WHERE THOUSANDS OF ENTREPRENEURS LEARN HOW TO GROW WEEKLY
How To Get To A 98% Sales Conversion Rate and Hit A 12,000% Engagement Rate!🤯 with Kate Bradley Chernis, Co-Founder & CEO Lately
Learn from Kate Bradley Chernis, Co-Founder & CEO of Lately.
You're viewing an archive of Get Sh!t Done Weekly Email Traction Briefings. Join free to receive your weekly 5-minute growth playbooks & grow alongside thousands of entrepreneurs
Hey, It's Alex!
🍵 Here's Your Weekly Tea
Last week, I spoke to a community of entrepreneurs just starting. Someone asked my thoughts on branding. Around the same time, someone else asked if I could stop using cuss words while I spoke. I proceeded with my potty mouth and the person who didn't like the cussing decided it wasn't for them. I respected the hell out of that decision! It was the PERFECT case study in real time. One of the primary failures I see founders make in positioning is trying to be for everybody. Sorry to break it to ya babe but you're not selling air . While it's important to be clear on who you serve, it's just as important to know who you do NOT serve. When you aren't clear on the latter, your brand doesn't stand for anything and suffers in communication from sales to marketing to fundraising, etc. The coolest thing about what happened was that it was clear who our brand spoke to based on who showed up and stayed and who left. I LOVE THAT! Indifference leads to inaction. Great brands make you want to do something.
Let's get into your weekly briefing!
💸 HERE'S YOUR TRACTION BRIEFING
Founder: Kate Bradley Chernis | Company: Lately | Location: New York, NY
Receipts: AI tech co-founder, Kate is the queen of marketing and sales. She's been able to get Lately to nearly a million in ARR, has raised 3.7 million, hit 98% conversion rates and increased her clients' engagement by 12,000%.
Here's your traction playbook...
How To Get A 98% Sales Conversion
Build Trust - Lately has been able to hit 98% conversion by building trust, not only with their community but across their entire industry. Using their own technology, they have created content that resonates with their target audience. This has worked really well for them. According to Kate Bradley Chernis, Lately has been mentioned by someone online at least once everyday. They are now seen as an authority in their field and have so far been able to hit a staggering 98% conversion rate!
🛠️ TRACTION TOOLS: How to get it done...
Everything starts with trust. Learn more here. Slay Your Sales: Learn here how Sophia Stone scaled a 7-Figure Fintech business by mastering sales. 5 Ways To Build Trust In Your Sales Processes: Here.
How to Kill It At Marketing
Master One Thing At A Time - "You don’t have to be everything to everyone, you only have to do one thing really well. And once you can do that well then you can do the next thing. So don’t do paid, owned, and earned - don’t do it all. Pick one. Pick one channel." - Kate Bradley Chernis. Taking a one-channel-at-a-time approach gives you the opportunity to master each one. It also gives you more insight into what's working for your business and what's not. Because let's face it, not every marketing channel is right for your needs.
🛠️ TRACTION TOOLS: How to get it done...
Here are the 4 P's in marketing that you need to consider when choosing a marketing strategy. What Marketing Channels Should You Add To Your Strategy?: Here's how to determine which channels will work best for your business and long-term goals.
How to Navigate The Ups and Downs of Entrepreneurship
Timing is Everything - Entrepreneurship is lawless. It comes with constant ups and downs, and you will probably fuck up more than once. Kate's greatest takeaway from her broad experience is that timing is everything. Every mistake that they have ever made has led them to where they are and will be a factor in their continued success. So when the lows get low, know that they are stepping stones for greater things to come.
Support Kate in Scaling Impact: Kate is looking for investment to help her scale Lately even further. Feel free to connect with her here
🛠️ JOIN A COLLABORATION: Get it done together...
*There are limited spots to join our collaborations for non-members
October 26th @ 1PM: Operations Office Hours & #AskMeAnything: Get feedback on how to set up and scale your company operations. RSVP here.
October 27th @ 6PM: How to Navigate Setbacks in Entrepreneurship: Get the frameworks for getting to your most brilliant ideas following a setback. RSVP here.
