PP 602: Earn Money that Doesn’t Sell Your Time with Bernadette Doyle

“If you’ve got a dream… there is absolutely a way even if you can’t see it yet, even if you can’t see anybody else who’s already done that yet. And the most important thing is to trust in that dream and trust that there is a way and keep that dream alive and stay open to the opportunities that you know you will be presented with every single day to lead you in the direction of that thing. So keep the belief and stay open.” – Bernadette Doyle

Are you still waiting for the right time to pursue your passion? Some people do, not realizing that they’re letting the opportunity pass them by. Today’s podcast bears witness to the fact that good things come if and when you do not limit yourself. Be responsible for your own success. Give permission to yourself to do what you’re meant to do. Validate your offers and validate your value with your work.

HIGHLIGHTS

02:25 Successful but Limited
09:47 Give Permission to Yourself
20:19 Take Active Responsibility
27:08 Be Clear on Your Strategy and Execute
35:07 When Obstacles Become Catalysts
38:55 Get Rid Email Addiction
43:13 Validate Your Price
48:15 If There’s A Will, There’s A Way

About Bernadette Doyle:

Bernadette Doyle is a very passionate entrepreneur clothed with challenges in her back story. She has founded her business and was able to grow them tremendously earning her millions. Today, she helps her clients earn the income that they want without having to sell their time. Her marketing expertise was no overnight transformation. Her outcomes speaks to the value of patience, passion and trusting in your most important investment- yourself.

Website: https://bernadettedoyle.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Doyle.Bernadette/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bernadettedoyle/
Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/clientmagnets/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BernadetteDoyle
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadette-doyle-909442/

Resources:

Business Smarts with Heart by Bernadette Doyle (Facebook Group)

Inspirational Quotes:

“You can get trapped in your existing situation when it’s comfortable enough to be getting by, but not so uncomfortable that you have to change.” – Bernadette Doyle

“There is always something that you can do to take a step forward and to maintain momentum.” – Bernadette Doyle

“Not everyone gives themselves permission to have that experience.” – Bernadette Doyle

“The real transformation occurred, the moment I invested in myself and stepped up.” – Bernadette Doyle

“The people that made the most progress, take active responsibility for their progress.” – Bernadette Doyle

“Fail is just not possible when you take full responsibility for everything that’s happening.” – Bernadette Doyle

“It’s no coincidence that the person who’s making more money has mastered execution and the person who’s struggling financially hasn’t.” – Bernadette Doyle

“Those little things that we know when we started doing them… we can quantify our actions because we’re saying that that was time well spent. –Kim Sutton

“Every little tiny toe forward, those little baby steps forward, grow into the miles in the marathons and that huge growth that we see over time.” –Kim Sutton

“God doesn’t give us our dreams without the ability to make them happen.” – Bernadette Doyle

“If you’ve got a dream… there is absolutely a way even if you can’t see it yet, even if you can’t see anybody else who’s already done that yet. And the most important thing is to trust in that dream and trust that there is a way and keep that dream alive and stay open to the to the opportunities that you know you will be presented with every single day to lead you in the direction of that thing. So keep the belief and stay open.” – Bernadette Doyle

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

“If you’ve got a dream for a business online or not, or something that you want to do in your life, there is absolutely a way, even if you can’t see it yet, even if you can’t see anybody else who’s already done that yet, and the most important thing is to trust in that dream, and trust that there is a way, and keep that dream alive and stay open to the opportunities that you know, you will be presented with every single day to lead you in the direction of that thing. So keep the belief and stay open.”

———————

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host, Kim Sutton, and I am so happy to have you here today, and I’m thrilled also to have our guests, Bernadette Doyle. Bernadette is the director of Online Profits University, and two of the reasons why I’m so excited to have this conversation are because, they’re just everything that I was reading about you Bernadette, just really connected with me as a mom, as an entrepreneur, and having gone through my own ups and downs in my business. But listeners, Bernadette has grown her business to seven figures, not just once but twice, and listen to this aligning with the correct plan for you. Now you know that I have had struggles in my business with aligning with the correct plan for me, because I have chased the successes of everybody else. I have chased income rather than impact. And then I finally met in the middle, but I don’t want to wait to get this conversation started. This is actually Bernadette, a longer intro than I normally do, but I’m just that excited. But welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you here.

