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Steph Crowder
Hey, real quick, before we dive in, I've got a really exciting announcement. My mastermind, which is a year long and it's called Sold Out Group Programs, is officially open for enrollment right now. You can go to stephcrowder.com SOGP to read all of the details and get your application in. If you've been wanting consistent, repeatable sales, you're tired of winging it and wondering when your next clients are coming and where they're going to come from. And, and if you like the sound of weekly coaching with me, deep feedback on your sales assets and a proven system that actually works for me and my clients in 2025, now is the time to apply. This is a limited capacity experience and we sell out every round. So again, go to Steph Crowder.com so GP and hit apply. All right, let's get into the episode. Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measurements. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello? Hello. Let's talk about the real cost of figuring it out on your own. I'm so excited to hang out with you all. If you're catching the replay or you are watching this live, I just wanted to jump on and I want to talk about something that I have been having a lot of conversation around. As we have opened enrollment for the sold Out Group Programs Mastermind, that's first and foremost, if you don't already know. Enrollment is open for the Sold Out Group Programs Mastermind. This only happens a couple times a year and we are open for enrollment for the next few days. So if you've been meaning to apply and get onto my calendar, we can have a full next step sales call together. You just have to go to Steph crowder.coms o g p to start that process. Super simple and painless. It'll take you two minutes and then we can schedule a time to talk. But I've had so many conversations with people this week. Who are saying some version of this. Things are going pretty good, right? Like things are fine. I'm making some sales. I could probably figure this out on my own. And this is the kicker. I want to be responsible with my money, right? The cost of my mastermind is 8K. And a lot of people have been telling it's a year long Mastermind. So much support. You can find out lots more about the Mastermind again@steph crowder.com SOGP we have our full replay of this amazing class that I taught earlier this week, which was called fill your group program in five weeks where I really get into the nitty gritty of exactly what we do in the Mastermind. But it includes weekly coaching. I actually coach twice a week. Live calls, daily coaching in our community feedback submission process. I'll review your stuff and give you deep, detailed critique. All of the curriculum you could need to get your group program either started or scaled, including, you know, 50 over 55 email templates with sales psychology webinar framework. Like everything you need at your fingertips to get to the next level with your enrollment goals. And that is, you know, for a lot of people it's group programs. But there are also people in the Mastermind who are not quite there yet. They see a group program in their future, but right now they're working on another kind of offer, whether that's one on one or services or even corporate contracts. Right. And so when you're, it's a really interesting place to be in, I think, where you feel like, yeah, you're not yet where you want to be and you have a lot of goals, but maybe you've made a lot of other investments before that didn't really work. Or maybe they did work fine or maybe you already have other investments going right now. I've definitely been having conversations with people who are like, I'm in, you know, this other program or three other programs. And this phrase has come up a number of times. That's why I wanted to do a whole livestream. And I'm also recording this for the podcast. This phrase, I want to be a good steward of my money. I've been hearing that a lot. And maybe you, maybe you can identify with that and I completely respect that. In fact, that is a thought that I've had many times myself. I'm going to share a little bit more about that too. Especially when it doesn't feel like a full blown emergency. Right. Like this might not feel like an emergent problem in your business. You might feel like, like I said, Things are going pretty well. Maybe I'll just do it later. Maybe I'll see how far I can get on my own. And I think there is this temptation to stay the course, to figure it out solo, to save the money. And like I said, I've been there, too. I definitely. I've been accused by friends who love me dearly. I'm sure that I'm a bit of a hoarder in my business, or I have a history of being a bit of a hoarder when it comes to my cash. Maybe you can, you know, resonate with this. It's like, in your business, it feels better to have more money sitting in the savings account. Um, I used to say, I still laugh about this with a friend that, like, I used to be the Walter White of business owners. If you've watched Breaking Bad and he has, like, the cash lining the walls, like it's in the panels of the walls, right? I was totally doing that. And I would not say that the money. Like, the thing about the money sitting there in the business is that money doesn't have a job, Right? Like, it's. And I think we have what I would call investment shame, where we feel like, again, it's the responsible thing to do. You know, it's the, like, there's like, this morality to it. We're trying to create nervous system safety by having the bank account at a certain level. Or if you're. Maybe if you're watching this or listening to this and you're like, my, no, the money's literally not there. Right? Or like, I don't think I'm hoarding the money. I'm just trying to be responsible with the small amount of money that I do have or the moderate amount of money that I do have. I want to offer some thoughts about this again, going back to the fact, the way that I used to be with this type of thinking. This is a huge, huge thought and a huge block that, to be a hundred percent honest with you, absolutely contributed to me quitting my business. Okay, I'm not gonna tell you. I'm not sitting here telling you that if you don't join my mastermind or if you don't heavily invest in all of the things in your business that you're gonna end up quitting. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just sharing a bit about my story. When I quit at the end of 2021, I was doing a lot on an island. I had friends, right? You might have the thought, like, well, I have like people I talk to, like I have people that I can go to, I did as well. But I wasn't investing in getting my brain coached. Being challenged in a coaching relationship by someone who really knew what they were doing, especially on the mindset side of things. I was supported on the strategy side. But when you're not also being challenged and being lovingly sort of like offered different perspectives regularly, you run the risk of believing trash thoughts and taking those thoughts and as fact. And that's exactly what happened to me when things got hard in my business, or maybe more accurately, things got scary and success started to feel unsafe and I felt like I was going to break it and I started to run into really big scary problems. It felt like the most logical thing to do, to pack it up and let somebody else be in charge of the scary stuff. Right. I literally had the thought, I just want to collect a paycheck. Like I have young kids, I have a lot of demands on me. I just want to let somebody else make the big bad decisions and I'll just come in, take my paycheck, clock out at 5:00, that will be easier, that would be safer, that would feel better for my nervous system and for my body. Right. And that's exactly what I did. And I wonder, it's like everything happens for a reason. I'm definitely a believer of that, that like we're all on the path that we're meant to be on. But it ended up, this is important part, it ended up being majorly the long way around for me. Right. I wonder what would have happened if I had invested in the right kind of support. If I had had a coach at the time who could have sat down with me and been like, hey, do you actually want to walk away from your business right now or are you afraid of what's going to happen when somebody says something mean about you on the Internet? Are you afraid of what's going to happen when you have a client problem that you don't know how to solve? Are you afraid of what's going to happen if you get hit with a tax bill that you're not prepared to pay? Or like whatever the big bad scary things were that I was afraid of. I was scaling a group program and I had happy clients and things were going well and I was really not in belief that I could be the CEO that this program needed me to be, that this business needed me to be. I even had a co coach at the time. I was felt responsible for her and it just really felt like running away was something I was able to justify. That's the crazy thing is I didn't actually realize at the time that I was running away. I just thought, hey, this great opportunity landed in my lap. Like, I even convinced myself that this was the smart move. And I had all of these reasons to do it. And listen, I'm here to say I don't regret it for a minute. It ended up being a really great year of working in some inside someone else's business. I learned a lot. It was a great experience. And yet when I came back to business, I knew that I had to do it differently. And I never looked back in terms of, you know, I don't look at investments the same way anymore. When I spend $15,000 on a mastermind, which is typically what I spend on, on my mastermind that I've been a part of now since I came back to business, I see it as I approach it, as if I'm putting 15,000 in, how am I going to get $150,000 back out? Right? How am I going to make an extra hundred k with this $15,000 investment? That is the way that I want you to be thinking about making a decision like this. Not $8,000 in my pocket or $8,000 in somebody else's pocket. Now I'm out $8,000, right? You need to be thinking of it. If you're going to invest. And this is not just about my program. This is about any investment you make. You need to be thinking about what that investment, what that return looks like for you. I'm talking about financial return because I am a business coach, but it's not always financial, right? If you know that you're trying to lose £60, then you need to know that that's what you are going to do. When you are in the program, you are going to commit to getting that job done. And that's, you know, you're going to pay a certain amount and your return is going to be the weight lost. If you are wanting to take your marriage to a specific place, you're wanting to rescue your marriage, you're wanting to not end up divorced, for example, then you are going to take that investment and use it to create that result. So giving the investment a job and knowing why you are making the investment is going to be the way that you can start to feel safer parting with the dollars, right? I was talking to someone else about this today. That whether you have $0 in your bank account or $200,000 sitting in your bank account flushing 8,000, 10,000, $20,000 down the toilet. That's never gonna feel good. Like, I think we have this misconception that money is really easy to spend when we have money. It's not true. It money feels easier to spend when we understand why we are spending it and what we are getting back. $8,000 is hard to spend when it's just 8,000 do on. But how do you feel about spending $8,000 if you're going to get $60,000 back, right? Well, that's weird. Now it's a no brainer, right? Or even $8,000 you're going to spend, you're going to get $16,000 back. $10,000. Like all of us would take that deal every day of the week and yet we don't always look at it like that. And so I just want to challenge you to think that like, while you may be telling yourself that this is responsible, something you want to do, here's the thing. If you know why you're passing on this opportunity or any opportunity and you really like your reasons, like I was talking to someone else today who was like, no, I know exactly when I'm going to invest in a mastermind like yours. It's going to be January 2026, because I have these goals right now. And when I get there, I'm going to be prepared. Like this person had it all planned out. And I was like, hey, that's a strategic decision. Fantastic. That's not really what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about