#261 Visionary Habits that Create Quick Momentum

“It will slow everything up in your business if you're not crystal clear on where you're going. And some people like to call that goal and sure we can call it goals. But I really think that sometimes casting a vision can lead us into more beautiful places than just setting goals.“

Welcome to Thrive by Design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. Spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make you ready. All right, let's do this.

Tracy: Welcome to the Thrive by Design podcast episode 261. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, Chief Visionary Officer at Flourish and Thrive Academy where we help overwhelmed jewelryprenuers and creative product brands become in demand designers, by using a little something we call the Desire Brand Effect, where we help you attract and build a bigger audience. convert those people into paying customers and get them to buy from you over and over again by building massive loyalty and then scaling those results because in my opinion, jewelry and creative products and aspirational products are all things that basically need to have desire created about them. And that's the only reason why people buy them because no one needs jewelry.

No one really needs candles, but they like them because they make them feel good. So your customers need to connect with your brand and we show you how to do that and I'm super excited to be here today. Now this is a particularly exciting episode because I consider myself a visionary and I consider many of you are visionaries too and I know that creative visionaries have a special gift because we are able to see big visions and a big thing, big plans for the future, I would say like our strength is not necessarily in the details. But a lot of times like we take for granted the ability to see at high level. And the reason why I'm bringing this up, is because I was on a call today, as I'm recording this podcast, with a group that I am. And I'm going to be announcing this more later down the road with a group that I am on the board of advisors for because it is a nonprofit in the jewelry space.

And this group was, you know, asking my advice on some marketing things, because I do have a lot of experience building community and creating programs and all those things. And I asked them, like, what's your vision for this? And they all stared at me blankly. Well, Tracy, we need you so that you can create the vision. I'm like, it's not my company. But you know, it is a nonprofit. So I was helping them a little with that. And I realized like a lot of people kind of get stuck when they have to think about, like, where they're going in business or what it is that they want to create instead. They get so caught up in lost in the details of the day to day of their business, that they forget that there is a bigger plan to all of these things.

And you know, when I decided to when I had the idea for Flourish and Thrive Academy eight years ago, and I asked my friend Robin Kramer to help me co found it. And we launched this brand. You know, in the beginning, I was just like, well, let's just see if it works. And we'll launch a program or two, and keep things going. And now eight years later, where we started is so different than where we are now. Because after doing that for a couple years and starting to see like, okay, we're making a huge impact on people's lives. They're not only are their businesses changing, but their lives are changing to where do we see this going? And so back then, you know, we were working with a lot of handmade jewelers and people who were selling on Etsy who wanted to get off Etsy and build their own creative brand.

I don't we never really have been the people you go to for advice on Etsy. We've included that in certain parts and aspects of what we do. However, I do believe that e-commerce is really the way to go. And your own brand website and I've always talked about that. So, back then, you know, we specifically chose the name Flourish and Thrive because we had a vision of being able to help other creative product brands one day, and it took us about seven and a half or seven years to kind of get there, when we started inviting people in the handbag and wallpaper and gifts and pottery and all those kinds of spaces. And I know we've had other people in the past, but we're really opening up our audience right now. Because we realize that people who have products that require a conversation about them, it's it's something so different. And so back to this idea of vision, you know, back then, like my vision was to just have a successful program that helped people. And then when that started working, my vision changed. 

Well, now I want to help X amount of people and then I want to be able to help them in all areas of their business and then I want to create a mastermind program and then we decided to close the mastermind down a couple of years ago. We launched a coaching program that was specifically around online marketing in e-commerce, then that has evolved into our program, which is now called Momentum where we have multiple levels. And that started the process of us redesigning our entire Ascension model over at Flourish and Thrive Academy to make sense from start to beginning so that when people come to us, they know exactly where to start. And there's no confusion. And it's super easy. And so if you are someone who's looking for help, I'm just going to mention this here, because this is the perfect segueway for that we can help you, we can help you if you're in startup phase, meaning you're doing less than $100,000 in revenue a year, doesn't matter if you've been in business for, you know, 20 years if you're doing less than $100,000.

