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Courage & Clarity
146: Back to School, Back to Business: Reset Your Sales Momentum for the Rest of the Year
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Maddie Crowder
Hi, I'm Maddie Crowder. I'm wishing your kids a great back to school season. 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 that bur brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. 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 there, friends. Welcome to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed my special little intro I had for you today. It felt very fitting to let my girl come onto the microphone. I'm actually recording this episode on the very, very last day of her summer and it just felt very fitting given that we're talking about Back to School. She heard that I was gonna be recording a podcast and she was begging me to come onto the microphone and say hello, and so I thought it would be fun to let you hear her. Sweet. I hope you enjoyed that little cameo. Today we are talking about Back to School, Back to Business. How to reset your sales momentum for the rest of the year. I am so excited about this podcast episode. I don't know about you all, but I just love Back to School season. Some of you, I know many of you out there have kids yourself, so you're in the the throes of getting everybody ready for Back to School. A lot of you listening also don't have children. Or maybe your children are grown up and the idea of Back to School isn't as front and cent in your life as it once was. But even if that's the case, I still was really excited to create this episode for you because I think we can all, every single one of us, borrow from the amazing blank slate energy of Back to School season. It honestly is like a little mini January 1st. If we choose to accept the invitation to look at it that way, I'm actually going to go out on a limb and say I like it even more than January 1st. I think it's an even better opportunity to wipe the slate clean. I mean, I don't know about you all, but thinking about, like back when I was a kid and getting your new clothes Ready for back to school and your new shoes and your backpack. I mean, the energy is just so delicious, and I think we can all use that in our businesses. I know. I'm titling this episode Back to School, Back to Business. And some of you might be thinking, well, what do you mean, back to business? Steph, I've been working all summer, and I totally feel you. I've had a pretty busy summer myself. I did a whole launch this summer, which I don't actually typically do. Like a big, big. Certainly. I don't do a mastermind launch typically in the summer. So I hear you. I've been working. I've been working, too. But I'm thinking of this as back to business because even if you have had a really productive summer, even if you have been working really hard in your business, again, it's an opportunity to just reset and reclaim and get clear on what it is that you want to do and create for the rest of the year. I want us to think about really taking advantage and seizing this unique early fall energy rather than coasting into the holidays. We're going to talk a lot about this. I know this might sound really wild because at least, you know, at the time of me recording this, it's. It's August, right? And it doesn't really feel like the holidays are upon us. But I promise you, and I'm sure a lot of you agree from your own experience, it's all going to be here a lot sooner than we think. And we welcome this time of year. We cherish this time of year. I personally, you know, some people call them the burr months, like September, October, November, December. Those are my favorite months of the whole, entire year. And so I want us all to be in a position to deeply enjoy this, the, the holidays and everything that this time of year brings. Cozy season, all of that good stuff. And also I want us to be on track for our business goals and really knocking it out of the park, not only to finish this year, but because we're also going to start to think about January. I want you to start thinking strategically about the last stretch of the year so January doesn't feel like starting from zero. I think this is one thing I really have figured out in my own business, is how to set myself up really well for a solid January. Otherwise, because I will be honest, I have had years where I spent the whole entire month of January feeling like I was clearing out the cobwebs. And that's very optional. You can walk back into your office on January 2nd. Or whatever day you're going to end up coming back to work after the holidays. And you can just feel ready. You can just be like, I'm not confused. I set myself up so well for this. You will be so grateful to your previous self if you are intentional about how you want to go into next year. So whether you're someone who is currently launching, you have a launch based business where you're doing group program offers, or you are someone who's not quite there yet, you're working on getting booked out with clients first and getting your ideas out there. Either way, this episode's for you. We're going to talk about how to reverse engineer your Q4. I know we're still in Q3 right now, but we're going to be thinking about the rest of Q3 and certainly Q4 so that your offers and your audience are ready