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ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS

Entrepreneurial success, the process of scaling a business can feel overwhelming.

There’s always at least one more thing to do, and the fear of a misstep that could be a setback can cause a lot of sleepless nights.

But today’s guest, Jessica Yarborough can help reduce that fear and anxiety by sharing some often-overlooked factors of growing a successful business with her helpful tips.

What You’ll Discover About Entrepreneurial Success:

* Why not having the right pricing strategy interferes with entrepreneurial success

* How entrepreneurial success requires the proper reinvestment of profits

* The systems you need to profitably scale and achieve entrepreneurial success

* Why startups need a holistic perspective of their business to develop a strategy that will work

* Why taking the time to work on your business instead of only in your business is the key to entrepreneurial success

* And much more

Guest: Jessica Yarborough

 Jessica Yarbrough has quickly developed a reputation of being one of the best business strategists for coaches and consultants who want to sell and scale ultra-high-end services.

Her background is in international business and she has built multiple companies.

Jessica is a genius at showing entrepreneurs how to build an expert platform, rapidly raise their value, build credibility and attract high-paying clients.

She loves teaching entrepreneurs how to grow their influence and make the income and impact they desire.

Related Resources:

If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Entrepreneurship episodes.

Contact Jessica and connect with her on LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Also check out her video on How to Become a 7 Figure Coach or Consultant.

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Embrace the Often Overlooked Factors Contributing to Entrepreneurial Success

Entrepreneurial success, the process of scaling a business can feel overwhelming. There’s always at least one more thing to do, and the fear of a misstep that could be a setback can cause a lot of sleepless nights, but today’s guest can help reduce that fear and anxiety by sharing some often-overlooked factors of growing a successful business. Stay tuned.

This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.

Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line. I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I have a fascinating guest for you today. She’s Jessica Yarbrough. Jessica is a business strategist and a growth expert who helps entrepreneurs build scalable, sustainable, and wildly profitable businesses.

She built her own successful consulting company from the ground up, and as a result of the lessons she learned along the way, she’s been able to help clients on average, double or quadruple their revenue. That’s a great track record, and I’m really excited to learn more about how she accomplishes that and what the most overlooked aspects of scaling a business are. So, let’s bring her on now.

Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Jessica.

Thank you for having me on your show.

Great to have you. Achieving entrepreneurial success and profitably scaling a business, not just scaling but profitably can really be challenging. In your experience, what are some of the hidden landmines in this process?

That’s a great question. I mean, not having the right pricing strategy, which determines the amount of cash flow you have into the business. That can really hold you back.

So, it’s really important to look at, as a business owner, what your end goal is in terms of what you want your life to look like, and design your business around that, and then make sure that your pricing model is congruent with achieving that because otherwise, you’re going to be on a cycle of constantly needing a volume of clients, more and more clients in order to hit your income goals, and that will max out your time and lead to a whole other host of other things that can hold you back from growing.

Well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, but I have a feeling there’s some folks out there going, “Yeah, but can I really charge that much?” How do you find that sweet spot because there is competition out there? And especially when somebody’s in a little bit of a startup mode, they don’t have the reputation to build on to say, “Oh, yeah. I’m worth X dollars. Keep adding those zeros.” How do they go about doing that?

Well, absolutely. You’re right. You need to have credibility and some client results. So, you may not come out the gate charging a lot of money, but what happens is people start not charging enough and then they stay there for three, five, ten years, or they’ll gradually raise their prices.

And so I recommend, especially if you’re a service provider and you want to make more money, that you go after a market that has more money, right. Because obviously, if you’re selling to people with that don’t have a large disposable income, that’s going to limit how much they can pay you. Same thing with organizations, why not target organizations? A lot of people think that in order to sell large packages to companies, that you have to go after these global, multi-billion dollar organizations. And that’s simply not true.

In fact, one of the most underserved markets is small businesses in the United States, and you can sell six-figure packages to anywhere from a manufacturing company to a startup tech company to healthcare company. And it can be small and then you can go after larger clients. Just know that the sales cycle is larger as well.

