My dream in becoming my own CEO was to create a freedom based business that gave me more time, more money and more flexibility to do the things I love. But it took me a while to understand how to actually run my business in a way that really facilitated those dreams. There was a time when I felt like I’d left my full time job and created a 24 7 trap for myself!
Today I’m taking you behind the scenes of my first few years in business whilst navigating a somewhat sketchy start. I pivoted 7 times, and worked through a lot of self doubt, fear and belief systems in order to position myself in the market and own my personal brand.
So many women I’ve coached over the years have felt trapped in their businesses, wanting to burn it all down to the ground and start again. Trust me, you don’t have to do that. In this episode, I talk about coming back to your dream and pivoting your business to become something that truly supports the lifestyle you want.
I share some of the questions I asked myself to help me make practical decisions about the way I ran my business. In the beginning, my business model was unsustainable and the idea of a 7 figure business didn’t seem real to me at all. But through support from coaches, mentors and a strong network of people who believed in me, the million dollar dream became very real to me.
If your business isn’t supporting your idea of freedom, that’s a fast way to reach burnout and frustration. But I absolutely believe that you can create a business that you love and one that facilitates everything you hope to create in this life. I hope you enjoy hearing a little more about my story today and that it encourages you in your own entrepreneurial journey.
LINKS
Previous episode mentioned:
Hello from NYC + my predictions for 2023
Doors are open for the Amplify Mastermind! Join me here
Send me a DM on INSTAGRAM 📸 here
Subscribe to my YOUTUBE channel here
Check me out on TikTok here
My dream in becoming my own CEO was to create a freedom based business that gave me more time, more money and more flexibility to do the things I love. But it took me a while to understand how to actually run my business in a way that really facilitated those dreams. There was a time when I felt like I’d left my full time job and created a 24 7 trap for myself!
Today I’m taking you behind the scenes of my first few years in business whilst navigating a somewhat sketchy start. I pivoted 7 times, and worked through a lot of self doubt, fear and belief systems in order to position myself in the market and own my personal brand.
So many women I’ve coached over the years have felt trapped in their businesses, wanting to burn it all down to the ground and start again. Trust me, you don’t have to do that. In this episode, I talk about coming back to your dream and pivoting your business to become something that truly supports the lifestyle you want.
I share some of the questions I asked myself to help me make practical decisions about the way I ran my business. In the beginning, my business model was unsustainable and the idea of a 7 figure business didn’t seem real to me at all. But through support from coaches, mentors and a strong network of people who believed in me, the million dollar dream became very real to me.
If your business isn’t supporting your idea of freedom, that’s a fast way to reach burnout and frustration. But I absolutely believe that you can create a business that you love and one that facilitates everything you hope to create in this life. I hope you enjoy hearing a little more about my story today and that it encourages you in your own entrepreneurial journey.
LINKS
Previous episode mentioned:
Hello from NYC + my predictions for 2023
Doors are open for the Amplify Mastermind! Join me here
Send me a DM on INSTAGRAM 📸 here
Subscribe to my YOUTUBE channel here
Check me out on TikTok here
[00:00:00] Ruby: Okay, welcome back to a new episode. Do you know what you guys loved the last episode so much about how I got my start that I'm gonna continue on with the flow of the story of how I made a million dollars in flow and one thing you'll notice is the very beginning journey of working through what the business was and how to operate as a brand new CEO and entrepreneur, which by the way, there was no way I would've even felt validated enough to call myself an entrepreneur at the beginning.
[00:00:41] I don't know what I called myself. So if you're kind of like in that pocket right now, it's totally normal to feel your way into that and now that I'm almost, almost five years into business, it's only really now that I feel a real authority when I say that I'm a C E O and I'm a business owner. But there'll definitely be times when it still kind of bubbles up a little bit.
