Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast episode 85.

Intro 0:06
Welcome to the good girls get rich podcast with your host, Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl, stop being the best kept secret in town, learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

Karen Yankovich 0:23
I’m Karen Yankovich, the host of the good girls get rich podcast. This is Episode 85. And it’s brought to you by Uplevel Media, the proud sponsor of the simplest relationship and heart based LinkedIn marketing system that gets you on the phone, that phone you know that thing you text with, you know, you can actually talk to people on it too. And if you knew that some people don’t want you on the phone consistently with your perfect people, people who you can’t wait to have the opportunity to chat with you’re going to be jumping around excited when you see them on your calendar.

We support you with that we have a free Facebook group that you can join so that you can get some support around that Karenyankovich.com/facebookgroup will get you in to that group. And you can start to learn a little bit about how we think we can help you with this relationship and heart based marketing on LinkedIn. And this episode with Natalie act all really, I think drives the point home of why those relationships are so important.

Speaking of relationships, what we teach here at global media is digital marketing with the human touch. So if you go to KarenYankovich.com/events, you can see the events that I’ve got coming up. If you’re if it’s in any of your neck of the woods, come join me at one of these events. If you have any questions about any of these events, just send us an email or comment on our website and we’ll help you figure out how to get a ticket or whatever you need to do to join me. But I’d love to meet you in person take a selfie, right the build those actual relationships.

And of course, if you’ve listened before, if you love what you hear today, we love to hear from you. So make sure that you’re subscribing to the good girls get rich people on Apple podcasts or whatever pod catcher you’re listening to this on, give us a rating and review we love being able to showcase you and your review on our episodes. Also take a quick screenshot of this episode and share it on social media. If you do that we can then share your post with our audience. And that’s how we all get more visibility right we get more visibility when we are lifting each other up. So we love it tag me @KarenYankovich or use the hashtag good girls get rich and we’ll find it and we’ll share the post with our audience in the show notes. there’s a there’s a link for speak pipe where you can leave an audio review we love that as well.

This interview with Natalie is so awesome I want to get right to it I want you to hear every single word of my chat with Natalie at all from the bizchix podcast.

Okay, so this week on the good girls get rich podcast we have Natalie Echdahl with us. She is a business strategist high performance coach who helps high achieving women entrepreneurs across industries and time zones, build, grow and scale their business while avoiding overwhelm. She’s the founder of the bizchix community podcast programs and events and the author of reset your mindset silence your inner mean girl.

Natalie has been recognized as one of the top women in business to listen to. She’s also been featured in ink. fastcompany huffington post and entrepreneur. Natalie brings a multidisciplinary perspective to her work she draws from her MBA education 20 plus years of work experience deep intuition, and over 250 podcast interviews with industry influencers to help her clients with customized strategy and coaching to reach six figures plus in profits. And while she’s not enjoying precious moments with her husband, Mark and her three children aged four to 17 you can find her drinking a steaming cup of coffee on her way to a spin class or sneaking in a power nap. Visit bizchx.com for her latest podcast and inspiration on life and business.

Natalie, it is so fun to have you here today.

Natalie Eckdahl 4:01
Oh my gosh, Karen, I am really thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.

Karen Yankovich 4:05
Oh, I’m so glad that you’re here. And I kind of wanted to start by picking apart your bioa little bit if that works.

Natalie Eckdahl 4:09
Let’s do it!.

Karen Yankovich 4:11
Yeah, I love the silence your inner mean girl that is so awesome. Tell me a little bit about that. And tell and then we can maybe we’ll start the conversation from there. Because as you know, the good girls get rich podcasts were all about lifting up other women and other people and really finding the spot that you’re good at and and building your business and your life from there. And I love I’d love to hear what that means.

Natalie Eckdahl 4:35
Well, what I realized from working with incredible high performing women, so you know, probably women exactly in your audience, you know, women that are go getters, women that are used to accomplishing a lot. When we were having coaching sessions, I found that a lot of our time would be spent on what was going on in their mind and their mindset. And really what they were saying to themselves and in you know, in psychology world, they call it the inner critic, and I like to call it the inner mean girl. And it’s usually those thoughts. It sounds like you it’s not like where you’re saying I am something, you’re literally hearing someone else say like, you’re never going to do this, or you’re too old to start that or you’re not as good as she is, or there’s already someone else doing this. So what are you even thinking and it’s in a tone of voice like that. And so we’re hearing, you know, tapes playing in our head of this. And I was seeing how this was holding people back. And so I wrote the book, reset your mindset to help us to silence those thoughts, and to have tools and strategies to get past them. And also Karen, just to normalize, that we are all dealing with this. I’m dealing with it. I’m guessing you deal with it too Karen from time to time right now too huh?

