9 Secrets To Transform Your Business!

Have you started a business, thought about starting a business, or have been running a small business for years? Well, if you’re looking to gain new skills, increase your sales, attract better clients and step into the NEXT LEVEL of business ownership, then we wanna help! 

Janelle and Eddie are sharing with you, NINE SECRETS,  designed for you to get BACK TO BASICS, and begin transforming your thoughts, your actions and your beliefs about business. 

You’ll learn best practices, tactical strategies, tools and guidance to help you LEVEL UP (in life) and in your business! 

If all of this has you saying, “YES,” you can check out our BRAND NEW 3-part training HERE and if you’re ready to TRANSFORM your business, then let’s dive in!  

 SECRET #1- YOUR BUSINESS IS NOT YOUR BABY! 

The full training can be found on the PUSH PODCAST “TOTAL TRANSFORMATION: BUSINESS EDITION - (Episode #127)”

Although, raising a baby is a familiar analogy when business owners are referring to the thing they’ve literally BUILT,  BABIES are living, breathing beings that REQUIRE our full, uninterrupted attention, 24/7. When a baby cries, you drop what you’re doing and quickly tend to it. If you run your business with the same reactive emotions you would use when caring for a baby, you’re setting yourself up to be way too emotionally invested. 

A business is built for 2 reasons: 1. To serve its customers, and 2. To make money.  

Your job is not to get too emotionally attached to the business. Instead, your job is to create and build a brand that gets your customers emotionally attached to your product and services. (Again, NOT YOU). Understanding this will help you remove some of the EMOTION you’re sure to face when that “BABY” stresses you out!

Your business is not your Baby. Yes, you created it, and yes it is a work in progress that requires attention. But the difference is, BABIES constantly need you. Your business shouldn’t; if you build it right. Eventually you may want to STEP away and sell your business. You wouldn’t ever SELL your baby. 

The CONS of treating your business like a baby… 

• It BLINDS you from glaring problems and issues preventing you from making necessary changes to help grow your business.
• Treating your business like your baby can hurt decision making.

•  You'll never create an exit strategy if you hold your business “near and dear to your heart”.
• If your business is truly your baby, you’ll think you’re the only one who can care for it. 
•  Feedback will feel like an attack. 
•  You can’t negotiate with a baby. 

Secret #2 You need to work ON your business vs. work IN your business

If you’re the “Doer of all things” in your business, chances are: There are A LOT of things that need attention… 

The last thing you need to be doing is putting out all the fires that ignite in your business. 

The ultimate goal as a business owner is to be PEOPLE DRIVEN (aka. Utilizing support to help you run the business) When you’re stuck working in your business, you’re unable to think about the BIGGER QUESTIONS. 

“What is our mission? Who is our customer? What does the customer value? What are our results? and What is our plan? Self-assessment leads to action and lacks meaning without it.”

Because you’re the CREATOR, the MAKER, and the DO-ER of all things, you’re the one who’s bringing this business to life and wearing all the hats. But in order to STAY IN BUSINESS and continue to grow, you have to find ways to drive sales! There are THREE WAYS to do this: 

1. Increase customers.  
2. Increase the average transaction 
3. Increase the frequency of your customers. 

BUT, you can’t do any of those when you’re the DO-ER of all things. 

This is important to understand as you think about working on your business instead of in your business. 

Working ON your business allows you the FREEDOM to develop leadership skills, train and develop new hires, plan your company culture, delegate, and empower your employees; VERSUS working IN your business, you’re STUCK managing and playing catch up with all the things. 

Running a business is consuming and your ultimate goal should be to create the freedom in your life to do the things that bring you joy. The more you spend working yourself to burnout IN your business, the closer you’ll get to resenting it. 

Secret #3: HOW & WHY You’re Devaluing Your Magic ✨ 

The number #1 thing that holds business owners back is CONFIDENCE. 

When you don’t have confidence in yourself or your products & services, then how will your customers ever VALUE you or the things you're selling. Lack of confidence= Lack of sales!! You then blame your customers for not purchasing your products because they should just understand the hard work you put into your craft. Right? 

Really though, it’s up to you as the business owner to SELL your customers on why they need your products. But you can’t sell without confidence. This is why understanding the problem your product solves is so important. 

When you’re confident in the product or services you offer, you have no problem justifying the price and combating customer objections. Versus, if you’re just advertising your product hoping people will buy what you’re selling, you’re more likely to devalue your craft hoping to close sales. 