[00:01:05] Like am I like legitimately an entrepreneur now? So keeping it real, I wanted to share some of the things that, you know, still goes on behind the scenes and it's okay. It's always a part of the journey. It's always a part of how you reflect growth and ownership of who you've become on yourself. So, Let's get back to where I left you off and where we left off was about the establishment of the personal brand in 2018, where everything was at and beginning to kind of get the hang of building a business, making sales, growing a network and being known for something out there in the industry. But here's the thing, the start line was really, really random. Like, quite honestly, I don't know how I kind of, you know, got my way through it. [00:02:00] But looking back, it wasn't that strong. It wasn't great.
[00:02:04] Once again, I had not really like a social media following, so I knew I had to expand outside of LinkedIn, which was about the time that I began my Instagram account. So somewhere in 2018, I started an Insta. Even back then, I still felt like it wasn't really my space because I was corporate Ruby. Instagram was photos of beautiful people and beautiful places and beautiful things, and I'm like, but I'm corporate Ruby. What can I add to this platform? Anyway, I still started one and I started to post a lot more quotes, or I would re-share articles.
[00:02:42] It was really botchy to be honest, but anyway, it was a start. I also got myself a mail chimp, so that was sort of our first email list experience. I got myself, Thrive Cart to get better payment systems through, and then it blew my mind that I could do payment plans because PayPal at the time, I don't think they do still, but they didn't offer payment plans, so it was either a one-off payment or I had to invoice and bill people every month for their coaching services.
[00:03:16] It was such a mess. And Facebook groups were still really big. I know that there's some people who really still grow on Facebook, but back then it was like if you had a brand and a business, you really should grow a community via Facebook. And so I started a Facebook group and I called it like something so lame at the start.
[00:03:37] Something like Career Superstars, I got pretty much all of my friends and family to join that so that it didn't look like only me and one other random person who had the heart to join would join. So I might've started with 10 people in that Facebook group and that was it. It was very, very bochy and I still made a hundred thousand dollars in a [00:04:00] hundred days.
[00:04:00] So I wanna make that clear and I absolutely hand on heart still believe you can make that happen without all the bells and whistles. If you have a good network, if you can provide value, if you show up consistently somewhere, that can absolutely happen for you. It wasn't like that was a 2018 thing and you were just, you know, you struck it lucky, although that is my word for 2023, by the way. I am claiming all the lucky stars this year. I really do feel like lucky is my word, and I talked about it on the last podcast of the year in 2022. If you wanna go back and listen to that. Okay. But I did have two really big advantages in my corner. One was I had the LinkedIn account with roughly 5,000 followers on there, and whilst they weren't qualified , perfect audience.
[00:04:50] In the pocket niche type of people watching on it was still a really good baseline to jump off. And yeah, I had a whole bunch of people asking me, this is so random, why are you creating this content? Are you still in recruitment? Like, so many hilarious like games that I would get from people in the industry, but I learned how to put that aside.
[00:05:13] It wasn't completely easy by any means. I did learn how to kind of shut off the noise, and there are a lot of haters. There are a lot of gossipers that just happen sometimes when you're shifting identities and those people don't understand it. What matters is that you understand it and you stay true to your goal.
[00:05:33] You stay true to why you started this in the first place. The second advantage I had was discipline. I am a very disciplined human being. And I was actually just talking to Michael, my husband about this yesterday. We were out having a lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Such a, like an American institution, and I love it.
[00:05:54] I'm very much like a salmon and salad cheesecake factory type of gal. And then followed [00:06:00] up by a cheesecake, of course. Anyway, we're having this really cool discussion and I said, you know, one of my biggest strengths is determination and discipline. last year I ran a program called The Daily Ritual, where basically I was live four days a week for six months to my community every single day, except one day Wednesday, which is when I did my mastermind calls.
[00:06:23] I was live, and I'd be talking daily to all of you about what my day was like and really taking you truly behind the scenes of what it was like to run a seven figure business. Anyway, I didn't miss a beat on TDR, I haven't missed a beat with my podcast. One to two podcasts a week. I haven't missed a beat with Instagram.