Karen Yankovich 6:01
Yeah. And I love I you know, and I love that you’re bringing attention to that, because that really is at the heart of a lot of the work that I do, as you know, and as most of my listeners know, I do a lot of work on LinkedIn. And one of the hardest pieces of the strategy that I do is getting primarily women to own all the amazing things that they’ve done. You know, and you know, they’re looking at and I have somebody right now that we did her LinkedIn profile, and she’s like, I can’t put that up yet. I was like, What do you mean, you can’t put it up yet? She says, I can’t, I gotta live with it for a month. Like she couldn’t we, I mean, we didn’t make anything up. She did all of that. But it’s so easy for us to listen to our inner mean, girl. And it’s so hard for us to look at ourselves, you know, as others could see us. Right? Do you find that?

Natalie Eckdahl 6:48
I do. And I also think it’s how many of us are socialized? So we are taught to be nice. And you know, my mom taught me to not brag about myself. And she said, You know, it’s, it’s we need to let other people talk about how great we are. It’s not for us to be, you know, talking about ourselves. And to brag about ourselves, I was taught to be humble. Well, I quickly learned in the workforce that when I went to my first interviews, that if I wasn’t going to talk about how great I was, I wasn’t going to get a job.

Karen Yankovich 7:20
Yes.

Natalie Eckdahl 7:21
And then I also learned by working primarily with men. So after I got my MBA, I was a management consultant. And I would travel across the country doing consulting projects, primarily working with men. And to be honest, Karen, I learned a lot from them, because they would tell each other how great they are. And they would, they would talk about a great win they had, and I would watch the dynamic between them. And I would notice that there was no judgment going back and forth between the men, they would like high five each other and then you know, maybe try to top the next, you know, like, try to be the next one to have the big win. And I feel like it was very helpful for me observe that and that, hey, if I want to survive in this group of guys, I’m going to have to change how I’m behaving in this culture, I need to also share the great things I’m doing because no one else is going to talk about them. So I grateful for that experience. And that learning and I saw a lot of times I tried to think about would a man have a problem doing this? No. All right, Game on. I’m going to do it.

Karen Yankovich 8:26
Yeah, you know, it was so funny, Natalie, and I’ve had a few conversations. But I don’t think we’ve ever had this conversation. Because I have the same background. I was in it, primarily most of my early career. And I was very often the only woman in the room. So not only did I learn from them how to be confident, period. But I also learned how to how important it was to portray confidence.

Natalie Eckdahl 8:48
Yeah.

Karen Yankovich 8:49
Because if I wasn’t portraying confidence in those rooms, I wasn’t going to be able to get a word in edgewise. So I had to really be comfortable with being confident. And sometimes you’re have to portray confidence, even if inside of your you’re like, Oh my gosh, I hope I can figure this out. When I get home for dinner, you know, like, it’s not like you want to make stuff up. But sometimes you have to be confident in saying, you know, I’m not sure, let me find out. And that takes a lot of confidence to to say, I don’t know, you know? So it’s interesting that we have similar backgrounds.

Natalie Eckdahl 9:19
Yes, I didn’t know that approach know that either. And that’s why it’s so fun to you know, have podcast interviews, because you get to go deeper, you get to have these conversations.

Karen Yankovich 9:28
Because we do have we do approach this, we do approach this similarly, you know, I really supporting women in owning what they do and owning how they, you know, owning that they have to do it. Well, you know, I had a I had a, I have a new client that I just hired. And she’s like, Oh, my gosh, I have I have an ego. So big I’m although my ego, I was like, hallelujah, you know, I’m like, hallelujah, you’re going to be so much fun to work with, because I’m not going to have to tiptoe you through owning all of your achievements. You know, it doesn’t she’s like, really, it’s like, You have no idea how how rare that is.

Natalie Eckdahl 9:59
Yeah, it’s it’s really fun to work with lots of different people. And and we host masterminds where we bring together women from all different industries and backgrounds, and you know, even you know, childhood experiences, work experiences. And so it’s always fun for someone that doesn’t deal with, you know, major mindset issues. I think that on some level, we all, you know, deal with some mindset issues. But when you can see someone like that, that has all this competence, and is ready to put themselves out there. And you compare them with someone else that is struggling with that, and they can learn from each other. It’s amazing. And yes, it’s definitely easier to coach people that have, you know, worked through a lot of those mindset issues.

Karen Yankovich 10:43
Yep, yep. However, that’s why we’re here, right to help the people that do need support with that. So you can definitely get support with that as well. And you know, get your handheld and we’ll get you there. So tell it Tell me Tell us a little bit more about your journey, though. So. So going back to when you first got your MBA, and you were working with a bunch of men, how did how did you go from that, Natalie, to the founder of bizchix?

