198 – How to Handle Transitioning into a New Business Model with Sarah Masci

Josh 0:14
Welcome friends into Episode 198. I’m so excited to bring back on one of my very favorite people in the design and web design world. This is Sarah Masci, she’s been on the show before, you likely know her if you heard her previous episode on 122. You probably know her as being the founder of day rate mastery. And she has really pioneered the day rate approach to design and web design projects.

Josh 0:43
I wanted to have her back on the show because we were recently chatting about just the the different identity and mindset shifts that she’s went through and all the evolutions of her career as she’s switched up her business model and kind of become and kind of morphed into a different role in her business. So I wanted to bring her on specifically to chat about that. I feel like this is not talked about much. But when you go from being the designer, to being a creative director, or the business owner in your business, and then if you’re like me, where you pivot your business dramatically, and you go from being the business owner to a coach or a completely different business model, something happens with your identity.

Josh 1:25
I experienced this firsthand. And we talked about this in the episode, but I really had a lot of highs and lows every time I seem to change my role in my business. And every time I business morphed, I know that you’re probably if you haven’t gone through it yet, you will when you kind of level up in your business, it’s natural. And in this conversation, I was really excited to hear from Sarah about what she’s learned and the tips and tricks that she’s learned to, to kind of manage the identity changes. And again, those kind of like mental shifts when you transition your business either to a new model, or you kind of take on a different role in your business.

Josh 2:01
So I really enjoyed this conversation, I think you will too, especially for those of you who are scaling and you’re going from designer to business owner, I think this conversation is really going to shed some light on some of the things that you will likely go through and hopefully help you out. And speaking up before we dive in here, if you don’t know I have a free action plan that you can pick up right now to help you scale your business. If you are in this point where you are, you’re you’ve got a lot of clients and you are just you’re stuck being at just you and your business and doing everything. It’s time to scale.

Josh 2:37
Now you don’t need to grow a massive agency and have overhead and a big payroll, you don’t need to do that you can scale on a very small level, and do it at your pace. And I’d love to help you with that. And I have a free resource for you, you can go to Josh hall.co/scale. And it is a free basically like a one hour training with me with my tips on helping you scale. So it’s a little about a one hour training that will help you it kind of lays out the the high level things that I learned in scaling my agency that I hope will really help you as well.

Josh 3:05
So pick that up right now at Josh hall.co/scale. Again, it’s totally free. So go check it out if you’re ready to scale. And here’s Sarah Masci, we’re not going to talk about day rates. This time, we’re going to talk about the mentality of shifting and transitioning into a new business model or a new role in your business. Enjoy.

Josh 3:27
Sarah, welcome back onto the podcast. It’s so good to see you. Again. I just told you before we live, I feel spoiled. We’ve been hanging out a lot more recently.

Sarah 3:35
I know we keep bumping into each other. So I am super excited to be back and talking about something a little different today.

Josh 3:41
Yeah, I’m extra excited about this conversation in particular, because I think every time I’ve talked to you, like you recently did a monthly training for my web design club. And you’ve been on the podcast before we’ve we’ve met, you know, virtually and some other summits. And it’s always about VIP days, your you know, the queen of day rate mastery and that whole business model. But you had a really interesting idea that we chatted about, which was to maybe branch off into a different topic, which is I think what we’ll hone in on today is really about like when you transition to a new business model and maybe how your role changes. So yeah, needless to say, I’m so excited to have a completely different type of conversation with you. For those who don’t know, you, Sara, do you want to let everyone know, I think I kind of let the cat out of the bag. But what do you do for folks who don’t know you?

Sarah 4:27
Um, yeah, so my main, I own us Day Rate mastery. And so my main role is coaching and I have courses on really like the VIP day business model and how you can simplify your business and really streamline what it is you’re doing web design, brand design, graphic design, anything like that, how you can streamline it and start offering it as a VIP day as opposed to those long drawn out projects that often result in like never ending timelines and scope, creep and all of that. So that’s what I teach inside of my company and in all of my programs. Previously, I was a web designer. And yeah, I mean, I did branding, graphic design, web design all of that for about a decade before transitioning into this role of being a coach and of course creator.

Josh 5:17
And I’m kind of curious. And by the way, for folks who have not heard your first episode, it’s back on episode 122. For anyone who wants to go back to hear that and to get to know you know, your business and what you teach with day rate. But I’m curious, like, When did your main transition happen? We talked a little bit about it on that episode. But if you’d like to give a refresher, because I think that will set the foundation for this talk. Yeah. When did this like main transition happened for you? Were you I mean, you change your business model, you change your title, I imagine you kind of had to take on a new identity, right?

Sarah 5:50
Yeah, it was really, it was very difficult for me to stop calling myself a designer and start calling myself a CEO, or a coach. I mean, I remember when people will be like, well, you’re basically a coach. And I was like, me, I’m not a coach. I’m a designer, you know. And that’s, that was my identity for so many years. I mean, it was over, like 12 years, I was a designer. And so it was really hard for me to switch over, it was definitely a slower evolution. It’s not like I turned off the took the designer hat off one day and was the coach the next day.

Sarah 6:26
But just to kind of back up, even before I started teaching VIP days, I had already experimented with creating courses and actually created a membership teaching DIY errs, how to create their brand. So that’s kind of the direction I thought I was gonna go in with my business. When I was doing one on one branding and web design, and I was trying to figure out how to scale rather than going into an agency model. My coach at the time, suggested, well, why don’t you teach people how to do what you can, you know, create a course and create a course on branding. And so that sounded like a great idea. And so I did fairly successfully launch a couple of different little mini branding courses, I had a five day mood board challenge, which is still pretty popular, even six years later. Now from when I first ran it, I still have people signing up for it through Pinterest, and Google, you know, search.

Sarah 7:24
But that was really teaching branding to people who were just kind of started whatever type of business they wanted. And they needed help with branding, and they didn’t want to hire a designer. And so I did that for about a year. And that’s also like the same year that I stumbled upon the day rate model for myself. And so I was kind of doing day rates for my clients and teaching branding. And then I started having people ask me, Well, how do you do J rates, and I realized that it was a totally different audience. If I needed to teach day rates, I needed to be teaching designers how to do that, not DIY, or you know.

Sarah 8:04
So I was like, Alright, I’ve got all these audiences. Now I have the people who want my services, I have the people who want to learn how to design and then I have the designers who want to learn how to do day writes. So I knew I just kind of had to pick something out all the coaches, all the gurus are saying you can’t, you need to have one audience, you need to be talking to one specific audience in order for your message to be heard. And so that was in 2019.

