be in this hustle mindset where we’re grinding it out at the expense of our health and our wellbeing and our overall life.

Pat:
What are some of the signs that a person can consider that they are headed toward burnout? Maybe you can think back to the point at which you experienced burnout, and what were the symptoms that you wish you had paid earlier attention to that could have helped you earlier on?

Racheal:
Yeah, I think this is one of those things where if you are young, without any responsibilities, you tend to think that you’re Wonder Woman or Superman, you can just push and push and push and nothing bad will ever happen to you. But what happened to me is, I was facing debilitating anxiety and I started having panic attacks. I literally pulled off the side of Interstate 95, I was driving back from Washington, D.C. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to die on the side of this Interstate.” Because I was having a full blown panic attack, driving my car. For me, that was the result of not paying attention for a long time. It’s like my entire body finally had enough and was saying, “You’re going to pay attention right now, I’m telling you, you are burned out and exhausted and I’m going to do whatever it takes for you to slow down.”

Pat:
Yeah, and I know a number of people, friends of mine, who’ve gone through similar bouts with stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, lack of nutrition, just a lot of things fall by the wayside when we’re so focused on our businesses. And these things that make us potentially strong entrepreneurs, the focus, the hustle sometimes can actually work against us. So, how would you recommend somebody, whether they’re just starting out or they can look at their business now, how do we ensure that we don’t reach that point? You had mentioned strategies for sustainable success, and that obviously means making sure you’re never going to get to that point of burnout. What are some of the systems you put into place? What can you teach us about making sure that’s going to happen well for us?

Racheal:
Yeah. I think the first thing for me is, this always starts with what are your values and where are you in your life? Because what works for me is going to be very different than what works for somebody else. I feel like context is so important. I am currently in my late thirties, I have three children ages 10 and under, my husband is a stay at home dad. So, what works for me is going to be very different from somebody who is a single mom or who doesn’t have kids, or who’s still in their early twenties and has all the energy in the world to hustle nonstop and sleep on the sofa while they have roommates. That’s not my life anymore. So, I think one of the biggest things that I always walk women entrepreneurs through is, we’ve got to get clarity around what you actually want your life to look like, and then build your business around it.

Racheal:
Because what tends to happen for a lot of entrepreneurs and high achievers is, we have these big dreams about our business and what we want to create, but we keep delaying our life hoping that one day we’ll just magically have the life that we always dreamed. And unfortunately, we see that that is the opposite of what happens. Like if you don’t make time for your life, if you don’t make time for your friends and family, if you don’t make time for your health and wellness, it will not be there when you actually want it.

Racheal:
So we actually start with designing your life first, and that means, what do you want your day-to-day to look like? What do you want a full week to look like? Who do you want to be spending time with? What do those relationships look like? What does quality time look like for your family, for your kids, for your partner? What kind of friendships do you need in your life? What kind of activities do you need in order to feel like you’re taking amazing care of yourself? Actually think about those areas of your life now, and then build your business to support that.

Racheal:
When you go in this way, it seems backwards to a lot of people, because we’re used to squeezing our life into the margins, but when you make your life front and center, then your business is actually easier to run. You’ve given yourself constraints, and constraints are great for building a sustainable business because now you know what your bandwidth is, you know how much time and energy you actually have, and you can make smarter decisions longterm.

Pat:
This is really great. It’s very similar to this term that’s been thrown around ever since Tim Ferriss started talking about it, Lifestyle Design, right?

Racheal:
Yeah.

Pat:
That was a cool term, and it makes sense, but now we’re getting a little bit more concrete with it, right? Lifestyle Design. Okay. Let’s actually think about who you want to spend time with and what you want your day-to-day to be like. This is a new thing for a lot of people thinking this way, especially perhaps if you’ve been conditioned to do like you said, to fit into the margins. So, when a person hears, “Okay, think about who you want to be with, what do you want to do?” This is a hard question to answer some times, and it can actually … and from my experience, it could phase a lot of people and then it could start to make them shell up a little bit, “Oh my gosh, I don’t even know what I want.” How would you help or coach a person through that very common response to this exercise?

