The Stackable Revenue Strategy: Secure £10K+ months, 6 Months Ahead

Sep 10

What's this episode of the lionhearted ceo podcast about?

When you're scaling your business it can be really easy to get stuck in what I call 'the messy middle'. In this episode, I'm spilling the tea on how I transformed my approach to growth and found a way to build a business that truly aligns with my values and lifestyle. Grab your cuppa and let's dive in!

Here's what we're sipping on today:

Why hitting 10K months isn't always the dream it's cracked up to be
The pitfalls of focusing solely on one offer (hello, evergreen program stress!)
How I discovered my 'stackable revenue strategy' and why it's a game-changer
The freedom of having 8-10K in revenue secured months in advance

Whether you're feeling the pressure of inconsistent income or dreaming of taking proper time off without financial stress, this episode will give you food for thought on how to build a business that supports your ideal lifestyle.

Feeling inspired to shake up your revenue strategy? I'm thrilled to share that my Mastermind is kicking off in October, where we'll dive deep into creating a business that truly works for you. There are still a few spots left, so if you're ready to secure five figures of revenue through to March 2025 (yes, really!), pop me a message on Instagram (@sophiegriffithsco). Let's chat about whether it's the perfect fit for you!

Ready to turn your business from stressful to stackable? Pour yourself another cuppa, hit play, and let's get building a business that brings you joy as well as pounds in the bank!

Hi! I’m your host Sophie Griffiths, a Meta ads expert and business growth strategist.

The LionHearted CEO podcast is designed for impatiently ambitious women who are ready to scale and often juggling motherhood alongside their thriving online businesses in coaching, course creation, or service-based business.

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.

[00:00:00] Hello and a big welcome to Lionhearted CEO, the podcast for unapologetically, impatiently ambitious women who know they want to stop being the bottleneck in their business and become the Lionhearted CEO they know they are meant to be. I'm Sophie Griffiths, a tea enthusiast, marketing and Metis ad specialist and firm believer.

The chocolate should never be kept in the fridge. Join me every Tuesday and Thursday for bold, imperfect, fun approach to marketing and scaling your business without burning out every few months. We'll dive into practical strategies and have inspirational conversations that will support you to create a thriving, sustainable business that brings you joy as well as financial freedom.

Okay, let's jump in. 

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of align hearted CEO. Now last week. I talked all about. Success and what success feels like to me and how I might have some slightly controversial views [00:01:00] on a 10 K months. And also this idea that success is only measured by being able to pick your kids up from school. I talked about the seasonality of life and business, and I had such a big reaction. 

Thank you so much to those of you who messaged me and emailed me and got in touch to say that you really resonated with it and 

someone said that it was really interesting and thought provoking to think about business planning. With your life totally integrated. And what it really made me think about was how over the last 18 months, I have totally transformed my business

however to get to the point where I have now got a business that aligns with my values and totally supports my life and allows me to run my business in a way that is. Supportive and feels like it works with my energy and my time. And where I want to be focusing my time and Headspace at different points of the year. It has taken time to get here. 

And that time I call it the messy middle [00:02:00] period and for quite a long time, I felt like the messy metal was just scaling, like, okay, I'm adding more complexity into my business. More clients, more strategy, more offers. More investment, more team, more systems. It felt like, well, obviously all of that is going to be more chaotic, more stressful. 

But it's okay because I'm going to be making more. And so once I make more, once I hit those elusive 10 K months that have been on my vision board, because actually to me, 10 K months were ago for a really long time. Financially. 

It really made sense for me in terms of how much salary I wanted to take for the business. How many clients I wanted to support the way that I wanted to show up, 

but I'm not going to lie. I put it on a pedestal. I felt like people who are adding 10 K months. Wow. Unbelievable. Like they must just have their shit together. Like they must have team. They must have systems like their life must be so easy once I hit that 10 K it's all going to click into [00:03:00] place and it's just going to be amazing. So, okay. 

