Ep #311: 2024 Celebrations and Year-End Review

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 311. Today I have a fun, special episode planned that I haven’t really planned. This is going to be off the cuff, but I’m really excited. I’ve been wanting to do this episode. Today I’m going to do a 2024 celebration and year-end review for my business. And I think this is really important because I know so many of you, and even I do this, and I have to be really conscious of it. When we are very ambitious or we’re working towards big goals that we haven’t achieved or we’re going through really hard times, it’s very difficult to celebrate and to take time to do it.

And a lot of times we dismiss our celebration, I see this a lot. Actually, we just finished the revenue challenge, which should be something that I should celebrate. But a lot of students created a lot of money, and they were so fascinated, all the ways their brain wanted to discount the money they created and tell themselves it doesn’t count because. And they all had different reasons, which was really insane, it wasn’t one. Now a typical one is, it didn’t come in cash, it’s a payment plan. Or it was for a client that they were renewing.

And so, we’re not going to get into that today, but there’s a lot of ways that we discount our success, that we don’t let ourselves feel and have the celebration. Another common way is when we’re thinking about the output of energy that it took to create the result. And when we don’t feel like that matched, I created this incredible result, but you have no idea how hard I worked for it.

And so just a lot of different variations that keep us from just receiving the good result, receiving what we want, receiving our business moving in a direction that is upward or that is gaining traction or that is further than it was. Because of the minimization, the discounting, all of the things that we do to discount the celebration or to not receive it. And so, I think it’s just really important for me to come on here and celebrate my year and talk about everything that we created in really, if you think about it, such a short timeframe. One year is a very small amount of time.

And it feels specifically for me, this year was 10 years in one. I can’t believe the level of growth that we created and also, I can because I know the level of work I put into it. And let this be an example for how you can do this for your own business. And I really think December is a great time to do it. It’s such a great reflective period. I love to spend my Decembers reflecting on the year and doing my three-year plan for the next year and I do have an episode coming up about that as well.

So, let’s just start with the end of last year. The story has to start in October or November-ish, I think October of 2023, where I had my final meeting with my previous mastermind, and I got some coaching along with another mastermind colleague. We both knew that it was time to reclaim our business operations and take it over but we both had people who had been working with us for a really long time and we were both a little codependent in those relationships.

And imagining almost sick to your stomach, imagining that relationship ending and moving on and taking over, all the work involved. And at my level of business, it really felt like this would be an impossible task. And I remember Amy Porterfield had come to that meeting and it was the first time I’d gotten to meet her in person. And she said to me, “I have been through this transition. And the time in my transition, it was one of the hardest things I ever went through in my business.”

She said it was a very difficult year, “And also, once I got it, all of my business growth since has been because of that year. It was so hard until it wasn’t and then I was someone completely different, that could lead a completely different business.” I’m paraphrasing dramatically, but it was that type of conversation. And I remember just feeling so inspired and I love to be the most improved player. And so, I was like, “Next time I talk to Amy, I’m going to tell her that I have made this transition, and I nailed it. I killed it. I’m going to do this.”

I believe if she did it, I can do it and the fact that I had a colleague doing it at the same time, we were both like, “Okay, let’s go.” And so that was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my business ever. Not just the parting of a relationship, but also having a business that serves thousands of clients, close to 7,000, maybe a year as of the time of this recording.

And all of the operations, multiple employees and contractors and my brain just wanted to tell me, especially with a toddler at home that there’s no way I could do that, that it was impossible, and I wasn’t equipped for the job. And I had to manage my mind so carefully during that time. I would say that’s the biggest lesson and celebration I will actually have on this episode is how well my mind was managed this year and how hard I fought for that. I’m so proud of myself for that.

Strategy and business, business decisions, offers, all of that stuff comes from your brain, who you are. Who you are as a salesperson, who you are as a leader, who you are as a coach determines your results. It’s always the who before the how. It’s always the mindset that is the most important thing to make sure that it is strong and clean when it comes to your business, and you have to fight for that.

You have to fight like you are Mike Tyson at 60-something years old in the ring with a top boxer. If you all were part of that experience, I watched some of that fight. You have to fight for your mindset and that is what I did this year. And I remember specifically, if you’ve listened to the episode that I recorded on increasing your capacity and your capability, that podcast episode was a direct result of the work I did to take over my business. At the time I had two top executives running it, I took over both of their jobs.