Okay. Fair enough. When it comes to scaling and getting that kind of growth that you say you have with clients doubling and even quadrupling their revenue, I’m hoping that’s also the same time scaling the profit in that way, but what do you think usually gets overlooked? I mean, undercharging is one thing.

Well, we do scale their revenue and their profit. However, there, one just quick thing to say is that as you grow the business, you do need to take a portion of that and reinvest it back. And we usually do that in the form of a team to build out their systems, but we aren’t growing them through like some models where you’re spending tons of money on ads, for example.

You can grow your business and reach a sustainable level without having to do that and then use ads later to grow because most people quite frequently aren’t ready for ads, but again, one of the most overlooked aspects is not only your pricing model, but a lack of systems. Because let’s say I were to hand you 20 really high end clients right now, do you have the capacity to serve them? And most people, that answer’s no.

They don’t have the right systems in place, whether it’s client onboarding and management. Taking on 20 new clients might break their business at that level, so they don’t have capacity. So, a lack of systems is another key problem, and then the third one would be that oftentimes the business owner is still doing too many things. They’re stuck in the weeds of the business and they’ve capped their income.

And so until you have team members in place that you can delegate more to that you trust, it’s going to keep you stuck. You can only do so much. There’s only so many hours of the day. And I know so many business owners that are making really good money, but they’re completely capped and they’re stressed out and they can’t grow.

Capped and stressed out. Well, that doesn’t sound like too much fun. But before we talk about the business owners, I’d like to come back to the systems aspect of what you talked about. Are there any particular types of systems that seem to be the biggest bugaboos here?

Well, I would say a huge one is marketing systems for lead flow. A lot of people don’t have that piece dialed in, but then some people, that’s all they have and that’s all they focus on. You also have sales systems, client management systems, operations systems. You know how you project manage within the business, how you communicate with your team. There’s a lot of backend infrastructures.

When you look at a business, we only see the external. We see the pretty website, right? We see their social media, but what about all the backend infrastructure that you really need to build into a business to ensure that all your Is are dotted, your Ts are crossed, that no stone gets left unturned. That way when you get a client, you have a happy client. You keep that client, they get the results they’re seeking, and you can grow your business.

Same thing with your team. If you don’t have the right communications and operations systems in place, your people probably aren’t going to stay because they’re going to get really frustrated. If you don’t have clear expectations and you’re frustrated because they’re not meeting those expectations, and they’re frustrated at you because you didn’t communicate it in the first place, it creates a whole host of problems. And the people dynamic is one of the more challenging things to unlock for a business owner.

Definitely. Now, when we’re talking about the business owner and being able to let go and establish these systems, what do you find is the hardest thing for that startup business owner?

I would say it’s the strategy because we are bombarded by ads saying, “We are one funnel away. Use this thing,” or, “No, wait a minute. Here, just plug this AI into your business. This is what you need.” So, the business owner is bombarded with all of these ads of all these different tools, 20 different software that you could use in your business. It’s really overwhelming, and everything is the next shiny golden object thing.

What you really need is to understand strategy and what makes most sense for your business holistically and understand how all of those things are going to work together before you invest in building out the systems. Also, when you have the strategy, you’re going to know what kinds of help you need. I’ve had many people come to me and they have three or four people or more on their team, but they may not be the right people or they’re not doing the right thing.

So, you also need to know, what is the strategy and how can you best position talent within your organization who are going to execute on the things you need that are going to be most beneficial for the growth of the business? And there’s an entire strategy around that as well.

It sounds like there’s a lot of moving parts here. And especially when you’re talking about scaling, there’s always the next hill to climb, the next mountain to climb.

Yes.

So, when somebody is in a startup mode and they’re getting into that phase where they have a proven product or service that’s getting some traction in the marketplace, at what stage do they need to start thinking about scaling and all of these different systems that you talked about? Because it’s one thing to say, “Yes, that makes perfect sense, Jessica. You are so right, but when do I do this?”

Well, it really depends. I mean, if you want to grow your business, then you’re going to have to address these systems. You can only operate for so long without these systems. So, I would say number one is that you want to grow. Number two that you are constrained timewise and you haven’t figured out how to do that.