Sarah 8:30
When I was like, Okay, I need to stop teaching DIY. Here’s how to do branding, it was getting kind of frustrating for me anyway, because as a designer, I just really struggled with teaching other people how to design if they didn’t have the natural ability to design. But I knew when I did that I could teach designers how to implement this new business model of doing day rates. And so that was 2019. And I kept my one on one clients for about two years after doing that.

Josh 9:00
And so I was curious about that.

Sarah 9:02
Yeah. 2022 is my first official know, one on one design clients. Yeah.

Josh 9:10
Gotcha. And you already hit on a couple of really interesting points. And that is, the more like, clear and concise you can get on your target market, the better. And this is so timely for me, because I don’t know if by the time your episode goes live, not quite, we’re not going to quite be there. But I’m about to rebrand this podcast to the web design business podcast, because I’ve realized we’re really focusing on the business side of things in web design, and we’ll talk design and SEO, but it’s really much more about the business and that’s what I’ve realized I’ve kind of attracted and you’ve met a lot of members of my web design club it’s really clear like it’s people who own their own web design businesses in our in our growing.

Josh 9:51
So I’m it’s this is so timely. I feel like I’m gonna learn a lot from this too because I’ve realized like you just said and all when you said all the Guru’s saying it’s because It’s true, the more detail you can get on what you do and who you serve and limit the amount of people who are going to be there, the better the would you agree that it’s like, that’s the best way to just explode your business is to get just so concise about who you serve.

Sarah 10:14
Yes, yeah. I mean, when I was teaching branding to DIY or so it was like, well, who’s your target audience? It’s like, anybody, anybody who’s running a business, who is just kind of starting out and doesn’t want to hire a designer? Yeah, they can learn how to do their own branding, but it was so broad. And yes, I attracted, like, 1000s of people into that five, that five day challenge that I kind of kick started the whole thing with, but my messaging never felt completely dialed in, because I never really knew who I was talking to. It was such a broad scope of industries and professions, service based businesses, and, you know, just all different types of people. And so when I got really clear, and I was like, I’m going to teach VIP days. And now this like, as of the time of recording, like I am teaching more than just designers how to do this model. But it really started with the messaging piece, because I could so clearly articulate the pain points that I knew designers were struggling with.

Josh 11:18
Well, and it helps when you come from that background, I’ve experienced that too. Like, I didn’t need to do any market research to figure out web design content. I just looked at my entire journey and looked at all the pain points I had, I was like, there we go, that I’m sure everyone else has these two i i know that’s the approach you’ve taken as well. It’s harder for I think folks who are work with people in different industries, because you do need to get to know that industry a little bit. But I think you’re hitting on an interesting point for web designers. It’s like you can still serve people in different industries, but still have a type of focus. That is so clear.

Josh 11:51
And I learned this from Amy Porterfield recently who I had on the show a little while ago, and she said, the more it’s concise in your messaging, you can get to like one type of person is the best, you will still get outliers. Like you’ll still get people outside that but the more you can attract your main perfect type of customer. You know, that’s key. And I think, if you’re going to transition or pivot your business model, that is paramount, because you need to be so clear. Like I think it’s easier in the beginning to be a generalist and just work with anybody, you figure out what you’re good at what you like, what kind of clients you start attracting, but you got to get, would you also say, Sara, that you have to get to a point as kind of an evolution in your business that you have to like, level up and get more concise get more clear, no matter what you’re doing with your business?

Sarah 12:38
Yeah, yes. Um, yeah, for me, I was like, but this is so helpful for all of these different people. But it really took effort on my part, and like, restraint for me to stay focused on the messaging that I had with designers. However, now I’m at the point where I have people coming to me and saying, I really want to enroll, but is it only for designers? So now, the other side, we’re in, you know, on my FAQ section is, is this only for designers? And the answer’s no, this can be applied to anyone. But my messaging is just really, like catered towards designers. Because that’s where that’s the world that I came from. And when designers do land on my sales pitch or whatever they they’re like, oh, my gosh, how are you in my head? How do you know exactly what I’m dealing with? And that’s, that’s the reason why.

Josh 13:30
So one of my close colleagues, Jimmy Rose, who owns contests there, they have one of the best examples of a product that has a few different like niches, it’s the same product, but just different niches. So there’s, you know, web designers, but they also serve bookkeeping and accountants and all these different industries. And what he did is, which I thought was genius was basically to create different landing pages for his most popular industries, same tool, just different verbiage. Have you thought I’m just curious, have you ever thought about doing something like that like having different landing pages for the main niches or niches that you kind of cater to?

Sarah 14:06
Yeah, I mean, it’s one it’s the same curriculum and I’ve thought about just kind of repackaging that same payment, the same program, repackaging it with, you know, day rate, day rates for designers, J rates for copywriters, day rates for marketers. And this is like, like you said, the same curriculum, just almost a different name and putting it on a different page and really speaking to each other’s markets. But I think my biggest hesitation with that is I don’t know how to really talk to copywriters, or because that’s, you know, I would have to do some market research to really kind of get the language that they’re using and be able to get inside of their head the same way that I could do it with designers.

Josh 14:47
Totally makes sense. A great lesson for anyone who has a service for multiple different industries because I think it’s probably wise just to stick with what you know, and you will attract those other people what I would say A for anyone who’s in this position where you’re like, Okay, I build websites, but I could build websites for any type of industry, maybe highlight the type of industries you’re comfortable with, you know really well, but then just the outliers will be attracted in there. And you can always say like also serving automotive chiropractors, home inspectors, whatever it is.

Josh 15:18
Just have it in there somewhere in the verbiage that way people know, or is or the way I always did, it was custom websites for small business small to medium sized business owners. So it was like, it didn’t get me in the startup crowd. But it also didn’t take me into the big corporate large businesses that I wanted to have nothing to do with. So yeah, sounds like, you know, you’re on the right track with that. Now, I’m curious, Sarah, Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

Sarah 15:40
Yeah, I was just gonna say one of the one the, like, the word that I found the most, that’s really resonated the most just by saying creative service providers, because it kind of keeps it in that service provider niche, but also, just like creative, she knows. So marketing is creative. copywriting is creative, and all of that. So yeah,

Josh 15:59
So like, a landscaping company is not going to be like, ooh, tell me about this day rate model, even though the landscaping can be creative, for sure, but a little different than the actual creative services. So you’ve had from from what I gather you’ve had, I would proceed two main shifts, you went from freelancing and doing what everyone does, which is just to run yourself ragged with all, you know, the the basically 24/7 support model, and then you transition into this day rate model for yourself, but then you transition to coach is, am I getting that right? As far as your main transitions?