And you have goals of going bigger, or even just making it more sustainable. So you're working not as hard to keep your kind of lifestyle business and that lower in that lower financial range. Then we can help you there and the reason why we have this hundred thousand dollar metric is because in a product based business, there was a hard cost to creating inventory and keeping merchandise on hand. And if you want to take home a modest salary of $50,000 a year, we figured that if your margins are really good, you would have to be making at least $100,000 a year in order to do that. And I think that with the right systems and structures in place, you can certainly do that with a very small team. And it's not that hard.

Even if you're a maker and you're making everything. So that's the first metric that we have. And then the next metric is like people who are in the high five, because sometimes there's a little overlap, you know, in those layers, like they've already gone through all the foundational work, their business is growing. They're in like high five figures, maybe like 75-80,000, and they want help with that next step or with implementing all the things that they've learned. And so that's where Momentum comes in. We have two levels in momentum. One is called Accelerate, and this is where we really help you accelerate your goals to the next level and then Elevate is for people who are already in the hundred plus or multiple six figure range, we're trying to scale to mid or high six figures or even seven figures in their business, using their website and other sales channels to grow their sales. 

So if you're like you would like help, because at each stage in business, what we do know is that you have very different, unique problems. And I say that because when you're first starting out, and you're in that sub $100,000 Mark, typically Your problem is getting consistent, predictable sales and optimizing your business in a way so that you can do everything without driving yourself crazy. Am I right? Or am I right? I think I'm right, because I've been there before. In the second phase, when you're kind of in that more growth phase. You know, your problems are different, you know, the, the workload that you're bringing on oftentimes becomes too much for just one person to do.

So there is an opportunity for systematizing and streamlining lining and optimizing and automating things on the back end, so that you can either do more on your own and or Bring in some freelancers to help support you with marketing or technology or these other things. And this will be like when you're bringing in someone who's just working a couple hours a week for you, or a couple hours a month. And then you get to that bigger phase where you actually start hiring team members who maybe are working part or full time for you, we were managing a company, and really growing and so like each of those phases, like there's different levels of frustration, there's different pain points, different things that we need to be looking at for growth.

And so we're helping you based on the different programs based on where you are, and in that, that phase. So if you're interested in getting our help, we'd love to help you. So you can just head on over it's super simple. All you gotta do is fill out an application. This is part of our new flow, because we want to actually talk to you to see what your problems are and to see how we can support you and help you solve those problems. Because every business is unique and we understand that so it doesn't matter if you have a jewelry company or create a product brand, or even when we work with product based businesses, obviously Because that's our forte.

But we do help, we can help you even if you don't have just a jewelry company is what I'm trying to say here. So if you're interested in getting our help and seeing how we can help you based on where you are in business, then I would love to invite you to jump on a Momentum Accelerator call, all you have to do is head on over to https://www.flourishthriveacademy.com/strategy/ And on that page, you're going to see a full explanation of what we do to help people and all you have to do is click on the link to see if you qualify. And you'll fill out an application which will take you probably about 15ish minutes, depending on how quickly you move through it. And once you're done with that, we're going to give you the next steps on what to do so the call is free. 

We just ask that you only head over there and fill out that call if you're serious about getting help from us. You know this is not a free coaching call or anything like that. This is really for people who are serious, who want and desire help. And they want to get a team of professionals's eyes on their business right now. And the reason why I say that is because We have a team of coaches, we have about 20 different coaches or more at this point, who have serious expertise in their field. We have people with conversion experts, website experts, messaging experts, collection development experts, wholesale experts, like all kinds of experts that run the gamut from traditional sales methodology, all the way through, you know, e-commerce and online marketing. So we are here to meet you exactly where you are in your business and to help you grow your results. And a lot of times, what I've seen happen is that when I was first starting out, I didn't value investing in myself. As much as I do now.

