The Small Business Trifecta (Part 1)

You're listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, Episode 155. 

Welcome to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Sassen. I went from being a financial adviser, author, and chronic under earner to building my business to six figures as a financial planner and money mindset coach. And then, on to multiple six figures as a fulltime money and business coach. 

I help entrepreneurs create money making businesses and build wealth using sales and money mindset strategies in alignment with authentic Jewish values. Now, let's dive into today's show.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, we are going to start the first of a three-part series that I'm going to be bringing to you in the months of November and December 2024. It is called “The Small Business Trifecta”. 

I have been working with a new group of life coaches. I started a new coaching program a few weeks ago called The Five-Figure Coach Accelerator for new life coaches who want to make the first five figures in their business, the first $10,000 in their business. I'm giving them the real foundational principles of building their business. 

As I was reviewing the material that I've been teaching and coaching my clients on for years already, and simplifying it down for people who are new in the business, I thought that the material that I was covering … I mean, we're doing it a little bit differently. We're having master classes, question and answer times, and we have a Slack community where people can ask me questions all the time and get feedback.

But the questions and the topics that we're covering in The Five-Figure Coach Accelerator are relevant to every business owner at every level. These are questions that even if you've been in business for two years or five years, maybe even 10 years, you need to come back to. 

In fact, I'll just say that I was coaching a woman today who runs a seminary for Jewish women when they finish high school, and her business, even running a school as a business, her school, her business has been in existence for nine years, and things are shifting. There are shifts in the market. There are more competitors than she's used to having. 

These questions are important for us to face over and over again at every stage of our business. So I'm bringing them to you. I thought it would be relevant. 

So we're going to start today with part one. And then in the coming weeks, you're going to get from me part two and part three of “The Small Business Trifecta”.

If you are not on my newsletter, I also recommend that you go and you sign up, because I have some fun things coming up in the weeks ahead. I have a Black Friday offer that I'm working on. That is going to be a really fun bundle. You don't want to miss that. And some other fun stuff coming up in December, Hanukkah time, end of the year time, going into 2025.

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All right, so let us now jump into what I want to cover today. Today, we're going to start with the first part of “The Small Business Trifecta”. And that's really the top level of deciding who you serve, what you offer, and exactly how you serve them. It's kind of the bare bones, the skeletal structure of your business. But it is so important.

Because when we're talking about what you do, so many people talk about, “I'm going to help my clients have their dream life. I'm going to help my clients have their dream body. I'm going to help them bring their dreams into reality.” 

And this is not what your people are walking around the world saying to themselves. Most people, unless they already are living a dream life and they're thinking about, “Oh, what's the next dream? Maybe if I've already vacationed in all of these 87 different locations throughout the world, my dream is to be having such and such a vacation.”

But I imagine that if you're listening to this podcast, that's not your reality. There are other podcasts for travel and luxury cruises and adventures and things like that. So I imagine that if you're here, you are trying to grow your small business and you're trying to get some great tips and some great pointers for how you could do that.

Similarly, your ideal clients, they are somewhere in their life or in their business and something is niggling at them. Something is bothering them. We call this in the business, their “pain point”. Sometimes I will just simply call it their “problem”. 

Because even if you want to go on a luxury cruise, you also have a problem because you need to figure out which luxury cruise is going to be the solution to your “problem” of figuring out how to have your next vacation.

But I digress. Most of our clients have much more well-defined problems. Even if I'm speaking in the business coaching arena, where I hang out as you know, sometimes my clients have a problem where they have money blocks. They feel like they can't raise their prices or nobody will pay their prices. Or they can have a money block around issuing a refund. 

They might have a money block around believing that people like them, that grew up in their kind of a family, on their side of the tracks, “People like us are not allowed to charge.” Or some of my healers and therapist clients are like, “Ooh, I'm not allowed to charge.” All of a sudden it just comes up, “I can't charge for that.” And these are the money blocks or the limiting beliefs that we have.

But sometimes the blocks, or the pain points that my clients have, is when they are writing their content. When they are writing an email or a social media post or something like that, their language is vague. Their language is fuzzy because they don't know exactly, or they haven't taken the time to define very, very specifically who their clients are and exactly how they help their clients have a transformation in the life. 

So then they talk about their fuzzy things. “I help you have a healthier body. I help you make your dream life.” Again, nobody wants that. If your clients want to lose weight, we need to call them out. 

Because there's a big difference between saying, “I'm going to help you get healthy,” and “I'm going to help you lose 10 pounds by December 31st. I'm going to make sure you get through Hanukkah without depriving yourself. We're going to help you eat latkes, eat sufganiyot. We're going to make sure that you schedule in your exercise so that you get to eat your fun stuff.” 

“And you get your exercise even during the cold season. You're going to feel swishy in your clothing. You're just feeling like you are on fire. You're feeling so energized. You're fitting back into your clothes. You’ll lose 10 pounds going through the Hanukkah season without depriving yourself.” 