November 10th @ 12pm EST | The Don't and Don't-You-Dares of Copywriting: Join copywriting expert Kate Bradley Chernis for a tactical, cliff-notes-style run-through of writing essentials that will make you lean forward and think DUH.. RSVP here.
JOIN THE COMMUNITY: Join our community membership waitlist here.
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🧑🏽🤝🧑🏽 How to Raise a Friends & Family Round; Getting Influencer Marketing Right; Building Brand Authenticity with Rooshy Roy, founder AAVRANI
Learn from Rooshy Roy, founder of AAVRANI
You're viewing an archive of Get Sh!t Done Weekly Email Traction Briefings. Join free to receive your weekly 5-minute growth playbooks & grow alongside thousands of entrepreneurs
Hey, It's Alex!
🍵 Here's Your Weekly Tea
Checking in - Are crypto companies ok? Jk. Clearly, they're not. Here's the thing about pioneering new paths - there will always be those with good character, those who start with good intentions that are influenced into bad behavior, and just outright stinkers. Crypto is here to stay but we gotta stop pimping out the term "innovation" to give bad behavior a bailout.
Let's get into your weekly briefing!
⭐ COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: Learn why we call Queen Rose Jean the "Sales Slayer" here. Join our community membership waitlist here.
💸 HERE'S YOUR TRACTION BRIEFING
Founder: Rooshy Roy | Company: AAVRANI | Location: New York, NY
Receipts: Rooshy managed to scale a beauty company to the millions by building an authentic brand, seeking alternative funding and using unique marketing strategies.
Here's your traction playbook...
How Authenticity 5X'd Conversions And Grew A Brand
Create A Brand That Truly Reflects Who You Are: Truly authentic brands are a reflection of their founders. When creating her brand, Rooshy chose colors and designs that she felt spoke more to her potential customers - but didn't reflect her personal vision for AAVRANI. When rebranding, she looked inward and chose a brand identity true to herself and her brand. As a result, they increased conversions 5X. Learn how this worked here.
How To Nail Influencer Marketing
Build Long-Term Relationships: Consumers are smart. They can see through the rehearsed promotions. Rooshy saw major growth and better engagement by fostering long-term relationships with specific influencers. They also take time to carefully choose influencers who reflect their brand and who genuinely have an interest in their products. This approach has increased trust in their product and loyalty from their customer base. Learn exactly how AAVRANI approaches long-term influencer marketing here.
How To Raise From Friends & Family, Angels & Family Offices
VC Isn't The Only Vehicle and it isn't the way for most businesses. AAVRANI first approached their network of family and friends for capital. They now have very little institutional capital. Most of their funding sources came from family offices & angels.
Once you have traction, you may need capital to grow, but there are many funding paths. That's why AAVRANI sought funding primarily from family and friends. Here's why they did this and how they were successful.
Support Rooshy in Scaling Impact: Follow AAVRANI on their social media pages (@aavrani)
TRACTION TOOLS: How to get it done...
Best Practices For Raising A Friends & Family Round: Here are factors to consider when seeking to raise substantial capital from your close network.
Beginner's Guide To Influencer Marketing: Here's a beginners guide to everything you need to know.
Raising Capital From Individuals: Find out how our Queen, Fawn Weaver, was able to raise $60 Million Dollars from individuals here.
Long-Term Influencer Marketing: Here are the benefits of long-term influencer marketing.
Understand your funding options relative to your growth stage here.
GET YOUR FREE 5-MIN WEEKLY GROWTH PLAYBOOKS
⚠️ Are your business processes hurting your company? Here's how to make them more efficient with Stephanie Neale, co-founder Blind Zebra
Learn from Stephanie Neale, co-founder of Blind Zebra
You're viewing an archive of Get Sh!t Done Weekly Email Traction Briefings. Join free to receive your weekly 5-minute growth playbooks & grow alongside thousands of entrepreneurs
Hey, It's Alex!
Developing processes is one of the biggest pain points for founders in trying to grow into scale. We gotchu covered. But first...
🍵 Here's Your Weekly Tea
With the tomfoolery happening with Elon Musk & Twitter, women worldwide were reminded of the crazy privileges men have including playing games with billions of $'s. Meanwhile, women are just out here seeking equity 🤷🏽♀️ Also, I can’t hear one more company justify mass layoffs as a means to focus on "self-sustainability." So wait… WTF were they doing before?! #StupidMoney Anywho…
Let's get into your weekly briefing!