Josh 16:35
So can we take these one by one I would love because I think a lot of people are probably in that position where they either want to get out of this, like chaotic business, this Frankenstein Stein style business that they’ve created, and they just want to get into a more sustainable business. But then eventually, they may want to be the business owner, or they may be they may want to be the creative director and get out of the design. So I think maybe some lessons learned from both of those transitions for you, I think would really translate to people wanting to get that next level.

Josh 17:03
So that like first transition, you’ve already kind of talked about the pain points. But how did you practically go to the day rate model? Did you still keep the same clients? Or did you just like, burn the boats and just start fresh? How did you transition to the day rate model from the one on stuff?

Sarah 17:20
No, I actually started with some of my existing clients who were coming back to me asking for things updated, whatever. So just to kind of really back up, I was never big on the retainer model. My work was more I had a few retainer clients, but most of my revenue was coming from custom proposal projects. So do you need a website? Okay, let’s talk about God branding. Do you need ecommerce, do you what functionality do you need, and then I would do a custom proposal based on their needs, and charge anywhere from 2500 to I think my highest was a $12,000 package.

Sarah 18:01
So that was kind of my thing, right. And I was questioned for proposals for every single client, everybody was really, very catered to what they specifically needed. And those projects would range anywhere from two to three weeks to I had one there was almost two years, like honestly just dragged on forever, because there was so much scope involved. And then there was so much waiting, and all of that. So that was my business model previously.

Sarah 18:30
And as you can imagine, like those projects wouldn’t, we’re all kind of stacked and layered and overlapping with each other. And at any given week, I would be working on five or six different clients. And literally just like throughout the day, I would, you know, spend half hour in this client. And then I would send something off for review and move on to the next client, I would work for an hour and another client and then another client and it just became like, oh, I felt like I was doing was jumping from client to client and nothing was ever finished. Or it took forever for things to actually finish. And when they did finally finish, it was way beyond the original timeline. And we were I was frustrated. They were frustrated. And the whole project just kind of ended like, like, I’m so glad that number and let’s just move on. And you know, did it result in the good case studies or testimonials, even though the end result is, you know, beautiful work. And they were happy with that with the end result. I was happy. We were just so like done with the project.

Sarah 19:33
So when I switched to the J rate model, it was those kinds of clients who were coming back to me who had I’d already worked in I’d already built their website and they came back and we’re like, I need like x, y and z changes. What will you charge me to do this, this, this, this this? And you know, typically in the old traditional model, I would have wrote them another proposal for whatever it was that they needed. And that’s when I was like If I don’t have time to do all these proposals, because I have all this client work on my plate, so how about you just pay me for a day, and I’ll get the whole thing done for you. And so that’s when those were those first few clients, they were all people had already.

Josh 20:14
It’s a great, it’s a great point to that, whenever you switch up or change your business model, or the way you do things, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to lose all your clients, users, you just train them on the new way of doing things. I definitely learned that when I scaled, I was like, like, the rates are different. The way we go about projects are a little bit different. But it was relieving to me to know that like everyone was cool. I mean, I I don’t think maybe I had a couple who just because of rate changes didn’t stay with me. But it was I was so surprised. Like I made it. I guess I made it so much worse in my mind that I was like, if I changed my business model or one’s gonna leave, I have to start from scratch and it just did not end up being that way.

Sarah 20:53
Yeah, yeah. I mean, my some of my retainer clients did not come on with me. So I did have like, three retainer clients, but they were all at low hourly rates, like we’re talking $50 Now, or $75 an hour for 10 hours a month. So I had one guy paying me $750 a month, per 10 hours. And he would just kind of come to me whenever he needed something, and I would do it whenever we needed it. And, and so that was not as I mean, just wasn’t as lucrative or profitable as when I would say okay, well, my day rate is $3,000 for a day, and this guy’s only paying me $750 for 10 hours over the course of the month.

Sarah 21:35
So I couldn’t really transition those people. But kind of going back to starting the day rates with existing clients who had booked me for project work. What was really great about doing that was that they already trusted me, they already knew me liked me and trusted me. And they knew that when I said I’ll get a jump for your day, like they believed me because they had already worked together, we had already built that relationship. And so for anyone who’s kind of going to start doing this, I know this, this call isn’t even about this recording is even about day rates but if you’re going to start doing it’s great to start clients who already know you and trust you.

Josh 22:13
And luckily, we have your first episode at 122. Everyone can go to Josh howell.co/ 122. And listen to the full talk on de res because we really expand on this. But that’s great context for like another question. I wanted to ask you, Sarah, which is, what a bit like what changed in your mindset. Because I experienced every time I had a service change or rate change. It was like I was a new person. I’m like, Wow, I’m not Josh, that $35 An hour guy. Now. Now I’m $75 an hour and it fell more in power. But I also felt a little scared because I’m like, Oh my gosh, oh, my clients can do this. What what tell me about like, the mentality of when you changed, I mean, you were the day rate person. And that obviously led to a whole career path for you. But yeah, what did your mentality of what what was it like? Like, what changed for you?

Sarah 23:00
Talking about pricing, when I first did my very first one and just $500 because I was in that mid that hourly rate mentality, I was still thinking to myself, Okay, $500 per day sounds reasonable, because let’s factor in a few extra hours, the beginning it you know, before and after. So let’s just say it’s 10 hours, at $50 an hour, that sounds reasonable. So I’ll just charge $500 a day. And I didn’t take into consideration my level of expertise, and just the convenience of them getting everything done in a day. And I remember my coach at the time was like, You are way under charging, you should be charging $1,000 per day, and I being that, like always, chronically under charging person that I was I was like, who’s gonna pay me $1,000 for one day, like, I’m not worth that nobody would pay me that much.

Sarah 23:52
And so I slowly raised my price over time. And what I noticed was with each small increments of raising my rate from 500, to 3000, my confidence grew, my mindset shifted, and I became, I was able to step into, like owning that expert role. I like thought of myself more as an expert when I charged $500. But then a year later, I was charging like $2,000, and people were still paying it. And I was like oh, like people actually will pay me or money, I am actually worth it. And so then seeing testimonials from those clients really helps a lot with your mindset of just believing in the value that you’re delivering.

Sarah 24:42
So for me it was really just overcome, like believing in myself and knowing that I was worth charging a lot more and and then I got to a point and I think this was a big turning point was when I had enough clients booked out paying those rates that I did detach myself from the outcome when if I would pitch it, and a client didn’t want it. Okay, you know, this is my very like, I, I stopped like feeling like I had to get every sale like every sale was so important. And it got to the point where Okay, well, if you’re not going to pay it the next person that comes along well, and so really like, when you get to a point where they need you more than you need them. That’s kind of when you know, like you haven’t, like made it, but you feel just so much more empowered and confident.