Natalie Eckdahl 11:04
Yes, it’s such a good question. And it’s a, you know, a long winding road. So I’ll kind of shorten it for the sake of time. But after I worked in management consulting for, you know, several years, I had my daughter, and I went more to like a freelance model, and would take projects here and here and here and there that work with my lifestyle. And then as she got older, my husband and I decided to launch her own business. And we started a software as a service business. And through that, I kind of got exposed to this online world of entrepreneurship and social media, and so much it’s shifted since I was trained in marketing, and I graduated with my MBA in 1999. So there was no social media, then. And barely the internet really like things people were just, you know, getting websites. And so it was so much a change from where I was and what I had originally learned in marketing. And so I went on this quest to learn and I discovered podcasts, and I fell in love with them. And what was missing for me, and this is going back to like, say, 2012 2013, when I was first listening, I wasn’t hearing very many women’s voices, not only women, leading conversations, like you are now Karen, but also women being interviewed. And not just women, but women that were balancing marriage and motherhood, and how they were putting it all together. And so would hear women interviewed, say, like 10% of the time on on these kind of male originating podcasts. And the the, you know, single 30 something dudes didn’t know what questions to even ask the ladies that I was wondering. And so I have been raised? Well, I was raised to be humble, I was also raised to believe that I could do anything I set my mind to. So thank you parents, and decided to launch a podcast. And I launched bizchix in January 2014. At the time, there was maybe one other podcast hosted by a woman. Now we have so many, which is amazing. And I just goodness, yes, thank goodness. And you were one of my early guests, which was so fun. I remember back that. And over time, what started happening is my passion shifted. My passion shifted to serving women and wanting to make a business from this podcast. And that’s that’s kind of where my journey has come to. Now, this is what I do full time. I support a team of people. I have a community that has grown. I have listeners around the world, I have had clients around the world, which is amazing. And I have this location, technically location independent business. But I have three children who are in school. And so I, I am actually location dependent, in a sense, because I stay single to four, yeah, but I’m also able to, you know, take time off, like, in a couple days, I’m going to my sons, and a school year party, and I make my own schedule and work around my family’s life. And so that is where we’ve gone. And I have learned so much from not only the people that you know, we’re kind of started out in podcasting early. But it took me a long time to figure out how to monetize the podcast, because what people were teaching at the time, did not seem to work for me and many other people.

Karen Yankovich 14:45
Yeah, yeah. So you know, I’ve our journeys are similar even from that point, because when we first had our first conversation, I was running more of an agency type business where we were doing social media for people versus the strategy that I do now. And when you say you leaned more into your passion, I believe that that’s true. But I also think that, and I don’t want to speak for you. But I know for me every year that goes by in my business, I dial in how I can best support people. Right? So So for me, I wasn’t really best supporting people, when I was managing a team of people that were posting on Instagram or Facebook for them. I my sweet spot really is the strategy and the personal branding and how to how to build a business from that. And then you also, you know, you see you see what’s going on, and then apply your unique perspective to that. Right. And that’s, you know, that’s what I’ve done. And we talked a little bit about this, before we turned on our microphones. So I’d love to hear a little bit about that. Like because because your your unique perspective on the digital marketing and how people how it serves people and how it doesn’t serve people. I’d love to hear about that.

Natalie Eckdahl 15:56
So I love, I love that we’re able to have businesses now where we can consume content in a digital way, right? There’s online courses, there’s membership sites, there’s so many ways that we can get information and there’s people that are selling that information as well. And when I was learning to podcast and getting exposed to kind of the the leaders in the industry, they were all sharing this this phrase, which was don’t trade your time for money, like it was this horrible thing. And for me as a formerly high paid consultant was like, well, I used to trade my time for money. And I did very, very well. And so I ended up learning that for me, starting out as a digital business wasn’t the right fit. I also learned that most of the people that were teaching, to create courses and create membership sites already had very large audiences. And when you look at the percentage of the people in in your set your own audience or people that are exposed to you, that will buy for you it’s very small percentage, it’s like maybe anywhere from 1%, sometimes 5%, if you’re lucky 10% at any one time. And so if you think that, you know, however many people are listening to or following you are on your email list, if 125 percent are going to buy, is that effort worth it? Or would it be better? Or would you be better off offering services. And I find that most of my clients actually did a study of people, a study of my clients who had a six figure or beyond business. And the majority of them had a service based business, many of them had a local service based business. And it was very fascinating me, for me to see that because I wasn’t seeing people talk about that. And another thing I like to say is that teams can help create passive income, right. So if you have people working for you doing similar work to what you do, or doing tangential work, that’s impressive part of your business, you as the owner, or making profit on that. So it was it’s been really interesting for me to kind of go against the grain, and to ignore the kind of six figure launch ads I see out there. And I started doing coaching. And I started working one on one with people. And I started not only offering coaching packages, but one time coaching packages, because similar to you, I am really good at coming up with a quick strategy. And I call them strategy sessions. And I could work with people one time and they could go off and do something with that whatever they learned from me during that time. And I am a quick start on the Colby if anybody’s ever heard of that assessment. So I am here, same here. So I’m great to brainstorm with like I have ideas all I have ideas for new businesses every day, like every hour, I hold myself back, I’m only allowed to work on this one business right now. And I love Gary of giving my ideas to other people. And what happened Karen is I worked over the course of 18 months I do did, like 150 strategy sessions. So I worked one on one with 150 people. And that helped me to really understand what was currently happening in the marketplace in terms of what was working and what wasn’t. Because I had a lot of people coming to me and saying, I took this person’s course on how to build a membership site, or how to launch a course or how to run a webinar. And it’s not working for me. And several of them were the type of people that I knew were very good students and did every exact thing that person told them to do. And so I could feel something was shifting. And I think in the last few years, we have seen it’s difficult to build a large audience quickly. buying an audience through social media has become more expensive. And so a lot of the things that work say even a couple years ago, or even you know, when many of these people kind of grew their businesses initially, that’s like seven years ago, the the landscape is shifted. And so I love helping people figure out whether it is a digital business or a product business or a service based business, what is the best fit for them and their skill set? And so for me, it has been offering services and offering high ticket services.