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💸 HERE'S YOUR TRACTION BRIEFING
Founder: Stephanie Neale | Company: Blind Zebra | Location: Indianapolis, IN
Receipts: Stephanie is a self-proclaimed sales chick who has worked in several industries from automotive to SaaS. She has managed to bootstrap a 7-figure consultancy by deconstructing limiting mindsets and programmatizing her business.
Here's your traction playbook...
How To Deconstruct The Scarcity Mindset When Trying To Make A Sale
Ground Yourself In Abundance: Sales scarcity thoughts will kill you! A scarcity mindset says there's never enough. There's never enough resources, opportunities, finances, etc. This mindset will make you anxious, fearful, and even desperate.
Lesson - One of Blind Zebra's key sales philosophies is abundance. Developing an abundance mindset, especially early on will make you a powerful sales leader. An abundance mindset knows that there is more than enough to go around. It creates confidence and enthusiasm in you that you will carry to all your pitches. There are plenty of leads to go around. If it's not the one you're working on, it's the next one. Learn here how Stephanie Neale approaches this philosophy.
Here's how sales leaders can create an abundance mindset.
How To Streamline Your Business Processes
Document Everything:: Whether you're a one-person company or a 100-person company, you need to have your processes documented. Lack of documentation means you never know where mistakes were made or where the inefficiencies are. Document early and document often.
Lesson -"Start with the end in mind. If you are building something, document it. Figure out what you're doing and as you grow, you have somewhere to go back and edit and iterate. From an operational perspective, get some systems in place now." - Stephanie Neale. One of the biggest factors that helped Blind Zebra grow to a 7-figure business was the fact that they had their systems and operations down very early. Having streamlined and documented processes creates efficiency, improves productivity, reduces expenses, improves employee satisfaction, and increases transparency and compliance.
Learn the key fundamentals of process documentation here.
How Your Money Script May Be Affecting Your Relationship With Money
Get Trusted People In Your Corner: You can't create a quality product without testing. Testing gives you the opportunity to find out if your product is something the market actually wants. Not only does it give proof of concept, but it can help you save a lot of coin.
Lesson - In her experience as a sales and client success coach, Stephanie Neale has found that a lot of women in particular have guilt when it comes to money. They have hang ups about making too much or being too much. As a result, this leads to self sabotage especially as they start to progress. It's important to understand your beliefs and traumas around your finances - not only for your business, but also your personal life. Learn here how Stephanie Neale approaches money scripts.
Here are 5 steps to transform your relationship with money
Support Stephanie in Scaling Impact
Here's how you can support Stephanie: You can visit Blind Zebra's website here where they offer a free premium webinar with sales partners like Gong.io and occasional free sales coaching. You can also engage with her on her LinkedIn page @Stephanie Neale.
TRACTION TOOLS: How to get it done...
Blind-Zebra's Sales Guide: Here you'll find a collection of valuable lessons that will help you take your sales game to the next level.
Operate More Efficiently: Business processes are repeatable. Streamlining your work processes will make your business operate faster, smarter and more efficiently. Learn how here.
Master Sales As A Founder: Find out how our Queen, Kristi Zuhlke, was able to grow sales and get to an exit here.
Develop The Right Mindset: Here's how one of our Queen's was able to build and scale her fintech platform by developing the right mindset at every stage.
What Is A Money Script?: These are the 4 basic money scripts and how they can affect your relationship with money.
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How to Find Your $10,000 Hour: Prioritizing Time & Nailing Pricing with Kara Smith Brown, founder LeadCoverage
Learn from Kara Smith Brown, founder of LeadCoverage.
You're viewing an archive of Get Sh!t Done Weekly Email Traction Briefings. Join free to receive your weekly 5-minute growth playbooks & grow alongside thousands of entrepreneurs
"If I’m spending time on a $10 task, I’m stealing $9,990 from my business" Kara Smith-Brown, LeadCoverage
Kara Smith-Brown, scaled a 7-figure business by year 3 and is now on a path to $10M.