Racheal:
Yeah. This is where we really have to take the time to be introspective and ask ourself what matters to us. And this is where having some level of self awareness is really key, because often we don’t know what we want until we experience what we don’t want. So, I’m definitely like that. I tend to bump up against the things that aren’t working and that’s where I find clarity about where I really need to go. So, a great example of this, this year for me, I’ve been working out of my home office for 12 years, and this year with everything that’s been going on, I realized, “You know what? It’s really hard to work when you have three kids, ages 10 and under, running around, and a husband who likes to demo the bathroom randomly and renovate. So, I need to figure out how am I going to thrive in this new environment?

Racheal:
So that’s where I usually start, is like what’s not working, and how can we use that to inform us to figure out what could work better. For me, it was no longer working in my home office. It was time to get out, find another space that was actually quiet so I didn’t have to orchestrate how I was going to get anything accomplished. Suddenly I was back in that thrive zone, where I was able to be more productive, and then when I go home, I can actually enjoy being at home.

Pat:
I love that, and thank you for that very clear example, one I think we can all relate to nowadays. When it comes to thinking about what you want, do you focus with your clients ever on a specific dollar amount that they might need to reach for and how that plays a role in what they do for business action-wise? Where does the finance enter the picture for you?

Racheal:
Okay, now we’re going to get into some fun things, because I love pulling out a calculator and actually adding this all up. One of the biggest reasons why so many women entrepreneurs start their businesses is, one, flexibility, having more time freedom. But the other is, they’re hoping to actually replace the income they might’ve made in a professional setting or more. So, that’s where we start to look when I work with my clients. I’m like, “What is the salary you actually want to pay yourself?” So a lot of the women that I work with, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners, we tend to think about these big revenue goals, but we don’t always break down the difference between revenue and take home pay. If we don’t think about that, then we set our business up to be much harder than it needs to be.

Racheal:
So, I always start with, what is it that you want to be able to pay yourself, and make sure you’re building into the paycheck that you want. Think about it like you’re creating your own CEO salary package, benefits package, all of the perks that you want, actually go out and figure out what that looks like for yourself. What is it that you ultimately want to bring home? How much do you want to put aside in your retirement accounts? How much do you want to be able to reinvest into your children’s education, really crunch all those numbers and build out your own CEO compensation, and then let’s use that to reverse engineer the business that will support that.

Racheal:
So, for a lot of us, it’s going to be taking the income we want and multiplying it by two or three times in order to get the actual revenue number, because we have to include things like expenses and hiring team and paying taxes. So, that’s one of the easiest back of the napkin math types of things we can do is, start with what you want to pay yourself. This is one of those things where I definitely see a lot of times people don’t have clarity on what they want to pay themselves. So this takes a little bit of sitting down with the numbers. One of the smartest things I think any entrepreneur can do longterm is really understand the math of what they need to sustain themselves, and then what the business needs to sustain itself.

Pat:
Very smart, I love that. And especially adding a little bit more on top of that in terms of revenue, because there are a lot of hidden costs or unknown things that you have to pay for. I’ve found that out the hard way early on for sure. Medical included in that, like there’s a whole number of other things too.

Racheal:
Absolutely.

Pat:
When we start to play with the numbers, and I know this from experience as well because I often teach my students to do the same thing, like we have to get clear because a million dollar business requires a completely different set of actions than a $60,000 a year business. But either way people see that number and then they start to get those self-doubts.

Racheal:
Yeah.

Pat:
“How could I on my own ever make that much? I didn’t go to business school, I am not qualified, why would people listen to me?” How do you coach a person through the mental and the mindset with relation to, they’ve seen this number now, there’s a goal, and now these automatic just human nature self-doubting resistant feelings start coming into play?

Racheal:
Oh my gosh, this happens so much. I do want to say this is something that you don’t know until you’re in it, right? Like all of us start our business and we don’t know how much it’s going to cost to run that business. We don’t know the cost of all of these things we’re going to need the tool, the team, everything. So, I think the first thing when you’re looking at it is start where you are, right? If you are just getting started and you hear from somebody, “Oh, I’m going to make a million dollars in revenue this year.” I’m like, “Okay, great. Let’s break that down a little bit. Have you made your first thousand? What about your first 10,000?” Let’s chunk it down step by step, because going from zero to a million is a huge, huge leap, and that’s why your brain is having a hard time with it. Your brain can’t even understand what that looks like yet because you haven’t taken the first step.