Karen Yankovich 20:23
Yeah, such good stuff, Natalie, such good stuff. I you know, I also am seeing a shift. And I think there’s a big part of the shift is that there, you know, so there’s the people, there’s a lot of people or a few people that do really well at selling thousand dollar $2,000 courses. And they make several million dollars a year and it’s all good for them. But there’s also sites like you to me that you can buy for $10, of course, about pretty much anything on the planet. Yes. Right. So, you know, when the average entrepreneur is trying to come in with a digital product, that’s what they’re competing against. We’re not competing against the $2,000 people, because they have the audience that they’ve had already. Right? They’re competing against the people that are you know, going, Well, you know, why should I buy this one for $1,000, when I can buy this for $10, let me buy this one for $10 and see how far I get. And then if I need the thousand dollar one, it’s still there, right? So I think that we’ve seen a dramatic drop in pricing to a lot of digital content. And you know, I’m a, I’m a huge fan of, at least certainly in my business. And for me and for my life. If I buy something from you, like I do everything you say, because I if I if I didn’t, if I knew how to do it, I wouldn’t be buying it, you know, you don’t hire a plumber, and then tell them how to fix your leak. Right. So I do everything that they say. So I’m happy to try the $10 Place the $10 version once before I pay $2,000 for something. And and I you know, I also I also think that there’s a big part of the value with buying the digital programs is being is taking advantage of the fact that they’re making the mistakes. And we get to just jump in and do the end of the world. There’s value even now in that, but I so agree with you about starting with the higher ticket products and services. And it is it is for me it is not about, you know charging a ton of money for something, it’s providing a service that’s going to give a ton of value, and building services at a price that will support the lifestyle that you want.

Natalie Eckdahl 22:25
Yes. And I think that there are definitely some, I’m not against courses, and I’m not against membership sites, I pay for some for myself and for my team. But I think that there’s this kind of idea that, oh, I want to have passive income. And if I create a course it will be passive and it will be easy. And the truth is, is that there it’s not like there’s I call it active income, right? Smart active income. So every every business, no matter whether you’re delivering the product in a digital manner, or you know, one on one, or you have someone on your team delivering it, there’s complexity in the behind the scenes and the operations, and nothing is just set it and forget it. And so I think it’s just understanding, understanding that and also just being really real with what are what could you really expect, given the size of your audience, given the nature of your industry, what we’re finding with a lot of our clients that have a service expertise, so say, take take up, one of my clients is a marriage and family therapist. And she’s been in her business for many years and, and just gets referrals without trying. And so she has now built a group practice where all those referrals can now be used and and funneled into other people on her team who are serving those clients. So she’s built up her visibility over the years, she’s done great work, and just naturally gets referrals. And so now she’s able to focus on her thought leadership, and what Mark does she wants to make on her industry. And that’s where I love helping people kind of combine the the, the the digital part and the the social part of what like you and I kind of know and know well with someone who has this kind of local brick and mortar business? And how can we help them to get that book published to create a course for people in their industry? Given that they have visibility now and have built up an audience? How can they get speaking engagements to get more well known? And and for you? Like how can they have put all those accolades on LinkedIn and be known even further throughout the world. So it’s really fun to help people kind of combine the hybrid of a service based business with some type of online business or utilizing the online tools that we have even you know, some of the things that we use every day is online business owners, those can be added into a local business or a or a virtual service based business.