for a strong launch or, and, or a sales push now and in the new year. Okay, so what we're going to do in this episode today is just to kind of give you a preview of where we're going. We're going to really identify realistic end of year revenue or client goals. Could be either one, maybe it's both. But we're going to really think about where you're trying to go between now and the end of the year and get intentional. We're going to map out a plan that uses seasonal energy, really takes advantage of the season that we're coming into to hit those goals. And this one's really big. I talked about it a little bit already, but we're going to go much deeper to understand what you are setting the table for in January. Okay. Whether that's going to be a big launch, a sold out, one on one roster, or something else entirely. So this what we're going to talk about here today. This episode is really going to help keep you engaged through the rest of the year. When most people disengage. I mean, I know for me you're probably going to hear me call it this a few times. Sometimes I call it the holiday death slide. It's a little dramatic because the holidays, like I said, are wonderful. But I know for me it can feel like it's all downhill from Halloween. Right. And a lot of people understandably do disengage. Maybe they've spent all year pushing so hard in the business that they're like, oh, thank God, finally I can just take a break. And that really turns into two entire months, if not more of disengagement. And what we know is that when we disengage from our community, they disengage from us. Understandably. Then when you try to go into Q1 next year, you're like, okay, now I'm back. I'm ready to get back at it. You're all going to act surprised when your community's not paying attention. And it's like you disengaged first, then they followed suit. Right. Actually makes perfect sense. The amazing thing is this is completely preventable. So we're going to prevent that holiday death slide. We're going to prevent having to do that January cobweb clean off and prevent you having to have a slow start. Because I know that's not how you want to think about your 2026. We're going to build momentum now that carries over into Q1. Right. Because the truth is, most entrepreneurs treat this season that we're heading into right now like the start of the wind down. But the truth is, the work you do right now has the potential to make January your easiest, most profitable month of the year. I know it might sound crazy that I'm already thinking about January, but my clients know, they'll tell you that we often focus on the fact that whatever we're doing right now, the actions that you're doing right now, you will see those actions show up in your business three to six months from now. Okay, let me say that again. Whatever it is that you're doing right now, however you're behaving in any given moment in time, you will see the results of those actions three to six months down the road. Now, that's not to say you're not going to see any immediate results. We have clients, and I can speak for myself as well. You should see immediate action. If you're doing the right sales activities, you're doing your money making activities, you should see results pretty quickly. Right? But you're also going to really start talking about like the sales snowball and the momentum snowball that takes three to six months to show up. That puts us definitely into January. So we really actually do have to be thinking that far ahead. So here's how we're going to use this back to business energy to reset your sales momentum and set the table for a strong start to 2026. We're going to finish 2025 really strong. That's going to be the first thing. And then we're going to have a great start to 2020. So why this time of year is a gold mine. As I said, I actually prefer it to a January 1st. And there's a few reasons for this. First of all, there is definitely a seasonal shift that I think, like I said, a lot of us can feel again. At least here in North America, where I live, there's this big back to school energy. For many of us, it is the return of structure, routine. Many of us are feeling ready to focus. I've been joking with my kids. I'm like, party's over. And we laugh about it, right? Because it really, really in some ways does feel like that. It's like we have been footloose and fancy free. We've had some schedules, but not a ton. We've had trips, we've had sleep ins. We've had more lax days and nights. And that's been fun. And a lot of us are like, so ready. I can speak for myself. So ready to go back to the support of structure, routine, readiness to focus. So that's the first thing is we get to take advantage of that energy. Yes, we have schools. And some of you, like I said, some of you listening to this, maybe don't really resonate with the idea of school school anymore. But there is still, even if you don't have school in your life, there is a seasonal shift. I think we can all feel that the days are gonna start to cool off here, at least, so they tell me eventually. I can't wait for that personally. And we start to kind of feel that energy shifting. And I do think, and maybe you could say it's because we're going into Virgo season. For those of you who are into astrology. Yeah, there's more structure and routine to be found in this time of year all the way around. The