those of you who know you're thinking to yourself, you have that little excitement in your body, in your brain, wherever it is for you, where you're like, I actually want to do this, but I just have shame around spending the money because I'm telling myself I blew money in the past or I haven't made the most of my investments in the past, or wouldn't it be safer to hang on to it? Those are two very different things. The other thing is the cost of not solving the real problem is something that I want you to think about as well. This is something that I learned the hard way. The cost of not solving the actual problem. So going back to my story, I thought the problem was I just needed an easier job with less, with less scary stuff happening. The real problem was what I had going on between my ears, was how I was looking at myself, was how I was identifying as a CEO, was my inability or unwillingness to solve the, to like dig in and lean into the hard stuff and learn how to solve more difficult problems. Right. And so in your case, the cost of not solving the real problem right now might be the lack of predictability in your business. I've been talking to a lot of people who are like, I'm having success, but it feels random, even magical. It feels kind of like if it happens, it happens and if it doesn't, that's gonna be really scary. So there's that. There's also the behind the scenes stress, the mental load. All of that stuff is often way more expensive over time. Again, in my example, I lost. I don't, I don't choose to look at it this way, but it is instructive. It ended up costing me a year of my career. And I think back to like, where I might be revenue wise if I hadn't let those thoughts get the best of me. If I had been investing in my growth instead of hanging on to all my money, hoarding all of my money and eventually quitting because I didn't know what to do next with the success that I was having. I'm very confident and this, like, I can say this with total neutrality, so don't feel too bad for me, but I'm totally confident that I could have already had like a seven figure year in my business if at that moment I had invested in the proper support. But that's not what, that wasn't what my path was. I had to learn this lesson the hard way. And some of you may need to take that path as well. I call it the long way around. But for some of you, if I could come on here live today, if I could produce this podcast and, you know, help one person make the decision to get support at the moment that I wished I had, I thought it would be worth sharing you because it's not just time, it's not just money left on the table, it's also energy and confidence. Right? It can shake your confidence. Like for me, I had to kind of come all the way back around to my business. And again, I'm not saying it's going to be as extreme for you as your quit as quitting, but what I do want you thinking about is how do you feel about spending another six to 12 months of exactly what you're experiencing right now? Because listen, if you don't make the decision to do something different, then that is what you're signing yourself up for. Another six to 12 months of what you've been experiencing. And again, it's probably not an emergency for you, but maybe there's just some stuff that's that you're ready to be done with. You're ready to be done with the inconsistency. You're ready to be done with the mental ping pong, the emotional roller coaster, the exploding, overflowing to do list, the feeling that you're almost breaking through to the next level, but not quite. That's where I spent a lot of my time. I could not crest the 200K a year mark. It was, I was repeating like 160, 170, 180. And it wasn't until I started stepping into a different identity and getting different kinds of support and learning more advanced strategy. So it was strategy and mindset. It wasn't until I dug in and did that work that I was actually able to scale past the messy middle of where I was. Here's the thing. Messy middle. The messy middle of entrepreneurship is not going to go away by itself. I have to tell you that I've been thinking lately about how saying maybe later or I'll wait, I'll wait and see is actually saying I'm going to hope that something changes without me having to do anything differently. Oh, I hate to burst your bubble on that one. Right. But I'm gonna say it again. Saying maybe later or I'll wait and see is actually saying I'm hoping something changes without me having to do anything differently. And that's so normal, right? Like, as humans, we hope. Like I think about so many things in my life where I'm just like hoping that that goes away by itself. I'm just hoping that the mess goes away. I'm just hoping it's like closing the, like the closet door. Like we all have that, that, that closet or that drawer. We're just closing it and hoping that it goes away. And so I want you to just honestly check in with yourself and ask, are you being responsible or are you closing the door on the closet and just delaying the problem for another six to 12 months? Right. I want to circle back to stewardship as well. Because again, like I said, that's something that people have been given. Like bringing up to me if. Here's what I've been thinking. If stewardship is about taking care of the resources you've been given, that's what stewardship means, right? Taking care of the resources that you've been given, helping them grow. Sometimes being a good steward of the resources that you do have means investing in the thing that's going to get you to the next level faster and more sustainably. Being A good steward doesn't always mean just hanging on to. And again, the hoarding, like holding on, stashing things in a drawer, putting the money in the wall, lining the wall with cash. That's. We need to not mistake that for being for good stewardship. That's not helping it grow. That's stashing it away. And those are two very different things. I think it's also worth pointing out that I want to encourage you to think about the difference between wise strategic investments that open doors for you versus panic buying. If you're in a position right now where you feel like you don't necessarily need to do this. Buddy, I'm a special guest. Go back downstairs. Okay. If