Karen Yankovich 25:09
Yeah, because we are so it is so amazing that we have so many great tools at our disposal. So I’m not saying don’t use all the amazing digital marketing tools that we have, I’m saying use them. But But and for me, it really comes back it comes down to relationship marketing. Right, it’s you know, don’t overlook the importance of talking to people. And you know, the hundred and 50 strategy calls that you did, helps you develop relationships and people I’m so I’m sure a percentage of those people wanted more. And it helps you also gauge if they were a good fit for you, as well as they get to gauge if you’re a good fit for them. Right. So So I think we’re so blessed that we have, we live in a time where we’ve got tools like LinkedIn, but also the other social media tools, Facebook and Instagram and Twitter places where we can get a ton of visibility. But that doesn’t, that’s not where it starts. And you know, at the time that we’re recording this, and we’re not too far ahead, but I just recorded a podcast, and I believe the name of it will be what’s the point of LinkedIn. So it’ll be live by the time we this goes live. So we’ll show it will will link it in the show notes. But basically, you know, LinkedIn is really exploding. And I love that. And people are talking about visibility and the engagement they’re getting on their posts. And I love those conversations, I’m so excited that there’s all these conversations about visibility on LinkedIn. And I’m trying to not be like the downer going, but that’s not the point. You know, the point isn’t that you’re getting a lot of visibility, it’s great that you’re getting a lot of visibility. But the point is, it’s where you get your high ticket clients from, it’s how you get on the phone with the exact right people to make more money in your business. You know, so I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes. Because it’s those tools are such a big part of the strategy. But they aren’t the point, you know, the point is Get, get some solid income coming in, before you start doing all of that other stuff. Because otherwise you can you can’t. I mean, I don’t know where people even find the time, because I need you know, it’s a full, I actually spoke to one of my clients recently, and she’s in a new client and one of my leads it into our masterminds and we kind of laid out her products, what we do in these masterminds is we kind of pick a product, and we want to try to have one sale of that by the end of the mastermind, right? So we were talking about what her products are. And you know, her high end product is a year long product and blah, blah, blah. And so I started walking through the numbers with her next, if you’re gonna do 1000 for this, then maybe for the six month, it’s going to be 6000. But then for the 12 month, it really they’re giving them so much more, it really needs to be 20,000. And she really bought at the 20,000, a year number and I said we’ll hang on a second, you told me you will only can do two of them at a time. She said yeah, I said, so that’s only $40,000 a year. Like I want every one of your income streams to be a full time income stream. Like you need to get a full time income stream at this before you add another stream of income on and you for the $40,000 for $20,000. If they were going to hire somebody in house to do what you’re going to do for them, that’s $150,000 a year position. You know, so they’re getting a bargain if they’re hiring you a 20,000. Like I think it needs to be 40,000 Yeah, but like, but I had, I had to really and I basically pulled the plug on the call and this was an hour call, I said we’re gonna do a half hour, I want you to live with this for a week. And then we’ll do the other half hour, I want to see if you can live with this $20,000 number. And then we’ll come back and finish it in a week because it is not about you know, I mean, we have to and that goes back to your mindset, right? You’re inner mean girl, we have to understand that. That’s where all of the other stuff she wants to do all of the more volume driven sales, where are you going to find the time like you need a staff to help you with those things. So you need enough money coming in not just to support your income, but to pay for the stuff that’s going to help you with the funnels and the Facebook ads and all the things you need for digital programs for you know, for a membership site,

Natalie Eckdahl 29:02
I think it’s so helpful to think about how many people you actually need or have space for. And we can get caught up in you know, for example, that when we are talking about she only needs two, she only needs to people to say yes. And so that is such an incredible, like, that’s so freeing to me to think about versus for many people selling like an online course where it’s 40, or like a membership site, that’s $49 a month. And you might need I don’t know how many I can’t do the math in my head. But someone here Can someone listening, but think about how many $49 sales you would need to get to $40,000. I mean, it’s just, it’s if you have the ability to offer your expertise, and if you enjoy it, and serving people in that way, it’s such an it can be such an incredible business. And you can really see the impact on people, like when you were doing a high ticket could offer like that That woman is that you’re talking about like the impact she could have on them. And also, like you’re saying the savings that she’s providing them by them not needing to hire that as a position and to get an you know, an industry expert into their business. But there is so much mindset around offering those prices. And I hear a lot of people talk about worthiness, like am I worth Am I worthy to charge this and something that she’s going to have to believe and and learn to believe and understand her worth? I find that sometimes doing some of the things that you were talking about Karen, like writing out what are all the things like all a card that she’s going to be providing, what would they have to pay for that. And I also like to think about, when we are working one on one with someone, they are not just getting that time that you know, 45 minutes, hour or two hours or whatever it is of our timer VIP day, the whole day. It’s not just about those minutes. It’s about they’re tapping into all of your past work experience, all of your past education, all of the past client work and learnings. You’ve had all of the conferences, you’ve attended all the books, you’ve read all the podcasts you’ve listened to. And so you are fast tracking that person, you are like almost doing a mindmeld with them, telling them what they need to know the next next best steps. And so I love for people to really kind of internalize that. And when we when I say those things I just said they’re like, Oh, my gosh, that’s so true. Like I I didn’t think about that. And so I think it helps us charge at a rate that is really, that really encompasses all we bring to the table when we’re working one on one with someone or in a small group with with with a group of people.

Karen Yankovich 31:49
Yeah, I agree. And I think that understanding to the difference in the value that you’re bringing to people and and and you’re right it is it is listing out all of the different things and all the places that they’re going to get. And I always like to have have my clients and dream big. Like if you were going to spend a whole day with someone forget. And like, let’s say you’re going to charge them $10,000 for that day, what cool things could you do? Like I want you to make this the most amazing freaking day that you can make it right, because you’ve got all the money, you need to make this such an amazing experience for your client. You’re not going well, I can’t do this because there’s not enough budget for this. And you know, I can’t do that you’re like, I want you to be I want there to be no holds barred if you need to send a limo for them go send a limo for that, right? Like, what could you do to make it an amazing experience. And that’s the place I want you to be at when you’re creating those higher ticket things. And it’s not really about limos and spoiling us ourselves. It’s more to me about, you know, over delivering How can you massively over deliver and really provide huge value. If you if there was no budget on the table for it.