other thing that I really love is a shorter finish line. Okay. So with this, we're talking four to five months is the time between now and the end of the year versus a whole year. I mean, a year is so long. When we think about goal setting on January 1st, it's like, oh, I have a whole year to do to do things. I really love feeling like I'm kind of coming to the part of the marathon where we're going to pick up the pace because we want to sprint towards the finish line. To me, it's easier to stay locked in. There is such an invitation to lock in right now for the next 4ish months between now and the end of the year. And that really gives us this opportunity to think about reverse engineering. If you know me, you know, I love a good reverse engineer. A lot of the work that I do with my clients is all about reverse engineering. Where do we want to be? So I want to ask you and, and through this episode, we're going to get into this first actually we want to think about where do you want to January 1st. Okay, you're gonna start there and work backwards. So let's actually dig in right there. And I'm gonna give you. I sort of have two different types of business owners in mind as we go through today's episode. So you're either gonna sort of be in one camp or the other. So I'll share those in a second. And how you can really use these questions based on your situation. So the first question we're gonna ask ourselves is what is the goal by January 1st or December 31st if we're closing out 20, 25? What's your okay if you are someone who is launch ready or already launching, you have a business model that has launches, you have a course, you have a group program, you have a membership, you have that as part of your business model. You may want to ask questions such as, do you have one more big launch in you this year? Do you want to do one more big launch? I know personally that's what I'm going to be doing. We're going to be opening up the doors to my mastermind one more time towards the end of the year. And so I'm going to be doing a lot of work between now and then. Actually that work starts right now. I'm starting that right now for me to be able to close out my year with one big, one more big launch for my sold out group programs mastermind. So you want to ask that question, do you have one more big launch in you this year? Second question here is how can you time it to hit before the holiday slowdown or your intentional holiday time? So this is the time of year where I know for me and I'm sure for many of you as well, my calendar is starting to look a little bit like Tetris when I think about holidays, when I think about my kids. Schedule with we have fall break, we have Thanksgiving, we have Christmas time, we have all of these sort of like times off where I'm. I know I'm not going to want to be working and so I do. I really, I've already done this work myself. I had to get my calendar back out. My year on the wall. I'm looking at my year on the wall calendar. If you don't know about that, you can check that out on my site. StephCrowder.com to see how we plan like these big calendar pages for our year. And it can kind of take a little bit of recalibrating to figure out what, how do I want to kind of piece everything together to take advantage of, you know, my, my schedule. But then also we have things like Black Friday you might want to be taking advantage of where we know people are going to be shopping. Right. So you really want to think about what we have coming up. And then this one's really big as well, is what kind of lead up content or even offers lead up content or offers are going to get your audience engaged now. So for me, you know, it's August 11th as I record this and really I'm releasing this pretty much right away. I have actually planned out my podcast episodes between now and when my Mastermind is going to open, which is going to be November. Okay, so that sounds really far away. But I want to, I think this time of year especially, it's is really helpful to back into it and be like, okay, if I know I'm doing one more big launch for the rest of the year, how do I want to frame my content on this podcast between now and then to really get everybody excited about this? You know, I'm going to be teaching a brand new workshop I've never taught before. More on that coming soon. And I want to get everybody really ready and excited to be able to come to that training and take, take the very most out of it. Okay, so those are some questions you can ask yourself if you are at the helm of a business that launches now, if you're a different type of client that I help or a different type of business owner, you might not be launching, you might be working on getting booked out first. This is, this is advice I give a lot of business owners where they're focusing on one on one or services. They don't necessarily have a big group program. Right now you're working on the skill of closing, of selling, of building up your revenue and just getting good at making offers and having people take you up on them before doing some like big product or program launch. Right. So if you have that type of business model, you might ask yourself, what's your one on one capacity between now and January 1st? How many clients would you like to lock down between now and January 1st? Again, it's close enough that we can be like, oh, I