← This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
How to Scale A Business Without Sacrificing Everything with Kelly Roach | 311
00:29:33
Kelly Roach shares how she built a scalable, 8-figure business from scratch—without sacrificing her relationships, health, or happiness. This is real talk on scaling sustainably and defining success on your own terms.
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- [00:02]
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- [01:25]
Nicole Kahlil
I am Nicole Kahlil, your host of the this Is Woman's Work podcast, and while much of my job as your host is to prepare for each episode, ask the questions I think you'd most want answered, and hopefully inspire, motivate and entertain a little bit along the way, another key part of my role is making sure we cover a variety of topics that are relevant to you and friend. That can be one of the most challenging parts because there are so many topics that matter that speak to the multifaceted experiences of today's woman. We actively seek out interesting topics and guests and we get a ton of pitches. But what we've noticed is that a lot of them fall into a similar theme or similar topics like health and wellness, burnout, perfectionism, even confidence, women in leadership, and a crap ton related to building and scaling businesses. These are great, highly relevant topics for women, no doubt. So the challenge becomes choosing our guests, because if we said yes to every pitch, we'd have a whole year's worth of episodes on just one topic. And that's not what I want this podcast to be. I want it to reflect the wide variety of experiences and conversations that are relevant to all of you, or at least most women. All that to say we get to choose from a large pool of incredibly talented, capable and successful women, and also some men who apply. And we get to pick the one guest we feel will not only knock it out of the park, but also has an obvious amount of credibility, experience and expertise to offer to you, our listener. And today's episode is one of those we're talking about building scalable businesses with none other than Kelly Roach. An 11 time international bestselling author, a top 20 podcast host, philanthropist and award winning entrepreneur, Kelly has been featured in major media and honored with awards like number 287 on the Inc. 5000 list, the Stevie Awards Woman of the Year and the Titan CEO of the Year. She's one of the few women in the online space to build her business from zero to eight figures with no debt, investors or outside funding. From former NFL cheerleader and Fortune 500 executive to powerhouse entrepreneur, Kelly empowers thousands to achieve financial and lifestyle freedom. And she's here today to share how we can too. So Kelly, thank you for being here. And there are 1 million questions that I could ask you about building and scaling a business. So let me start by asking this. What do you think is the worst advice that's being given out there? What are some of the things that people are being told to do as business owners that make you cringe?
- [04:09]
Kelly Roach
Well, a lot of the trends and fads that we see on social media, I mean I wrote a whole book about it because it pissed me off so much. I wrote a book called Conviction Marketing and that's really about smart people using their talent and capabilities to be of service, to add value to the world and to not get caught up in the pressure to feel like they have to follow trends, participate in fads, do things that aren't in alignment or integrity for their brand. So you know what I see quite a bit in the online space is that people feel so much pressure that they're going to be left behind or when certain trends emerge, that they spend so much time and energy to jump on the bandwagon and by the time they've jumped on the bandwagon, that's no longer effective. We've already moved on to the next thing. And so I'm really trying to guide and help people to build brands that are built on timeless principles that are going to last versus chasing algorithms and tracing short term gimmicks that many times expire before you develop mastery of them.
- [05:14]
Nicole Kahlil
Couldn't agree more. And I love that you call that out. I also am curious. In addition to them no longer being effective by the time they get to us, I sort of feel like there's an element of we're getting a piece of the whole story. Like we're being told to do certain things, certain ways, or certain things work, but we're missing the part where they're doing these other Things or investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in other places that help generate the results they're telling us they're getting. But then we go to try it and we're missing those pieces and it sort of works, but not quite at that level. Is that just a feeling I'm having or is that true?
- [05:56]
Kelly Roach
No, it's totally accurate. And a lot of what I teach, you know, when I developed the live launch method, I said this is the method for everyday entrepreneurs to have success selling one to many online. Because everything that was being taught, yes, it works for people that have celebrity brands with tens of millions of dollars, thousands and thousands of fans, an email list of a hundred thousand people. And then what was happening is that people that were early stage in their business career were attempting to model this and mirror this and they're ending up losing money on their launches instead of making them. So to your point, that is a hundred percent accurate. And I'll give a very specific example of one of the things that I saw online that I really was very vocal when the whole trend emerged of people doing the pointing and the dancing and going viral with all the, you know, skits, they call it edutainment online. I started speaking out really early and I said, listen, I said, be aware because what will happen is you are going to get so many followers so quickly and it's going to be junk and you're going to get a lot of attention with but no conversions. Now no one shared that this was happening. People kept teaching it, people kept selling it, people used it to build their brand, teaching other people to do these things. All the while no one was admitting or acknowledging that yes, you can get millions of views on a reel, you can get tons of followers, but nothing is converting from that. Well then two years later we heard from some of the top influencers in the online space saying, oh, I'm shutting that account down because my engagement is so low, because I got all these people, people following me, but none of them are in my ideal market. And so that's the thing is like you can't chase the facade, you can't chase these vanity metrics because when you do, you're almost like unintentionally self sabotaging, right? But then people that have very small accounts online that are very niche, they're really clear in their messaging, they provide value and they have a great conversion strategy. Someone with a thousand to ten thousand followers can have a far more profitable business than someone that has a million followers that has attention but not conversion.