Natalie Eckdahl 32:59
I think it’s all so about like I personally am willing to pay to fast track time with people. So I had actually paid someone $10,000 several years ago to help me prepare for my first live event. And it was interesting because her team member who I was coordinating with said, you know, this expert, really the woman, the coach, she’s like she’s really suggesting that you instead choose her program, because for the same amount, you could have, you know, a year in her program, and you could have community. And I said Listen, I don’t need community, I have my whole community already. What I need is my specific questions answered, and her eyeballs on my event. And I was going to be offering my programs from the stage. So I wanted to get her thoughts on how I should do that any tips she had, I also wanted her eyeballs on my programs as well. And so it was worth it to me to fly to her city. And to have six hours with her. And to have one on one time with her like I would have paid more than that. And I actually told her before our lunch break. So we’d work for three hours, I said I have already received that my $10,000 worth of value. Like I feel that way already.

And when I do VIP days with people, I see it as them getting the equivalent of three months of coaching, what would take us three months to do over time, we can get done in a day. And so there are always people in your audience or in your realm are interested in people interesting in working with you who will pay to save time and to get things faster and to have things customized just for them. And, and to think about the transformation that people are getting when you’re offering you know, whatever, whatever service you’re offering, you really want to think about where are people when they arrive work with me whether it’s an hour a day or months? And we’re we’re what transport what transformation? Could they expect or anticipate? And what is the value of that transformation to that person?

Karen Yankovich 35:15
Yep, yep, yep, I actually have a service that I’ve packaged a couple of my services together, and I call it a fast track package for that same thing, and you know what, Natalie, it is easier for me to sell that big fat, you know, $7,000 package than it is for me to sell $100 a month anything?

Natalie Eckdahl 35:32
Yes,

Karen Yankovich 35:33
it is, it is so much. And I mean, I just yesterday, I’m cold, somebody reached out to me cold on LinkedIn, a conversation with them. And before the conversation ended, they put their credit card down for that service. You know, and this is and i and i and i say this to my team, when we’re creating funnels and, and I because we do still do some of that stuff. And we, you know, I do have a digital program. And that digital program supports my business in a lot of ways. But I remind them every now and then I can sell two more of these, and ditch this whole other process. I know what I mean and, and not need to do any of this stuff. So really think, keep that in mind when we have that when we’re putting together our systems for this.

Natalie Eckdahl 36:15
Yeah, it’s something to really think about. And I think it’s great for all of us to take a step back, I like to call it like a CEO day or take a CEO date. And really like look at your numbers. And if you need help with that, if that doesn’t come naturally, like get a bookkeeper or CPA to sit with you and go through things or even to create a high level report for you to show what are the most profitable things that you’re doing. And to not just look at them, the money, the revenue and the profit, but what is the energy of you and your team and your systems you’re paying for that goes into that. Because sometimes we’ve created these really extensive funnels. And that’s like, was a myth that I, I saw in my own business, it was so different. And literally you just explained as well, I was initially taught like, you need to have like a $7 offer, and then someone will pay you 14 and then maybe they’ll pay you 47 and then you’ll 147 and that people had to work up a chain of paying you money. And I remember when I first when I offered my first high end mastermind, I had several people go straight from my podcast, to my high level mastermind, because they are hardly on Facebook, they’re not in my facebook group getting nurtured and getting nurtured. They don’t want to receive emails, they are busy ladies, and they just want to be in a mastermind. And so they went straight from podcast to my client, and paying me a high ticket number. So yeah, it’s true.

Karen Yankovich 37:43
It’s true, like and when I think about the last, like four people that have bought that offer, I think, I think three of them were like cold. The first time I spoke to them, and they put their credit card through and did it because there’s a value to that there is a mark, there’s a market for that there is and you know, and then you have to look at like what I mean, just just in full transparency, even in my own business, I have to look at my I’m not really funnel, but I have to look at the things that I talked about on my podcast, and the things that I talk about, you know, you know, when I’m speaking it at speaking engagements and things like that, and say, What audience, am I attracting with this, my attracting the audience that is going to buy these, you know, $10,000 packages? Or am I attracting the audience that’s going to buy these $100 packages? That is so much more difficult for me to close? You know, so you almost have to take that SEO time, you almost have to go back to the beginning of all of the front end of your business to and say, Who am I speaking to on the front end? Right you doing? I’m getting some conversations because we’re selling this, but maybe what if what if we change the front end to match the highest package price packages we do? What could that change in our business?

Natalie Eckdahl 38:49
It’s something I actually did a few years ago in my business, I changed my content. And what happens when you do this is it it can take some time for your audience to shift and you will people but you will gain people. And so on my podcast, I used to talk to any entrepreneur, any woman at first it was any entrepreneur, and it was any woman and entrepreneur. And then I started talking to people that had a business. And we started up leveling the content and talking about people that had a team and thinking about Okay, what does that six and seven figure entrepreneur? What are they struggling with? And what could I address on the podcast? And also thinking about what are those topics that cross the levels of entrepreneurship? So we have become known for and I did some speaking engagements where I shared the secrets of my six figure clients intentionally to tell the audience, I work with six figure clients and became know, several those communities people would say, I’m looking forward to when I get to six figures and can work with Natalie.