have capacity to take 15 clients total between now and the end of the year, or 20 clients or whatever that looks like for you. I really think it's a cool opportunity to be like, how many more, how many more clients do I want to take on between now and the end of the year? And when we get to the next section, if you're not sure about this, I have more questions that can help you answer this. So hang tight. If you're not sure, you may also ask yourself what sales or audience building I would say and, or sales and or audience building habits will you lock in before the year ends? What are your sales habits going to be? In particular, I always say, you know, let's prioritize our sales habits over any audience building that you're doing. So we call these money making activities inside of my mastermind and all of my clients have them defined individually. What are your money making activities that you are going to prioritize week in, week out, day in and day out that you're going to lock in on between now and the end of the year? You should have the goal of these are just be. These are just habits between like by the time December 31st gets here, you're like, that's just stuff that I do. I'm going to work on building those habits. And then finally, how about building demand? Speaking of building things, if you are someone who wants to work on, you're not launching yet, but you're working on having a business that eventually has a group program or a scaled offering that you want to launch in the new year, you need to be asking yourself right now, how are you building demand? What are your demand building activities that are going to set you up for a successful launch in the new year? Those are questions for you. If you're the type of business owner who's working on getting booked out before launching. Okay, so for both groups, whether you were the first one that I was talking about, the sort of launching business or the getting booked out business, here's where I would have you go next. We talked about what's your goal by January 1st. This will also help with with that. The second question, big question here is what gaps exist between now and the goal? What gaps exist? So let's dig into this. I have three different gaps for you to think about. Number one is your revenue gap. Okay, this is one of the first things I do at this time of year. How are you doing so far with how much income you're trying to make in your business? How much more do you need to sell to hit your target? Okay, are you off track? On track, somewhere in between? What do you need to do between now and the end of the year? Then we can really start breaking it down. So remember before when I was saying you can ask yourself the question like, what's your one on one capacity between now and January 1st? You might look at your revenue gap to figure that out and be like, well, I want to make an extra 50k between now and the rest of the year. Okay, how many one on one clients would that be? You can start to do the math. So that will really help you know how to set your goals. If you're launching same thing. What do we need to do in your launch to hit that target? And if you don't think your launch is going to be able to close, close that gap, what else do you want to do? Do you want to do some kind of cash injection offer? Do you want to offer some more one on ones? Like, we can, you know, really start to think about how to piece together the plan. You have time, we still have time, but it is time to get intentional. So revenue gap absolutely comes first. The second thing I'd have you look at is your audience gap, so you can ask questions like looking at your leads. Okay, is your current lead pool big enough for your next step? Have you created enough demand for your next move? This question can be a hard pill to swallow, especially when I'm talking to people who really want a launch, but their demand does not match up with their desire. Okay, you might have the desire to do a launch, but you have to look at your demand. You have to ask yourself, do I have a big enough lead pool to support that next step? If the answer is no, that's no problem. You know what you need to do? You need to go out there and get more leads. Do lead generation activities to get more leads into your world so that you have the demand to support that next move. The thing you don't want to do is be like, no, I don't have enough leads. Oh my God. Like, you know, and act kind of powerless. We have to remember lead generation is a activity that is something intentional. There's many things we can go out there and do to find more leads, but not if we don't consciously spend time doing it. Okay, so you have to be thinking about your audience gap as well. That's something I'm doing now between now and my launch of My Mastermind, which will be October, November, ish. Not only am I doing things like recording these podcast episodes and engaging on social media with my current audience, but I also have a larger strategy where I am utilizing paid marketing these days to get, you know, advertising My same day sales program. Some people may come and decide to buy that program. Other people are just going to get onto my list. But I'll, I'll get to invite those people who are new to me to come to my live training in a couple of months. Okay, that's just one, one thing that I'm doing right now. But