This is called SCARCITY friend! 

And this mindset along with your lack of confidence is what’s causing you to devalue your magic. 

Secret #4- NO ONE KNOWS YOU (Answer: MARKETING)

The full training can be found on the PUSH PODCAST “TOTAL TRANSFORMATION: BUSINESS EDITION - (Episode #128)”

Business owners believe the key to INCREASING their sales is to gain more customers; while this partly true, here’s what gets missed…YOUR MARKETING!

You might have the most amazing products and services in the world but if you aren’t getting your business in front of people who WANT to buy and support you, then the world will never get to experience what you have to offer. 

The world is HUGE. You may think because you have thousands of people following you, that you have customers. Truth is, you just have people following you, not people PURCHASING from you. 

Think about this… new products and businesses get discovered every single day. It doesn’t matter if your business has been around for 10+ years or your business has been around for one year, there are people all over the world that have NO CLUE what you do or what you offer. 

This is WHY it’s so important to constantly act as if no one knows you! 

MARKETING VS. ADVERTISING

Surprise! There’s a difference between marketing and advertising. 

Marketing is creating consistency, representation, and brand awareness around your business! 

 Advertising is saying, “Here’s some red velvet cupcakes. Order now!” 

Simply put, Advertising is saying “buy my shit!” 

 Question is, which one are you currently relying on in your business?

1. Are you sharing posts that leave people feeling inspired? Educated? Informed? Entertained? 
2. Or are people scrolling past, uninterested in what you have to say?  

 If you’re feeling more like letter B, follow this simple format to instantly up-level your marketing game!!

1. Photography. Focus on posting clear, high quality photos that showcase your art. You have to put time & effort into photography.
2. Hook. Capture your readers attention with an eye-catching statement, question, or opinion. Think about click-bait. Get your followers to stop their scroll. You can do this by invoking emotion. 
3. Story or caption. Storytelling is so powerful. Tell a story about your experience or why your product solved a problem your customer might have. Your customer wants to find themselves in your story. It grabs their attention and makes you more relatable. 
4. Call to action or ask for the sale. You can ask them to comment, click the link in your bio, or purchase on your website. You should always end your captions asking the reader to do something. A lot of the time, this step gets missed. 

SECRET #5- There’s no HYPE / EXCITEMENT around your brand or products. (Photography, branding… It’s NOT share-worthy)

Your business has to be creating some type of movement or excitement around your brand that attracts people to your business.

 An example of this could be creating buzz in your community by running a fundraiser and donating to local schools, partnering with influencers, attending a local pop-up event, and asking for testimonials from your customers. There’s so much you can do to make your business BIGGER than it actually is. 

It should feel like there’s always a BUZZ around your business.

Give your customers a reason to WANT to buy from you. People want to feel a sense of belonging or be a part of something bigger. When you create movements around your business, you give your customers the opportunity to join in on the hype. 

So, what kind of campaign or product can you be creating to create some sort of hype or excitement around your business? Maybe, it’s centered around a specific holiday that’s up and coming, or you make something locally that could benefit the local schools; you have to find a way to LEVERAGE those things to keep your business relevant and show your customers WHY they need your products/services in their daily lives. 

SECRET #6- YOU'RE NOT CLOSING the damn sale!

What in the world does that mean? Obviously, as a business owner you want more sales? Right? Unfortunately, this is part where most business owners get STUCK! They miss the CALL TO ACTION! 

You want to ask your customer to do something, even if it’s face-to-face. This can be difficult for business owners because it may make you feel like a “slimy sales guy,” but you have to ASK FOR THE SALE if you want to stay in business. 

What we tell our students in our 8-week masterclass, Passion To Profit (www.janellecopeland.com/about) is, you have to OFFER them something. Think of it like dating or meeting someone new for the first time. It’s new, fun, and fresh, and can also be slightly awkward cause you’re just getting to know each other. You offer them suggestions, advice, free gifts; all that offer VALUE. The goal is you give, give, give, and give some more, then you can ask for the favor (or the sale) in return. 

You have to establish a relationship built on trust before you can ask your customers for anything. Another key point is you have to LISTEN. You have to hear and understand what your customers' NEEDS are. 

The goal of an entrepreneur is to solve the problem of your customers.The only way you can do that is by LISTENING to what the needs and wants of your customers are. 