Racheal:
So I always like to start simple. The first benchmark I tend to see for a lot of people is that first six figures. It could take a few years to get there, especially if you’re bootstrapping your business and you’re doing this part time on the side while you’re also juggling everything else. There’s a lot of factors that could slow that down or speed that up. But if we can focus on that first six figures, do the activities that will get you there as quickly and efficiently as possible, your brain starts to understand more about what this is actually going to take.

Racheal:
Then you get to the next benchmark, get to a quarter million, get to half a million, then go up from there and your brain will start to believe that it is possible because they’re seeing that, “Oh, you’re getting really good at the skillsets that it takes to run a business. You’re getting really good at marketing, you’re getting really good at selling this thing, you’re getting really good at delivering this offer and bringing on team to continue to help you to grow. But we have to start where we are.

Pat:
Thank you for that, Racheal, that’s very smart. I know that when we start to ask people, “Okay, where do you want to go? Here’s that number?” Then they start to get really excited about starting a business, oftentimes the first question I get, and I want to know your response to this is, “Well, should I start an online course or should I do coaching?” And it’s always like a solution-oriented start versus like, where else might you suggest Racheal, that we actually start when it comes to building our businesses because it’s so … Like people go, “I want to invent this thing.” And I’m like, “That’s not really how it works.” How do you coach somebody who’s right at the beginning to understand, well, what can they do to now get to those numbers that we’ve set for ourselves?

Racheal:
So, I’m going to have to ask for some qualifiers of them; I need to know what their bandwidth is. I need to know how much time and energy they have available. I need to know what resources they have. What is their startup capital? Are they self-funding that? Do they have a line of credit? What is actually available to grow this business? Then I need to understand how quickly does that business need to start cash flowing. If you don’t understand those three things, then you can get a million different responses from a million different people about what type of business you should start first. But you and I know being more than a decade into this, that it could take a while for a business to start cash flowing. You can eat it up a lot of money without meaning too, because you go after the wrong thing and then you don’t have money to pay yourself.

Racheal:
So, if we understand how much time and energy you have to invest in your business, where you’re starting from, what capital you have to start it, and then how quickly you need to be able to turn around and pay yourself, we can make a smarter decision. So, I tend to be someone who loves starting with some service-based business. The reason I love that is because simple is usually the fastest path to cash, and most of the women that I’m working with, they are looking to bring in that revenue as quickly as possible. They’re not wanting to wait until year two or three, which is on average, how long it takes for most new small businesses to start cash flowing and getting to that break even point.

Racheal:
So, if you’re trying to get … right now especially, if you’re trying to get to where you’re replacing your income as quickly as possible, it’s a lot easier to do that with a service, because you need fewer people to market to, you don’t need to have as many clients, you don’t need a lot of bells and whistles and technology and all of the fancy stuff that everybody thinks sounds really sexy, but it does take time to put all of those things in place. You can get started with just starting to ask people, “How can I help you?” And this is something I just saw. One of my dear college friends has been a teacher for 16 years, and this year she decided, “I don’t want to go back to teaching, I want to stay home with my kids.”

Racheal:
So we brainstormed, she decided, “I’m going to start a virtual assistant business.” Great. Three months she’s replaced her teacher salary, she’s locked in clients for the rest of the school year, and she knows exactly how she’s going to get paid, and the time she has without overly investing in her business and she feels like, “Okay, this is something I can do and build from there.”

Pat:
How many clients did it take for her to get to that point where she was matching the revenue or income that was coming in from her previous position?

Racheal:
Six.

Pat:
Six.

Racheal:
Six.

Pat:
So, you don’t need a million followers, a million subscribers?

Racheal:
No.

Pat:
Just six? That’s amazing.