Can you guess what she attributes her success to?
SALES.
I know we sound like a broken record but I swear we don’t plan it this way. It just happens that 100% of the people on our podcast have scaled successfully through founder selling early and often.
What’s that saying? If it ain’t broke don’t…..
Are you stealing from your own business?
If so, no worries. We gon' learn to stop that s**t today and sell, huni!
What we'll brief you on:
Where women business owners are getting stuck resulting in only 1.7% of us ever achieving $1M in revenues.
How to figure out the $10,000 hour by prioritizing your time & nailing pricing
How picking a specific box led the company from $250k to being on a path towards $10M.
How to slay your #1 job is as CEO.
How they grew 60% YOY in the middle of the pandemic when they thought the market would fall
How to Find Your $10,000 Hour: Prioritize Your Time & Pricing
Founder: Kara Smith Brown | Company: LeadCoverage| Location: Atlanta, GA
Receipts before LeadCoverage
At 25, Kara was the 12th employee of Echo Global logistics. The company grew 3000% in 3 years while she was there and was on a path to going public. Prior to going public, they asked her to figure out what they needed to do to go public. She literally grabbed "How to IPO for Dummies". #NoJoke. Fast Forward - The company is now public and her name is on the IPO release. It’s giving receipts and we are here for it allllllll!
Here's the tea...
Problem-solving
"Someone told me that less than 2% of women founders will ever break $1M. And I said - challenge accepted." After the IPO of Echo, another company recruited her to help with an IPO but it imploded. She knew that she only had 3-6 months left so she and her husband decided to move to Atlanta and have their 2 kiddos. During this time, Kara was helping friends with email marketing to convert leads.
Solution
She launched the B2B only lead generation shop for Hubspot for companies specifically in supply chain and heavy industrial space. Kara already knew this market from previous experience. You'll learn why this type of focus matters in a min!
Where women business owners get stuck.
"Women are creating jobs for themselves in their businesses." The biggest barrier for women entrepreneurs is revenue. Kara finds that women are struggling from Moving from creating a job for themselves to small business owner to scale. Kara breaks this down into 3 phases: Phase One: Making yourself a job where you don’t have employees. Phase Two: Putting together a small team and starting to put processes in place. Phase Three: Scale. Getting into the millions with multiple employees. Learn how you can get unstuck to get on a path to scale.
Pick Your Specific Box
"One of the things that helped us go from $250k to we’re looking towards $10M now is that we have chosen a very specific box." Y’all have heard me say it before and I’m got’ say it again, and again, and…. Niche is SEXY! Early-stage founders get stuck in the clouds by failing to get focused on one segement that creates iniital momentum early on that leads you to the big vision. One way to conquer this is by getting focused on what we call your "Hell Yes" customer. You don’t need to convince them of your value and they’re willing to pay a premium for what you offer. Speaking to everyone means you're solving for no one. Learn how to refine your box to grow.
Your #1 Job as CEO - Finding Your $10k Hour
"My job as CEO is to set strategy and keep cash in the bank. There are 4 types of hours: You have a $10, $100, $1000, and $10,000 hour. It’s your responsibility as the owner of the business to free yourself up for the $10,000 hour. If I’m spending my time on a $10 task, I’m literally stealing $9,990 from my business" Figure out your $10k hour here.
How to Get & Stay Focused
"People are trying to solve problems they know nothing about." Some of the BEST companies are started by people solving problems that A. They’ve experienced and found the solution or B. They have industry-specific expertise. Kara mentions that in order to make this happen you need to first figure out what you are the best to solve for. More importantly, she mentions that it does NOT need to be sexy. So many founders are chasing trends instead of solutions. Some of the most lucrative businesses don’t mention AI, VR, Crypto, or whatever the hell is the buzzword today. They tap into a feeling by telling you what solution they’ll solve for their customer. Get the playbook on how to get and stay focused here.
What if You’re a Solo Entrepreneur or Have a Small Team?