Josh 25:32
That’s a great point. And I know, there’s a lot of different mindsets on this. But what I’ve learned in business is that if every one of your leads gives you a yes, then you’re not charging enough. You want some knows, obviously, there’s a lot of different ways to funnel and kind of weed out people before they even get to the proposal stage. But you definitely never want to be at a point where you’re landing 100%.

Josh 25:53
I actually, I used to think 100% conversions was really good until Eric, my see, you know, CEO, and I talked about this when he took over the agency. And we learned a lot together about the fact that we actually want to get more no’s to get to that point where we know like, okay, we’re at a price point that is only for the best type of clients. And it’s not for everybody. But that’s fine. Like there’s a ton of other service providers out there who can handle the lower end stuff. So what about I’m curious, did your title change at all? Like practically? Did you still keep the same? What was your title? Were you like designer strategist?

Sarah 26:26
Yeah, I was. I was, yeah, brand strategist and designer, I added strategists to the end of it. I do remember, I remember, like, I would go out to, you know, social functions with my husband’s corporate, co workers, Christmas parties, that kind of thing. And whenever we would be out in public, and people would say, Oh, what do you do? I would, I would kind of like, I kind of would come into the conversation like, oh, well, I’m just a web designer. And my husband noticed that he was like, you’ve got to add a little more confidence to what you’re saying. He’s like, you’re not just a web designer. He’s like, you run a web design company. And so that was a shift from me from saying, I’m a web designer to I own a branding and design business. And that really, also helped with just like, feeling more confident and feeling more like the expert, and like running a company versus just being a designer.

Josh 27:24
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Because I feel like anytime you make a change in, in your business, sometimes that’s going to change the title. Like for me, I know, I went from the designer to suddenly being the creative director. And then eventually, when I wasn’t doing nearly any design, I was just the the head honcho or the CEO or project manager. So that’s always something to take in consideration to whenever your business changes a little bit. Just remember, I think it’s fair to say your title is probably going to change a little bit too. But that bleeds into your confidence. And it just kind of I hate to say leveling up, but you know, it’s just the next evolution for someone as a freelancer business owner.

Josh 28:02
Now, you went from quite the transition after that, and to coach and into, I guess, its course grade or whatever want to call it. Test was the start of that, just the confidence of this business model working? And then I’d love to hear about the mindset with that transition, because I got a, I have a lot of probably, very parallel thoughts to you. But yeah, where did the like the start of actually doing that, and the mindset, you know, take hold for that.

Sarah 28:29
It took me a long time to come to terms with switching my identity from being a designer, or owning a design company to being a business coach. I always thought of my coaches, as coaches, they weren’t designers. They were coaches. And so when people started calling me that I was like, well, that’s not who I am not really a coach. So it definitely took me I would say, like a year for me to feel comfortable and confident calling myself that. And now even two years, two plus years later, I don’t call myself coach anymore. I call myself CEO and founder of my company.

Sarah 29:07
But yeah, it was really hard for me to make that shift I did get I got the competence just to go off and start doing that. Let me just kind of back up like I was doing all one on one client work. It was going great. I was you know, doing my business was doing well. And then people started asking me, well, how are you doing this? Can you teach me how to do it? And I was like, Sure, I can show you what I’m doing. And I would just do a quick little loom video to kind of show them some like, well, this is how I do this. And this is how I do this. And they there was like a handful of people that watch this loom that I did inside of our designer Facebook group. And they were like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing.

Sarah 29:50
And that’s when the light bulb went off when I when I thought to myself, Okay, there’s a there’s a lot more designers out there who could benefit from learning this. So why I don’t I tried to create it, why don’t I try to pre sell a course. And so I emailed my list, which at the time was full of my clients and those people who took my branding, five day challenge. None of like, I was like, on the off chance that you are on my list and you are a designer and you are interested in learning about day rates. Click here because I have something I might be creating. And we out of that list of I don’t even know several 100 people, maybe 500 people. I got about 60 Hand raisers.

Josh 30:33
Okay

Sarah 30:33
interested and so I was like, Okay, I’m gonna do it. I’m just gonna launch this beta course. And I’m not going to make it until I sell it. So I got the waitlist going, I kind of pumped up everybody’s excitement. I launched it. It was July of 2019. And I had 15 people enroll. And so I was like, Okay, that’s a good start. Yeah, yeah. And so that’s where I kind of got confidence from that. And then I built it out one week at a time with them over eight weeks, or six or eight weeks, and I started seeing them get an ROI, full ROI. Within two weeks of joining the course wasn’t even fully built out.

Sarah 31:16
I literally had created two modules. And they were like, Oh, my gosh, I just booked my first VIP day. Oh, my gosh, somebody’s just paid me $750. And I can’t believe it, you know. And then by the end of that first month, I had out of those 15 people, I would say like 80% of them had gotten they made their investment back. And one of them said, This is my highest month in six years of my business, and I only had to work five days, or whatever it was. And so I was like, Okay, we definitely are on to something. And then I relaunched it again, a few months later had 15 More people enroll. And then the following year, as well. And I kind of really revamped to the whole thing, put it on an evergreen model and went full force into it. But I did still keep my one on one clients for two years. Right? Yeah.

Josh 32:08
So and that’s a great another, that’s another awesome business lesson is just try it out. And if you get results for a few people, then you like, if you get awesome results with 15 people, you can get another 15 people, then you can get 30 people that didn’t get 100, they didn’t get 200. Like the results for a few people or even one person can replicate. I think that’s so so important to remember. Because a lot of people starting out are like, I don’t even have any web design clients. But if you can get one, and you do a really good job, you can get two, then you can get 510, etc.

Josh 32:39
So I think it’s a great lesson, just try it out. And if you get results, it’s I’m imagining that’s what gave you the confidence to get ready for this huge transition. And then I want to ask you about the mentality of going from designer to coach because that’s, that’s a whole nother I mean, that’s really a different business model. It’s not like going from you know, as a freelancer just bespoke kind of like custom quoting today rates, you’re still one on one service working stuff. Now you’re like a whole different person, you’re not doing this service. It’s a completely different business model. It’s exactly what I experienced. When I went from an agency owner just starting to doing courses, and then eventually going full time courses. It was completely different.

