Hitting that $1M / Month in my Business Taught Me These 7 Lessons:
As has become a bit of a tradition, I wanted to take you behind the curtain into the wins and learning lessons I had from March & everything I’m carrying with me into the months ahead!
AdOutreach had its first $1 Million+ Month — $1,085,726 in booked revenue to be exact!
You may already know that one of my biggest Mantras is:
The Marketer’s Mindset
This is the concept that everything you do in business (same as in marketing) is a series of “tests” where you either succeed or learn what doesn’t work.
In both outcomes, you’re learning — what does & doesn’t work, that way you can double down on what does work while eliminating what doesn’t.
This is a concept that has existed for centuries in the world of marketing — but is equally as powerful when applied to business in general.
When you approach business with a marketer’s mindset you’ll find yourself innovating more, discovering things that work incredibly well (while being aware enough to double down on them) while simultaneously nimbly navigating what others may describe as “failures” but you instead see them as “learning lessons” an equally as important piece of information that steers your ship in the right direction.
When people ask me how I hit so many milestones & records — I believe far too many of them assume that I just knew *exactly* what would work from the beginning.
The same way someone who hasn’t practiced the art of marketing may assume marketers predict winning campaigns every time…
The reality is that in both marketing and business there are certainly ‘educated guesses’ as to what will & won’t work — but that has to be backed up by the success or learning lesson based on the outcome of each new innovation or test.
Then it is all about doubling down on the innovations that succeed
While eliminating with a strong stroke the things that do not succeed & learning from them.
So now when people ask me:
“What’s the most important thing to hit XYZ milestone.”
I don’t answer with strategies or tactics — because that will depend on the business.
The answer is a MINDSET — The Marketer’s Mindset
^ Which is actually the topic of my upcoming TED Talk & book I’m writing!
Now I’d be remiss talking about mindset if I didn’t spend some time talking about how I look at achieving a new milestone in business.
This is a lesson that I’ve learned after hitting many milestones & reflecting on how I have responded to achieving them:
The 80/20 of Normalization/Growth & Celebration
One big thing that I’ve come to realize in business is that there are 80/20 principles wherever you look — and the big one that I’ve discovered is in the mix between growth and celebration.
Virtually everyone reading this knows that spending too much time celebrating or too little time celebrating a milestone can be equally damaging — but in different ways.
I have found that unfortunately, most entrepreneurs fall into a 95/5 or 5/95 split between growth/normalization and celebration.
I was guilty of this as well.
I fell into the category of 95% normalization/growth & 5% celebration — if I could even call it 5% quite frankly it was 1% or less for most of last year.
But before I get into what this looked like & how I respond now, I must first explain the difference between normalization/growth and celebration
Whenever you hit a new milestone you are faced with two different ways to react:
Celebrate — Celebrate the milestone, do something to commemorate it, embody the gratitude for the achievement you’ve made — let yourself experience the moment.
Normalize/Growth — Normalize this new level as your new ‘floor’, focus on what can be further improved, there is always room for growth & focusing on what to double down & what to cut. Keeping focus pointed towards the next goal & milestone
Now I will say it’s very important to let yourself experience both of these when you hit a new milestone in business.
Depending on your goals you should strive to tilt the scales towards one or the other.
If you’re looking to grow FAST then emphasizing the normalization/growth recipe is definitely the route to take here because it will keep you focused on that next moving target and milestone.
On the other hand, lifestyle entrepreneurs tend to favor the celebration/fun side of things and tilt the scales on this side. They gain more enjoyment in the moment while understanding that taking the focus off growth will cause it to be slower.
I think where people go wrong here is tilting the scale too far:
95/5 or 5/95 towards either growth or celebration
Late last year I found myself tilting the scales so far towards the growth side of things that I was forgetting to enjoy & live in the moment & celebrate the wins I had.
I remember in October of last year we crossed the 8-figure run rate category (833k+/mo) and I barely celebrated or acknowledged the achievement for more than a couple of hours.
Yet the next month when things weren’t quite going as well I didn’t hesitate to beat myself up for weeks. (See my November 2020 Recap for the lessons I learned here — I grew a lot that month).
On the flip side, I have seen far too many Entrepreneurs overcompensate on the “celebrate/fun” side — achieving a milestone and then partying, vacationing, celebrating so hard that they lose momentum and/or never stack momentum to get to the next milestone.
Both extremes have the power to be devastating in the long run.
But I also think that too many people try to achieve the elusive 50/50 balance
I think that 50/50 target is in itself a trap.
Because achievers like myself are never going to want to celebrate that much, it’s too much. And lifestyle entrepreneurs want to enjoy more than that.
That’s why I’ve concluded that the best way to tackle milestones is with an 80/20 approach.
And which side of the coin you’re on depends on whether you’re an achievement-oriented growth entrepreneur or a lifestyle business entrepreneur.
For me the perfect balance is 80% growth/normalization & 20% celebration/gratitude.
So when I hit the $1,000,000 Month in March I made sure to take some time to celebrate with my team:
- I had a nice dinner with the local Austin team!
- I took time to show gratitude towards my clients and team
- I’m looking at getting a memento to commemorate the $1 million month.
- We did a team virtual escape room!
- I committed to attending x2 events/masterminds (which yes also spur growth, but I also get a lot of enjoyment from!)
And most importantly I told my team that this is a major milestone and to take some time to reflect, have gratitude & celebrate the achievement!