I mean, I pay for really expensive masterminding and coaching programs and consulting to support me because where I am in business now is very different than where I was then. And a lot of times, we end up becoming our biggest bottleneck in business. And I know, over the past two years, I've grown so much as a leader, you know, like the way I lead my team, the way I manage people and all those things has completely shifted And I was doing some things that were actually before that, that I couldn't, I didn't even realize that I was the problem that were causing people to basically, it was causing, like really bad morale and things weren't working very properly, it was costing me a lot of money.

But I couldn't see it. It wasn't until someone else came in and like pointed out, like, hey, maybe you should consider that. If you do x, this is going to be the result. Maybe if you looked at it a different way, then you might get the desired result that you're looking for. And so that's, that's sort of where this comes in. So if you're interested in getting some help, because if you if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're struggling, if your sales numbers aren't where you be, if you feel like you don't have any money left over at the end of the day, a lot of those things are oftentimes, and I say money left over over today because I had a million dollar company in revenue, that with zero money leftover at the end of the day, or very little profit. So it doesn't I'm saying that it could be you know that your sales are low, but also could be that your sales are high. You're just your business is like leaking cash and there's a lot of ways that we can help me fix that. So I'd love to help you. 

And if you're interested in getting our help, head on over tohttps://www.flourishthriveacademy.com/strategy/ and let's see what we can do for you. And once again, we're going to ask you to see if you qualify, you're going to fill out an application for a call, you're going to jump on a call with our business accelerator specialist. She's going to talk to you about your vision, what you're trying to achieve in your business, what some of your problems are, what's preventing you from getting there. And then we'll talk about if we think that we can help you we're not going to try and sell you something that if we can't help you, I will guarantee you that because it doesn't do anyone a service. We only want to help people that we know we can help and we've done such a good job. And we've helped over 7500 brands at different phases in business, grow and reach their goals. So if you're someone who wants our help, we'd love to help you.

And that's what brings me to this episode today, which is all about visionary and momentum. So I mentioned this briefly. I was on the board of advisors for a nonprofit The jewelry space and I was asked to jump on a marketing call because they're trying to figure out what tools to use in order to create the experience that they want. And I was asking them, I'm like, what are your long term goals? Like, where do you see this going? And no one can quite answer the question. I was like, how could you not know where you're going? And because they have all these patchwork solutions right now, so I was recommending some different membership applications that they could use. And I realized after that, and then, you know, I feel like the universe like one of the reasons why I you know, when I'm planning these podcasts out some in this year, it's been very last minute because of everything that happened with COVID and having to basically scrap our entire podcast plan and start over.

It's been quite interesting because everything shifted super quickly. So we're coming back to getting back on to our normal schedule of things that I like to talk about. And it just seems that there's always a sequence of events that ends up happening that inspires the topic for the podcast. So I ended up over the last couple of weeks talking to two or three people that were like I was like, so we're what, what's your vision? Like? Where do you see this going? And they couldn't answer the question. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about some visionary habits or things that you need to be thinking about, that are going to create quicker momentum in your business so that you stop fighting against yourself, because I think this is really important. Because it will slow everything up in your business if you're not crystal clear on where you're going. And some people like to call that goal. 

And sure, we can call it goals. But I really think that sometimes casting a vision can lead us into more beautiful places than just setting goals because goals I think of oftentimes are like hard numbers or factual instead of painting the picture of what we want to create. And so with that being said, one of the, you guys probably have heard me talk about my boyfriend, Jason. He's been on the podcast, I think three times by now. He was on two weeks ago and the week before that, and He is one of our Momentum coaches, actually, he's our mindset and success coach. He's amazing at business operations and getting people out of their own way.

He helps me on a daily basis, get out of my own way. And so I wanted to just talk a little bit about this. Because for people, when you have people who you actually like, look at you and call you on your BS, I'll try not to swear on here, you're gonna move forward a lot more quickly. And so but when you can't paint the picture of what you're trying to create, it's a lot easier to get there. And so, one of the things when I was in this conversation with this nonprofit, and these other brands that I was mentoring is that they weren't super clear on where they're going. And because they don't have they might not. I mean to say this, because not everyone has these huge ambitious goals of having like, a multi million dollar business because I think for a lot of people, that sounds painful and not interesting. In fact, I was talking with a designer who's in our momentum program. She started out doing about $65,000. 