Bernadette Doyle: Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here, also.

Kim Sutton: My transcriptionists have got to be going crazy and thinking to themselves, would you stop saying but, and, and just keep on going, and get the show. But I would love if you would share with the listeners a little bit of your entrepreneurial journey. Tell us how it got started. I know how it got started, but the listeners need to hear it as well because you’re just so inspiring.

Bernadette Doyle: Thank you. Well, I, I started my first offline business when I was just 26 and looking back, it wasn’t a difficult, risky decision, but then because I have no mortgage, I have no dependence. And honestly, my attitude was, if this doesn’t work out, you know, in a couple of years I can always go back and get a proper job. What I didn’t appreciate at the time was that the business I was starting is what I now call a trading time for money business. So, I was basically working for large corporations, and working with their learning and development teams, or sales teams to help them train their staff. So I would literally be brought in as a consultant, often staying overnight, sometimes for several nights, sometimes for weeks, and staying away from home, and working long hours. But it was very lucrative. I mean, I, I reached, you know, six figures within 18 months in that business, and I’m going back 20 years ago, so it was great. But as I got busier, I started to see the limitations of that model. And I remember around that time I had Robert Kiyosaki say: “If you don’t have a business that you can go away from for three months and come back, and it’s working better than when you left it, you don’t have a business, you have a job.” And that was the moment when I realized, Oh, I’ve created what I’m calling a business, but it’s not really a business, it’s a glorified job because, if I want to take vacation, the income dries up. And that was when I started looking around and I thought, I need to start packaging my expertise in other ways that can serve clients. So this is way before the days of online courses. I thought about, you know, taking my training and I actually brought in a sound engineer to record the training and we packaged it up. And this will show you how long ago it was, it was an audio cassette. Do you remember those?

Kim Sutton: Cassettes? Not DVDs?

Bernadette Doyle: Not even DVDs, no, audio cassettes. So this was back in the 90’s, but that was my first product. It was my first taste of passive income, if you like. And I was hooked and I thought this is fantastic that you know, this is a breakthrough. I’ve now found another way of earning money that doesn’t sell my time. And around that time, I also started to learn about people who are selling products like these on the internet. And the moment I heard about it, I was like: “Oh my God, that’s just my dream business.” Cause I thought, you know, this is a business I could run from anywhere. I don’t have to have offices, I don’t have to have employees. This is a way that, you know, people can be buying things from me and getting digital downloads over the internet. I have to do this. But as can often happen, and I’ve seen this happen with a lot of people who come to me, and you know when I first take them on as clients, you can get trapped in your existence situation when it’s comfortable enough to be getting by, but not so uncomfortable that you have to change. So when I was in that position of, I was still earning good money, you know, as a corporate trainer knowing I wanted to change, but nothing had really happened in my life to really force or prompt that change. So, I just stayed there and I actually stayed in that position for a couple of years. But this time I’d started a newsletter that I used to send out every week, most weeks, sometimes I was inconsistent but pretty much it was weekly. So I started to grow an email list and build an audience. But I hadn’t really developed products I could sell online. And everything changed in December, 2005 when I looked down at a white stick with a blue line on it. And because you’re a mum, you know what I mean by that.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely.