Karen Yankovich 39:53
Right. Right. Because and the people that listen to the show regularly have heard me say this before, a six figure business is not the same as a six figure paycheck.

Natalie Eckdahl 40:02
No.

Karen Yankovich 40:03
So once you hit six figures, very often you’re looking at your bank account going where’s all the money? You know, why don’t I have any money? It’s because of you, you need to really, you know, to have six figures to have a six figure paycheck. As an entrepreneur, you have to look at things so differently, then I can’t wait to hit six figures in my business. Right?

Natalie Eckdahl 40:20
It is one stepping stone. So we have we have a mastermind where we say we help you get from six figures in revenue to six figures in profit. And then our highest level mastermind CEO Chix is for women that have multi six figure and seven figure businesses and those women tend to have teams and very large teams, their teams are anywhere from five people to 30 people. And so in that we’re really working on teams. And so I actually hired another coach into my business, who is a team expert. And her name is Shelley Warren, and she actually started we started another podcast under my brand, a sister podcast called stacking your team. Now the listenership of that podcast is about 10%, maybe 15% in numbers compared to biz chicks, but it is worth it because the people listening to that podcast have a team. So right. So that has also been, it’s just interesting, you know, if you just looked at numbers gonna be like, Oh, is it worth like investing, you know, the time the social media, the show notes, all the editing, all that goes into, you know, producing a podcast, it’s, it’s a lot of effort and time, and you need to see results. But what we’re finding is that the people joining our highest level programs are listening to that podcast. And so interesting, sometimes, the more nice you are, it’s not really about the numbers and quantity, it’s about quality in terms for me, at least in terms of the mindset we’re building and the content that we’re creating.

Karen Yankovich 41:56
Yeah. So tell us, I mean, I’m going to put on the spot a little bit here and say, if somebody is listening and going, alright, I hear you I’m in what are the first? What’s the first step or two you think that they need to take to start to shift? their, you know, we’ve caught their mind, and they’re hopefully ready to shift their mindset, how do they start to shift their business?

Natalie Eckdahl 42:14
I think you nailed it. Karen, when you said, you really want to think about who are your ideal clients? And the ones that you have? How did you get them? And how can you reverse engineer the process to attract more. And if you are currently very broad and talking to a lot of people, and doing a lot of things, for a lot of people, the way to build a bigger business and to scale is to niche down and specialize and to really understand what you do and who you do it for. And for it to be very easy to explain to other people so that you become referral. So the people I refer are experts. I, I know when I hear your name, I think LinkedIn. I just do. And I know it’s true. I know so much more. I know there’s a ton of other thing. Yeah, we can help people with. But yeah, I have associated LinkedIn with you. And I’ve recommended you to several people,

Karen Yankovich 43:11
thank goodness, because that’s I worked really hard for that to happen. Yeah, as we’re recording this, I am sitting in this in a gorgeous hotel suite in Atlantic City, speaking on LinkedIn at the conference, put me up in speaking on LinkedIn, to, you know, to a conference. And if they had been looking for a social media, Speaker 40 names 50 names might have gotten thrown out there. But when they said we need a LinkedIn speaker 10 people said call Karen

Natalie Eckdahl 43:35
Yep.

Karen Yankovich 43:36
So so it’s important that you don’t worry about who you’re alienating, cuz you’re going to gain 10 clients for everyone that you alienate by missing down,

Natalie Eckdahl 43:46
especially for social media, because there are so many social media professionals. Now, I tell people, you need to specialize either by platform or by industry. So they may have also chosen a library and specialist. Right. Right social, someone who understood their own industry and could talk about all the platforms in terms of their industry like that could happen in terms of law or accounting, or to specialized by platform, and then you can specialize even more by industry and platform. So say you could become the LinkedIn expert for lawyers. And that is still quite a big, lucrative market, right? It is for it absolutely about their business, I find that I I’m very familiar with like marriage and family therapists, I find that in general, they like to say they do therapy for everyone. I work with couples, I work with teens, I work with children, I work with individuals. And really, when we are wanting help, we want someone that is the expert on the thing. I had a client I worked with, earlier this year, I did a strategy session with her. And I was like I said, I said I love your business. She’s an eating disorder specialist. So she does therapy for people that have eating disorders. She gets referred business constantly her her practice was exploding. And because other therapists were referring her work, and everyone knew exactly who to refer her. So I think that to really take a look, if you’re struggling with growing your business to take a look at how could you specialize. And it’s also okay, I give you permission to focus on the higher end of the market, where people will pay more, sometimes people say I feel bad, I’m leaving this group behind. And sometimes that will happen that we will offer services that other people cannot afford. And I call it the Messiah complex, where we feel like we have to do everything for everybody. And it’s our job to take care of everybody and serve everybody, especially people in helping professions can feel that way. And so I love for people to remember that there’s room and there are other people to serve, it’s not your job to serve every single person and that needs your help. And there are other people and they’re also for people that literally cannot afford help. There are nonprofits associated, usually with whatever you’re doing to help people and you can also by creating wealth for yourself and your business, you could create a nonprofit or funnel money into into a group that’s serving a population that can’t afford your type of work. So there’s so many I just I just love for women to not be held back by the thought of leaving people behind. Because I really want women to focus on profit and building wealth. Because women are generous. And when we have wealth, we change society and honestly change the world.