Racheal:
Just six. And I think this is where often … and I love online courses, I love info products. I have all those things, but I didn’t start there. I think if we go back into the origin story of a lot of entrepreneurs we all know and love, we would find that they started with services, and while they might not have loved those services, they might have dreamed of bigger things. There’s so much value in that. One, you really get to know your content, right? You really get to understand inside and out how things work. You also get to understand your clients, like you working with clients, actually hearing from them, talking to them, they are going to give you the exact copy that you need for the sales pages you’re going to write in the future. They’re going to tell you the content you need to create on your social media, but that only comes from having these in-depth conversations.

Racheal:
You’re going to be able to iron out all of your processes that allow you to create that signature offer, that signature course that then you can go and scale, but it’s really hard to figure those things out without having these types of more in-depth relationships with people. Otherwise, I see a lot of people who get stuck in what I like to call the top-secret entrepreneur cave. They just want to sit at home, on their computer and dream up all the stuff with some customer avatar worksheet that they did and they’re magically going to solve all the problems, but they’ve never had a real conversation. They’ve never actually figured out how to solve a real problem for a real human. There’s a time and place for all those customer avatar worksheets, but nothing beats talking and working with real humans, you will get so much more data and insight that then you can go turn into something else.

Pat:
Thank you so much for saying that, because this is something I tout all the time, I’ve written books about it. Thank you for validating that for us even further, the conversations are absolutely key, and that’s where you start. I also know that when we work with people who are just starting out as well, oftentimes those questions are, “Okay, I’m excited about this, I have this skill, this expertise, this thing that I’m thinking of creating. Awesome. Okay, so should I start writing content? Do I build the website? Let’s do the business cards, let’s do all those, let me get the social media handles for it.” Where in fact, should we be starting perhaps after even a few conversations with people? Yes, building the website, it’s cool. Getting your social media handles, that can help, but where should we really be moving the needle?

Racheal:
Okay. So, my advice is usually so backwards than what most people think it should be because most people go to that. They’re like, “I need the website first.” But I actually don’t think you need the website first. I know a lot of businesses that started and grew very quickly without investing in website or trying to grow a huge audience. And again, it comes back to those conversations. So I usually tell people, get your first 10 clients, let’s get your first 10 clients, and what that’s going to do for you, one, it’s going to have revenue coming in the doors, which makes it a lot easier to then go get the website and to start doing these other things you’re hearing about. Right?

Racheal:
But if you can get your first 10 clients, you’re going to be able to develop your intellectual property, develop your processes, develop your workflows. You’re going to have cash flow to go and reinvest into your business. Then you can start with a starter website. The next mistake I see a lot of people make is they get those first few clients and they feel like, “Well, now I’ve got to go invest $10,000 into a new website.” I’m like, “No, please don’t do that.” Because what will happen is, six months down the road, you’re going to come back and say, “Everything has changed, what I thought my business was is not what my business is.” And you’re going to be so mad that you over invested in that.

Racheal:
So, I think once you get those first 10 clients, that’s when you can start to experiment with growing your audience, but I love the minimum-viable approach, right? We can do this really simply, you can start growing your audience with a landing page website with something that is just very, very, very simple. Squarespace, something that isn’t going to take a ton of time or energy or money, and then start testing content and see what resonates with people. My favorite way to do this is to start going out and getting in front of other people’s audiences. I think where a lot of people get stuck is, they start on social media and they’re talking to themselves and maybe the 100 people who follow them, but they don’t go out into bigger audiences to start testing their message and sharing their ideas.

Racheal:
So this is where going out there and focusing on getting interviewed, getting featured in media, getting out there and really growing in front of a bigger platform is going to be so much easier for you to start growing that audience and then start growing that client base at the same time.

Pat:
A hundred percent agree. Let’s find new audiences who don’t know you exist. I am very much proponent of … for example, growing your podcast, a lot of people go, “Okay, I’m going to repurpose and share it on social media.” Well, guess who’s seeing it? Everybody who already knows you exist, right? Let’s get out there on to other audiences, but this is also a chicken and egg situation. How do we get in front of other audiences when we don’t have an audience ourselves? How do we even make that happen?