And I remember I brought a couple of my employees to Louisville, and we spent two days going over. This is how I figured out what I knew and what I didn’t know is, I said, “Okay, we’re going to take each of our programs and I’m going to list off every single thing that has to happen to market, sell and deliver it and then you’re going to tell me what I missed.” So, the meeting was mostly me having to do the heavy lifting, but it was the best thing ever for my brain.

And it turns out, this really blew my mind, I knew 90%, if not 95% of what needed to happen. I didn’t miss very much. Then I got to find out who was doing the most work in the company and who was not holding their weight. And I ended up letting that person go because it was so dramatic and then offering the other person a dramatic raise. And I can’t tell you how proud I am. I look back, I’m like, “What? I can’t believe I even thought I could do that, and I did it.” And I’m still doing it.

And what’s really fascinating is to watch, we just did a 200K Mastermind launch and it was the first time in a while where there were just no hiccups, none. There was nothing that I was like, “Oh, guys, we have to do this last minute. This didn’t get done.” Or “Hey, why wasn’t this done? Hey, what’s going on over here?” It was just seamless. I just celebrated that on a call with my client. And that’s not stuff that you all would see necessarily as what I call customer facing. But it’s something I feel as the CEO on a daily basis.

So, to go from your operations feeling bigger than you and you not knowing really how to run and manage them and what’s happening in the business to knowing every single step that’s happening in the business and those operations being very seamless is a really big celebration.

The other thing that I’m really proud of is our customer service. This is the thing we’ve worked the hardest on this year specifically. Not just having great customer service, that could be a whole episode. But really making sure that the customer service matches my tone, how I would communicate authentically, that feels true for me and also matches my values and upholds our company standards and serves our clients in a really incredible way.

We’ve recently been getting so many people responding and saying how grateful they are for the great customer service. And I just think that is something that can easily be overlooked but if it becomes a problem, it becomes a really big problem. But also, it’s an intangible thing that you can’t really measure the impact on a business when it’s really, really good. And I’ve had some really bad customer service situations recently with companies I love, it’s been really hard and so, I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

As companies, not everybody can always say yes to every single thing and every single request. And in the journey of our customer service, I’m starting to see, even when it’s not done well for me, what I don’t like about it. And then come back and teach my team, “Hey, let’s make sure we don’t do that ever because this felt really bad.” So, I’m just really proud that there are tangible results in customer responses and the way that people are receiving our customer service that has dramatically up-leveled this year and been worth it for how much time and energy we put into it.

I also invested a lot on getting coaching and getting really clear on my philosophies, my values as a leader, as a CEO. And I’ve gotten a lot better at communicating them, even if I think that they’re contrary or that people won’t agree or that it’s different than maybe it’s being done anywhere else in the industry. And for a people pleaser, the only time I don’t seem to struggle with people pleasing typically is in my coaching because I know it’s for the client, but everywhere else in my life, it’s a constant work of art.

And so, this feels big to me to be able to come out and kind of set the tone and this is what my values are and why it matters to me, and this is the way I think about it and even if people disagree, that’s okay. What I’ve found is actually the more I do that, the closer my audience and my people are feeling to me and they’re telling me that. Even if they don’t agree, they appreciate the strong leadership. That’s been said to me a lot this year is, “I really appreciate the strong leadership you’re bringing.”

Which is something I didn’t expect of just really telling people. And one of the things I’ve been doing, I’ve been working with Trudy Lebron this past year. And one of the things that we’ll do on our calls, I’ll say, “Okay, well, this is how I would handle it, but I just know that people aren’t going to like it.” And she’ll say, “Well, tell me why it matters to you. Just as if no one was listening, tell me your values and what matters.”

And I would tell her, and she’d be like, “Okay, can we just tell people that?” And I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know, I guess we can.” And every time I’ve just been really surprised that people have responded so well to it, for me to just say, “This is my values, this is what matters to me.”

So, an example of that is we just went through a 2024 election. And one of the things that’s really important to me is that my business is a place on the internet where you can come, and it looks very different than your newsfeed. And there’s only one conversation happening and it’s where everybody can just focus on their business. And I was telling my students, it’s like a spa or a yoga studio. When I go to yoga, I don’t want to hear political conversations. I don’t want to think about the bad stuff. Anything that’s in my day-to-day, I want to leave behind and I want to sit in a quiet room.