When she started out, she's like, probably going to end and this year doing 200 to 250. And she's like, Look, I don't have massive goals, I don't want a big business, I'm pretty much good. Like with what I'm creating right now. And that's cool. Like, that's, that's who she is. And that's what she wants. She doesn't want to have to hire a bunch of people. She just wants to make the most and like, like, every day and all those things. And that's perfect. And so that's her vision. And that's good. And so sometimes I just want to remind you that it doesn't have to be growth, it doesn't have to be something that's big like growth, growth, always it might just be status quo. But a lot of times the status quo is even harder than growth. And so I don't want to bring that to your attention. So it could be just you want to get your business on autopilot.

So you're coasting you know, and it might be that you want to remove yourself from your business might be that you want to paint the picture of this lifestyle. In fact, you know, for many years, I was trying to paint the picture of what it would be like to be in a relationship with someone He was like an equal conscious partner. And I use that term because I've dated a lot of guys and I've, you know, experienced a lot and have had a lot of different relationships after I got divorced when I was 30. Some of them were long term, some of them were very short term. And there was always something missing because there was either one piece or the other. It wasn't that I was with someone who was ambitious and motivated, but they weren't like thoughtful and mindset oriented or like cared about me that much, or I was with someone who was super sensitive and and very evolved a very Evolved Human, but they weren't ambitious, and I and they were unmotivated.

. And so I really wanted to be with someone who was both and it took a lot of work internally from me, and a lot of painting the picture of what I wanted to feel when I was with that person in order to create it. And Jason walked into my apartment last year in April. And I mean, the rest is history. We started dating in November, but he started consulting for my company.And things evolve pretty quickly and now I'm in like an amazing relationship, which is awesome. 

But that would have never happened had I not really gotten clear on what what I wanted to create, it took me almost 20 years to find him like from or for him to find me Maybe I should say, from, you know, my last I mean, I wouldn't say that the relationships I had weren't significant because they were definitely. But this is like, I feel like a really big, powerful thing that's happening in my life right now. And so. And I, when I look back to all the big milestones that I've had, it's been the same process. It's about casting this big vision, and imagining feeling what it's like to be in that situation. 

You know, over the last couple of years, with all of my businesses, I've had to do a lot of internal work and change who I was and how I was showing up in order to get what I wanted from the business because I kept trying to push it on other people. And in fact, because I was trying to push all the work on other people, what ended up happening is I ended up making a bigger mess inside the company at certain points you pushing people away. And so this is the place you have to start. And it's hard for some people and I get that. But you need to cast a broad vision of what you're trying to create in your life in your career. In fact, we kind of walk you through this in a new bundle that we have.

It's called the Success Maximizer Bundle, I'll put a link in the show notes, you can just head on over to https://www.flourishthriveacademy.com/success-maximizer/  in order to grab it. But it's really about being able to cast a big vision, understanding where you're going. So this means that your journal in this exercise actually happens in the journal prompts that we have in the Success Maximizer bundle. It's like 15 pages of journal prompts, not to overwhelm you, but there's their different sections for different types of things that you're trying to create. But getting really clear, if you're able to actually paint the picture of what you want your life to look like. If you can see where you're living like experience, the feelings you're feeling, see how your family's interacting. What are your relationships like all these things? 

How much money do you have? How are you able to spend your money? How are you traveling or going on vacation, I know, all of us would be super excited to actually be able to go on a vacation right now like a real vacation where you get on a plane and go somewhere and like lounge on a beach and lay by the pool or whatever and go to a hotel or whatever it is. I'm like dreaming of this. I can't wait. Shout out to pure CAD designs here in New York City, who sent me an amazing book as a gift because I'm one of their clients for my jewelry company that said, 100 places to visit before you die. And I'm like, Jason and I were looking at that the other night, he's like, we need to look at that together. So we can plan some trips for next year. 