[00:06:40] I'm doing stories every day anyway, you get the gist. So LinkedIn was very disciplined for me from the beginning. And do you remember that like 10 k a month goal and how I got that within the first a hundred days. I truly believe it's because I was constantly showing up on people's feeds. People were constantly seeing me and how LinkedIn works, which is why it truly is a very, very powerful platform still today, is if, let's say you see a video of mine, and you like or comment on my video, my video actually gets shown to your networks. And then if someone in your network sees that video that you liked and commented on, it goes to their network and so on and so forth. So it is such an incredible algorithm still.
[00:07:27] It absolutely has its faults. It's very salesy. there's a lot of junky things in there, but if you can see through that and you can grasp onto the opportunity, it really is still a very mighty place to grow your personal brand. But coming back to that first two years in business, and this is like the two years, March, 2018 to March, 2020, I changed my niche and my focus.
[00:07:54] Like seven times. I did like a whole course on this called Story also [00:08:00] Alpha Omega, how to end things, how to begin things in business, how to close off a certain thing that you've been known for, and pivot seamlessly into something new. But I literally went from career coach to corporate consultant, corporate facilitator, LinkedIn strategist. Side hustle coach, straight up business strategy coach and spiritual slash energetics coaching now, so there's the seven. There's a lot in there in terms of my own personal development. And as you know, if you're in human design, you've guessed it. I am a manifesting generator, so that means that I like to do a lot of different things.
[00:08:41] I like to experiment, try new niches. I don't get stuck in the one box, and in fact, if I did that, it would actually really feel very constrictive to me. So for anyone out there who has been told that you have to stick to one thing and be known for one thing, here is your permission slip, sign, sealed and delivered to just be whoever the fuck you wanna be and follow the flow of what feels good, follow the flow of what brings you excitement, joy, and all those wonderful things.
[00:09:10] Okay, so. Now that I've changed my niche seven times, I wanna talk about that two year period and just how out of whack and how crazy it was in that period of time as I'm really navigating through a lot to do with my own self worth, my positioning in the market, all of this.
[00:09:28] And throughout that time, I also hired a number of different coaches, mentors. I've done courses. I was always uplifting my skillset. always learning new things, always being in different people's, like knowledge base networks and energy. A huge component of moving to a million dollars in flow is to continue buying the knowledge, like be in the space where you can collapse the time, get there a lot faster, be amongst people who maybe challenge you, who sees the world a different way, or who sees business in like a completely different way that really helps you [00:10:00] expand your knowledge base.
[00:10:01] And through all of this, I realized that my business model was really sucky saying yes to everything, throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping something stuck, hoping that I had an opportunity that would kind of bring me the thing that would make me a million dollars. And already in these two years I went from could not fathom having a seven figure business to within that two years, because I surrounded myself with the right people and I was within certain networks that really helped me to dream bigger. The million dollar dream became very real to me. I still didn't know how I was gonna get there, but I knew that I was very much on my way to that seven figure pathway.
[00:10:43] And as a result of that, I was saying yes to so much.
[00:10:46] I was offered consulting, speaking gigs, branding gigs, one-to-one coaching. Started to do some masterclass, some one off coaching, the discipline behind daily LinkedIn content. I was adding Instagram, Snapchat was around for a little bit. I was trying to work out emails, like. . everything was happening all at once, and I realised that not only had I kind of created a nine to five job again, it was actually a lot worse.
[00:11:15] I felt like I had created a 24 7 trap where I would deliver things in my business and then straight away I jump off a coaching call or a masterclass that I was hosting. And then I was into so much more that was of the running of the business and it was constant. And I also wanna say this, I had the privilege of having my husband alongside with me.