Secret #7-How To INCREASE YOUR PRICES

The full training can be found on the PUSH PODCAST “TOTAL TRANSFORMATION: BUSINESS EDITION - (Episode #129)”

In order to be successful and have a successful transformation in your business; the ONE thing holding your business back from generating revenue and allowing you to feel joy and excitement is your PRICING! Your pricing probably sucks!

We hear people all the time say, “Well, I’m not good at numbers. This is intimidating. I’m not good at math. Numbers aren’t my thing,” and we’re here to tell you friend, if this is you, then owning business is NOT your thing. 

The first thing to ask yourself when increasing your pricing is, “What’s the goal for my business? What is your strategy or your plan with your business?” You wanna do this because if you’re basing your numbers off of what you think is a good number, it may not align with the lifestyle you want to live. The reason you probably started a business in the first place is to have some control over how much you work and how much you get paid. So, you have to figure out how much you NEED to make in your business to fund the life you dream of. 

Remember friend, business is a TIME EXCHANGE. You get to decide how much fulfillment you want out of life. You get to decide how much freedom you get in your business, how much you wanna make in your business and you get to decide how you are going to trade your time, skills, and talents to be fairly compensated. 

Once you know your numbers, the goals you have for yourself and your business, and have started to outgrow the beginning stages of business, THEN you can start thinking about increasing your prices. 

One thing to know when you finally do INCREASE your prices is you will LOSE customers.

the more expensive the product, the less people who can afford your products/services. So, when you’re selling a product with a higher price tag, you have to be able to stand behind the value of your products or else you’re devaluing your magic. 

Don’t humble yourself because you’re worried people won’t buy from you. When people see and understand the VALUE of your products they’ll do whatever they have to, to get their hands on what you’re selling. So, don’t freak out when you lose customers. You’ll also GAIN a new group of clientele who will gladly pay your going rate. 

Secret #8- So many orders... So  little time - HOW TO PRICE YOUR TIME!

After you figure out how to value your products, how much your products cost you, how much to fairly compensate yourself and your employees, you need to figure out how you’re VALUING YOUR OWN TIME. 

It’s YOUR Job to value your time, not your customers. Your inability to see the time, energy, and skill that goes into bringing your product to life is what’s causing the lack of confidence you feel when commanding top dollar. 

Even if you’re just starting, things might take you a really long time, but that doesn’t mean you should devalue your time and energy for the sake of receiving more orders. ( We go more in-depth, and share a simple formula on how to price for your time in episode #129 of the PUSH Podcast) 

So you need to figure out how many hours you are dedicating to your business. Not all the behind the scenes, multi-tasking you’re doing while building the business, but the hours you’re solely dedicated to bringing your product or service to life. 

A lot that goes into increasing your prices and time is the way you communicate the problem and the value your products or service solve to your customer. As you’ve learned through this series, your job as the business owner is to solve the problem of your potential customers. It's also your job to SELL your customer on why you have the solution to their problem. Once you tell the story of WHY your product/service is so valuable and WHY it's necessary for your customer, then you’ll find your customers will have no problem paying TOP DOLLAR for your products and services. 

You have to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. If you are providing value, and solving a problem, remember, customers pay for convenience, they pay for things they want to outsource. As long as you explain the value propositions of your business, your customers will have no problem paying a price that you deem fair. 

Last thing, don’t get HUNG up on increasing your prices. In reality, people don’t know. They aren’t following your prices on a day-to-day basis like they are gas. Raise your damn prices! 

Secret #9- Can I get a discount?”

What do you do when your friends and family ask you for a discount? You say NO! You give them the same value propositions, you tell them about all the time and talent that goes into creating your products, and you give them the same presentation as you would any other potential client. 

Just like your friends and family go to work everyday and work for a wage they believe (or may not) is fair, you should also be compensated fairly regardless of where/what your job is. It is your responsibility to speak up for what you believe is fair and they’ll either respect it or not.

If you find yourself complaining that, “people don’t value what it is you do or understand how much time goes into it,” it’s because they don’t know how to do what you do. It’s your responsibility to convey value. 

Lastly, if you’re properly managing your expectations, pricing your products and services accordingly, and properly managing the time you have available to dedicate to your business, you’ll have no problem when people ask you for a discount. People asking for discounts isn’t something you should be offended by. People ask for discounts every single day. If anything you should be happy that people are asking for a discount because it means they WANT to buy from you. 

You got this friends! 

If you find this useful, please let us know by sending us a DM to @janellecopeland or @copewitheddie or you can email [email protected] 

You can also leave a REVIEW on Apple Podcasts!