Josh 33:22
And while it’s awesome, there’s definitely pros and cons to every business model. But yeah, what about for you? Like, I guess one of the questions I have is like, what was the hardest thing to get past when you went full time coach, or even when you were doing day rate, you know, much more I would imagine that took most of your time, like what was your mentality and what was some of the challenges you went through?

Sarah 33:44
One of the thing that people a lot of my students were telling me was that they really appreciated the fact that I was still in it, doing the thing that I was teaching and they had a lot of respect for me because they were like you, you’re teaching us this but you’re still actually doing it to like you’re walking your talk and you’re doing that thing and you’re showing us how to do it. And so when I really truly pivoted out of doing that one on one design day rate work. That was my biggest fear was Am I not as like, do I not like am I not as authentic anymore because I’m not doing it anymore.

Sarah 34:28
And I always felt like I had to explain myself why I was no longer doing the design work and it’s really because I want to be 100% all in on helping you guys and I can’t split my energy both ways. But also because this is a lifestyle business for me and I don’t want to be working five days a week. I don’t want to be doing design work two full days a week and then coaching three full days a week and like the whole point of this is to get back our free time. Put more whitespace in our life and our you know in our Business and in our life. And so I really had to be okay with that myself to convey that to my students in my audience to just like that was just like a really awkward thing for me to stop being a designer.

Josh 35:13
Well, I 100% back you up. And that that was my biggest fear with with taking this brand full time is like, am I going to lose my legitimacy because I’m not actually building sites for clients now. But what I’ve found is that I’m actually like, 100 times more valuable to my audience now, because when I was teaching what I did, it was only from my systems, and only my approach, which was a really good approach. It worked for me building a lifestyle, six figure web design business. But there’s also a lot of other ways to go about things too. And now I’m able to share what I learned, but also these other approaches to see what works for different people.

Josh 35:55
I never did the day rate. But a lot of my students have mixed a lot of my processes and with your processes, Sarah, and they have like this weird Josh and Sarah business day rate slash custom mix. And it’s awesome. Like it’s working for a lot of people. So I think you’ll find too, like over time, as long as you continue to be in the trenches with your your students and learn from them and learn from other colleagues. It’ll make it even more powerful, because now it’s just not what you experienced with that model. But now it’s like what other people are doing and what they’re working on now. But it’s at scale.

Josh 36:28
So yeah, I totally agree. It’s, it’s tricky. I also, it’s one reason that I kind of retained the founder role for my agency was I still I still oversee Eric and the team, and he kind of gives me reports on what’s working, what’s, what they’re changing. And it really helps me get a pulse for where things are at. So that’s kind of one way I kind of kept my toe in the water. But even for you like I would imagine you’ve got years and years to expand on what you’ve learned. And then if you ever did want to offer a very slim amount of like one on one work, you could like, are you familiar with Brad Hussey?

Sarah 37:02
No.

Josh 37:03
So Brad, is you would love Brad, you should talk to Brad, you guys are so aligned, because he has a very productized business, it’s very similar to the day rate thing except his is just more like, it’s strictly web design. But he essentially started teaching that and then got back into doing project work, but on a very, very constrained productized business model. And He only takes on like one client usually every two months or three months, like every two or three months. So that was kind of interesting. Like he wanted to dip his toe back in that world, but just at a higher level. So like the options are endless, but it is I totally get it that like the mental and the mindset games that happen when you get out of a role and into another role. It can be really, it can be really like you can be your own worst enemy.

Josh 37:51
And I even remember going from designer to creative director and business owner, when I scaled my agency, I was like who’s gonna work with me if I’m not designing the site’s and I know a lot of my students are going through this right now I can think of several on the web design club who are scaling who I’ve had to tell over and over like, it is okay, you can still be their primary contact, but it doesn’t mean that you need to do everything you can oversee stuff, what are your thoughts on that of somebody who is like, they know, their next step in business is to get out of the designer role, but they’re afraid of not doing the work for their clients.

Sarah 38:28
I had this same thought when when I was trying to decide how to scale my design business. I was like, nobody’s gonna hire me if it’s if it’s not me doing the design work. But when I was doing day rate, I did have my assistant, take over not all of the did not the design course, but a lot of different like it. So it was like a course. So people would hire me for web design, branding, and course setup. So setting up their course graphics and all that. And I eventually started transitioning all of that over to her and clients were just just as happy.

Sarah 39:03
So that kind of happened when I was doing that one on one work. But now in maybe I don’t know if you can relate to this. But in the coach role, I got to a point where I was thinking about bringing in coaches to help with different parts of the coaching program. And I thought, I can’t give this up. Everybody’s joining because they want to learn from me. And they’re joining it because of me. And that was all in my head like, well, I can’t have another coach onboarding and doing all of this stuff and giving them feedback because she’s not me. Well, we’re there now. And we have someone else doing the feedback and the coaching and the onboarding.

Josh 39:45
That’s awesome.

Sarah 39:46
Love. We know they love her feedback just as much as they love mining. They’re still getting all the same results that they were getting before. So it’s really just a mindset thing. You kind of have to get over and trust that you have someone who can help.

Josh 40:00
I think it’s very similar. It’s so funny. You mentioned that because we were just talking about Shannon Mattern, who is like, basically the girl version of me. She’s in Columbus, Ohio. She’s a web design coach, we met up recently, and she’ll be on the podcast here. I think in the next couple episodes, she told me the exact same thing because she has coaches under her. And I told her I was like, I kind of similarly, I kind of have my own mental roadblock. So I was like, I just can’t imagine, you know, offering coaching and then not personally be with me. But she’s said the same thing. It’s like subcontracting a lot like you.

Josh 40:30
It’s all stems from your your skill, your processes, your skill sets, your expertise, your knowledge, but it just filters down and allows you to scale a little bit more. And there’s still ways that people can access you via like a weekly call, or whatever the coaching type of program looks like. But yeah, that’s so funny that you mentioned that because I feel like that’s gonna kind of be the next step for me too. And, and I definitely struggle that because I am such a, like, I like the personal side of things. And that will never change. For me, it also is probably different because I have a personal brand. However, I realized that at some point, I’m going to get to the point where like, in order to help people at scale, I’m going to need to go from just me doing that all the things. So got a very similar like the roadblocks I had as a going from a designer to a business owner are still here as a coach in some ways as it scales.

Sarah 41:19
Yeah. Yeah, I think any, you know, the whole scaling was you can’t truly scale unless you have other people helping with, you know, it’s very hard to scale as a one person show being the only person doing that thing that’s helping people get the results. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh 41:36
That’s great. That’s so great. I’m curious to like, so you went by coach for a little while, but you changed to founder of your company. I think it helps that you probably got day right mastery as your as your company name. Did you ever think about going with a personal brand? Or was it direct mastery pretty quickly early on?