I had a client who was stuck at the high-six figures and pretty much booked out for the year. And we had a conversation and if he had someone come and say, I’m going to hand you six-figures, he wouldn’t be able to accept them at that moment. So, again, there’s strategy that has to happen to get his time back, get him focusing on the right things. So, the right time to invest in strategy is when you are stuck. And you want to get to the next level, you’re not sure how to get there, and you may be again in that time crunch, overwhelmed place where you want to grow, but you’re unsure how.

What kind of time frame should people be looking at? Okay, let’s take your example of this entrepreneur who’s reached the high-six figures, and he’s maxed out in terms of the capacity available to take on larger clients. How long would it…?

With the timeline? Yeah.

Yeah, the timeline for them to be able to reach the next level to then take on the clients because I understand it’s not going to be overnight. It’s one thing to say, “Yeah, I want to grow, but I’m at Point A. I want to get to Point B and is it a leap? How many baby steps?” Can you give me sort of an idea of what to expect?

Because I can imagine some people get pretty frustrated if they’re tapped out and they’re getting burned out and they just don’t have any more bandwidth, like, “Okay, how much longer do I have to hang on in order to put this stuff in place and get some relief and take the business to the next level?”

It’s a great question. And you know what? It’s very much I have a lot of business owners come to me in this situation. It’s a chicken versus the egg. It’s like I want to grow, right?

Right.

But I don’t have the time. You’re going to have to make the time. That is the reality. And for him, we reduced his workload by 50%. And so, he had the time and we were able to do that over the course of probably three to four months from the time we initiated the strategy because he still had commitments.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but that did allow him to then be able to take on another six-figure client like in month four, I think of working together a month five, which he was not able to do when we first started. So, again, looking at your model, what your services are, what your time is with your delivery.

I’ve had many clients. I had a client who was stuck at 300,000 for ten years, and a big part of that was yes, she was undercharging, but two, she was in the weeds with delivery. So, some of the corporate coaches and consultants, entrepreneurs, they get really stuck with having a handful of clients that suck up all their time.

And so again, you can change your delivery model for her. Again, we got her time back. We more than tripled her growth, taking her to seven figures in a year, but she had to get her time back and she had to get her pricing right. And then once she got her time back, pricing in the right level for the services she provided, she could then use that cash flow to hire team members to help her with the build out of the infrastructure and to offload some of the delivery.

So, she wasn’t basically working for a client full time, which is not what you want if you want to grow a business, if you have a golden goose client, which is what I call them, that’s paying you 300,000 or 400,000 a year, but you work for them full time, you’re not able to scale. We have to change the way that you’re doing things, and you actually can if you build the business right and you have the right team, make a lot more and reclaim your time.

Well, that makes a lot of sense. Jessica, I’m just wondering how you advise your clients on the emotional side of all of this, because what you’re talking about is perfectly logical and makes great sense, but especially for a founder who says, this is my baby. They know they got to let go, but it’s still their head versus their heart. How do you coach them through that?

It is a journey. I would say the first thing is the pricing that I would coach them around because that is a huge point. People have a lot of fear around that, and I have a lot of clients who are former C-suite executives, and they’re still have trepidation. But every time they sell a bigger package, they literally what they say is, “I wish I would have done this sooner,” right, because no one’s going to volunteer to pay you more money.

When they see those big deals coming through and that cash coming through, that helps shift their perspective of what they can let go of, right? Because they’re like, “Okay, I’ve just leveled up. I’ve landed the biggest client in my life. I can’t do it all.” They know in that moment that they can’t do it all and get more of those level clients.

And so that first mindset shift around really their self-worth and it’s the value they provide concurrent with the price that they charge. That’s the first mindset piece that we have to solve. One of my clients is a strategist and leadership development expert. Largest package she ever sold was 15,000, and that was mostly to individuals. Right? And we positioned her to go after organizations.

She sold to a mid-market company and closed it for 360,000. That was a life changing moment for her because now, she has 30,000 recurring monthly revenue. She knows in that moment, “Okay, it’s go time.” There’s no way I can sit here and be the marketer and send out the contracts and schedule the clients and do their three 60s and – right? All of a sudden, she’s like, “Now I can catapult into that next level of business, and I really need to bring on help.”