So I'm sure that all of us are in that space. So get crystal clear on what it is you're trying to create not only with your business, but with the rest of the things because for a lifestyle business or for a company like most of the people that we serve over here, your business and your life are very interconnected. I hate to break it to you but they are and if you aren't showing up or understanding what that looks like, it's going to be a really hard to create And you won't be happy, I'm just telling you or be harder to be happy, I'm not going to say you're going to be unhappy, but it'll be harder to create. Then once you have that, you need to take a look like work backwards, like what needs to happen in order to reach that goal. Last week, we talked about success metrics I talked about, you know, a lot of people say they have this vision of making a sale a day on their website, or 100 sales a day on their website.

Well, you can actually track that back to math to figure out what needs to happen. We know that cold traffic 1% conversion when they land on your website, that's a good conversion, or standard conversion. So if you're more than that, you're doing great. If you're less than that you're you need to have some work to do. And if you know that the numbers you can work backwards to actually reach that goal of one sale a day. Well, the same thing happens with your broad vision. So let's say you have a goal of working less and feeling less overwhelmed. Well what needs to happen in order to do that you need to have systems in your business. You need to make sure that you're not reinventing the wheel all the time, so you're not doing three things at once.

I remember one time I was speaking with one of our momentum workers. Graduates, Jennifer Dawes. She's an amazing designer. And she interviewed me for an exit interview as she was graduating from the program. And her result was so significant. She was saving. She's a very established business. She's already like she's in stores all over the world. She's a very successful business. And one of the things that she was struggling with is that she felt like her and her team. Were doing the same thing over and over again, like, you input something here, but it had to also be input here, like nothing was talking to each other. And it was really expensive. It was causing her to have more team than she needed. And we worked with her and at the end of that when she eventually streamlined it because she wanted to be able to have joy when she was spending time that was like her ultimate goal is to be joyful again.

It wasn't even necessarily like she didn't care as much about the revenue number. It was really more about how she wanted to feel once she was able to cut out all the inefficiencies in her business. It relieves a lot of stress. And it was a lot of work for her to do. It took her over a year. And she started saving $18,000 a month, you guys like what would $18,000 a month do for you? in your life, I think for most of us, it would make a huge impact. So you need to work backwards and understand what needs to happen in order for you to reach that goal and get crystal clear. It's not just waving a magic wand, this is going to take work. And a lot of times when we're doing it ourselves, we can't see what the work is and it becomes a big problem. And so we keep fighting against ourselves to try and create something that we don't know how to do instead of asking for help. And, you know, obviously, we're here to help you if what we do over here seems like a good fit. 

I'm happy to help you on that. The next step is to work backwards to reach your goal and then get really clear on the actions that you need to take. This is the third step. So what I mean by this is that a lot of times you let's say we're using The Jennifer Dawes example you know what she had to do every day. But she had to explore the right inventory system, she had to test things, she had to spend a lot of time doing stuff that probably wasn't in her wheelhouse. She also hired people to help her do it. But that was just like, you know, tedious things that no one really wants to do.

But in order to reach her goal, she had to commit to doing that. So she really clearly outlined that she needed this, this one inventory system that it needed to hook up with other parts of her system, that it needed to do this and not in there. And then she broke it out into small tasks. And then by the time she was ready to go live, it was all working, and everything fit together. Same thing with your, you know, if we're using a simpler example, like if you want to make one sale on a website, you know you have to do it like you have to get the traffic to your website. So you have to do all those things, to keep getting traffic to your website. So make sure that you're doing the actions that are measurable, that are actually going to get you the outcome and the result and you're doing those every single day or week. Then the next step of this, the fourth step is really removing the roadblocks. A lot of times we're our own worst enemy.