Karen Yankovich 46:44
Oh, my goodness, well, I don’t think I can top that last statement. So we’re going to leave it at that. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the business that you run and how people can learn more about you?

Natalie Eckdahl 46:54
Well, I would always I always love directing people to our podcasts. And you can find both of them on either any any podcasting application that you use, or app, or just go to our website biz chicks BIZCHIX. com, we have a live event coming up in November for women entrepreneurs, and it’s for its intermediate and advanced level content. And so I would love for anyone looking for an event to check that out. But I really just let people to listen, because we have a back catalogue of Gosh, over 350 episodes on vistracks now, and I think 50 or 60 on stacking your team. And so just check out those podcasts. And I would love if you enjoy listening to let me know I’m also spend a lot of time on Instagram these days. And I’m on LinkedIn, Karen, Karen, because it’s good to hear her there. And I’m loving it and really directing a lot of our clients to spend time there. But yeah, check us out at biz chicks calm and I would love to connect.

Karen Yankovich 47:59
I love that, Natalie, thank you so much for being here. I think this was such an important conversation. Because, you know, for so many the things that you said, for so many of the things that you said that we really do look to we worry about who we’re excluding were, you know, we as women we worry about not really, you know, I mean, I had somebody say to me yesterday, my husband doesn’t understand how I can charge how why anybody would pay this much money for that. Yes, like, Oh my gosh, so I like literally, you know, had to give her like a pep talk and say, you know, here’s how much my coach costs, you know, I pay the person that posts that physically does the work for me a whole lot less than I pay my business coach, because my business coach helps me get and bring in enough money that I can employ all of these other people that work for me right at you know, $20 $50, whatever, because she helps me create the plan that brings in the business. And that’s the mindset you have to have. It’s not about you, it’s not dollars, because you did this one task. And that that once we start shifting that mindset that in search of voice some of the strategies you talked about Natalie, I think everything changes in our business, and I can’t wait to hear the changes that people have as a result of this conversation.

Natalie Eckdahl 49:08
I am so excited to I feel like so much good energy, just in our energy. And I just know that I can feel already that there’s been an impact for this conversation. And I am so excited for women to feel worthy to charge more. And we’re worthy to specialize and we’re worthy to ask for those things that they’ve been dreaming of asking for. So thank you for having me, Karen, I appreciate it so much.

Karen Yankovich 49:33
Thank you so much for being here.

You know if you know, if you follow me on social media, you know that I love having conversations with people that have differing views than me, because I learned from every single person, I love getting a chance to, I don’t know, maybe have a good debate on the topic, right? Because I learn a little bit I’m not looking to you for you to do everything my way. But I think it’s always good to have people that you have differing views, because we learn a little bit about from each other. But it’s also really fun. When you talk to somebody like I felt like Natalie and I talked today in this podcast interview, where we’re right in sync with our vision for our clients. And that is, don’t be afraid of the big income customers. Don’t be afraid of the big sales. Don’t be afraid to think big. I hope that you got some great takeaways from this episode, you heard me talk a little bit about the masterminds that I run and the fast track program that I have.

If you want to learn how to put those. How do you get that big ticket client in place for your business, just go to Karen yankovich.com slash apply and send us an application we’ve got a few spots left for 2019. We only do a very limited number of the fast track sessions. And the mastermind groups are small and we only start one every couple months. So join, just go to Karenyankovich.com/apply. Send us some information. If we think it’s a fit, you and I will be on the phone will talk a little bit about your business. Either way, you’ll get a takeaway from that conversation, whether or not we think there’s an opportunity to work together. But if there is, of course, we’ll tell you what that looks like. So don’t hesitate, go to Karenyankovich.com/apply. Let’s jump on the phone and talk and see if there’s an opportunity for you to dive a little deeper into building that solid revenue stream Natalie referred to it as six figures in profit, not just six figures in income. I love that. Right. So let’s see if we can build that for your business. You know that I’m here to support you in this. That’s why I do this podcast. Don’t forget about our free Facebook group, Karenyankovich.com/Facebook group. We do some pop up live strategy sessions in there so much more. We’d love to have you there as well.

And also if you love this episode, take a quick screenshot right now of this episode on your phone. Share that on your social media. tag me tag Natalie, use the hashtag biz chicks use the hashtag good girls get rich, Natalie and I will share this with our audiences and we’ll all get more visibility that way. The bottom line is I want to be here for you. I want to support you and I want this to be simple for you. So let’s let this be simple. See you back here next week for another episode of the good girls get rich podcast.