Bernadette Doyle: I discovered I was pregnant and literally in moment still in my hand, I just realized, Oh my God, I’m really gonna have to shift things around. Because I knew that my current way of earning money was not going to be sustainable with the baby. So I’d always have the comfort of, if I needed to I could go and do a corporate gig. You know, I always have that in my back pocket, and that moment I was just like, this insurance policy I’ve had is gone. And I mean, my situation was, you know, I knew that I was going to be financially responsible. It wasn’t like I have, you know, a husband or a benefactor providing for me. I had a mortgage to pay by this point, and I really need to, you know, get going. And you know, people say if you are working to a deadline as effective, my answer to that is, if you think work into a deadline makes you effective, try working to a birth line. Because I just knew, I had less than nine months now to essentially re-engineer my business. And really start to make some real income. So that was the moment I really committed to my online business. And I love to share this story because I hear a lot of men and women, but women in particularly hold themselves back with this idea of now’s not the right time. And I could have used that moment. I got, Oh well I’m having a baby now, so now I need to shelve this dream that I’ve had an online business. And for me it was the opposite, you know? That’s why, I really don’t buy it when people try to tell me that they have circumstances that are stopping them from moving forward. I honestly don’t get how challenging your situation is, and I’ve faced very challenging situations. There was always something that you can do to take a step forward and to maintain momentum, and that might not be a popular idea with people that want me to wrap them in a blanket and say, or the, you know, you just huddle up now and hibernate for a few months, and put your dreams on hold. That is not advice I followed. And it’s certainly not, you know, advice, it’s worked for me and it’s certainly not advice I would dispense.

Kim Sutton: Oh my gosh, I’m right there with you. I was actually six months pregnant when I went down to Arizona, and I have to say six months pregnant with twins.

Bernadette Doyle: Oh, my goodness.

Kim Sutton: When I went down to Arizona and I became Infusionsoft certified. Because I was not going to use that excuse of now is not the time, but I have to tell you, I’m seven years into my business right now when this recording is released, I’ll have just celebrated my seven year anniversary, but when we’re recording, I have just spent a week and a half setting up all the mechanics. I mean, that’s the dangerous part of what I do behind the scenes is, all the automation and the tech for the company–

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: –so that I can leave even for a week and still have the business run without me. I have never heard that quote by Robert Kiyosaki before, so I want to thank you for sharing it. It was like a love punch to the gut. It’s like, Oh my gosh, I’m seven years into this job.

Bernadette Doyle: Exactly. And the thing is, I think most people that call themselves business owners are actually the same. They’re glorified employees. Then if we rarely start to examine that, we could go, how much do you like your boss? And do you have a good boss that gives you nice holidays and time off? Or do you have a tyrant boss?

Kim Sutton: My boss deserves to be kicked in the butt, yeah. But at the same time I need to give myself some grace because I haven’t sat back and waited for the right time, and there had been so many struggles because I haven’t been willing to sit back. What’s the worst that can happen? That electricity can be shut off? Been there, done that, it’s really not that bad. We’ve gone a day or two, or the water, and I know that may sound like an irresponsible mother, but there’s food on the table, clothes on their back, their shelter over our head. So what’s the worst that can really happen?

Bernadette Doyle: Absolutely, absolutely. I’m like, as long as your children are healthy, then you have to go through some discomfort period. And so be it.

Kim Sutton: Right.

Bernadette Doyle: Not everyone gives themselves permission to have that experience though. You know, some people have rules, and I think it depends also on your own upbringing and your own, you know, your own experience as a child, you know, with your own parents. I think that creates a lot of often unconscious rules about what we will and won’t tolerate, and what we will and won’t give ourselves permission to do with our own children. I would be, I’m the last person to sit here prescribing to anyone what those rules or permissions should be, but I do think they’re worth examining. I do think it’s worth exploring what those are to make sure that you’re actually making decisions in alignment where you’re heading as opposed to by default, because it was something that was handed down from you to you from the past.

Kim Sutton: Those rules can be pretty dangerous though. I mean it’s a double sided rule, a double sided sword rule in my opinion, because I was raised by my single mother, and my dad was very well off my mother, not so much. So being raised primarily by my mother, you know, I saw that money wasn’t everything. We could be happy without money, but at the same time, every other weekend saw a lot more, you know, so I knew there was something more that I could have. I don’t want to get trapped in anything over zero in the bank account is okay, because to me it’s not okay. I mean it is, but it’s not. Does that make sense?