Or we have gaps in our skill set. And a lot of times we fight against those gaps. For instance, raise your hand if you're not a techie person. I'm raising my hands. I'm raising both hands right now, because I'm not techie at all. I understand technology, but like doing it is like the most frustrating thing in the world. And it's like, I'd rather make zero dollars then have to do set up like advanced tech. But trust me, there are a lot of people who actually love it, and they're very good at it. And they would be happy to help you. And there were a lot of people at all ranges of price points who could help you. And so a lot of times, we're our own worst enemy, because we're trying to improve our weaknesses and get good at things that are just never going to be things that we're good at. And so at a certain point, you know, we might have to learn some things and do it on our own if we don't have the money to invest.

But when you do, I would try to find a solution or someone or people who can come in and help you that you're the budget that you have And so outsourcing sometimes as a way to remove roadblocks getting external eyes on your business, getting feedback from coaches and mentors, having and I mentioned this as sort of the same thing, but having someone else look in your business. And being honest with yourself, I think that's sometimes the hardest thing is that, you know, sometimes we're our own worst enemy.

And it's hard to admit to ourselves that, you know, we might be the ones destroying our businesses, if we aren't self aware, and like, getting our checks and balances or whatever it might be. And finally, the last piece of this is that you get to see the result, which is seeing your vision come to life, because once you start doing all those things, you're going to start noticing that if you look back, like look back a year from now, to where you were a year ago, did some of the things that you wanted to create happen or not. So we have a fresh start right now. Let's start fresh, and hopefully in a year from now, if you use this methodology to create that momentum in your business, you can see your visions come true because the biggest thing that I have To emphasize here is that none of us are good at everything. 

We all have gaps. We all have learning curves, there were things that we're just not good at. And the more we fight against doing those things, and try to be good at the things that we're never going to be super skilled at, you might get okay. But the more that we fight against those things that we're never going to be super skilled at, the more frustration we are going to have with ourselves and others, and our businesses. And it's those are the things that actually make us want to throw in the towel. And I can't encourage you enough that if you're struggling with parts in your business, please get help. This is not a good idea to keep fighting against it. And help can come in a variety of forms. I mean, it might come from working with us, it might come from working with someone else. However, Google can sometimes work but like I don't think you can google your way to a successful business.

Quite frankly, you might be able to answer a question but you're not going to be able to go Google your way to a successful business because you're going to be missing a lot of pieces of the puzzle, because oftentimes you don't know what's next. But like work with a mentor or coach, and if what we do over here at Flourish and Thrive resonates with you, I'd love to support you in that. So, as I mentioned before, earlier on in this episode, I love to invite you to just see if you qualify to work with us. And we help people at all levels from startup to the elevated level where we're helping multiple six figure and seven figure brands. So you can head on over to https://www.flourishthriveacademy.com/strategy/ , and check out what we offer right over there. And if it resonates with you, just click that button. See if you qualify, you can fill out a quick application. take you about 15 minutes.

And if you qualify, we'll just pop you on a call with our business accelerator specialist Natasha. many ways many roads too many ways to succeed over here. Thanks so much for listening today. This is Tracy Matthews, signing off. I'm super pumped for you and your success. I feel pretty good about what's coming up in the next couple of months, I think that we are going to have, hopefully a really successful holiday season. And I wanted to ask you a favor. If you have other friends who are in the jewelry and creative product business industry, and they need help casting a bigger vision and building momentum in your business. I'd love for you to share this podcast episode with them or just the podcast in general. 

You know, I'm on a mission to reach as many people as possible. And if you haven't done this so far, I would love for you to give us a five star rating and review over on Apple podcasts. And the reason why I request this is that Apple literally 75 or 85% of podcast listeners listen to podcasts on Apple over any other listening platform. So when you give us a five star rating and review that helps Apple know that this is a podcast that they should pay attention to. And it also helps them serve it to more people like you and like me and helps us build this reach. You know I'm really on a mission to impact millions of people and To help them with their businesses and help them flourish and thrive, so I'd appreciate that. It's not too much help. I'll give you the link right now.

Or if you're listening on your phone, just head on over there and give us a little rating and review, https://www.flourishthriveacademy.com/apple/ That's a short link that we created. And you can rate and review us over on Apple podcast. Thanks again for listening. Tracy Matthews, signing off.