The only thing I will say is, and I talk about – there’s a YouTube video I put out around the mindset shifts, too, become really a seven-figure business owner. There’s also that disbelief of like, “Okay, this is really happening now. I got to reinvest back in the business because you are going to spend a good chunk of that in the beginning in order to lay the foundation to then really scale beyond that.” Does that make sense?

You’ve got to be willing to pour that back into your team because otherwise, you will burn out and you’ll be stuck with that one large client for the next year.

Understood, understood. Reinvesting is definitely an important part, I would imagine though, it also comes with some fear and trepidation that, “Oh my God. We’ve got to be able to maintain this because now all these other people’s livelihoods are depending on it.” It’s one thing to take the risk as a solo, but when you start taking on a payroll, that becomes a different animal altogether.

I’m wondering whether it’s possible for a business to get too big. It’s one thing to scale and want to grow, but can you get too big?

Absolutely. I mean, personally, I’ve never wanted an eight-figure company. And the reason why is because I really like my time freedom. That’s number one, and I don’t want to work 60 to 80 hour weeks. So, I work about 30 hours a week right now, and I have a daughter. So, that’s important to me.

But the other thing is, especially in my world, in the coaching and consulting world, when you grow to that level, you are a figurehead. You’re no longer doing transformational work with clients, right? Whereas my business, I work very intimately with my clients. I’m developing their strategy. Otherwise, you’ve got this really complex model where you’re disconnected from your clients and again, you’re the figurehead.

And I never wanted that model because my passion is actually the strategy and working with people. So, most of the clients that come to me, that is what they want. They’re looking to build an expert business. They’d like to make high six-figures or one, two, three million dollars a year, but they value work-life balance and they value that direct connection with their clients. They’re not looking to, again, grow and buy a private plane, for example, and you can do that.

I mean, with the right model, you can have a high end business, meaning a high price point and high margins. Lean team, still pay them well, especially when a lot of your people can be contractors and you don’t have to worry about payroll. We’re talking product coaching, consulting, even a lot of agencies. So, you can still have that and have a fairly healthy work-life balance.

So, we’re talking about a lifestyle business here.

If that’s what you want to build. Listen, I know people and I’ve got friends who have successful brick-and-mortar businesses and it’s a different animal, right? It is a completely different animal in terms of their products and shipping, and can you get it? And what happens when things shut down, and you can’t get supplies, or the world shuts down, or you can’t go on vacation because you have to physically be there or you have to have people there.

It’s one of the reasons why I personally never have wanted to have a brick-and-mortar business. I always wanted to have a service-based business that I could run from anywhere in the world. So, for anyone who is thinking of starting a business again, just consider what you’re passionate about and what you want.

And if you do have a brick and mortar business, make sure that you bring in – you have the right model to bring in the cash flow to hire your talent and people that will stay. Pay them well, take care of them, so that you don’t have to be there 24/7.

Great advice, Jessica. Thank you. As we’re wrapping up here, I’m curious about what you think the most important thing is business owners need to know to achieve entrepreneurial success.

I feel like so much of it is your mindset and attitude, and anybody that chooses entrepreneur. The entrepreneur world has to have the right mindset and attitude in order to be successful. I always say that outside of parenthood that entrepreneurship is the biggest personal development journey you can go on. And so your ability to commit and to persevere because you are going to face obstacles, no one gets out of here without some scrapes and bruises is going to determine your ability to be successful.

Your mindset around investing, your mindset around investing in your people, your mindset around being able to change and not being so stuck in the way that you’ve been doing things that isn’t working, that ability to pivot and be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. You don’t have to stay stuck. There are opportunities to grow. You just have to be open to it.

Marvelous. Thank you, Jessica. This has really been great. I appreciate you, sharing your experience and insights with us because I think it is a lonely journey for most entrepreneurs, even if they do have a team, and knowing that that there is some support for them, I think, is just tremendous.

If you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Jessica Yarbrough, that information, as well as a transcript of this interview, can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.

We really appreciate your listening. Be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. That’s really helpful.

We’ll be back next week with another information packed episode of Business Confidential Now. So, until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.

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