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: I don’t want to be comfortable thinking that just because there’s a dollar in my bank account that I’m okay, now I want to raise at zero. I actually did one of the earlier, the very early episodes was about raising our zero because a penny in our account today may be good, but what if our new zero became $10 tomorrow, and $100 a day after that, so that by this time next year we’re not comfortable unless there’s 20,000 in the account and we’re doing it. We’ll, as you teach your people how to do so that you’re not strapped to your laptop 24/7. If I remember correctly, you have two children now. But how did your business change after your first?

Bernadette Doyle: So after my first, the next, you know, almost nine months from me discovering I was pregnant to him arriving, it was hustle. Honestly, it was just let me do what I can to get money in. I created new products, I launched them, I did various promotions and sales, for the last two months with that pregnancy I spent most of it in hospital cause there was some complications, and I was in the hospital with my laptop (laughs), actually doing that.

Kim Sutton: (laughs).

Bernadette Doyle: Right to my bed and the nurses, midwives in the hospital, they just thought I was a mad lady, but you know, that’s just what I did. And then when Bannon came along, and you know, I mean Holy smokes, you have twins so you probably have this to a ninth degree, but nothing, there is nothing in life that prepares you for the, I believe your first child. No matter how many books you read, no matter what people say to you, like it’s just, you know, complete overwhelmed and obviously like my focus was on him at that point, and I had not got my business to a point where it could run without me. I had figured out ways of generating income through online products, et cetera, but I still needed to be like tilling the promotional wheel to keep the money coming in. And the next six months were really difficult as I was bringing in very little money in the business, and I was so sleep deprived, and my savings were like dwindling fast. And about six months in, I seriously considered that I should give up this business and go and get a job, because the business wasn’t bringing in any money. I couldn’t, I couldn’t see out of the situation. It wasn’t bringing in any real money. And crunch time for me was my VA. I had got a VA that was doing a small number of hours to me to manage customer service, etc. I couldn’t pay her and I’m like, what am I going to do? And around this time. And I’m, I really appreciate the opportunity to tell this story because I know that there are many people listening who can relate to this situation. And the conventional wisdom and logic is, Oh, well just keep your head down and somehow survive this, and someday things will be better. And at this time, I received an invitation to apply, to join a mastermind with someone who was an internet marketer that I really respected. And I hadn’t worked with him previously because I’d been telling myself, I should be able to figure this out on my own. I thought, Oh my goodness, I’ve got marketing and sales as a background. This is what I just trained in. This is what I’ve done since I came out of university. I should know how to do this. So there was a little bit of pride that stopped me from reaching out and asking him for help. So this invite landed and it was an opportunity to work with him and at a high level, and there will be other, you know, people in the room who achieved at least six figures. And at that moment my business was not doing six figures by how I achieved that the year before, so I knew what was possible, I’d had a taste of what was possible. And I’ll just apply and I’ll see do I get in, and about a week later I got an email back to say, congratulations, your application is successful. And I went– woo. And then I went, Oh no, cause I’m like, this is $13,000 how am I going to pay for this? I have $3,000 in my savings. But bear in mind I haven’t been able to pay my VA, and that $3,000 was going to clean me out. And I’m so grateful that I didn’t ask anyone around me for advice, because I know everybody around me would have said, what are you thinking? Like keep your head down, hang on to your savings. It’s too much of a risk. But I was looking at what will happen if I don’t do this. I had a six month trajectory of trying to figure this out on my own as a new mum. And all of the evidence staring me in the face was this was not working and in six months, it hadn’t turned around. So where did I think I was going to be six months later? This isn’t even a case of choice, I have to do this. And because he had a payment plan, I could pay 3000 as a deposit. And I’m like, I’m just gonna do whatever this guy tells me to do and I’m going to make this work. So I plopped down my deposit, that was in March. And the first meeting was in May, and about a week or two after I’d made the deposit, so I haven’t had any meetings, I hadn’t even had any consultations with my new mentor. I got this idea, and the idea was to do a closeout sale. It was to shut down some products that I knew I was almost certain I wouldn’t be continuing. I identified what they should be, cause I applied something called the 80/20 rule, which is I’d looked at my income over the past year and I’d looked at, okay, what are the products that have only really contributed to 20% of my results? Cause what I want to do is, I want to get those out of the way and I just want to focus on the ones that are bringing in money. So I identified these products, I decided to close out sale. That sale brought in in seven days, $16,000.