At the same time I also imparted the wisdom that has allowed us to grow:
What’s even more exciting than a record-breaking month is that we achieved this $1 million month even when we know we didn’t hit all the KPIs we set for ourselves, even when we know there are things we can improve and do better. What’s even more exciting is that we hit this goal but still have lots of room to GROW from here! 🚀
When you adopt this mantra, impart it to your team and also apply the “Marketers Mindset” to see what you can double down on and what you can improve, that is the key to massive growth!
Alright now let’s dive into some of the more tactical lessons & strategies we learned & applied in March!
Doubled Down on YouTube Advertising MasterClass — Front End Product
If you missed my last recap you may not have heard just how successful our YouTube Advertising Masterclass has been, but it’s been incredibly successful!
In February we rolled out our full 3-hour long in-depth YouTube Advertising MasterClass that covers our entire 7–8 Figure YouTube Ads Strategy for coaches, consultants, and course creators.
And we sold the entire MasterClass as a front-end product for just $47!!
Well, long story short but the MasterClass has been selling like hotcakes!
And it allows us to liquidate a portion of our ad spend immediately as soon as we gain the new leads!
I practice what I preach and since I saw this was a winning strategy we doubled down in March!
We ended up selling $85,000 worth of our $47 MasterClass in March alone! And we know this number will only go up from here as we keep dialing in our systems!
Our Advisor Team Got Resourceful to hit their Target KPI — $1 Million in PROGRAM Sales
Our Advisor team had their own target in March, which was to achieve $1 Million+ in Program sales, not counting the revenue we bring in from our front-end $47 Product (which just gets reinvested into ad spend).
One valuable skill in business and life is to be resourceful — finding a way to make it happen!
Well, the advisor team needed to get resourceful when they found themselves at 5pm ET on March 31st and they were $50,000 short of $1 million in coaching sales.
Now — we had just hit $1 million+ in revenue overall when we included the MasterClass sales, BUT that wasn’t enough — the team knew that they had their own target to achieve!
So they tapped their pipeline, re-offered, and did everything they could to ensure we hit the target.
And at literally 11:53pm ET on March 31st we hit…
$1,000,300 in program sales for March!
Yes, that’s the exact number.
And what it shows is that it pays to be resourceful and there’s always a way — you just need to find it!
It also shows how important it is to encourage your team to PUSH and hold themselves to their standards and get resourceful.
Other teams may have stopped, but our team, the dream team, has been conditioned to get resourceful & do what it takes!
Put an Emphasis on Raving Fans & Client Experience (in addition to Results)
Our biggest focus at AdOutreach is providing absolutely incredible results to our clients when it comes to YouTube Ads!
And this has really shone through in the results we get our clients, the records they hit, the milestones they hit and the new heights they reach when they implement our YouTube Ads strategies!
It’s what lights us up every day and we have our own Slack “Wins” channel which is solely dedicated to sharing our clients’ wins and celebrating them!
Seeing our client wins is like the rocket fuel that powers AdOutreach’s rocket ship! 🚀
But one thing I’ve been thinking more & more about is how we can increase our overall “Raving Fans,” our evangelists, and our Inner Circle clients.
The clients we work with get such incredible results with their YouTube Ads so that couldn’t be the area we needed to dial in.
What we noticed was we needed to place additional focus on the client experience!
Now don’t get me wrong — our clients have a great experience and see great results.
But while we go above and beyond on the results side of things — exceeding many of our clients’ wildest expectations when it comes to Leads & Sales from YouTube Ads…
We found that we could add more ways to ALSO go above and beyond when it came to the client experience and elevating the relationship with clients and the way that they are felt and heard!
So we set out to elevate the overall experience our clients have by not just going above and beyond in the results we help them achieve but also by going above and beyond in how we work with them, how we show we care about them (because we deeply do!) and how we all celebrate their wins together!
I know that taking these steps to elevate every level of our client success to the highest level possible, raising our already high bar is going to be the key to creating raving fans and clients for life! 😁
Invested in New Software for the Team
Now, this is a very exciting one for someone like me who loves implementing the latest software!
We have officially gone back to HubSpot!
I’ve been a big fan of HubSpot for a long time and was in some of their very early iterations of the software, but along the way, we opted for simpler and more streamlined solutions in the meantime.
But now the time is right to implement HubSpot again & to centralize our CRM, sales, pipeline, client success, and marketing all under one umbrella!
We’re also going to be leveraging the Power Dialer Kixie which has come highly recommended and we are excited to give our team the tools that will allow them to succeed at the highest levels!
As these are newer initiatives I will share the wins and learning lessons of these in future recaps!
Fully Lined up our Executive Team & Developed the Optimal Executive Call Cadence
Finally, this month has been a massive one for dialing in our executive team and lining ourselves up for massive long-term growth!
We now officially have a full executive dream team:
- Head of Client Success
- Marketing Director
- Sales Director
- Head of Operations
And myself as the CEO & Owner leading the executive team!
This build-out has been a long time in the making but we truly have an absolutely incredible team in place that is going to bring AdOutreach to even greater heights!
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Overall I am incredibly excited to have hit our first $1 million month!
But I am even more excited for all of the room for growth and opportunities to continue to grow our team, serve our clients at a higher level & achieve even greater levels of success!
I see this as the start of a new chapter & an exciting chapter!
I can’t wait for what’s next from here!
Exciting things are coming for the rest of 2021 & beyond! 😁 💯 🚀
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