In this tenacious episode, Tracy Beavers, Founder of Tracy Beavers Coaching, shares strategies for consistent income. If you face unpredictable revenue, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– How to use organic strategies for list growth
– How to create 90 days of content in 30 minutes
– Why one-to-one coaching builds momentum early
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the start, scale and succeed. Podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder, one of the biggest traps that entrepreneurs face is the revenue roller coaster. Yes, you have either been there and done that, or you will be there and done that. But it’s particularly brutal, because if you ride the roller coaster long enough, even the good times become bad times, because you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop. So if you’re a small business owner struggling to produce consistent monthly income, you are absolutely in the right place, because today’s guest is Tracy Beavers, and she’s going to lay out for us a roadmap to consistent monthly income, and she’s the one to do it because she’s got a proven track record in business growth. As the CEO and founder of Tracy Beavers consult coaching with award winning career spanning 20 years, Tracy has guided hundreds of entrepreneurs to grow their business visibility through organic marketing strategies. She’s a public speaker and a published author. CBS Television, Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair and Kajabi have all featured Tracy, and she’s the creator of one of the top ranked business podcasts create online business success, and she’s here with us today. Tracy, welcome to the show. So excited to have you here. For those who who may not know, I’m not sure how many of the there are going to be, but let’s just start on the right foot here. What is the revenue roller coaster, and why is it so common?
Tracy Beavers
Oh, the revenue roller coaster. I love what you said, because we’re either on it, or we’ve been on it, or we’re getting on it. I mean, you just can’t avoid it, especially when you’re in those first few years of business, when you’re figuring things out, and you’re trying to figure out your offers and your pricing and setting up, you know, all the stuff. So the revenue roller coaster is where the income is. Roller Coaster II, like, I like to call it that. It’s just, it’s up, it’s down, it’s sideways. It makes you want to throw up. It may it sometimes, some days it’s exhilarating, where you got your hands in the air, and then other days, you’re like, oh my god, I think I’m gonna toss my cotton candy. And you know, that is not what we want. And No buddy wants that, regardless of if you are an online entrepreneur, a small business owner, a corporate person. I mean, nobody wants their income to be roller coaster. So it just, it’s just that twisty Tourney of, is this going to be a great month? I don’t know. And then you kind of hold on for the ride till the end and wait to see what happens, and then, you know, you go again, so.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I want to make a distinction on this, because it’s something I’ve bumped into for a number of clients. And this is different. There is seasonality to some business cycles, and then there’s the roller coaster, right? And and so if it’s like feast or famine, all or nothing, that’s not healthy, that’s never healthy, right? That’s what we want to avoid. Sometimes you’ll have big months, sometimes you’ll have low months, but it’s that, that dramatic, wild, unpredictable oscillation, that really is a killer. Yeah, so when it, when we’re talking about that, especially that unpredictable, I don’t know what next month is going to look like, yeah. How do you solve it like, what are some of the first steps to get on track for that steady monthly income?
Tracy Beavers
It’s a great question. So I’m a visibility and list growth strategist, and I teach all organic strategies to get your list, your email list, growing and your leads coming in automatically every day. And the goal for all online entrepreneurs is to have that consistent monthly income. That’s the end goal. So what I like to do is reverse engineer back through that. So that is the goal. What do we need to get there? Well, to get there, you need list growth. You need to have people you are connecting with and having conversations with in the inbox and in the DMS. So you need to have leads and list growth. Well, what do we need to have leads and list growth? We have to have visibility in the online space. Yeah. And what do we need to have to get massive visibility without having to be online? 24/7 it’s consistent content. So if we verse reverse engineer all the way back, one of the strategies I teach my clients and students is, if you want that consistent monthly income and you want we got to get the list and the leads going consistently right, then we’ve got so we then we got to ramp up your visibility to get there. That starts with consistent social media content, yeah, and that’s not sexy and it’s not fun and it’s not the part everybody likes, but it is foundational to allowing you to reach your audience in a very crowded, noisy space.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. Consistency is the key. One of the things that I’ve found holds us back is a pretty basic question of, like, what do I actually talk about? So how do you help folks? Because it’s one thing to say, hey, I’ll go do a couple of posts right when you’re on like, week 92 so. Like, yes, what and so. And some folks will kind of see that problem and it worries them so much that they don’t even start. So to help folks start off and be confident in their ability to create consistent content, what have you found are some good strategies for really baking in that consistency.