- [08:15]
Nicole Kahlil
Such a Good point. And I will add that some of what we see that looks like engagement is being and can be manufactured, yes, some of it is fake, but I actually mean manufactured. Like there are strategies that people employ to get engagement and things like that. And again, that often is one of those missing pieces of information that the general public just doesn't really know about. Okay, so one of the things you said earlier that had me thinking is I think one of the things we often do is we look for advice from people who are way ahead of us. Like the best of the best, the multimillion dollars, the top 001% podcasts. And it's not bad advice. But the distance between where we are as new business owners or even developing or established business owners is so far away that some of that advice doesn't hold true. You'd said that earlier. So what's some advice? Let's start with the newer business owner. What's some advice that you would give to them about building a. Scaling a business that sort of meets them where they're at?
- [09:24]
Kelly Roach
Yeah, I think the most important thing is to understand what the non negotiable fundamentals are. And everyone, I say this all the time, everyone wants to work on level 20 strategies, but they don't realize it's actually the level one strategies that are done with consistency, that are then duplicated and multiplied at scale that are what is creating that level of results. So people like to get fancy, they want to chase all these things, they want to invest in all of these things that they think will be a shortcut. Or there's someone that is, like you said, very far along that's teaching it. So they say, oh, this must be the answer. But that isn't actually what that person did to get to that place. And that's why you have to like use a little bit of judgment and you have to ask questions and you have to be clear on why are you investing with this person, why are you investing in this thing? To make sure that it's actually what you need at the time. And the basic fundamentals of like creating value for the market, building your email list, going live consistently so that you are able to have people consume your brand in a long form. Methodology. This fundamentals of sales. Right. It really, truly is the basic fundamentals that fuel everything else that you layer on top of it. The problem is most people want to do the layering on top of it, but they don't have the fundamentals. And so everything that they're doing just kind of is like A house of cards. Because there is no foundation that the business is being built on.
- [10:56]
Nicole Kahlil
Okay, so for people who maybe want to rethink or spend some time with these level one fundamentals, in addition to your books and I know you provide a ton of resources in your podcast, what other things might they be looking at to help identify and also develop these level one strategies?
- [11:16]
Kelly Roach
Yeah, so I mean I would say I would look at the market facing activities that your brand needs to be doing every single day. Like this is the biggest thing that has happened in the online space is that people have been so I, I guess like they're, they're, they have stars in their eyes about marketing. Right. And I love marketing. I own a marketing agency, so I'm not, there's nothing wrong with marketing. I love marketing, I teach marketing. Okay. But the thing is, is marketing is not going to be effective if there isn't a foundational sales strategy in the business. And everybody wants to use marketing to replace sales and it doesn't work. And especially in the market of today because people want to invest in a brand where they're going to have a relationship, they want to buy from what they feel like is a person that is going to know them and understand their wants and needs, you know, so especially in the environment of today. So I think it's really what are the things that need to happen on a foundational level in your business every single day? We need to add value for the market. We need to do something to create visibility, we need to make offers for people to buy. We need to book consultations if you sell a mid ticket or a high ticket service. So it's literally what are the, let's call it, five to 10 core activities that need to happen in the business every day to build a sustainable business. And if someone focuses on those things, they're going to get a lot of momentum and traction in the business and they're going to have cash to, to then be able to invest in things like scaling advertising, building team, adding in additional tech which is then gonna allow them to scale those things.
- [12:58]
Nicole Kahlil
Very well said. My own brain is buzzing and thinking about my own level one strategies. Kelly, I think sometimes people believe from the outside looking in that some of these really successful businesses like your own, it was like this straight line trajectory and that you just did one strategy on top of the other and they all worked. And now you're here. Right. And the real, never a straight line. You know, I love the expression there's no such thing as a straight river. And I Feel like the same thing in business. There's ebbs and flows and turns and all that stuff. So knowing what you know today and looking back, what might you have done differently and what mistakes and I put in air quotes, actually helped you or served you in some way.