And if you guys do yoga, you know the feeling when someone comes into the room and they’re on their cell phone, despite the signs that say it’s a quiet area and it feels almost assaulting to your ears. And I think that that is what I want my programs to be. Whatever’s happening, whatever noise, whatever conversations are happening in the world, this is the one place you can come to quiet your brain. And that is a little bit of a contrary decision and statement, but it feels really true to me. I like to be in those spaces.

When everything’s kind of crazy or if it feels like it’s falling apart, I really love this dependency and the trust and the faith that I can have. That there are certain rooms I can go in and really focus when I need to focus on the thing that I need to focus on. And so, I really love that. So that’s one example. But I’ve really appreciated and been surprised by even when people don’t agree, their appreciation of me being willing to come out and talk about it and share my philosophies and share my reasonings.

And so that’s been a really big success after having been kind of attacked online for the last two years and finding out that not everybody thinks I’m amazing. In the online world, after two years of being kind of frozen to say anything, I have found a lot of peace and strength in saying my truth. And so that is one of my biggest, biggest celebrations. And then after we also hired new people, and I have a team that I genuinely love to work with. So, I had one more thing, but I’m going to say that first, that’s also a big deal.

I found at the beginning of the year, there were people on the team that I would feel sick to my stomach when I knew I had to engage with them. I felt a little bit like I was stuck, and I needed to just make do, but it got worse and worse and worse and worse. And the fact that I was willing to make a decision and move forward and go out and do the effort.

A lot of times we tell ourselves, we don’t have the energy or the time to replace someone, but we don’t factor in the problems it creates in the business, the impact on the business, on the customers, on ourselves, on our energy, on our mindset, on everything to not do that work. And so, I was willing to do that work. I went, I hired new people, and I am just really enjoying working with my team now. I don’t always love team meetings, just in general, I struggle with meetings, but if there’s a group of people that could make me excited to get on a team meeting, that’s what we have now and so that feels really awesome.

Actually, we have one team member, Tiffany, who’s about to celebrate her fourth year with the company on December 16th, which is really exciting. So, it’s feeling a little cozy and good on the team front right now. So that’s another celebration.

And then I also, in January, did my last 200K live event. And that was emotional and scary. I always say in the three-year plan, one of the things that we identify are the strategies that are working now, but won’t work in the future, or they just aren’t taking you where you want to go. And those are always the hardest ones to leave behind because you can either wait until they get to the point where they don’t take you where you find out, it’s not taking me where I want to go. And there’s a big weight about changing it.

Or you can change it really where it feels a little bittersweet, where it’s not quite there yet and it’s kind of like ending a relationship before things get bad and ending it with respect and love. And so that’s what I did ahead of time, before I really needed to do that, and I was scared. And it’s a big deal because it was an offer that brought in millions and millions of dollars of revenue and was very successful.

We just did the data study this year and proved that program and showed the results that were coming from that program, the insane results coming from that program. You can listen to that episode as well if you’d like. But there was a lot of reasons to not change what was working, except ever since I had Jackson, it felt like a big, big strain on my family and myself to be traveling and gone for a week at a time twice a year. Company wise internally, every live event was like putting on the Oscars, so, it really strained company resources. It strained my brain.

I was creating content and making each one the most incredible event, better than the other one, every one, this one’s got to be better than the last one. This one’s got to be better than the last one. And that was a big strain as well. And then on top of that, we were at a point based on how expensive venues had gotten where we were going to have to raise the price. And it just didn’t feel in alignment with how many people I wanted to help through that room and how many $200K earners I wanted to create.

So, to not only stop doing the live events, but then also unbundle and do a pretty significant price drop, that all was just such a big undertaking, and I can’t believe we did that this year. But then around July was the next time I would have had to have delivered the next live event, and we didn’t. And the impact of how much time, energy, and mental space I had was deeply profound.

And what came out of having that time and space was the entrepreneur series. And we have released the first two of those. One was an all-level Served and one was an advanced level, the Revenue Challenge. And both of those were absolutely insane. We had over 800 people enrolled in Served, and said it was one of the best things they’ve ever done. And we had 250 students enrolled in the Revenue Challenge, and a lot of money was created in that room. So many people blew their minds. It was really fun.