Tracy Beavers
Yeah, the key to it is a system, week in, week out that you’re going to stick with. So years ago, when I started building this business, I had to build it alongside my full time corporate job, which was really stressful, two busy kids, husband, dog house, parents, the whole thing, right? And so I did not have as much time as other online entrepreneurs to build my business, so I had to be really smart about what I did, and I knew that having consistent content week in week out, was going to catch the favor of the algorithm, position me as a thought leader to my audience, they were going to start to expect me, because I was going to keep showing up. And it’s kind of an outlet, Outlast, outplay survivor Island, kind of a thing like on week six, did I feel like creating content? No, but did I want consistent income and to leave my corporate job? You bet I did. So we have to be willing to put on our CEO pants and hold our nose and do some things that are not fun in order to get to the goal we want. So what saved me in those early years was a system I created for mapping out 90 days of content topics in only 30 minutes. And it’s something that your audience can grab. It’s Tracy beavers
.com, forward slash social, just a free training with a guide. But essentially, what we’re doing is we’re visualizing our ideal client, and you’re going to brain dump topic ideas, things you know they want they want to hear what solution can you provide? What are they looking for? How are they feeling? And you just dump all that out on a piece of paper or Trello board or a Google sheet or whatever. And then we take one topic per week, a great topic that I love to talk about is how to have your own free Facebook group be a massive list builder for you. Well, that’s my topic for the week. Then I map out another topic. So you try to get in the brain dump, you try to get to 12 topics, because if you take one per week, that’s 90 days. And so then what you do, Scott is you look at that topic idea, and I say to myself, what’s my regular piece of weekly content? For me, it’s a live video. I’ve been going live every Thursday at 1130 for years. Did I always feel like it? No, didn’t feel like it yesterday, but I did it anyway, right? Because I’m a serious CEO. So I write that one live training script, the hook, the intro, the meat of the training, of what I’m going to say about why a free Facebook group is a great idea, and the outro, then what you do now with AI, listen, I feel like I built this business in this in the dinosaur age, because chat GPT wasn’t around when I was doing this, and so I would have to physically look at my live script and go, Okay, I made four points about a free Facebook group. I could make four social media posts for one each of those points. Now, with AI, you write that one thing, you throw it into chat GPT, and you say, Hey, can you write me two to three social media posts about what I’m going to present on live. And there you go. You’ve got your live that you’re going to do, or maybe you like to do a podcast. I love that you do a podcast. Or maybe that person’s regular piece of weekly content is a blog. So you just write that one piece. Then you let your friend AI get you some social media posts about it, throw on some graphics. So then you’ve got you’re going to go live. That’s one thing you could do that week. You’ve got two to three social media posts that you’ve had help writing. You could write about 10 minutes. Then if you toss in a lead magnet or two, look at what you got. All of a sudden, got seven fingers? Do I have six fingers? Holding up? Sorry, but yeah. So all of a sudden, you wrote one thing based on one topic, and you’ve got everything you need for the week, and you can email your list. What you just wrote. My Tuesday email to my list is, Hey Scott, this is what I’m gonna talk about live on Thursday. Here’s what you’re gonna hear, here’s what you’re gonna learn. Here’s the link to join me. Awesome. My email on Friday is, Hey Scott, did you miss the live training yesterday? This is what happened. This is what you missed. Here’s the replay link. I mean, don’t make it difficult. Don’t make it difficult. And when you get to the end of the 90 days, you can turn around and go back to week one, look at what performed well, rework it a little bit and throw it back out there, because nobody’s gonna remember what you did 90 days ago. Yeah. And this is just going to get you started, until you get some chops under you, and you get that muscle going, and you get more ideas rolling in, and it really is just going to take the pressure off.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, there’s a couple of things I love about that. One is separating what you’re going to write about or talk about from writing about it and talking about it when you can lay those all out in advance, you know, the whole writer’s block of, like, sit down, I don’t know what to do, right? You have at least a topic to start with, which is, like, everything. It’s like the, you know, showing up at the gym. You know, it’s almost impossible to get there, but if you can get through the first five minutes, you’re golden, right, right? So I love that. There’s another thing that you kind of, you. Slipped in a little nugget there that’s easy to miss. And you said, because I’m a serious CEO, yes, and that’s a big deal, because a lot of folks, especially when they’re just starting out, you know, they might think of themselves as an entrepreneur, right? But a serious CEO, how did you come to that conclusion, and at what point in the game can we think of ourselves as a serious CEO?