Racheal:
I think it seems like a chicken and egg situation, but really it’s just, you got to put yourself out there and start pitching things. Sometimes that doesn’t mean you go for the Forbes or the Business Insider right away. Sometimes it means you start with who you know, and often I think we underestimate the connections that we have. We underestimate the people in our circle who know other people and can facilitate introductions. So, one of my favorite strategies that I teach all of my clients is what I call a business announcement email. This came from when I was starting my business, 2008. Everybody I knew was getting married or having babies or buying houses, and I was like, “You know what? If I have to go to another bridal shower or baby shower or house warming party, I’m going to lose my mind. I am starting a business and I think this should be celebrated too.”

Racheal:
So, I sent out an email to everybody announcing my new business baby saying, “Hey guys, this is what I’m doing. This is who I’m looking to get in front of, and I’m looking to speak or deliver workshops or trainings to these types of people. Who do you know, who would be interested in having a speaker like me come?” That opened the doors to so many things. It opened the doors to me speaking at my local chamber of commerce, which turned into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It opened the doors to starting to get on podcasts. It opened the doors to speaking on stages. All of that started with a very simple email where I was proudly showing off my business baby saying, here’s what I’m doing, here’s who I’m helping, who could I talk to that might be interested in having me as a speaker.

Pat:
I love that thought, and is that language chosen specifically so it doesn’t feel like you’re selling to your friends, who do you know, and maybe it’s them, maybe it’s somebody else, is that very specific?

Racheal:
Yeah. In this email, this type of email, I’m not asking them to buy from me. I’m asking them to introduce me to people, and I’m specifically letting them know who I’m targeting, because I know that I’m not for everybody and what I do is not for everybody, but I’m telling them how they can take that next step and make it really, really easy for them. So yeah, I think this is one of those things where it is easier if you have a professional network that you can tap into, but that really can get the ball rolling for so many people, just sending out an email, sending out an announcement, hosting a launch party, telling people what you’re doing and being proud of it. Don’t just hide on social media.

Pat:
I love that business announcement email, kind of like it’s your new baby, and you’re making that announcement. I love that. That’s so . . .

Racheal:
That’s right.

Pat:
I love that. First client, we want to get that first client and that’s always a big one. Right? I know that when a person unlocks their first client, the rest just start to come, right, often, because we’ve unlocked those things. But how do we get to that first client? How do we ask for money for the first time when it’s just we don’t feel qualified or it’s just seems weird. What would be your advice to somebody who’s going out there and they’re looking to find their first client to actually pay them for something?

Racheal:
Yeah. Okay. So, this is weird. It is weird asking someone to pay you for work that you’re about to do for them. But I think if there’s one thing I could share with entrepreneurs who are brand new and haven’t asked to get paid for something is, just know going into this that you’re going to hear a lot of nos. If you just know this, it will make it a little easier. It will help you not take it so personally, because on average, I would say, if you are talking to the right type of person, you should be able to get 20 percent of the people you talk to to become a paying client. If you’re talking to the right type of person, they actually need what you have to offer, even a not awesome sales person can usually get one out of five, one out of four people to say yes.

Racheal:
Your ability to get more yeses is correlated to how many people you talk to, because when you put in the reps, you get better. When you put in the time and energy, when you get better at having those conversations, you will see more people saying yes. So I think that’s the hardest thing for a lot of people, just getting over those nos as you’re trying to get to a yes. And it might mean when you’re first getting started, you’re going to hear 20 nos. I’ve heard more than that in a row, and you just have to keep going out there, keep asking, keep asking, keep asking. If you’re hearing too many nos, it means that we need to figure out, “Okay, how is this conversation going? Are we actually getting the right person on the phone? Are you offering the right type of thing? And how can we make sure that there is a match between the person you’re talking to and what you have to offer to them?”

Pat:
Racheal, I’m about to get on my first phone call with somebody and it’s a potential client, they seem interested, they seem to be in my target market. I know I have something I can share with them, but Racheal, I don’t know what I’m going to say. How do I make this natural, not be weird, like what words do I use?