Sarah 41:55
I honestly still keep kind of going back and forth. Dairy mastery is the name of the company. But if you go to my web, my website is still Sarah massey.com. My Sarah Massey is the logo at the top. And so we had actually trademark to direct mastery as a business name. And then we had a lot of people referring to what I teach as VIP days. And so it started to get kind of confusing. And I was like, let me just put my name on here, because everybody knows me by my name. And so that’s, I’m still the personal brand. But just from a more professional bio standpoint, it’s like, you know, CEO and founder.

Josh 42:36
No, I like it. I like what you’ve done. I actually, I forgot that your website was still Sarah Massey, I was thinking it was direct mastery. Yeah, I like that. And even when you google you, it just says Sarah Massey, direct mastery. So it’s very clear, like those two things. And then I think what’s cool about that is you always have a chance to expand on that if direct mastery is like your main program, but you end up having, you know, a separate program, it can be tied in there without having two different business entities and bank accounts and all that complex stuff. So

Sarah 43:04
I mean, I’m notorious for changing my mind and kind of changing things up, I can never just stay focused on one name one thing forever. And so yeah, you’ll find different names of the program, then it’s half of its under me. And so it gets a little confusing, but I feel like as long as we have all the URLs kind of pointing to the same place, you know, people are gonna find me one way or another.

Josh 43:27
So I feel conflicted on how the season in the period of time when I went full time coaching because I thought I was gonna just feel awesome. I was like, I’ve got no more service work now. Well, I mean, it was a lot of work to turn all that over, and I did it very tactfully. I probably went way more detail than I needed to I made a video for every client that I had that I passed on to Eric and the team and I went ham on making the most like the smoothest transition possible. And I thought that was in June, I remember was June of 2020, that I did all I was like a whole month of just transition work.

Josh 44:04
And then July came around July one I officially was full time coach and I thought I was just gonna feel free as a bird and just gonna happily work on content. But I felt weird. And I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t upset about the decision. I never felt like it was the wrong decision. But I did feel weird. And I think I can trace it back to just almost taking on a new identity. Because suddenly I was not I mean, I’ve been Josh, people’s web designers since 2009. For some clients, so did you ever have that? Did you have any low points of like, once you got, you know, once you pass, pass off your clients, do you ever feel any identity struggles and just feel like wow, why do I Why do I feel like this? I shouldn’t be like happy as a clam as they say.

Sarah 44:45
I think it’s because as a designer, you’re probably the same way you became known as an expert. Like you were an expert designer, like you’re in your zone. I don’t know I get into like the zone of genius versus the zone of excellence thing and think as it is I knew I was in my zone of excellence. I was really good. People loved my work, I was getting paid well, and things were really going well, like I was felt like it’s kind of not like a star, but I felt like really in my power and confident in that role. And then transitioning into a coach, all of a sudden, I was like, new again. And I was like, you know, yes, I had a great program. And yes, the people who knew about it, were loving it, but I still kind of felt like, it kind of was like undiscovered, right?

Josh 45:34
Well, you’re also you’re probably you, if you feel anything like me, it was like a yeah, I’ve sold a lot of courses to this point I had when I went full time, I already had a six figure business on my hands. But then I realized, I’m a baby in the course creator world, like, I’m still I just took a course from Amy Porterfield. I’m like, How did I not know that? Like, I’ve been doing this for three years? How do they not even think about doing these kinds of things? So yeah, I think it’s like you, you will have to learn a new business model, you become kind of a starter again,

Sarah 46:01
yeah. And the other thing, and I was just talking to someone about this the other day, like I, you know, when you’re doing that one on one client work. And for me, especially in the day rate model, I went from chaos, like proposals and projects, and hamster wheels and scope, creep, and all of that to all of a sudden streamlining my business so much that it was running so smoothly. And it was so simple. And I was working two or three days a week, and I was making six figures just doing that. And like, it was beautiful.

Sarah 46:34
And then I transitioned out of that into this course model. And while yes, I was making even more, all of a sudden, my business became complex again. So I went from complicated complex to super simple and so streamline to what that one to many model well, like, it’s kind of like the grass is always greener, like, I’ve thought, Oh, if I answer this one, too many, like, everything is going to be amazing. Well, then you’re dealing with customer service, and like onboarding, and back. And now you’re no longer just onboarding one client. But you’re onboarding 50 clients or, you know, you’ve got to have all that other stuff that you don’t need when you’re doing the one to one business model.

Josh 47:17
That’s a great point, I remember even when I started scaling my agency, I realized that I needed to like reel back what I was doing, because I had come into such a sweet spot, with small businesses that were websites, usually between three and $5,000. That was my sweet spot, I would have some really good projects for 70 510k. But then I started taking on some bigger projects that ended up being kind of nightmare type projects. And they ended up being Yeah, I was like, Wow, we got a $12,000 project, hello.

Josh 47:47
However, it took like six times, as long as some of my $3,000 projects, I would just assume nail like just, you know, crush it out a bunch of $3,000 projects, get them on my hosting and maintenance. And it was like such a simpler model. So this is a great point to I think for anyone who I mean, I definitely encourage expanding your business model and scale when you feel like you need to. But definitely be careful about, like what you change your business to become if you have a nice streamlined model. Because sometimes I feel like once you get in a rhythm and you feel like stuffs getting easier, it’s like something must be wrong. It’s like, oh, I got a scale. Now it’s too easy.

Josh 48:27
Whereas sometimes, like that’s probably the best way to go for a while. And then you could just refine those systems and take an easier approach rather than, you know, trying to take on anything and everything. Like, for example, I know a lot of web design colleagues who got really good at web design and did some SEO and stuff. And then suddenly now they’re doing social media and digital marketing and all these other things. And now they’ve got a complicated business, they’ve got staff that’s turning over, it’s you’re right, it can really be a dangerous thing. When you’ve got something, you know, nice.

Sarah 48:58
Yeah, yeah, it was, that has been a big shift for me to go from that simple. I mean, when I was doing day rights, I was able to get rid of the VA who was working for me because it was so simple. And I do remember, like having a discovery call with a potential client way back then. And she had all these things that she needed. And under the traditional model, it would have been a 15k project. But I was so I was doing these VIP days for two or 3k at the time. And I remember thinking, You know what, like, I don’t want a $15,000 project. This just sounds heavy and complicated. And at the end of the day almost sounds kind of boring, because it’s like there’s so much detail and so much stuff in it, that I knew how much I appreciate it, like getting in getting it done, getting paid and being done.