Tracy Beavers
I came to that conclusion. First of all, I had to decide, did I want to build this online business? Because I was going to have to build it alongside my corporate job, and that was going to have to go on for probably a year, because I knew I could not leave corporate without some sort of money in the bank, in my business bank accounts. I just knew that was not gonna work for me. So I had to decide how serious was I about. This, the serious CEO part, I think happened for me right around the time I was able to leave the corporate job. It’s about a year and a half later, because that’s when I knew, Okay, Tracy, if you’re not ever going to go back to work for anybody else, you have to be, you have to rise to the occasion. Be the CEO that you always wanted to be when you were in corporate, run your business and have the confidence to do so, even on days when you don’t feel like it. You know, one of the things that will do derail an online entrepreneur like we’re talking about is, and I’ve made this mistake, is looking at that topic that you’ve got scheduled for the week and saying to yourself, I don’t want to talk about that again. I’ll find another topic. Well, no, you won’t. Days will pass. You won’t come up with a new topic, and the next week will pass and you’ve lost your consistency, yeah? And so that’s where the serious CEO part comes in. And I think I have a little bit of masculine energy when it comes to business, because I kind of just have to say, well, how bad do you want it? Yeah, you know, how bad do you want to build a business? Do you want to have a hobby? That’s fine if you want to keep it a hobby, a hobby, a side hustle, extra income, totally fine. But if I have somebody telling me, Tracy, I have to do this and make it fly, or I have to go get a job and I don’t want to do that, then my question is, all right, are you willing to do some of the things that we don’t like in order to get what you want? Yeah, so that’s where that part comes in.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love it. I love it so good. So I wanna jump to the next step here. And you talked about creating consistent content and then building up a list. So what have you found? Either strategically or tactically, are some of the most effective ways to go from mass one to many to one to one.
Tracy Beavers
Great question. So you mean in terms of programming? Sure, yeah. So I think a lot of people start out one to one, I did. I mean I didn’t. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to offer. I didn’t know if it wanted, if I was going to want to offer an online course, or group coaching or anything like that. So I just started one to one, but at some stage that’s not scalable, because there’s only one of me, and I do not want to be on Zoom calls eight hours a day, Monday to Friday. You know, I wanted to put some bumpers around my time and see clients on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, Mondays and Fridays were for create, content creation or running errands or, you know, whatever else I needed to do. And so the one to one worked for a while to get me experience testimonials. What did I like, what did I not like? What was I really good at? You know, what were people? Where were people stubbing their toe, you know, things like that. And then I realized, a couple of years after doing that, I was like, Okay, I need a group program. But I feel like starting one to one is a really smart way to start for most people.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s an interesting dynamic, because there’s this temptation, and it shows up everywhere, right? But it’s, it’s to think of, hey, I want to do the highest leverage activity first? Yeah, and that sounds really good. And even if I were to try and articulate why that’s bad, it wouldn’t work, which is why I’m going to make you do it here in a second. But thanks. But what I think is a better objective is momentum. Yes, right? Small, consistent action, again and again and again. So help us? Why is pursuing leverage at the expense of momentum such a big deal?
