This was not on my bingo card for this year—and it’s contrary to advice I’ve given in the past—but here we are.
Last month I hired (not for the first time, though—more on that later) a Facebook Ads Manager. And today’s episode is about the potentially deeply resonating thoughts and feelings you might be having right now in your business, and about investing too—because deciding whether or not to hire Jayne almost broke my brain and took a number of mindset hurdles.
I started the year intending to have a low investment, low drive year.
The plan was to:
-
Coast along at $250K-ish revenue
-
Be with the fam
-
Finish the renovation
-
Take a high wage and be lean on expenses
I still want that. All of that.
And…
As an inherently ambitious woman who loves what she does,
… who also wants to finish creating our dream house without adding to our mortgage
… and whose three words for the year are space, seamless, and simplicity
I respectfully decided:
F*ck that.
I’m not the type of person who blindly believes it’s all possible.
I am the type of person who believes that you can be wildly successful and hugely present in your personal life—when you make the right decisions.
Everything has a cost. It’s typically either time or money.
If you don’t have time, invest more money.
If you don’t have money, invest more time.
That said…
I’ve been very vocal about the fact that I don’t believe you should invest in a Facebook Ads Manager until you’re spending a significant amount of revenue on Facebook Ads—likely at around the $500K mark.
I think expenses such as team in our businesses can escalate very quickly, and it’s usually at the sacrifice of one or both of two things: your own wages, or expenses that are directly tied to your growth (such as coaching or advertising). The latter is a business killer.
I was absolutely whitewashed in the early days of my business thanks to the rhetoric online about hiring VAs and OBMs and people to manage your email inbox and “don’t work in the business, work on the business.”
Everyone speaks about stacking revenue and starting the month with a high amount of monthly recurring revenue—and for good cause. This is what separates the CEOs from the jobbies.
But where is the conversation about stress and pressure that comes from starting the month with a high amount of recurring expenses? About how it feels when you know that you’re supporting a tonne of people’s livelihoods by the success (or lack thereof) of your business in a particular month? And if a launch or a funnel doesn’t take the way you think it will—the hustle required to make up that revenue?
High expenses = high pressure.
I’ve been there, and I hated it.
Managing team was also my least favourite role as an executive.
One of my highest values is peace and a regulated nervous system in my business.
So when it comes to expenses in my business, I’m very intentional—and this year was designed to be exactly the same.
I budgeted all of my expenses to the percent point.
Here’s also why I’ve been vocal in my thoughts about hiring an Ads Manager:
I’m already great at ads.
Learning how to run consistent ads (especially in lead gen) is a significant part of what I teach in my own proprietary process within the Peace and Profit Mastermind and I have some firm beliefs around the best combination of ads to run (which differs to advice from others in the industry).I had the belief that if I were to spend (for example) $20,000 on an Ads Manager – if I’m already getting high quality leads for $3.00 each – would they really be able to generate leads for much cheaper to offset their ad spend?
I’ve worked with an agency before. It didn’t save that much time or money
They were ok. But I felt like I was still leading the process, writing a lot of the copy and initiating changes myself for lead costs that weren’t that much better than I was achieving on my own.
So, what changed?
I did my Q1 Review.
Kids. Renovation. Life
This year kicked off BUSY. We had a great intake into the Mastermind in September/October, followed by a great Black Friday (with some 1:1 offers that kicked it out of the park), swiftly followed by a great December intake and re-sign period – with school break starting in the first week of December and then continuing on to 1 February and it’s been BUSY. The kids have sporting commitments 3 days per week, the renovation is taking up more time than I could have ever anticipated and perimenopause has kicked me in the butt. Life is fuller than ever, and my time window seems tiny.
I just felt like I’d got my sh*t together for the start of the year and already I was staring down the barrel of school break again.
I wasn’t spending my ads budget.
I budgeted 10 – 12% of my revenue on Ads (sliding scale based on MRR) and while I can set up a campaign in lightning fast time, and check into my campaigns every day – I wasn’t finding the time to edit, test, make changes and scale. As I enter a season of low ticket demand generation, having the capacity to do this is essential – and something I didn’t have. I want to be spending my time in content creation, client support and funnel iteration (nerd alert!).
It wasn’t just about the cost. It’s also about the opportunity cost.
I want to reach a particular revenue goal by the end of 2025. I checked my interim numbers, and knew that if nothing changed, nothing would change. And not only that – but if I didn’t have the capacity to free up some space, not only would I not grow, there was the potential that I’d go backwards.I realised that, let’s say I spent $20k on a Facebook Ads Manager, it wasn’t about whether I could generate 6,667 leads for the same cost per lead – it was that my Ads Manager only needs to generate 3 additional Mastermind clients (actually more like JUST ONE because 73% of my clients choose to stay, and stay on for an additional 12 month period) to make back her investment. And… even if all she did was take lead gen off my plate so I could focus more on building relationships, serving my clients or creating more content organically – that would also make her investment worthwhile.
I’m the bottleneck
For YEARS I’ve had the goal of holding space for 24 people in Peace and Profit. At the start of this year I set myself particular standards for client onboarding and delivery, as well as internal standards for team management and it’s felt like, the start of this year, I’ve been the bottleneck – for new product releases, BTS tasks and new initiatives. In February, we reached 16 people in the Mastermind and I cancelled my launch because I didn’t want to ‘break’ the level of service we provide by overextending myself. We just came off a laid-back launch (again… I didn’t have go big or go home energy) and again, even though I spaced out our launch (and therefore our initial delivery/onboarding between clients), I still felt like I didn’t have the ability to extend beyond 20…. which has brought up an entirely new set of thoughts and challenges – but at the simplest level, again, if I want to reach my revenue goals and do it in a way that doesn’t compromise the experience my clients have, nor sacrifice my peace, I need to take things off my plate. I need to stop being the bottleneck in my business.
And so…. right before Easter, I made the decision that the next necessary step in the business was to take Meta Ads off my plate to create demand in preparation for our September launch and our ‘low ticket season’.
So far, it’s felt like a deep exhale.Indecision is torture. I had been considering an Ads Manager on and off for the last six months or so – umming and ahhing. Being stubborn and trying to do everything myself and it’s just like the story of Burniston’s Donkey (the donkey that got two bales of hay and spent so long trying to decide which one to eat that he starved to death) that finally making the call and deciding to play a bigger game again feels good.
Every day I see ‘your ad has been approved’ in my notifications and think to myself that it feels good not having to be sitting in the iterations in that way – especially with our low ticket funnels coming up. I simply wouldn’t have the capacity (with my current spend – $2,000 – $3,000 per month) to be nimble in both our funnels and our ads at the same time – and it’s giving me space to consider what the next iteration of the Mastermind will look like, dive deeper into how we can deliver more instant resources and finally launch the things we need to launch.
How to sell your online course: additional resources
- Signature Online Course Secrets – My podcast for women who want to grow and scale a profitable and peaceful online business
- Tools and tech – My little black book of tech, suppliers, and software to help you build your online business with ease (including Kartra, my favorite online course platform)
- Peace + Profit Mastermind – An intimate, 6-month program for established female service providers, consultants, and course creators who want to double their revenue while working 20 hours or less per week