It's stressful getting that. You know, it's going to feel really scrappy and you know, it's gonna feel like hard work. This is what I was telling myself. This is what I was living and breathing and believing. But once I get those 10 K months. Ah, it's just going to be this big, like. Breadth release and suddenly it's going to be like, okay, I've made it. 

This is a, I can just now. Maintain. I'm not going to say coast, but you know, that real feeling of like freedom and space and time. Now what happened was I got back. I did the scaling thing. And I scaled really quickly within about six months I went from like two to three K months up to a 10 K month. 

And it was incredible. from the outside, everyone was like, oh my God, what? This is incredible. You're doing so well. Everything then you've got this momentum. Like I had a rebrand, like it was all really, really positive. I'm not going to like those, like hitting those revenue goals was incredible. 

It was amazing. [00:04:00] However partly maybe because it happens so quickly, but also partly because the way that I scaled, I now know wasn't really in alignment with how I wanted to run my business. And that's really what I hadn't factored in. I was so focused on. Getting to 10 K month. I didn't really think about, okay. 

When I get there, like, how am I going to be spending my time? How many hours a week do I want to be on zoom calls? How many one-to-one clients do I want to hold? How do I want to work with people? It might sound really obvious, but there were so many things like one of the things I did to scale was start an evergreen group program, which I loved it was called bloom. 

I put everything into it and it really helped me solidify, my niche, who I wanted to speak to my area of expertise. If you've created a course, you'll know this, but having to create a cross. Really makes you have to articulate exactly what it is that you stand for. 

And you want to teach people. You know, I did a lot of training before I created the audience builder course. But it was all one-to-one and it was all very bespoke and I could feed off the energy of the other [00:05:00] person. I could ask questions. I could tailor my training totally to them. When you're doing a prerecorded calls, you realize that you actually have to be super clear, like structured and framework to make sure that, everyone can get something from it. So that whole process really helped. 

I launched this course bloom, the precursor to the audience protocols. It was an evergreen group program. And I started running it and I loved it. And the people in it were amazing and they was getting great results. But what I descended totally done. Because I love people and I love training is I'd created a. Program that was, it was a mid ticket. 

I think it was after my head, I think it was a thousand pounds for three months. It wasn't like cheap, like the audience builder calls, but it also was a lot cheaper than working with me. One-to-one. 

But the level of support and time and energy that I had to put into that course, not just to create the content. And support the people in it, but then also fill it every single month. So the goal was, it was evergreen. So every single month, really relaxed. I'm just going to bring [00:06:00] five people in every month. 

You. I'll just use my organic and my social and I'll use ads to build my email list, but, naturally people will flow through and come into it. Wow. Spoiler alert that didn't happen with the ease that I thought it was going to. And in fact, I found it really, really challenging to only talk about one offer. 

And that was the goal. It was to have one offer, that I could scale do my projections. I was like, okay, I can hold about like 30 people in there. That means, I'm bringing in five a month and they can pay on a payment plan. And suddenly I'm like, oh my God. This is how I'm going to get to 10 K month and this is what's going to do it. 

And it did, it got me that it was so successful. It was brilliant. By the end of it. Massively was entered it. Didn't enjoy it. I felt this heavy weight every month. Like, am I going to get five people? If I don't that's impacting my revenue then for the next few months, maybe next month I could get six people. 

I ended up feeling like every email, every Instagram post, every story was selling, selling, selling. Like I have to get people in. How can I make it, a deadline or how [00:07:00] can I get people in. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with evergreen and some people I've got some clients, they absolutely thrive on evergreen. 

They love it. And it works really well for them and their personalities. For me, it was too heavy to rely on one offer. And I did have some one-to-one clients as well. But to be honest, the amount of time it was taking to run this, cause the more people I put in the course, the more support I needed to give, with having to look at like potentially do I add. Two calls a week. 

Do I need some, a coach in there to support me? I was like, oh my God, this is becoming my entire business. And it feels too heavy for me. So I paused it last summer. So just over a year ago now. And I think it was a surprise to a lot of people because it was really successful. But it just didn't work with my energy. 