Tracy Beavers
Well, you have to build an audience. And you know, I see this with my clients and my students. There’s a lot of big names out there that will tell you to create an online course or a membership or a group coaching program. The problem with that is, if you start with that, you do not have an audience to sell it to. You do not have a list of people that know you, like you and trust you, and you haven’t built yourself up to be an expert or a thought leader in that space. And so when they go to try to sell it, they don’t have anybody to buy it. And. So trying to go from from what you’re saying, you’ve got to build up that momentum, doing the incremental steps. I like what you said there, and that, to me was one to one. That to me was consistent weekly content, like we talked about, making sure my lead magnets are seen, making sure people know about my free Facebook group, because that grows my email list. Making sure people know about my podcast, because that grows my email list, having DM conversations with people to set up collaborations that grows my email list, and then working with people one to one, and building that brick by brick until I could get to the point where I had I had enough thought leadership established, and I was known for something where people would be willing to join me in a membership or a group program or something, that’s higher ticket.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So true. That’s good. So Tracy, there’s this question that I ask all my guests. I’m very interested to see what you have to say. Questions this, what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today?
Tracy Beavers
New it’s two things, and I call them the Wonder Twins of business, success, patience and consistency. Nobody talks about it. Nobody wants to hear it. It’s not fun. It’s not It’s like taking out the trash. Nobody wants to do that. No, you’d rather go, you know, watch Netflix. I totally get it, but being a serious CEO, we have to have, we have to do the work, and we have to be patient, and we have to be consistent, because it takes time.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. I could not agree more. I couldn’t agree more. Couldn’t end on a better note. So there are some folks, Tracy listening to this, and they’re, they’re struggling with the roller coaster. They want to produce consistent flow. We’ve got the link to the social resource that you mentioned earlier. But how can folks learn more about what you do? How can they reach out and connect with you?
Tracy Beavers
Well, if they love podcasts, which they do, because they’re listening to you, and I, right now, I have a podcast I’m really proud of. We launched it last summer. It’s called Create Online Business Success. That’s a great place to come hang out with me, learn more of my strategies, actionable, tactical, simple things. I’m all about building a business with ease. I am not going to complicate anything if I don’t have to, and so just really simple, authentic ways to build your business is what you’re going to learn. And then also, if they want to get to know me a little bit better, they can come join my free Facebook group. It’s called, Be a Confident Entrepreneur, get visible, grow your email list and your income. We have almost 4000 online entrepreneurs in there. You can promote your offers anytime you are encouraged to connect with other members and network for collaborations and grow your business. It’s really unlike a lot of the free Facebook groups out there.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, those are all no bueno, and most of them, so that’s fantastic. We’ll get the links to those in the show notes for everybody, so you don’t have to go search for me and just click right through. They’ll be just below this. If you’re watching it on YouTube or on our website, you’ll be able to get it right there. Tracy, it’s just amazing what a privilege to have you on the show. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. For those of you watching and listening today, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Tracy Beavers
Tracy Beavers has a proven track record in business growth as the CEO and Founder of Tracy Beavers Coaching. With an award-winning career spanning 20 years, Tracy has guided hundreds of entrepreneurs to grow their business visibility through organic marketing strategies. She is a public speaker, and a published author. CBS television, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and Kajabi have featured Tracy. She is the creator of the top-ranked business podcast “Create Online Business Success!”
Want to learn more about Tracy Beavers’s work at Tracy Beavers Coaching? Check out her website at https://www.tracybeavers.com/social and her podcast, Create Online Business Success, at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-online-business-success-visibility-lead-generation/id1751582214