Racheal:
Yeah. I’m not a fan of scripts. So I’m not going to give you a script. I know a lot of people out there would be like, “There’s a script I have and it’s foolproof.” I tend to be a very low-key sales person. But I think the biggest thing is listening. If you really listen and ask thoughtful questions, the best sales conversations are where you’re truly listening and asking questions about, “Hey, what is it that you’re looking for? What would the ideal result be? What are your pain points? Where are you struggling?” Then you reflect that back. “Well great, Pat, if I could help you with XYZ, again, reflecting back what you’ve just told me, would you be interested in hearing more about how we could work together?”

Racheal:
Then I walk through my process, walk them through exactly what it would look like, and I mean, that’s pretty much it. I’m the easiest most low-key sales person ever, I am not a pushy like, let me ask you 20 times different things to get you on a yes chain.

Pat:
Right.

Racheal:
Keep it very straightforward and be human.

Pat:
Exactly. I love that advice. It seems like you’re also doing a lot of upfront work to speak to the right people about this, right? So you’re not cold emailing people and pitching them, you’re not choosing random people on the street and trying to sell them something that they may or may not want. You already know that these people that you’re speaking to are in need of the solutions or the work that you have to offer them.

Racheal:
Absolutely.

Pat:
In which case, this just becomes part of the conversation, and the sale is just a natural part of the conversation, it’s just a conclusion to the work that you could do together. So, I love that approach, and so a lot of the work is done ahead of time. Let’s fast forward a little bit. Let’s say I’m working with clients now and I’m getting revenue coming in. This is fantastic. Very common I see is, after maybe six months of doing new work like this, things start to get hard. We start to doubt whether or not this is a longterm thing for us, and then it starts to feel like a grind in many cases; how would you suggest we continue to stay excited about the new work that we choose to do in this new field that we might be in the “honeymoon period is over.”

Racheal:
Yeah. And that honeymoon period, it’s so fun when it’s there, and then when it crashes and burns, because when I see a lot of people wanting to burn down their business. This is terrible. But really what’s usually happened is they’ve grown and they’ve evolved, and your business needs to grow and evolve right alongside you. The business you start with is not the business you’re going to have 10 or 20 years down the road. If it is, then it must be working really, really, really well for you. But for most of us, it does grow and evolve.

Racheal:
So, I find for a lot of people, when they’re out of this honeymoon phase, there’s a couple of things. One, you need to clarify again, who your ideal client is, because after you’ve had a few people that you’ve worked with, you start to notice little nuances. Like there’s some clients you absolutely love getting on a call with, there’s some people you absolutely love working with, and then there’s some people you’re like, “Ah, this isn’t it.” Maybe there are people who are excessively demanding or who don’t respect your boundaries. I do a lot of boundary work with my clients, especially an area that I know a lot of people struggle with, maybe we need to put stronger boundaries in place, maybe we need to really refine the type of client that we’re looking at at working with.

Racheal:
The other thing that tends to happen is, we tend to overextend ourselves. And again, sustainability is key for me. So I tend to see people saying yes to too much, trying to do everything for everybody, and they’re completely overextended. So what do we need to do then? Well, we probably need to see fewer people, we need to get back control of our calendar a little bit, might need to increase your prices, six months in is the great time to reevaluate if it’s time to increase your prices, and we might need to start getting some help, because usually the things that are the grind or the things that aren’t in your zone of genius, they’re the things that are lower value in your business. They need to get done, but they’re like admin, ops, behind the scene stuff, and that might mean that it’s time to start thinking about bringing someone in to get some of those things off your plate. So then you can get back into the things that do light you up, that you are excited about.

Pat:
Let’s keep going with that. I like this conversation about hiring help. I know it’s done wonders for me, and I was somebody who, when I started, I wanted to do everything myself, partly because I was bootstrapping, but also because there was just that sense of pride of like, “Hey, I have all the hats and I wear them all. Yay, I’m doing it all. Shouldn’t I be rewarded for that?” In fact, no, because a smart entrepreneur will let go of things that they shouldn’t be continuing to do, and that has to happen, and probably around this time that we’re talking about within the life of a business is the right time to do it. How do you recommend a person start finding help, and what to find help with? Second to that, how do we justify paying somebody when we could do these things ourselves often?

Racheal:
Okay, this is such a great topic, and I love diving into this. So, I’ll preface this again with context in my journey on this.