Isn't how I wanted to run a business. It felt like. I never knew how much I was going to earn each month. And how many people I was going to bring in. And I was having to be present all the time. Even when I said, I'm not working school holidays, I then felt like guilty. Or I felt like I [00:08:00] had to be doing backend staff, like prepping content or, making sure that I was on top of all the questions and everything. 

In the end. I decided to pause it. And at that point, really, it was last summer that I really took a massive look at my business to say, right, this is not working for me. So what's not working for me because this is what the scaling way is. Right. You start with one-to-one. 

I'd done my one-to-one time, I knew what everyone's questions were. I knew what they needed in a course. I was like, right. And the next step is then a group program. I can then scale. And then maybe after that, I'll have a few low cost offers. 

I'll just sell in the background. Yeah. That's how it goes down my business. That's the, that's the path. That's the roadmap. Not too many offers because you don't want to confuse people and you don't want to impact your high ticket staff. If you have too many low ticket things and keep it really clean for people they don't want too many choices of how they can work with you. I took all the information. 

In fact, I was a gold staff student in scaling. I knew exactly what it is I needed to do. None of it. It was actually [00:09:00] right for my business. And. What I wasn't doing was being selective in terms of the advice I took and really analytical, I guess, about, is this going to suit me, this is actually feel good. 

Does this suit my energy, for example, running an evergreen program, probably isn't where my energy is at because I don't like things that go on and on and on. I have real start to energy. I love starting new things. But unless I am really, really ongoing, engaged I find it very hard to teach, the same thing. 

Every single time that every single month we were having the same conversations about the same thing. Because they were new people starting and it just felt to me like Groundhog day, like it just didn't light me up. That's when I really started taking about right. How is it? I want to scale I do have a bit of a history about, of going off and doing it my own way. 

But not in running my own business and running my own business. I was made redundant while I was in corporate. And I lost my confidence. I lost my bravery. I lost that spark that [00:10:00] made me made me brave, made me take those risks and do things my way and not really care. And partly the rebrand that I had last year. In 2023 massively helped with this. 

It allowed me to step into my most fullest colorful list. Patternist version of myself and really kind of come forward as someone who was not afraid to be seen. And that really did help, but I needed to back that up with offers that also really supported my energy. I think what I'm kind of describing in a roundabout way is a place that a lot of people look my clients, who I speak to a lot of my peers that I speak to and having been there myself, it's really easy to get stuck in that messy middle. Think of that is just scaling like, well, If you're going to add all this in, scaling is hard, the bonuses you get the money, but the reality is it's really hard work behind the scenes. 

It's a bit chaotic, everyone thinks you're doing really well on Instagram but behind the scenes you're scrambling around, you're always behind you're making scrappy decisions. I think that's one of the [00:11:00] biggest things that. Came to the forefront for me last year is I'm not making good decisions here. I am. Bringing people into the program, that aren't a great fit because I need to get the people in. 

Like I need to hit the money. Like once I started hitting 10 K, if I'm honest, like I felt like it was a little bit like a weight around my neck. This is where, my challenge was is that my consistent revenue was about two to three K. If we month, I had to then generate. Seven or eight K to hit 10 K and I do it and I would pull my leavers and I would maybe sometimes create short time offers. 

I'd get people in on like, Power hours and nurture packages and you get them into the program. I'd maybe take on a one-to-one client. I want a bespoke package. What they needed, I would literally just do whatever it took to hear that 10 K and I did, it happened every month and then it would get to like the last day of the month. It'd be tracking it all month. And we get to the end, not knowing if I was going to hit it or not until I got to the end of the day, the last day of the month. 

Yeah. Have I done it? And I [00:12:00] generally would say like nine times out of 10, I would have a man. Overnight, you turn and it's the first of the month. And you're like, right. Okay, here we go again, then. Two to three K sorted, but I really need to generate seven to eight K what's this month plan. 

And it felt exhausting and it felt like I was climbing a mountain every month. And the energy around that was really, really hard and it meant, so the kind of crux point that really came to was. When I thought about Christmas. I really want to take two weeks off over Christmas, or at least a week. but if I'm not selling, if I'm not onboarding people, if I say, actually I'm not going to onboard in December because it's not easily practical. 