[00:11:43] And it is a privilege. It is a gift. I'm so forever grateful. He and I still run this business together. We are such a power couple. We are the dream team. We honestly, were made to find each other in this world, get married, have beautiful babies, and have a beautiful [00:12:00] business. And with all of this being said, there's a lot that I had on my plate and there was a lot that he had on his plate because he was growing the operations, he was understanding the tech, he was building the funnels, like that's a full-time job in itself. He was learning Facebook ads. That's a full-time job on itself. So for those of you solo entrepreneur babes out there, or you know, girls and guys in business, if you don't have a Michael, your number one goal is to at least have someone alongside with you who wants to see you win and who can support you in some way. And it might start small, like starting off with someone who manages like your email sequence or someone who manages your socials, someone who manages your calendar.
[00:12:42] Someone just don't do it alone. but coming back to income. The income that I was making in that first two years, at least 50% of it was corporate contracts, speaker fees, and brand deals.
[00:12:56] So it was really big still in the corporate side. There was one contract that I took up and I delivered maybe three to five masterclass for their network, and I also spent a couple of hours with them a month to talk about their LinkedIn strategy.
[00:13:14] Now that corporate contract was like 25 k. So it made up a huge part of my income. And then other speaker fees that I would get would range anywhere between $500 to three and a half grand. I would do brand deals which range from five grand to 15 grand. And brand deals would be things like, not as in this episode is brought to you by blah, blah, blah.
[00:13:38] This was brand deals. Like I was the face of the brand. So I worked with companies like indeed.com. Based out of Austin, Texas, which is where I am now, and I was their face, I was their representative in Australia. I would go around and talk about the Indeed job board. So there was that crossover between career coaching, career facilitation being the face [00:14:00] of career in Australia, and also having individual clients.
[00:14:04] So that was 50%, 40% of my income was private coaching, and then the rest of it was group coaching. I wouldn't say like I held major masterminds at the time. When I say group coaching, I might have done like a six week course here or a four week course here. I did develop at around that time my signature LinkedIn course, which was called LinkedIn Brand Boss.
[00:14:24] Doesn't run anymore, but that was really my first foray into group coaching and realizing that I could actually coach for one hour and help 15 people and make the same amount of money and have more impact. And it was mind blown to me at the time. So much of me not having group programs at the beginning, it wasn't like I was against it by any means.
[00:14:50] I was just scared of it. I didn't believe that I could fill my group programs. I didn't wanna be the loser who had no one enrolled my programs. Spoiler alert, absolutely did happen once I got into it. It's kind of like a rite of passage. I don't know. There was, all this conversation that I was having with myself and one of my coaches at the time, and I'm like, I don't wanna manifest being that coach who has no one sign up for their programs, but I also feel like it's a rite of passage.
[00:15:18] And they were saying to me, Ruby, like, you can believe that if you want. And clearly I was matched to that belief system because that's what happened to me. And then as soon as I experienced that, I was like, please never again. Like universe. I experienced that once. honestly, I'm joking about it now, but it really did nearly break my spirit. there's not many things now in my life that would really break me, but that really hit the ego in a certain place. That just made me feel not good enough I think about my early clients and I had them come to my co-work space and I would book a room, we'd sit down, we would do private coaching together. It was a whole thing. [00:16:00] Anyway, how funny. I just had that memory. So the business model sucked because it didn't match my dream.
[00:16:06] The dream was always about freedom. The dream was always about to create and to have more time freedom. The freedom aspect also meant I would have more time with the kids, with my family, time to travel. So I asked myself a couple of questions, right? How did my business support me in terms of my freedom dreams, in terms of my dreams in general, my lifestyle, dreams, the money, dreams, the scaling dreams?
[00:16:35] How did my current business model support that? And I would like to ask you guys that question as well, or at least give yourself a minute today to write down. What you believe could be better in terms of supporting your dream and your idea of freedom. Because if your business isn't supporting you to do that, I can almost guarantee that you are headed down a track of burnout and frustration.