I have been meeting with my team all this week, planning the next six. I already know what all of them are. I’m so excited to teach the things I’m going to be teaching. I’m going to be offering things that no one in the industry, I think, has ever offered. Conversations that have not ever made it out into the world. Conversations that I’m having with multi-millionaires, that were talking about it. And people will say, “Well, yeah, but Stacey, it’s because the reason you think that way is because you’re so rich and so successful. Other people don’t think that way.”

And I’m always thinking, wait, why aren’t we sharing this information? Why aren’t we telling the world? But it is a little bit hard because it requires such a deep responsibility. And it takes a certain type of person to hear the way that I think and be able to internalize that and not be triggered by it. And so, I’m really with a lot of finesse going to be unlocking a lot of knowledge that has been gate kept a little bit. And not intentionally, but just sometimes it doesn’t fit into an offer, or it doesn’t make sense. Or people don’t coach business and entrepreneurship. So why would they even have this conversation?

And I’m going to have these conversations, they feel deeply important. And I’m so excited to get them out into the world. And during that time period, I think we enrolled 1300/1400 people from August through November into our offers. I can’t imagine a time in history that we’ve enrolled that many people ever into our programs. Really, really impressive. So, I know that some people were really sad that we stopped doing the live events. But it has made the program so much more accessible with the Unbundle, 200K. And it’s created a whole new offer series that’s really going to serve people.

It’s already started serving people this year, but it’s really going to serve people next year. So that’s super exciting. So, there’s two other things I want to celebrate. One of the things I decided when I decided to stop doing the live events and unbundle the Mastermind and make the program more accessible to fuel my longer-term three-year plan.

I did something called the objections stress test, which I actually just recorded and released for my 200K Mastermind students and they’re freaking out. It’s so freaking good. It’s an hour training on a process that I take all my offers through called the objections stress test. And when I stress tested the objections for when I unbundled, one of the things that I imagined people would think is, if it’s less expensive, there will be less value.

And I really wanted to draw a very clear line in the sand and be an example of what’s possible of that not being true. And this round, I over-delivered more than any other round in the history of 200K Mastermind. I just had the capacity to do it. I delivered 33 extra calls from what I promised my students over the entrepreneur series and their regular calls and their revenue challenge. I coached eight hours over what was scheduled, what is our normally hour calls. They got two entrepreneur series courses and 2K for 2K lives. So even if they weren’t in 2K for 2K live, they got access to the 2K process during that five-week period for 2K for 2K live.

And I just created a ton of value, and I am going to continue to do that. It won’t always be the same every round because the entrepreneur series courses will each be different but I’m really, really proud of myself. I just feel like we’re entering a completely new realm of what this room is going to create and how much money my students are going to be able to make and how much they’re going to grow in their mindsets. So, I’m really proud of that.

And the last thing that I want to celebrate is something that’s happening as we speak, which is so exciting. So, in April of 2024, we were set to roll out a custom platform learning center for our students, where all of our programs will be housed, and we were on track to do that. And then the project had to go on hold. We had a team member who had an incredible life altering tragedy that really is unspeakable, and it had to go on hold indefinitely. And it was one of my business values to do that, to allow that space and that time and to let go of the timeframe in which I thought we were launching it.

And then when we came back to the project, this happens sometimes when you’re creating big things, we actually have a course in 200K about this as well, creating big things. When you’re creating big things, sometimes you put a lot of time and energy into those big things and then you get to the end result, and it’s not exactly what you wanted. And you have to spend way more time and energy than you thought and money than you thought getting it where you wanted it to be.

And so, we’re in the final stages. We’re going to be launching in the next week or two, mid-December, we’re going to be launching and rolling out this platform to our 200K Mastermind students first. We had them be sort of the example, the first group and then we’re going to build every other offer out, our 2K, our Two Million Dollar Group. Everything will be built upon the process that we create for 200K, but it is so beautiful and so stunning.

And the work we have put into it from the design team, the design team that worked on this are actually the same design team that worked on Apple’s website. And I’ve gotten to speak with the owner directly, which has been so exciting, and share my vision and share what wasn’t working and what I imagined. And a lot of people say, you hear this a lot in the industry, an offer is the Netflix of coaching. You hear that a lot.