Sarah 49:50
And then moving out of it. It’s just so much simpler to do it that way. And so I actually went back there and I said, I don’t think we’re a good fit. And here are some names of some web designers who I think you could work With but yeah, indefinitely and then going to the course model becoming a coach. There’s so much backend stuff there, you should see our air tables in our database like everything is just complicated. And thankfully, I have two amazing people on my team who keep me organized and keep me in check so that I can, so that I’m not the one having to really manage all of that. But it gets complicated. Yeah,

Josh 50:24
I was gonna ask you what, what have you found to be the biggest difference between one to one and one to many? I got a lot of thoughts on this. Similarly, it’s I’ve learned, it’s like, it’s definitely way more complicated. I think some people feel like, oh, a course creator, you just make a course sell it over and over your podcast, you throw out some content, that must be amazing. It is amazing. However, it is a lot of work. And it takes a while to get to the point where it kind of self sustainable. So yeah, well, what are some of the other differences that you’ve learned from going one to one to one to many, and I think this will sidenote, this will apply to people who are scaling too, because you go from like, maybe working with one or two clients a month to maybe five to 10 clients a month, like every month? Yeah. What are some of the biggest differences that you’ve seen?

Sarah 51:08
What I’ve noticed, is that you, you, I always feel like, okay, we did this thing, we built this thing. We got it working? Oh my gosh, it’s working like everything is good. And just when things feel like they’re running smoothly, like a well oiled machine, everything’s going great, something changes in the market. And all of a sudden, you need a new strategy. Facebook ads, stop working, ever webinars, no, people are no longer buying off of webinars. I mean, like the whole, like deadline funnel stuff stops working.

Josh 51:43
I have to say it does. It doesn’t it’s not dead, because it still works for me. Maybe I don’t know, I came in I came into it later in the game. But I know what you mean, like there are some strategies that that shift and change.

Sarah 51:55
Yeah, it’s not even just I’m just using that as an example. But like, just when you feel like it’s all going well, something is going to change, and then you’re gonna have to kind of go back to the drawing board. So yes, our programs are great, like the, like we created the programs, those have not changed those that’s really simple. It’s very simple to deliver our program. The hard part now is figuring out like, we get leads pretty consistently, we have a really great lead generating system. But then it’s like converting and like the right fit, figuring out the right containers for people. I mean, just where we are right now. And the current economic climate is so much different than it was a year ago, two years ago. And so we’re I feel like we’re always shifting to kind of meet people where they’re at. From a marketing side.

Josh 52:46
One thing that I found interesting too, is when I was at the height of scaling my agency, I was doing projects that three 5000 10,000 15,000. And I was used to like doing invoices and proposals for that amount. When the course world, I’m going to get to the point where I’m going to have some top tier programs here and the next evolution of my business. But as of right now, my bundle, which is all my courses is 1500. So that’s kind of my top tier product. It’s a different type of customer, when it’s one to many, isn’t it rather than one person spending $10,000 It’s like, you might need to get 10 people the beauty is it’s not service work. So you’ve already created it. You can make 10,000 on a launch or a sale or webinar or whatever. But it is it is like it’s different marketing to the masses, and to many versus just a handful of people, isn’t it?

Sarah 53:35
Yeah, yeah. I mean, just seeing little seeing multiple small dollar amounts coming in every day, versus those big chunks that come in a few times a month when you’re doing the one to one yeah, definitely notice that like now it’s, you know, every day money is coming in through payment plans. And my smaller course is like it’s all kind of trickling in, and then it adds up areas. Whereas that big kind of paycheck at the, you know, one or two times a month, but.

Josh 54:06
I think that’s that’s what any subscription model. I mean, like you have some recurring stuff, I have my web design club as my recurring income. But I know a lot. I have some students doing the subscription business model now for their web design agencies. And it’s the same thing. It’s like they’re getting paid less, but it’s every day and then over a period of a week, it may feel like oh, man, I had like 50 bucks here. 200 bucks here. 500 bucks here. It’s not that much. But once it all adds up within a 30 day period, you’re like, Oh, wow. Okay, that’s like akin to landing a $5,000 project than a $10,000 project and a $2,000 project.

Josh 54:41
So it does seem to kind of even out there which is really interesting. It’s I’ve just found the marketing I’m fascinated by the marketing of one to many it’s so different because I didn’t mark it at all. As a web designer, literally all I did was go to my networking group, and then it was referrals, word of mouth, so I was not active. I had a face up, but I was not that active. That was it. I didn’t do any social media, I didn’t go that route. And I was able to build my business fairly easily just from word of mouth referrals. And but it’s very different with one too many.

Sarah 55:11
And it’s so funny because like those word of mouth referrals are paying you 5k 3k, you know, whatever in that $1,000 range and just go and they get a referral, and they, they happily spend $3,000 with you. And then to try to get in the one to many model to try to get someone to spend $3,000, you need to get, you know, 300 leads to get that one person out of that, you know, so it’s, so you have to reach so many more people, and you have to do so much more marketing, just to get those one or two big ticket sales versus the way when you’re doing one to one when it’s just like easy, right? Yeah.

Josh 55:48
And it look, I think this is actually one reason I feel like web design is such a great industry for people who don’t want to be on social media too much and don’t want to be marketing people. Because you don’t need that many clients to make a good six figure income if you really, you know, hone in on your model and just serve a dozen or two dozen clients really well. So I think that’s why I’m personally so excited about teaching this is because I remember being in that period where I was really content with my business model, and I scaled and I learned some things I didn’t want to do. But I was content.

Josh 56:22
But then my problem was, I love teaching. And then this just this took over I kind of I wanted to segue to the good part about one too many because I feel like we’ve talked about the challenges. I don’t want to disparage anybody from scaling, or you’re growing on like a one to many scale, whatever that looks like if you have an online course or if you create more productize businesses and scale for your business. But what what if some of the wins been free? Like what if some of the payoffs been over the last couple years?

Sarah 56:48
Um, I mean, aside from like, having just a bigger impact and helping so many more people than you ever could with a one to one model, what’s fun, and I were just talking about those little trickles of income when you’re on an evergreen or when you’ve got a membership or subscription model. But the best is, when you launch a when you do a big launch, and you bring in 30 or 40 people at one time and you have that five figure launch or even though you eventually get to having a six figure launch. And that’s just like mind blowing, when you come from the one to one world where you’re just you know, working one client getting paid another client getting paid another click, and then you go out and you do a launch. And yes, launches were a lot of work. And that’s why I don’t really do them very often. But when I do and you kind of go all in for 10 days, and then you come out with a $60,000 launch. It’s like I don’t have to work for months, and I’m fine. And so like that I remember was such was so exciting for me.