Pat:
Sure.

Racheal:
So, I started my business in the end of 2008, and then six months later, I found out that I was pregnant with twins, and I was on bed rest for four months, and then I had newborn twins. So, I had to ask for help very quickly, very quickly. I had no choice. I could not do it all. So, I looked for help in the areas that were time consuming, but I knew I could get off of my plate. So things like managing my inbox, following up with clients, setting appointments, dealing with all the invoices, kind of more of that administrative stuff. That was the bottleneck for me, it was taking several hours a day and I knew I just needed help with that. So, I put out a job description for a part-time assistant who was going to help me with customer service and administrative types of tasks.

Racheal:
Now, for some people that I work with, they don’t mind those, but where they’re really getting stuck is all of the technology stuff. Especially if they’re getting to the point in their business where they’re starting to use more robust like customer relationship management systems, or they’re starting to do more email marketing or things like that. And they will waste so much time and energy trying to get the thing to talk to the thing, and they’re going to burn down their whole website. So, if the tech stuff is the bottleneck, that is the place to go. I usually look for where’s the bottleneck, where’s the thing that is causing you frustration, where’s the thing that is really just driving you crazy, and again, that’s not in your zone of genius, and it’s usually going to be customer service, admin operations, technology.

Racheal:
That’s the first level that I usually look at. Because if that can free up five hours a week, that five hours a week can then be spent pitching you to go be a speaker somewhere or creating content for your podcast or something that’s a higher value-

Pat:
Or just not burning out.

Racheal:
Or just not burning out—or taking a nap. There were plenty of times when I had these newborn babies at home where I legit was like, “You know what? Even if I don’t take on a client during those times, it’s giving me back a couple hours a week to go work out or to go on a walk or to not lose my mind as a brand new mom and someone starting a business at the same time. That’s where I would start. Where are you going to get the funds to pay for this? The good news is you don’t have to hire a full-time employee right out the gate, and I think this is something a lot of people don’t think about, especially if you’re not used to the whole idea of having a virtual assistant or a part-time assistant, you could hire somebody for two or three hours a week, and they could cost $20 an hour. That’s usually very easy for us to replace that money as long as we’re focused on the higher impact things in our business.

Racheal:
I use this not only in my business team, I think about this way in my home success team as well, because for women entrepreneurs, the things that tend to cause the most frustration is the fact that we still have to keep the house running and take care of kids. So I was like, “Okay, I need a housekeeper. Okay. I need a babysitter.” Well, if I hire this housekeeper to come in once a week and it costs me $150, that means I need to sell this many hours of consulting or this many things in order to pay for that, that really helps buy back your time so that you can go and do the things that really matter.

Pat:
Thank you for that. Hiring others is definitely a high leverage opportunity, a big lever to pull that will help you grow your business to the next level for sure. What are some other, as we finish this … this has been really amazing, Racheal, thank you so much again for your time. Where can people go to find you and your work and where should we point people toward from here?

Racheal:
Yeah, you can find me at my site at rachealcook.com and of course I’ve got a link just for all the SPI listeners. You can find me Rachealcook.com/spi, and I’ll put the business growth checklist on there. For anyone who’s going through the startup stage or starting to get into a more sustainable stage, I’ve broken down a lot of these action steps for you with resources. So you can head over there and find all of that, Rachealcook.com/spi.

Pat:
Thank you, Racheal, and that’s R-A-C-H-E-A-L cook.com-

Racheal:
E-A-L.

Pat:
… /spi. Thank you for that. To finish up here, I want to talk about what might be some other high-leverage or big levers that we could pull to continue to have success in our business and in our life at this stage, beyond obviously hiring others which we just talked about. What else in your mind is a high leverage item that we can focus on or items?

Racheal:
Yeah. So aside from hiring team in your business, like I mentioned before, hiring people in your home success team and also in your personal success team. This is something I do see a difference between how men and women look at this, because when I see women who are starting to grow their businesses, especially as they pass that six figure mark, we tend to be finally on the train of thought of, “I need a team, I need help in the business.” But where we don’t equally ask for help is at home or in our own personal things. So, this is where we start to look at in our home success team, like where are, again, the low-value things that are not helping you live the life you truly want to live? For me, you will never find me cleaning a toilet because I swear I will always have a housekeeper, I will always have somebody helping me out there.