And this portal, the way that my aesthetic is and the way that I like to engage with things, it really is going to look like a streaming service of coaching and it’s so beautiful. It’s so sleek. The graphics, every single thing, the construction of it, every piece of it is a true work of art. So many people have put so much blood, sweat, and tears into it. And I’ve been kind of freaking out all week as we are putting the finishing touches, so all the big stuff is done. But we’re putting in all the images that go, for example, in the 200K Mastermind, we have a five-step process.

And so, all the unique images for those, I’m designing and branding those. And then within each module, all the classrooms are also designing imaging for all of those. And so, I’ve been working hard with my marketing coordinator, Tiffany, and my producer and media project manager, Matt Care. We’ve all been working so, so hard. Patrick [inaudible] who created and really wrote the code for most of the site, my CTO. So, we’ve all just put so much time and energy into this.

It’s searchable, so we had every single video, not the past calls, but the videos and the content from the courses, the bonus courses, webinars and launches. We had all of that transcribed and then uploaded into the portal. And so, if you’re wondering, I want to pull up whatever’s been coached on, overselling. Or I want to see what’s been available from PSPR. What are all the times they’ve talked about PSPR? All of those searches will come up.

So, this is just the beginning but eventually, we’ll house 2K, 200K, Two Million Dollar Group, all the entrepreneur series courses. You’ll be able to see what’s coming up. So, if you join 2K and you make your first 2K, and then maybe you go make your first 20K. And then you’re ready for 200K, you’ll be able to see the lessons coming up for you and be able to outline your path to growth as you go from 2K all the way to two million, which will be really fun. So, it’s really created this amazing asset in my business that will make all of our operations easier, our client experience heightened and better.

There is a notes section that you get to take notes and as long as you’re enrolled in the program, you’ll be able to see your notes and look back at your notes. And really use the portal in a way and the platform in a way that really serves your growth, such a next level. I can’t even describe it. I’m at a fail for words because I’m so excited about it.

And actually, I have one more celebration. This is a really big one, especially at the multimillion-dollar level because when you’re growing from your first 2K or 20K or even 200K or 500K, it’s very easy to make big income leaps and big profit leaps, it’s so easy. And then when you get to the multimillion-dollar level, it can take a lot of time to restructure, reorganize, and to increase profit or to really change those margins at all.

And this year, we grew our profit margin by 16%, which is really incredible and it’s not what it used to be. That profit margin dropped a lot as we scaled. And one of the reasons I pulled back is to get a hold of that and to understand that. So also, another celebration. Look, they’re coming out everywhere. This is what happens when you take the time to celebrate, is more keep compiling.

And I also hired a full-time bookkeeper, and we spent a lot of time really fine tooth, combing through every expense. Our books are so clean, I get an updated profit and loss statement every single week. It’s a work of art in itself. And it’s really been an incredible thing to get a hold of my company’s operations and expenses and steward that and grow that. And we’re on track to get back to some of the profit margins that we were at for three and four years in a row at the multimillion-dollar level. Where you really should be, at a multimillion-dollar level, you should be between 40% and 60% as a coach, that’s possible.

So, we’re getting there, we’re getting back there. And it’s a really big deal to have a business the size that serves so many people be healthy. It’s a very big feat and I don’t think I’ve ever done it in my life.

And so just all of this to say, I went on a trip to Orlando and took my son to Disney World. And the first day we arrived, we have a rule where we always do room service the day we travel. And we had this insane deck patio pavilion to our room. And we ordered this amazing Four Seasons room service and we’re sitting there eating. And it was the first time where I realized I was on vacation in the last, I would say, two years, where I’ve really felt like my business was held healthy.

I could just relax and be on vacation and felt really light and it’s for all of these reasons. It’s for every single thing I’ve mentioned here and probably 100 others, I couldn’t fit into this episode. But it gave me an immense amount of relief and hope that after postpartum, after going through some really gnarly online stuff, after trying to figure out how to still run a multimillion-dollar business and be the type of mom that I feel called to be. To have this level of comeback, I mean, it’s just unheard of, it’s astronomical.

I can’t describe the feeling I have inside of my body that I was capable of this, and I cannot wait. So many of the lessons that brought me here are going to be coming out in my courses, my entrepreneur series, in my programs, everything. I’ve already started sharing some of it, but I can’t wait to share more in 2025. 2025 is going to be my year of getting all of my ideas expressed out into the world. It’s my intellectual property year. It’s my value year, and I’m ready for it. Let’s go.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part, using my simple five step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.