"I will sacrifice almost anything to sell. I will not show up for meetings. I will ditch one-on-ones. The highest priority and the highest best use of my time is selling" Das it. That’s Kara’s advice. However, she acknowledges that this is super hard for women because we’re natural nurturers. We want to touch every employee, be at every game for the kids, etc and she says there’s no shame in that. However, Kara mentions that you have to decide whether you want to have a job or build an empire. Neither is wrong but it is a choice. Figure out what choice is best for you here.
Scale Major Keys - Pricing & Confidence.
"Sir, I think we’re too sophisticated for you at this point." This is exactly what Kara said to a lead who tried to nickel and dime her on price. Major BVE (big vagina energy) It’s key to nail your pricing and have confidence that what you’re offering is worthy AF. Once you get pricing down - scale happens in retention. Therefore, figuring out what in your business can generate recurring revenue is critical to creating your flywheel. Learn how to nail pricing & be confident in asking for what you deserve.
Prioritizing Your Time
"It takes me just as long to close a project-based client at $20k vs. a $120k retainer client." You’ll hear a lot about sales but what I love about Kara’s breakdown is she gives you the run-through of how she utilizes her time. From who she hires, to what sacrifices she makes, to her content planning frameworks. For example, they closed a $25,000/mo deal just from 1 LinkedIn post that she worked with a ghostwriter on while batching content. Learn how you can better prioritize your time.
Where You Can Support Kara?
If you're a company using Hubspot and want to level up your leads and sales funnel, connect with Kara.
TRACTION TOOLS: How to get it done...
Here are some tools that will help you get to your $10,000 hour, get pricing right, and prioritize your time<3
Get the Breakdown on the math behind getting to your $10k hour here.
Have you mastered the 80/20 rule? If not, get the guide on high leverage time management.
Maybe you never learned pricing? That's ok! We hear this often with founders. It's never too late to get started. Check it out Startup Pricing 101.
Check out the 7 different pricing strategies startups use here
Ready to develop your pricing hypothesis? Learn how to map it out here.
How Pricing Drives 20-30% of Top Line Growth: Get Sh!t Done Growth Ally & Founder of Pricing Tool, Accrue lays it out below.
JOIN THE COMMUNITY
Explore community membership here.
GET YOUR WEEKLY 5-MIN TRACTION BRIEFINGS SO YOU CAN GROW
How to Scale a 7-Figure Service Business & Fund a FinTech Company with Sophia Contreras Stone
Learn from Sophia Contreras Stone, founder of Indie Tech.
You're viewing an archive of Get Sh!t Done Weekly Email Traction Briefings. Join free to receive your weekly 5-minute growth playbooks & grow alongside thousands of entrepreneurs
"Entrepreneur is a synonym for salesperson and salesperson is the pedestrian term for storyteller." Scott Galloway
The startup ecosystem does not value service businesses enough. We love to hype up tech but here's the thing... Some of the best scalable businesses started out as services (think Mailchimp) Here's why - services businesses are innovation R&D labs giving you blueprints for scale.
However, there's an art to learning what to lean into, and a part of that comes from mastering sales. This is where service companies have the upper hand over their pure tech counterparts.
Ready to learn how to master sales in way that doesn't feel icky?
What we'll brief you on:
How she built out her services company.
How she leaned into what was working to scale the services business to 6-figures then to 7-figures.
How mastering enterprise sales helped her make this move and a masterclass in how you can do it too.
How to build confidence in selling so you can slay your way to sales.
How she used the revenues from her service-based business to fund her fintech company.
HERE'S YOUR TRACTION BRIEFING: How Service Based Companies Can Scale & Mastering Sales
Founder: Sophia Contreras Stone | Company: Indie Tech | Location: Toronto, ON
Receipts before Indie Tech
"I grew up hella poor." Sophia started 2 years in community college and took out $100k in student loans to finish university abroad. Despite years of experience, she was only able to snag a sales job making $1700/month (before taxes!) and eating a slice of pizza for lunch and dinner. If you’ve ever been broke, you already know what’s up. My broke meals were PB&J or Ramen (with allll the spices) and lowkey... Today, I sometimes buy them as a comforting homage to the girl who got me here. What's your broke meal? Sophia later moved on from pizza slices into banking because that’s where serious cash was at. Little did she know, her selling prowess + insider knowledge of banking became a recipe for a dope-ass business.