You see? That's a little bit more activating than, “I'm going to help you get healthy. I'm going to help you lose weight.” That is the specificity of what your people are looking for. 

You have to know exactly who you're helping. Most of my clients are going to be similar to me. They're going to be women. They're going to be women in midlife and they're going to be women with children. Do I coach men? Yes. Do I coach couples? Yes. Do I coach people without children? I do. I do all those things, but my messaging is very specific.

I am talking to women 45, 50, 55, 60. They're similar to me in that most of their kids are grown up and out of the house. They're not dealing with little babies and diapers. Although I do have some, and I love them so, so much. One of my clients was like, “Oh my gosh, you are the same age as my mom.” Yes. I'm the same age as your mom. Isn't that fabulous? I absolutely love it. 

But when you are targeting your clients, you have to know who you are serving. If you are a creative, let's say that you are a website designer, do you help design websites for small businesses, for coaches, for insurance companies, for people in the financial industry? We want to know who are the exact people that you help because every industry is going to have its specifics. 

Can you do websites? Can you make websites for different companies in different industries? Yes, you absolutely can. And if you can be more specific, if you know the language, if you know how the different types of websites are structured… If you're financial, maybe you need to have some encryption on the website so that your clients can upload their financial documents. That's going to be something that's specific to that industry. 

And when you understand exactly how to create special, protected spaces for the clients, that helps you stand out in the industry. So it's very important when you are a small business owner, and also medium and large business owner, defining who you serve.

This is, of the business trifecta, this is the number one thing that you need to know, who exactly are you serving? And make it narrow. Narrow down your niche. I know you can serve everybody, just like I can serve everybody. I can do all the things, but I'm very specific. And I really, really encourage you, and I know that your brain is going to be like, “No, I don't want to. I serve moms, but I can also serve teens.”

It is so true. And if teenagers come to you, and you can help them as a life coach or as a health coach, or somebody has some other issues, parenting, mom, teen problems, you can work with them also. Then if somebody comes to you, especially in the early stages of your business, you can say, “Yes, sure. I also help people like you.” But make sure that you have a very specific image in your mind so that you can talk to that person specifically when you are producing your content.

The second part, of the first part of “The Small Business Trifecta”, is knowing exactly how you help your clients. What is it that you do with your clients? Do you know your process? Do you know how you get your clients from step A to step B? Because they're somewhere. You need to know where they're at and where they're going. And then your process is the bridge between the two things, where they are and where they're at. So it's important for you. 

So many people say, “Yeah, I know what I do, but I don't know how I do it.” If you want to be able to have a sales conversation with your potential clients and convert them into a paying client, your process needs to be clear in your mind. And so taking time away from your business, taking CEO time where you can actually sit down in a chair …. Maybe go outside. It's very inspirational to be outside in nature and ask yourself, what exactly do I do? It doesn't have to be in order.

A couple of years ago, I sat down at my dining room table, I took a pile of sticky notes, and I wrote down all of the things that I do with my clients. I laid them out on a wooden board all over my dining room table. And then what you can do is, you're like, “Well, I helped them to write their emails. I helped them to define their ideal clients. I helped them to close their sales conversations.”

Once, I was able to get all of the pieces out of my mind, then I could actually arrange them in a very neat order. I could group things together that I do with my clients. And that's how I came up with the four pillars of my business. Which are you as the CEO, and your commitment to your business. I call them your 4 C's: Your Commitment. Your Client; you have to know who your client is and how you serve them. Your Content, which is your marketing; how you reach out to them. And your Cash; how you manage your cash in your business. 

So I know what my 4 C's are, my four pillars, and those are my process that I work on with my clients. Similarly, once you get all of that information, all the things you do out of your head, you'll be able to share a process with your clients. How you get them from where they're at to where they're going.

You don't have to take all of the 30 Post-it notes and go through all the fine details with your clients when you have them on a sales call, but your process is going to be clear to you, and you don't have to create it linearly. Again, I recommend that you just take a bunch of Post-it notes, write them down, like a brainstorming session. 

What do I do with this one? What do I do with that one? How have I worked with my clients lately? And it will be so clear in your mind that you will really embody, like down into your body, into your tippy toes, you will be so confident in the work that you do.

And the third part, of this first part of this small business trifecta … I'm just laughing at myself. I think by the next episode that I record, I'm going to have to get my parts straight ... But the last part is knowing where your clients want to go.

As I said, you know where they're at, you know where they want to go, and your process is how you get them from A to B. But it's very important that you, again, specifically define where your clients want to go. Because bringing their dreams into reality, that doesn't tell anybody where you're going to take them. 

Are you taking them to Hawaii or are you taking them to Bali? Everybody has dreams. Everybody wants to take a vacation. Some people love to go skiing. Some people like to go hiking in the mountains. Some people like to go to the beach. Some people want to jump out of a plane and do some skydiving. Everybody's dreams are different.