you're. I hope so. I hope somebody got to see that. Summer, Mom. If those. Some of you are trying to build businesses on very small amount of hours that. For those listening to the podcast, my son just came in. That's just how we do things around here, Right? So what I was saying was if you are in a place where it's not feeling like the house is on fire, we have to solve this problem right now. It's a great idea to not wait until you're at that point, right? Like, that's not actually the best. Like what they say, the best time to get a job is when you don't need a job. Same thing here. You don't want to wait to make an investment like this until the house is on fire and you're freaking out and you're like, you know, I definitely have and I love my clients like this who've come to me being like, this is my Hail Mary. This is my last ditch effort. It's do or die. Like, we'll help you if you're in that place, but you don't have to wait until things are so dire to get the support that you need. Now I want to share something else. I created a resource that some of you may not have seen. It's called the Group Program Revenue Calculator. It's totally free and I created it. I taught it during my live training earlier this week. So if you want my Group Program calculator, what it does is I always walk people through this exercise of like, if you're going to invest in my program or anybody else's program, I want you to really understand, put pen to paper. How many more clients would you need over the course of the year to cover your investment? What would doubling your investment look like? Really understand how you would get your return on investment. I'm Always going through this exercise with pen and paper. So I went ahead and made a calculator. It's very simple. I'm not very good with spreadsheets, so I promise if I could figure out, so could you. If you want this tool, I want you to comment here and you can comment the word tool. You can DM me. You can also just go to stephcrowder.com SOGP and take my free training. I show you where to get, go, go to the tool during the training and I show you how to use it. But what I want you to do, here's the thing. Most of my clients 2x, 3x, 5x, even 20x, their investment in my, my program. And that's just the truth. I have the receipts I can show you, right? But when people are making this decision, I like them to go into it knowing what would it take client wise for me to be able to cover this investment, double this investment. It's immediate. Like, I started, I talked, I talked a client, a prospect through this on a call earlier today. And immediately this person was like, oh, it feels a lot different when you look at it that way. So look at the dollars and cents and make the decision from that place, right? I'm not saying like, just close your eyes and push by. I'm saying do it from a place of understanding. If you're gonna walk away, that's totally, obviously, completely your choice. But know your numbers. Sometimes when we look at it, say, oh, gosh, like the person I was talking to today was like, she only needed to get four more group program clients, four extra clients over the course of the next year in order to break even on working with me. And then it's just profitable learning. And it's having the benefit of being able to be coached by me every single week and learning so much and making mastermind friends and all of the cool things that come with being in my program for extra clients, right? She did that like in the past month, right? So for her, she was kind of like, oh, there's really no world where I wouldn't see that as being realistic. So I think that having a calculator like this, understanding your numbers just really will help you make an informed decision decision. So again, if you want to see that tool, comment tool on this live or in the replay, I'll send it your way. I think that can be really helpful to again help you make that more empowered choice or decision instead of like, again passing on it like, oh, I really want to do this, but I feel like I should be responsible. I feel like I should be a better steward of my money. Again, I'm hearing these terms in some conversations that I'm having. So if you've been feeling that pull and you've also been talking to people who are like, I've been watching your mastermind. I've been thinking about it. I've been listening, but you're on the fence. Right? Something in you knows that it's time to stop trying to do this all by yourself. And you want to go to the next level, and you don't want to wait. You don't want to be in the same place six months from now. You don't want to be in the same place 12 months from now. Right. The mastermind is open. It's open. Doors are closing on Wednesday. I have time on my calendar. We could talk next week. Actually, I could probably even talk to you today if you really wanted to talk. But I definitely have sales calls open through on my calendar. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Let's have a conversation. I'll sit with you for an entire hour. I'll hear all about your business. I will help you understand what your game plan should be from here so you can make an empowered decision again. If it's, yes, I'm doing it, great. If it's like, hey, I went through the process and actually decided this isn't the right thing for me, nobody's gonna be more supportive of that than me. Right? So, my friends, Steph crowder.comsogp that's where you can apply for the program. That is also where you can catch the training. We are gonna pull that training down on Wednesday, so only a few more days. It is like, such a good training. I mean, I've gotten rave reviews about how much I taught in that training. And that's also where the group program revenue calculator is my free gift to you. You get to keep it. It's a really wonderful revenue planning tool that I want you to have in your back pocket. So make sure you check it out. Did I answer your questions? Let me know. Comment here. I would love to know if you're listening to this as a podcast. Send me an email or DM me on Instagram. I'm at. Hey, Steph Crowder. You can email us. Hello, Steph crowder.com and I'd love to hear from you. Okay, friends, for now, that's all I have for you. I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love. That.