- [13:42]
Kelly Roach
I wouldn't do a lot of things differently, to be honest. I came from a business growth strategy background. I was worked in corporate building businesses before I started my own. So I really did focus on the fundamentals. Like I did the unscalable stuff, I did the stuff that no one wants to do right. So I wouldn't change a lot of that. I probably would have invested more in advertising even more soon because I did have the fundamentals working and I did have those basic, I'm a very risk averse, debt averse person. And so I bootstrapped my way from spending a thousand dollars a month on advertising to a hundred thousand a month. So I probably could have done that more quickly. I probably could have leveraged debt, you know, whatever the case to, to speed that up. But yeah, I mean, I think what I did right was focusing on the fundamentals and start building a team right away. There's three decisions that I made at the beginning of my business. And, and to your point, I'm not trying to pretend like things were clean, easy or pretty. They weren't. I failed at everything before I made it work right. So let's be really clear about that. And it definitely wasn't a straight line. But from a strategy standpoint, the three things that I did right from the beginning, when I started building my business, I started building team, I hired a coach and I started advertising. And those are still to this day, I started my business in 2012. Still to this day when I'm teaching people, those are the first three things I think you should focus on is getting help so that you can focus on profit producing activities, scaling the unscalable like we talked about, getting a coach so that you know what the heck you're doing and you can get feedback and support and accountability and guidance from someone who's where you want to be and then advertising so that you can multiply and duplicate the effort that you're making. So I do think those are the three things. But to your point, about like the, the, the winding river and the failure before success. I mean my whole brand was essentially built on the live launch method. And the live launch method was created because I kept launching and launching and failing and failing and losing money and losing money. So everything good only comes from the failure that you do something about. And I think that's the key thing. Because in life we're taught failure is bad. But in entrepreneurship, failure is the only thing that can open the door. And so I think that's a, that is a huge mental shift that we have to go through to allow ourselves to feel safe. Learning through action because you can't build a business in theory. You can only build a business through action, and it will only be through many attempts and that you can extract the information that you need in order to figure out how to get something working the right way. So all of the best things that have happened for me in my business came from failure that I did something about, right? And so I would, I would take that phrase for everyone. It's, it's the failure that you do something about. What did you learn? What information can you extract? What does it mean about what you're going to try the next time? And that's how you stair step your way to success.
- [16:40]
Nicole Kahlil
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- [17:41]
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- [18:17]
Nicole Kahlil
I love the phrase failure that I'm going to do something about. I feel like that could be a morning mantra for all of us. And that Just particular section I encourage every entrepreneur to listen to every morning, like myself included. That was so good. Okay, so let's shift a little bit to the more developing established business owner. Maybe they've locked in their fundamentals. They're feeling pretty good about that now. They're looking to scale. What's some advice or things that we should be focused on?
- [18:47]
Kelly Roach
Yes, so I think a couple things. Number one, I think one of the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is that they try to be the primary salesperson in the business for too long. It's important that you are the primary revenue generator in the beginning so that you can get a model that works and so that you can have something that's transferable so that someone else can help you. But a lot of times what people do is they over invest in the back end of the business and they underinvest in the front end of the business. And then the business owner is in this trap of they're just working, working, working to pay for the staff and the expenses because they don't have enough resourcing or on the sales, marketing and advertising front of the business. So I think definitely making sure that you're balancing your investments between the front of the business and the back of the business is key because I find that a lot of people, once they start having success, they start spending all this money on all these things, but not necessarily the right ones. So then, yes, the revenue is going up, but the expenses are going up even more quickly. And then it's like, well, why are we growing the revenue? There's no, there's no profit.
- [19:49]
Nicole Kahlil
Right.