It's a really chaotic month. I literally won't. Generate any income. I'll get my two to three K and that's it. And that's not enough. That's not enough to pay me. It's not enough for my systems, everything else. I had a VA at the time, that's just not enough. I'm going to have to sell. 

I'm going to have to do something. I have a Christmas or December to get that revenue in. And that's really when I made the decision that It [00:13:00] was kind of a, I think probably late October. But I made that decision because I could see it coming that I needed to make a change. 

And I did. I made some really big changes. The first thing was that, and I've talked about this before, but I dialed down the number of one-to-one clients I had, which was really scary to create the space and time to build the audience builder course. 

Because I knew I needed a scalable course. Now I don't really like the word passive. Passive is like passive course, make passive income. And it technically is passive. So if someone signs up to the audience builder course, there is an option where they can just sign up and do the course. 

And I have literally no involvement so technically that is passive at the point of setting. Well, it's not passive is selling it. Creating it. And so that's why I talk about scalable. Offers because there are some offers are truly scalable. 

Like that offer is truly scalable. I can sell it. I can sell as many as I want in a month. And it doesn't impact my diary. It doesn't impact my time. It doesn't mean I have to be present at all. So that is a really scalable offer. However other [00:14:00] offers I'm not scalable. 

Other offers like my consultancy and management. So I offer full management for Facebook and Instagram ads. Now that's scalable, but in a different way, 

The most obvious way to scale, that would be like an agency. We have a team of people who are working with you. You scale in that sense. Now, typically for Facebook ads managers, and this was the sort of truth that I had taken on. That either as a Facebook ads specialist, you either create an agency and you scale an agency and you have a big team and you're bringing in big contracts and you're working on big accounts with lots of budget and it's full service. 

You're like offering Facebook and Instagram ads and email and social media that's the kind of way you go. Or you become more of like a digital training business where you have courses and low ticket offers, and you're much more about volume I'm going directly to businesses. So I kind of took on that wisdom and I had flat refuse to even consider an agency. 

That wasn't really where my energy was at all. And I was like, I'm going to have to grow a digital business. Started with a group coaching course bloom then went into the [00:15:00] audience builder course. I had a bit of an epiphany in Q1 when I had a few people come to me and say, oh I'm looking for ads management. And I was like,

Hadn't taken on any new management clients for quite a long time. But I love the ongoing relationship of a consultancy client. I love the longterm planning. I love being able to be strategic, being able to test and plan. And really integrate myself into their team. 

I took on a few additional clients and then I brought in some support from another ads manager. Who supported me then with the actual, like actioning of the ads work in the background while I did the strategy. And it only was when the coach pointed out to me I could take on a few more clients and have maybe one or two people supporting me in the background. Then that also would be a way to scale as well. 

And honestly kind of blew my mind that I was like, oh, I can have an agency side of the business and a digital side of the business. But neither of them have to be wildly huge. I don't have to grow a massive agency business. I don't have to grow a huge digital [00:16:00] business. I can just do the bits I want to do and enjoy doing. I honestly kind of blew my mind that suddenly this whole world opened up. 

I was like, oh, I see. I can stack my revenue in any way. I want. And suddenly I had one-to-one clients like training clients. I had the audience builder course, which then people were asking me if they could be an affiliate for, to sell. I then licensed it so that someone can use it in their group program and their clients can then use it. That's an area I really want to build as well. I could have agents and agency where I had more consultancy clients. And suddenly I realize I've got about 11 different revenue streams here across all the different ways you can work with me 

and if I structure them all in a way that looks at my future revenue, not what I'm earning right now. 

So if I offer payment plans on everything, if I prioritize clients who are happy to sign up for a minimum of six months,

if I create an ads funnel that selling the audience builder calls and also more low ticket offers [00:17:00] consistently, if I get that really, really solid, and I know that I will be getting a certain amount of revenue from that every month. 