Josh 57:49
Yeah, it’s that’s funny, I’ve, I’ve had some of those highs as well. But additionally, a lot of low points where I mean, inevitably, when you own your own business, you have good months and bad months. But with a one to many model, whether it’s chorus grating coach, unless you have an exact sort of like recurring type of subscription model, you are going to have those waves of like launches or sales or whatever, versus just, you know, casual month periods. And yeah, I had one month in 2021, where I did 60,000. And I was like, Oh, we’re on a whole new level now. And then the next month, it was like 18. It was like a dramatic difference.

Josh 58:25
But one month was like launch and sale and very different style month and next month, I took it easy. And that 18 18,000 A month was still awesome. Like that’s still you know, that’s still on track to be in a quarter million a year. But it just it evens out like it evens out to like the 20 to 30 to 40 range. But that’s I

Sarah 58:45
Feel like you get to a point where once you’ve done a few of those you now understand like, okay, that’s 60, the 60k launch needs to kind of be stretched, because the next few months are going to be low until you do another launch. But that’s really why I I did those first two launches in 2019 of my course it wasn’t a 60,000 hour launch. But when I got into 2020 I knew I wanted to go evergreen on the model on my course because I didn’t really enjoy launching, like that whole process drained me energetically. And so I was like, let me just try this webinar with the deadline funnel. And it was March of 2020 when the world was falling apart, and all of a sudden people just started buying up my course without me having to do anything. Yes. turned on the light machine and

Josh 59:36
You timed that out nicely. Yeah, you got every stuff going. Perfect. That’s funny. I had just completed my bundle my web design course bundle in March of 2022. So it was like yeah, I definitely did not. Well, Sarah and I for the record. We did not time this out with the government or anything but by golly, we definitely had our things in place at the right time, I think.

Sarah 59:55
Yeah, yeah.

Josh 59:56
That’s awesome. Well, Sarah, this has been really cool. I’ve really enjoyed this Chad, I have one final question for you, particularly for people who are either in a transition or maybe they’re about to be in that transition from designer to business owner or business owner to coach or whatever it looks like, before we get to that, though, where would you like people to go is there I mean, we’ve talked a lot about your website, Sara massey.com, and your day rate Mastery program, we’ll of course have that in the show notes. But is there anything is there like a different resource, or anything that maybe we don’t know about that you’d like to point people to?

Sarah 1:00:27
Just my website is a great place to go, I do have a checklist on there. For anybody interested in VIP days, you can check that out. Um, while we’re while as we’re recording this, I don’t have a place quite yet to opt in, but maybe it’ll be there soon. But um, I am starting a new email series called whitespace. And it’s really kind of just inspiring for, you know, it’s like inspiring emails that are short, simple, sweet, but like really about just bringing more simplicity into your business, because that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned from all of this going from designer to day rage designer to business owner and coach is like, simplicity is the end all be all for me, and I’m in I’m in this to create more whitespace in my life, and I want to help other people get to that same spot.

Sarah 1:01:14
So whether you’re doing design work, or you’re coaching, always like, remember, like, why you started it and don’t want to get so complicated that you’re kind of burnt out from from whatever it is that you’re doing. So I’m gonna be going out on Fridays. And so I guess if you just like opt in to one of my freebies, on my site, you’ll get on that list, and then you can start getting that email.

Josh 1:01:36
Okay, I can’t wait to check that out. I’d love to hear from that. i Oh, can I give you just one, one assignment of homework. I think this might really help you in the as the one to many model, it’s helped me. I just recently had the author of the book free time, Jenny Blake on the podcast, who was awesome. She was episode 195. I actually think I don’t know if you’ve listened to that yet, if you had a chance, but she has some really good strategies for just what you’re talking about. Just simplifying things. And I know one thing I’m about to start doing is creating a list of like, flow tasks that give me energy and light me up versus friction tasks, which just drain me and then that I mean, it’s easy to do both and not realize it.

Josh 1:02:20
I know you’re doing a lot of this. I’m sure already Sarah, but I guess for anybody, I think that would be a good complement to what we’ve talked about today. And, and maybe some of your other resources is episode 195. But yeah, I just thought that might be of interest, just because I think a lot of things you’ve said were aligned with, with the idea of simplification, more than ever, because once you it’s your right, once you get to a point in business, it’s just natural just to overcomplicate things, but we almost have to like stop ourselves to reel ourselves in and try to keep it simple.

Sarah 1:02:49
Yeah, that’s right.

Josh 1:02:50
I love that. So last question real quick for you head out. For that person who is transitioning into a new role? Well, it’d be like one piece of advice you would give them and maybe even even something you would give yourself when you went from, you know, freelancer to the day rate model or even day rate to coach. Yeah, what would be like one piece of advice that that you could have used,

Sarah 1:03:11
I think the idea, really the idea that less is more. And so I feel like we can get into this, we get into this cycle where we’re creating something new, or we’re stepping into a new role. And we kind of have to go all in on it. And we just end up like I was saying, like, you kind of end up bringing yourself back to like, the whole reason why you started this in the beginning, like you started your business for freedom and simplicity and just more control over your life.

Sarah 1:03:41
And just be careful with whatever you’re stepping into, that you don’t end up going backwards in your business, always make sure that whatever it is that you’re doing is aligned with where you want to go. And that you are really kind of stepping into a role that is that you that you can best serve, like from your own personality, you know, just make sure that coaching or being a founder or an owner is truly like what lights you up and don’t just do it, don’t go into it. Just spend the money thinking that oh, that’s better doing that, or really like, think about it and make sure that it’s aligned with your values and what you want to be doing.

Josh 1:04:20
That is well said, Sarah, what a great closing thought. Gosh, I echo all that. Yes, that was awesome. Thank you so much, Sarah, for your time today. And I really enjoyed this chat. It was so fun getting outside of the day rate talk to hear about some of the mindset shifts you’ve gone through and I’ve definitely learned a lot in this. Like, you’ve made me feel better about some of the challenges that I had definitely feeling like wow, you You’ve definitely I’m sure had these two. So I really enjoyed this. Thank you again for your time and for being on the show again. Thanks. This will definitely not be the last one. I’m sure we’ll do around three here at some point and then we’ll hear about the next evolution which will be super exciting.

Sarah 1:04:55
Awesome. Thanks, Josh.

Josh 1:04:57
Thanks, Sarah.