[00:17:00] And I've met too many women along the way who I've coached with, who literally have felt like they needed to burn it all down to the ground. You don't need to get to that point. You can simply now pick up and pivot just like what I did. secondly, I remember asking myself, How can I create courses and scalable offerings that would also provide me more time freedom?
[00:17:24] And the answer was in that 10% group coaching. the way that I was currently earning, but it was so, so, so way down the track of how my income was coming through, that it almost felt out of whack. And this is also why it's so incredibly powerful to work with a coach on this because sometimes you just can't see your way through.
[00:17:47] You're so stuck in the day-to-day. You're so stuck in the normalcy of this is just the way that you built your business, that you're not really able to clearly create a pathway for your pivot. [00:18:00] And this is where I'm just gonna do a little plug. Come and have a look at the Amplify Mastermind. It's in the show notes and the links below.
[00:18:08] It is a Mastermind made for women if you're resonating with this story, if you're resonating with everything that I've talked about so far inside of this episode and the last episode, I know that this Mastermind is gonna change your world. It's gonna help you see things so differently. I've had a lot of clients come through Amplify, who have, let's say, made $10,000 a month and then they've never made it again. And the reason why they haven't is because they had all that money coming through and then all of their time was spent delivering on the services that they burnt themselves out. And then they got really scared to recreate that $10,000 a month. So I'm gonna show you how to do this in a way that feels really good, really diversified, and also really attune to your energy and your alignment.
[00:18:52] that's kind of where I think today's episode is gonna close, just to give you that perspective of how everything went. I'm really open to any questions, so if you are watching this on YouTube, just leave it in the comments. I'm, I monitor all of my comments because honestly, I don't get any.
[00:19:09] so I'm putting that out there. I'm manifesting more discussion inside of my YouTube videos and I really, really wanna grow YouTube this year in such a big way. And you know, this is kind of my start again. I feel like as I'm talking about how I made a million dollars in flow and now I've made over 3 million in my business, but I'm just going back to that first million to begin with. I've just begun really understanding the world of YouTube. I want to create a channel that is massive and the reality right now is that I have like 20 views, and that's not true. Maybe 200 views at the best and no comments. A couple of likes. My shorts are doing pretty good. Some of them have gotten up to like 2000 views on my shorts, but what does that even mean? So I'm, starting from scratch. I'm starting again, so, It doesn't matter.
[00:19:57] Like I'm, a multiple million [00:20:00] dollar business owner who loves and is obsessed with the idea that we always get to feel like a beginner because. If that essence kind of ran dry, if you don't feel like a beginner anymore and you don't have that beginner's mindset or you're not reminded to get back to basics, it's kind of boring.
[00:20:19] You know? Like it's cool cause you probably have a business that is just J curving it's way to high heaven, and you've got like more and more and more income coming in, but at the same time, don't you wanna feel that excitement? The butterflies again, and I know, I, I always do, I always wanna feel this way and I know that I'm gonna be running multiple companies in the future. This is the first one. Coaching is the first company. The second company will be something to do around YouTube and really growing the YouTube company. The third company will be around real estate and properties because I've bought, sold, owned seven properties now, and that will continue to grow.
[00:20:54] There's so much more that I wanna share with you guys this year. All about flow, all about authenticity, all about the psychology behind believing that you have this like mighty ability to manifest this dream life because your life truly is a blank canvas and you can make it whatever the fuck you want it to look like.
[00:21:11] And it can be as bright and beautiful as you choose for it to be. Or it can be as boring and bland as you choose for it to. Your choice. On that note, I'll leave you there. I hope you enjoy the episode. Please thumbs up and subscribe. If you're on YouTube, please subscribe if you're listening on the podcast, share away, tag me.
[00:21:27] I will always re-share and, um, hopefully by re-sharing on my platform and each other's platforms, we help each other grow. So have a beautiful day, inflow, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:21:40]