Racheal:
On the other side of this is what I call my personal success team, and I build this into my planning. I know that I need to have my concierge doctor. I know that I need to have concierge pediatrician. I never want to wait for a doctor’s appointment. I know that I need to have my coach, and I have several coaches that I work with, everything from mindset to my financial coach. I have my mastermind that is there to support me emotionally as I’m going through all of these big up levels. Building that into the whole equation, making sure that you have help not only in the day-to-day running of the business, but also to support you as the leader of your business, that makes such a huge impact.

Racheal:
There’s nothing that will, I think, help you have more of a successful and sustainable business than reinvesting back into yourself. Because as the founder, as the CEO, you are the greatest asset your business has, and if you’re not investing back into yourself, into your health, into your wellbeing, into your personal growth, into your mindset, as much as you are in these other areas, you will hit a plateau, you will hit a ceiling where you can’t move beyond it.

Pat:
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received from one of your coaches?

Racheal:
Fire yourself as much as possible.

Pat:
What do you mean by that?

Racheal:
Fire yourself from every job that is in your business that someone else can do. If your goal is to hold onto every possible job in your business, you will always be the bottleneck, and you always feel like you’re an octopus on roller skates going in way too many directions. Your job as the CEO, as the founder, as the leader of the business, actually narrows in scope as you grow, because you have to become more and more and more focused. That means you’ve got to fire yourself, and one of the hardest things as entrepreneurs who started doing all the things is we get good at all the things, we get really good at doing every little part of our business, so we tend to want to put our fingers into everybody else’s part, right? We’ve got to stop that. So we have to learn how to fire ourselves and trust our teams so that we can continue to lead the business that we’re trying to build.

Pat:
That’s perfect. Thank you, Racheal. Rachealcook.com/spi to get … What was it again that we were going to be receiving there?

Racheal:
The business growth checklist.

Pat:
Business growth checklist.

Racheal:
Yes.

Pat:
Thank you, Racheal. This has been fantastic. And also on social media, where can we connect with you as well?

Racheal:
My favorite place is Instagram @racheal.cook. Just take a screenshot of today’s episode, tag me, tag Pat, let us know what your biggest aha insight was, and I’d love to chat with you there.

Pat:
Yes, awesome. Racheal, this has been absolute gold, thank you so much. We appreciate you, and all the best.

Racheal:
Thank you so very much.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Racheal Cook. Again, you can find her and her free offering, the business development checklist over at rachealcook.com/spi. Let me type it in right now and see and just make sure I can get it. Yes, that’s the business growth checklist. It says, “From startup to scaling, the Business Growth Checklist is essential for entrepreneurs ready to grow without the hustle and burnout.” Although she typically targets women entrepreneurs, I guarantee you this would be helpful for men as well; either way, some great stuff here today.

Pat:
Thank you so much, Racheal for coming on. Again, that’s Racheal Cook, @racheal.cook and all the IGs, FB, TikToks, I mean, whatever. I don’t know if she’s on TikTok actually. We just talked about it in the last episode though, but anyway, Racheal Cook, that’s R-A-C-H-E-A-Lcook.com. So yeah, check her out, she’s awesome. Thank you, Racheal for coming on today. I appreciate you. Thank you all for listening and thanks in advance for all the amazing reviews that have continued to keep pouring in, and I look forward to serving you in next week’s episode. Make sure you hit that subscribe button because we have a special guest, probably one of the biggest YouTubers right now.

Pat:
He is somebody who has inspired me and he’s inspired millions of others, and I’m very, very grateful I got him on the show, it was in fact kind of unbelievable. So, make sure you hit subscribe. Any guesses? Any guesses? You can at me @PatFlynn, and let me know if you have an idea of who this might be. I may have leaked it at one point, but we’ll see if you remember. Anyway, take care. Thanks so much, I appreciate you, hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already. And as always, #TeamFlynn for the win. Peace out.

Announcer:
Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at www.smartpassiveincome.com.