this is the first year I've ever really done paid marketing. There's so many other things you can do besides paid marketing, all of which I don't even teach paid marketing in my Mastermind. I teach a lot of organic methods for creating demand inside of the sold out group programs Mastermind. And that's what our clients are working on every single day, is figuring out how to create more demand. And then the third gap I would have you look at is your offer gap. Do you have an offer gap? Do you have the right thing to sell right now? Do you have your offer ready? Do you even know what you're selling? Too many people I talk to are like, well, I'm not really ready to sell something or I don't really like, that's not really my focus right now. And it's like there's really no circumstance where that shouldn't be your offer. Whether that's a warm up offer, some kind of new beta offer that you're testing, a one on one package. Whatever the case may be, you have to ask yourself what? Like, do I have the right thing to sell that's going to help me achieve my goals? And if you're not sure about that, it's important to get to the bottom of it if you're going to hit that revenue gap. So you have to make sure that you've got the right offer for the job. Okay, so that is, that was the second question is what gaps exist between now and the goal? All right, so so far we've covered what's the goal by January 1st? What gaps exist between now and the goal? How are you going to fill those? And then here comes key question number three, which is what are you setting the table for? Okay, so so far we've been really focused on what you want to create between now and January 1st. And that's great. I want you focusing on that, but I also want you thinking beyond Q4 as we talked about at the beginning of the episode. Think about what January looks like if you do the right work right now. Okay, so for example, you could be with the right activities, with the right blend of, you know, selling and audience building, demand building, all of that good Stuff. You could enter January, you could be entering 2026 with a full one on one roster. Okay, you don't want to be in January scrambling like, oh my gosh, my roster's dried up, I don't have clients, what am I going to do? I want you focused on walking back into your office in January being like, cool, my calendar is full. I'm just helping my one on one clients. Let's go, let's do this right. You could be booked out for January. Imagine coming back after the holidays and being booked out. Totally possible. If you get started now or if you're someone who has more of a launch based model, you're not necessarily doing one on one. You could be starting your January with a warmed up audience who's ready to buy your next launch. You could be setting the table for a great launch in January. Right. So for me, for example, I know I've shared a little bit about what I'm going to be working on. I've shared that I'm doing one more Mastermind launch this year. I haven't mentioned that. I will also be of course bringing back my beloved year on the wall training. So I always do that training the, typically the first week of December. I'll be promoting that through November, bringing that back. And then I have not talked about this yet and I'm not prepared to talk about it at this time, but I, at least as of now, I am going to be bringing in a new sort of experimental offer. So a brand new opportunity to work with me, something totally different at the end of this year, kind of setting the table for January. It's going to be a totally different kind of offer, very different than the Mastermind. And you'll hear more about it later. Okay. But if you're, if you're somebody who likes the year on the wall type of stuff, then you'll be very excited. I think about this new opportunity, especially if you're a parent and especially if you're a mom. So more on that coming soon. But as you can see, I'm going to be creating demand for January with my seasonal year on the wall training. So I'm very much setting the table for what I want to do in January. Like I told you, I have learned this lesson the hard way where I didn't really think about January. I just kind of thought about getting through the year. And I just remember dreading, dreading coming back in January because I didn't know what I was doing. I had totally disengaged. I, you know, I Was like, does my community even care? Who am I? What am I? What are we doing here? And I remember that year, it took me all of January, just figure out which way was up. And that's okay if that happens. Like, I still had a great year, if I recall correctly, but it wasn't comfortable, it wasn't pleasant, and I told myself I would never repeat that again. So that is, you know, just something really important to keep in mind that if you want to set yourself up for a really smooth start to 2026, that definitely starts right now because too many entrepreneurs start coasting. Okay, this is where we're going to talk a little bit more about that holiday death slide. Too many entrepreneurs start coasting from, you know, mid November all the way through New Year's and then spend all of January trying to build rebuild momentum. And, you know, that's like the story I just shared with you about how I've done that before versus when we are intentional and we know what we're doing and we can