Problem-solving
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably consulted at some point. Most founders have. That’s how I stacked a cool 5-figures to launch Get Sh!t Done. Sophia realized that there was too much red tape making it damn near impossible for consultants to work in a meaningful way with banks. Deals weren’t going to vendors who were the best. Instead, banks relied on the same pre-existing relationships (hmmmmmm... sound familiar?) Sophia quickly learned banks did not have systems in place to actively participate in the burgeoning gig economy. Meaning, they were missing out on 55 million opportunities to find the best folks to work with. That’s 34% of the workforce.
Solution
Initially, she offered a services company that acted as a "cooperative of independent consultants." This got the company to 6-figures but to scale, she knew that they had to remove the manual components. They evolved to a service vendor management system backed by AI to help banks go from simply finding commodified labor without the right expertise to a curated system that managed relationships from start to finish. She walks through her journey here.
Growing services Businesses to 6-figures
Did you know that 20% of Latin-owned businesses are in services? That’s exactly where Sophia got her start. Instead of obsessing over scale, she did a lot of shit that didn’t scale to learn what could. (Do things that don’t scale should be your motto pre-6-figures) However, to prevent herself from getting stuck in the weeds, Sophia methodically documented errythang! By talking to customers often, she identified key pain points that hadn’t been solved by the market that Indie Tech was uniquely positioned to solve. This is where service companies have a leg up. The one-on-one nature of the business gives you so much intel early on, whereas some tech companies fall short because they hide behind product and build blindly. If you ain’t talkin’ to your customers regularly, you’re wasting innovation.Get Sophia’s process here.
How Mastering Enterprise Sales moved her from 6-figures to 7-figures...
Relationships, not Transactions. Put it on a shirt! Sophia learned that the best sales technique was building relationships. Being human is the first step to mastering sales This is why she doesn’t even believe in sales titles. Sophia basically gives you a mini masterclass on sales by breaking down how to learn the dynamics of an organization, learn who is who, what questions to ask, how to get them to work together, how to secure SOW’s (Statement of Work) and MSA’s (Master Service Agreements). Have you ever heard of the 3-legged stool? You gon’ learn today! This is major for enterprise sales. Get the mini sales masterclass here.
How to Build Confidence in Founder Sales
"You need to know that you’re the shit and your product is the shit" Sophia did not come to play! She reminds us that deference is not helping you and quite frankly, we gotta stop telling women to be humble. It's the system's way of saying - stay small. Hard pass. Give yourself all the flowers Sophia teaches you how she musters the courage and confidence to get in front of top executives and treasurers of banks. In the meantime, if you ever need a little reminder that you are the mothaf***in sh!t, you can borrow my hype song. Seriously - you’re welcome ;)
How to move from 7-figures to scale....
Sophia walks through how the services business allowed her to understand what they could patent and sell for scale - a supplier risk system that helps companies manage their supply chain. And guess what - she didn’t have to wait on a check from an investor to fund it because her investor was the service-based business. Check and mate Learn how Sophia made money moves by her damn self.
How You Can Support Sophia?
Sophia’s call to action - stop competing and start sponsoring each other. For her - collective impact starts at a community level. She wouldn't have been able to break barriers into businesses without her sponsors. We couldn’t agree more <3
SALES MOVES: Securing the REAL Bag
How to Acquire 150k Users Using TikTok for B2B & B2C
Did you know that TikTok had MORE traffic in 2021 than Google? Real talk - we're kind of here for it and more importantly, here for learning how to optimize the platform to drive sales. Check out how to drive sales via TikTok and how to get started below...
Here are some tools that will help you sell NOT die <3
Learn More About the 3-Legged Stool to secure the sale.
Wanna practice building Confidence in Sales. Check this out.
What should you sell? Data, not drama! Michelle breaks down how she scaled a multi-million dollar business in 3 years that's profitable by learning what to lean into and sell by listening to the data. Learn how to use her frameworks to lean into what you can sell.
Selling > Fundraising: Last week, Heather broke down how she was able to scale her company to profitability by focusing on sales that would later help her raise $3M from a place of opportunity later. Learn how she did it.
JOIN THE COMMUNITY
Explore community membership here.