Again, I know that you can help people do all the things, but you need to speak specifically to your people. Because if your person is adventurous and they want to go skydiving, they're going to find someone who sells them a vacation where they can go skydiving. They're not going to be coming to you because you tell them that they can make their dreams a reality. 

So the more specific you can get about what your clients want, and you can describe that, the more likely your clients are to reach out to you and to say, “I listened to what you had to say. I read your blogs. I read your social media. I read your emails, and it is so clear to me that you are the person who can help me.” So make sure that you can specify. 

Again, if you are a health coach and you help your clients lose 10 pounds in two months, that's very specific. If you are the health coach who helps your clients lose 20 or 30 or 40 pounds over longer periods of time, be specific. Don't be afraid that you're going to leave people out if you get specific about who you are, what you do, and where you take your people.

It's very important, to help you define your people, your process, and their results, for you to listen to the words your people say when you talk to them, when you get them on phone calls or Zoom calls. How do they describe their problems? What words do they use? How do they describe their feelings? Are they frustrated? Are they angry? Are they confused? Are they foggy? 

What are the words that they're using that's describing the situation where they are right now? Because then you will be able to be much more specific. If you are frustrated that in your relationship with your husband, he never listens to what you have to say, and you ask him five times a day to take out the garbage and he doesn't. You hear how specific that is? 

“When we work together on marriage coaching, I will help you stop blaming your husband, stop nagging your husband for all the things you do, and then you're going to feel much more at ease. You're going to feel calmer. You're just going to stop having this angry fire storming up inside of you, raging inside of you all day.” You understand how specific that is and how your people can relate to your content when you speak to them that way?

We're talking emotions. You can visualize exactly what that fire is that’s raging inside of them. That's the specificity that I want you to get with your clients. If you are afraid to say that, and you're just going to be like, “Yeah, I'm going to help you have a happier marriage. I'm going to help you stop fighting with your husband all the time,” it's not specific enough.

They're going to go to people who are able to call out their specific situation. And then you’ll be like, “Yeah, but Debbie, what about if my person isn't angry? She has something else?” Of course, if you're a marriage coach, you can give an email to your clients. Send them emails with various types of things that are happening. Events that are happening or conversations that are happening or not happening in their marriage.

But that, again, is the level of specificity you want to use with your clients. And think for a moment, even how your clients might Google it, right? You might have someone, let's go back to that marriage example, and your client might Google, how can I get my husband to take the garbage out?

Think about how they might speak about it with their friends. They're at a park bench and they're like, “Oh, I'm so frustrated. This and this and this are happening in my household.” Of course, there might be problems where they're saying loshan hara against their husband. We're not going into that right now. But maybe to their sister, maybe to their mother, maybe to their best friend, only one or two people. 

Those are the words. That's the specificity that you want to get to, because when you write those words, or talk those words out or share them in a workshop or a webinar that you're running, your people are going to know that you are the exact person that they want to work with. 

If you're a copywriter, for example, and people are sending emails and their emails are not converting, they're not converting people into paid customers, then you want to be able to say, “Do you send emails and they get crickets? Nobody responds? Nobody clicks on your links and you're just feeling so frustrated and worn out? You're banging your hand against the wall and you don't know what to do? You've been trying to write better, but it's just not happening.”

You see how specific that is? You can just imagine some poor, small business owner sitting in her little office, maybe at her dining room table, typing out to those words. Maybe she’s going to ChatGPT and trying to have ChatGPT improve her writing and still it's not happening. 

So when the copywriter is able to speak specifically to her clients, what they're experiencing, what they're feeling, their levels of frustration, they're just ready to throw in the towel on their business, but they know exactly how to help them, ah, that's when the tide will turn. 

That's when people will be like, “You know exactly what's happening. You must be sitting in my house 24/7 spying on me.” That is what you want to do in order to build the framework for your business. Get very, very specific on who you serve. Don't be afraid to leave people out. When you leave people out and you get more specific, you call in the people who are divinely contracted to work with you. 

Then you know exactly how you help them. Not because you're going to talk through them with 30 steps on your sales call. But when you understand your process, it gives you clarity. And then you can give the high-level pieces to your clients on a discovery call, and you know exactly where you take your clients. You know the transformation that you give them. You know the solution or the results that they're going to have when they finish working with you. 

All right, let's just review. You have to know the “who”. You have to know the “how”. And you have to know what is going to be the change they experience when you work with them. 

All right, my friends, that is part one of “The Small Business Trifecta”. And I look forward to seeing you next week on the podcast for part two. Take care and bye-bye for now. 

Thanks for listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. If you want to stop underselling and underearning and close more sales, you need to clear the limiting money beliefs that are sabotaging your business growth. 

Head on over to DebbieSassen.com/mindset and download my free Money Mindset Workbook. Uncover and dissolve money blocks, like hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are now building six-, multi-six-, and seven-figure businesses and creating true financial freedom.