- [19:50]
Kelly Roach
So I think that's something to be really hyper aware of. I definitely think that once you're starting to have success with the fundamentals, learning a model and a methodology for selling one to many is really crucial. Like launching is really crucial because being able to move multiple people to decision all at once is the only way that you can scale. Right. You can't scale one by one. You have to be able to scale one to many. So finding a method that aligns for you. Obviously I teach the live launch method. That's not the only method. It's the best one. It's not the only one. You have to figure out the one that resonates and aligns for you. But you need to commit to learning it. And I see a lot of people that they'll learn to launch and then the moment that they have a bad launch or they have a couple bad launches or they have a hard season, they're like oh, I'm not going to launch anymore. I'm going to go do this, I'm going to go do that. And it collapses their business because now they don't have any mechanism to, to sell one to many. And so I think it's important to remind everyone also with scaling that just because you learn something and you have success with it, you're not immune forevermore. So many people think like, oh, well, I know how to launch. So then when they have a bad launch, they're like, launching doesn't work. I know how to launch. It's like, nope, even super advanced launchers are going to have an off launch. They're going to have a bad launch, they're going to have a bad season. And that's just pointing to learnings and corrections that need to be adjusted. Right. So I think not. I think being able to differentiate between a situation or scenario where you need improvement versus projecting like an ultimatum on that entire strategy is really important because a lot of people waste so much energy hopping from coach to coach, method to method, tactic to tactic, et cetera, instead of trying to assess and analyze what is the learning that needs to be applied. And again, I'll repeat, just because you've done something successfully once does not mean you're going to have success forevermore. It's a constant iterative process. And there's going to be winning seasons and there's going to be losing seasons, there's going to be great launches, bad ones. You're going to have success with sales, you're going to struggle with sales, your marketing is going to kill it. You're going to run the same ads three months later. The costs are gonna go through the roof. You have to redesign the whole campaign. It's just part of it, Just part of life. Yeah.
- [22:10]
Nicole Kahlil
You know, one of the things you said earlier is getting a coach, someone who's where you want to be. And then you also just mentioned, you know, jumping from coach to coach. I think it can be a little overwhelming, confusing. Cause there's so many people out there. What's the value of sticking with a coach for a period of time? And also it's a good thing at some point if you outgrow your coach and need to find a new one. Any tips on coaching?
- [22:39]
Kelly Roach
Yeah, absolutely. I do think that you need to move from coach to coach over time. Absolutely. I think that is a part of your growth process. Right. And you should be evolving and growing. But I think a lot of people, they don't develop mastery of the thing that they Came to learn and then they keep moving around to go learn a new thing. And, and what they do is they keep putting themselves back as a novice, they don't have mastery of anything. So I think you need to think deeply about your commitment to the philosophy that that person has and the strategy that that person's teaching and ask yourself if you're willing to commit to developing mastery of that concept. Because if you're doing something half heartedly and you just want the quick result and you keep jumping from person to person, it doesn't matter who the person is or how good the person is, they're not really going to be able to help you because good things take time and they take a lot of repetition. A lot of repetition. And so I think a lot of business owners get confused that a strategy doesn't work when in actuality they haven't mastered the strategy yet. Now at the same time, if you start working with a coach and you're like, this person's off. I don't agree with their values. I don't, you know, I don't feel comfortable in this place. I don't align with the strategy. Like if something's wrong, like obviously you shouldn't stay there just to say, you know, move on, use your intuition, use your, your judgment. But there is definitely a lot to be gained by having the patience to follow through and iterate on a strategy versus constantly changing. And because I'm a coach, I see the difference between people that will spend a few years working in a linear fashion towards an objective versus people that every time I see them, they're doing something different. They never get anywhere. They never get anywhere. And that's like life, right? If today I say I want to be a ballerina, tomorrow I want to be a soccer player, on Wednesday I want to play lacrosse, and Thursday I want to run track, I'm not going to be good at any of them. Right. But someone that practices and, and is focused for four or five years and puts the energy and effort into improvement, obviously they're going to see elevation of skill set and mastery in that process. So I think it's just kind of applying the rules of life to your business.
- [25:00]
Nicole Kahlil
Yeah, Shiny penny syndrome never really helps anyone. Right. And, and we're sort of inundated with it. It's hard to not. You talked about thinking through it and I think discernment is really important as a business owner because it's easy to get attracted by what somebody else is doing and not stop to ask, is this what I want to be doing or does this f. It's also easy to be enamored with success. And one of the things I know you talk about is building wealth versus chasing riches. Yeah, talk to us about that.
- [25:36]
Kelly Roach
Yeah. I mean, listen, most people, even that have some level of success are only just broke at a new level their entire life. Debt everywhere. Right. They. They look rich, but they aren't wealthy. You know, no space for family, no space for intimacy, no space for other things in their life that they care about, not taking care of themselves mentally and physically. You know, I think there's nothing more dangerous than the pursuit of success at all costs. And I also think that you can either be wealthy or you can want to look rich, because if your objective is to look rich, you will spend all of your wealth on external facing materialism instead of quietly investing, stacking, building, creating, designing life. And to me, I feel like entrepreneurship is about freedom and that. That's why I like to live my life debt free. That's why I don't want to go. I don't want to go get investors. I don't want. My. My CFO just asked me the other day, he said, you know, do you think you want to do, you know, do you want to go get a line of credit? He's like, how much more fun, you know, would your business be to run if you had an extra million dollars to play with? And I said, yeah, but I said, I still have to pay that million dollars back. That isn't like a gift. I would rather just create the million dollars. Like, right. So. And. And it's different for everyone. And I'm not. It's not like right or wrong or, you know, whatever the case, but I think you need to know what you want. I want freedom. I want to be able to put my family first. I want to be able to create generational wealth. I want to be able to do what I love because I am so invested and I love what I do so much. Not because I have to, because I put myself in a situation financially where I need to be doing what I'm doing. And so I think it's just about having clear intent around what matters to you and aligning all of your decisions with that.