I mean, when I looked at my figures earlier this week When I was doing my finances, I actually know I've secured between eight to 10,000 pounds in revenue all the way through to like March 20, 25. so when I'm seeing at the moment, a lot of people talking about Hit your goals and like Q4, like you've got to, dial yourself up in September, you've got to get going and start as in trying to hit those targets before Christmas. Make it your best call to get, I'm absolutely here for adding revenue in. But actually if my children are ill, if I'm ill, if something happens in my life it feels like wildly freeing for me. If I'm really honest to know that actually I could just deliver what I've already committed to and 

that would be fine. Like I don't have to sell each month. I don't have to wait to the 31st of the month to see if I can actually pay myself and transfer the money over. I don't have to. Do anything, but I don't want to do. And suddenly that feeling of choice and freedom and [00:18:00] flexibility is huge. And it's only because I have taken this different way of scaling, of looking at my business of working with what works for me, what works for my brain, what works for how I want to run my team, and how I can see the business growing, going forward as well. 

So I'm kind of coining this, my stackable revenue strategy and it's something like been working with. With it on a few kinds as well because clients come to me because they want to scale and they want to grow. And the first thing they normally say to me is I want to scale using ads. I want to have this low ticket offer. I want to build my email list. I want to generate money from ads. And then I just want to kind of go off and do my high ticket offer. What's really interesting when we work together. 

When we unpick that. Actually it's often not the case that they just want to rely on ads and that they just want to have this big ads funnel running separately to the rest of their business. Actually, what they want is to just have another consistent revenue stream. They want to have revenue coming in from multiple sources so that they can dial up and down the energy in their business so that they can work less hours so that they [00:19:00] can how of December or half the summer off. 

I'm not worried about. If they don't take on a high ticket client, that they're going to have zero revenue. That's the big thing that's really coming through. And I ended up working with clients on. And that's actually going to be the, the core foundation of the mastermind that starts in October. And it really struck me as I'm having conversations with incredible women who are interested in joining the mastermind. Is that underneath all of it 

this feeling of success and financial freedom and financial security really comes from a deep knowing that the money is coming Now we all know, we can hold that belief. We can manifest. We can. Deeply believe the money is coming, but there's nothing like actually seeing it on a spreadsheet, knowing that that money is actually in place like that is happening. To make you feel. Creative and to launch an offer and not be wondering. Oh, is anyone going to sign up for this or God, I really need a minimum of eight people. Otherwise I'm not going to hit revenue this [00:20:00] month. 

Then we'll have to launch something else, quickly, because otherwise I'm not going to. Hit my goal. Actually going into it being like, yeah, I'm going to launch this. And I'm going to open up to people who it is perfect for. 

that want the energy and the are just so excited about with me. I am not going to hold on to it, having to be that amount of people, because I need the revenue. I just want the right people in. And honestly, that's really when the magic happens and when people flow to you because you don't have that energy of need, you just have that energy of openness and creativity and time. 

And obviously this takes strategy. This takes planning, this takes identity work. , so much identity work and beliefs on who I am and who I want to be and how I want to run a business. But the impact is huge. So there are still a few spaces on the masterminds. 

If this is something that has really spoken to you and you're like, yes, I want five figures of revenue secured all the way through to March 20, 25. 

Then I would absolutely love for you to get in touch and let's have a conversation about whether [00:21:00] it is the right thing for you. There are already four people signed up. 

I am keeping it quite small. If you are interested in make sure that you send me a message and let me know. 

So don't think, oh, this is something I'll do next year later in the year. I'm not quite ready yet. Come and have a chat with me. Cause I promise once we have a chat, you'll know if it's right for you or not. So I hope that was interesting. I hope that was helpful if it was, please do let me know. 

I absolutely love it. When you get in touch and tell me that it's been helpful or useful, or it's kind of sparked a thought. It really genuinely makes my day. I hope you have a lovely day and I will speak to you later in the week.

Thank you so much for listening today. Before you go, if this episode struck record with you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review, your words not only brighten up my day, but they are also the magic that helps others discover this lion hearted community.

Again, thank you so much and I will see you next week.