walk into January with a really clear plan and we're, like, not confused at all. I can also think of a time that I had an amazing launch in January. This was when I was still launching my signature course at the time. Crickets to customers. I remember I spent months preparing. And when I came back in January, I had a great launch that time. So to kind of start to sum this up, let's put together your action plan, shall we? This is how you're going to reset your sales momentum. Even if you feel really great, like, just quick temperature check. If you're like, some of you're going to be all over the place. For those of you listening, some of you are like, oh, my God, I need to reset so bad. Like, things have gone off the rails in the summer. Totally fine. Some of you may have noticed I have not gotten a podcast out. I think I missed a couple weeks. It's very rare for me. So it happens and it doesn't have to be a big deal. You're going to pick up your sales momentum like nothing happened. You're going to pick up where you left off. By the way, I have a podcast called pick up where you left, or it's called where you left off. It's really far back in my feed. I don't know what episode number it is, but it's a great episode. If you need more inspiration about exactly how to just pick up where you left off with no drama. So some of you are in that boat and others of you are like, Yeah, I don't really need a reset. Things have been going pretty good. That's great. You're going to have even an easier time generating even more sales momentum. So four things I want you to think about in summary. Number one, decide your January 1st goal between now and January 1st. What are we doing? Number two, identify the gaps from today's reality to where you're trying to go. Okay. Number three, map the sales and audience actions that are going to close that gap in the next 90 to 120 days. I haven't done the exact math. It's somewhere in there. Right. Number four, commit to consistency even through the holidays, even if you want to be lighter. Of course during peak holiday weeks, you can plan ahead. You can schedule things out. You can, you know, you don't have to. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. You don't have to ghost your audience to be able to take a break. Okay. You can maintain presence online without actually being online. Imagine that. But you have to be intentional and you have to be planning it out in advance. And that's going to, that's going to mandate commitment on your part. Something interesting about consistency. We talk about consistency and everybody acts like it's so hard. And it can be. But you know what really makes consistency easier is committing and planning ahead. It's really hard to be consistent in the moment. If you think about it. Right. Like I'm thinking about if you've ever been on like an eating plan for any number of reasons, any kind of diet plan, it's really hard to be consistent with no plan. When you're hungry and somebody offers, offers you cookies, like, good luck being consistent. I know I can't hold up with that kind of pressure, but I can be consistent all day, every day if I have an eating plan, if I have my food prepared, if I know what I'm doing, it's like no problem. I know it's kind of a bummer that I, I'm not gonna eat the cookie, but I already have like all these healthy snacks waiting for me when I get home. It's no big deal. It's the lack of plan and the lack of preparation that creates a consistency gap. So that's something to think about. I should probably do a whole episode on that as well. So as we kind of wrap things up if you are. Remember we kind of talked about sort of like the two different types of business owners. If you're somebody with a launch based business or you have group programs, I want to invite you to Absolutely. Keep following along. Stay tuned. Because I'm going to be folding in a lot of launch strategy episodes. I am really excited for the next few weeks. I'm going to be focusing specifically on launching and launch strategy. And hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. The free training and webinar I have coming up is going to be very, very relevant. If you are interested in talking about launching things. Okay. And if you're someone who's not quite there yet, but you're hoping to get there at some point, I want to tell you this. Everything you do now to get booked out, whether that's with services or coaching or whatever you're you got going on, everything you're doing right now to get booked out makes your future launches so much easier. That's what I do with a lot of my clients. I have them good get good at getting booked out because then their launches are so much smoother because they've created so much demand and they've garnered so much experience in not only closing, but also servicing their clients and customers. And so this is going to be very relevant for you as well. I'm going to be unveiling kind of your path from where you are right now to getting to a place where you are ready to be launching consistently. Consistently. Okay, my friends, that is your episode for today. I hope you have loved this. It's really wonderful to be back on the microphone. It feels like it's been a minute. So thank you for hanging out with me. I will say see you next week. And until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.