- [27:32]
Nicole Kahlil
Yeah. I think if you asked most entrepreneurs or business owners what the experience they're looking for in starting their business or doing their own thing, more often than not, we would say some version of the word freedom. Right. That's the experience we're looking for when we start a business. And yet so many of Us aren't creating that experience by the decisions that we make. You talk about work, life, integration and how you are running a very successful business and also engaged and present with your family. What tips do you have for us there about how to. And I hate the word balance or integration or whatever it is. You know, how are we doing this?
- [28:12]
Kelly Roach
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just knowing what the big rocks of your life are and, you know, putting the big rocks in first. You know, obviously there's only one place in your life that you're irreplaceable and that's at home. Right. So obviously that should be at the top of the list. And, you know, if you don't care for your mental and physical health, then ultimately you won't be able to continue with your business anyway. So that needs to be at the top of the list. I think it's really like asking these questions, right. And a lot of burnout with entrepreneurs comes from not building the correct team around themselves. And they may be surrounded by a lot of people, but those people aren't actually moving the business forward. Those people aren't actually producing a profit. They're not contributing to the bottom line. So I think making sure that you're building a true winning team around you and that the priorities are clear. Like what does winning team mean? Does winning team mean you have a lot of people to delegate stuff to, but now all of the revenue from the business goes to those people? Does winning team mean you're going to spend money on the people, but the people are going to bring an investment back to the business so that you can maintain a margin, like asking yourself these questions. And you know, obviously a focus on systems in the business is going to make a huge difference so that you're not spending your time and energy putting out fires, but instead, you know, strategically driving the business forward? Right.
- [29:38]
Nicole Kahlil
Yeah. Kelly, I told our listeners that I found the best on the topic and I feel very confident that we delivered on that. What last piece of advice or, I don't know, closing remarks do you have for our listeners?
- [29:53]
Kelly Roach
I would say whatever dream you have in your heart, you are given that dream for a reason and you're here to achieve it. And asking yourself those questions. We talked today about so many questions to ask yourself, taking the time to ask those questions and answer them and then make new decisions that are going to move you forward towards your dream. And I think the biggest thing that distracts us from our dream is when we compare ourselves to other people. So I would say run your own race, be present to your own growth and your own journey that you're on and get really clear on what you want and just make your best effort. I always tell my team, just stack good decisions each day. Just try to say, what's the next right thing? What's one more good decision that I can stack today? And if every day you say, how can I stack one more good decision? Ultimately, you're going to land in a really good place in business and in life.
- [30:48]
Nicole Kahlil
Amen. All right, I know so many of you are going to want to learn so much more from Kellie. So her podcast is called the Kelly Roach show and her website is KellerachInternational.com we'll put that and all the other links to find and follow Kelly in show notes. Kelly, thank you for your wisdom, your time, and for delivering tenfold.
- [31:09]
Kelly Roach
I'm so happy to be here and thank you so much for having me.
- [31:12]
Nicole Kahlil
My pleasure. Okay, friend, here's the thing. Kelly's advice and story isn't just about business. It's about ownership. Owning your vision, your choices and your life. Whether you're building a business, climbing the corporate ladder, or just trying to survive the day without high fiving someone in the face, even though we both know they probably deserved it, the lesson is the same. You have more power than you may think. And the only way to unlock that power is start where you are with what you've got. So if you're sitting on an idea, a goal or a dream, stop waiting for the right moment where you feel totally ready. Because that's not coming. The time to take action is now. That's the only way to get ready. And a quick reminder that you never need anyone's permission to bet on yourself. And if you're already building that business, Kelly reminded us to today that success is possible without having to sacrifice everything. And the real freedom comes when we define it on our own terms and play to our unique strengths. And at the end of the day, owning your choices, betting on yourself, and defining what success means to you, well, all of that is woman's work.
- [32:23]
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