Kim Sutton: Oh my goodness.

Bernadette Doyle: It was more than the entire investment in the program would be over the year. And actually, when I look back on it now, I go, Oh and that was also playing for the flights and the accommodation, et cetera. But it was like my whole investment in his program was covered. And I get emotional talking about this because, I know for a fact that leap of faith, it didn’t feel like a leap, but it was like a moment of faith, and making a commitment is directly connected to me receiving that inspiration that I got. But the point I want to make here is, that opportunity to do the closeout sale existed in my business for the previous six months. I could have done that at any time with my son. And you know, when I’m with my newborn baby and created some cash flow, but I could not see the opportunity. And this to me is the real reason why it’s important to invest in yourself and to step up, whether that’s to work with a mentor, or a mastermind, or the investment even could be bringing on like a key employee to help you grow your business. But it’s that active investment, that active stepping up, that’s what creates the change. I was a different person in April than I have been in February because I backed myself. I’d invested in myself and because of that, I now had the ability to perceive opportunities that had been there all along. But I had not been able to see them previously. And that to me is the true power of stepping up. It’s not what you get from the mentor. It’s not, I mean that’s probably, I did actually get some really helpful advice from him, but the real transformation occurred the moment I invested in myself and stepped up.

Kim Sutton: That is so huge, and I’m thinking about my own personal similar story about six months and not seeing improvement. I was given an opportunity to join a mentoring group coaching program in September of 2017 and I was thinking, no, I can do it myself, no, I can do it myself, no, I could do it myself. And six months later, I was in the same room with the same group of people facing the same opportunity again. And I mean facing in a good way. And the mentor asked everybody who was there: “Who has seen a six figure increased in your business in the last six months?” And in the group of 40 people, all but two of us raised our hands. And I was one of those two people, and I must say I was cross country in a hotel having to pay my hotel bill that day and I didn’t know how I was going to pay it. It’s like you do do. Like that was not quite what I was saying to myself at that point. I mean it was probably something that would require an E on this podcast. But are you serious him? It’s been six months and now you’re not only not in a better situation, but you’re worse. You could’ve paid your hotel room bill six months ago. So, I signed the line, you know, and signed up for the program. And while I’m not saying that listeners, and I know you probably agree Bernadette, but we’re not saying that you should just go out and sign up with the first coach or mentor that you find.

Bernadette Doyle: No.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely not. The program had its pluses and its minuses, and it showed me a lot of good qualities of coaching and some not so good, but the business did turn around just because of that investment in me.

Bernadette Doyle: That’s because you were different.

Kim Sutton: Yup.

Bernadette Doyle: I’ve had a conversation going on on my Facebook page recently about whether coaching is a risk or an investment, and one person replied: “It depends on the investor.” And that’s so true. It’s like who you are being in that situation. And I have a client, she helps people to rehabilitate and improve the mobility after like, women had a big accident, you know, maybe a car accident, or in some instances they might have had a stroke, will be facing ALS or Parkinson’s. She’s been doing this 20 years. So she really understands transformation. And I said to her recently: “Have you ever seen a difference between the people who,” you know, “they come in and they really like have massive breakthroughs and turnarounds as clients, and the ones that they just stay stuck.” And she said: “Yeah, absolutely. And as we talked, it was like the people that make the most progress take active responsibility for their progress. Whereas the ones who don’t move as fast, or don’t even make any progress at all.” They kind of come passively. They make her the authority. They want her to show them exactly what to do. And you know, they kind of make excuses about not having time or you know, they just struggle to implement. And as she was sharing this with me, I realized it’s exactly the same in business coaching. And I’m planning to do a post on why I’ve made ROI and every single thing I’ve ever invested in. So I made return on investment from everything I’ve done. And you know, that coach was one, because I know whenever I make an investment it is not about a coach. Obviously that part of the picture. Obviously I chose him because he had values. He had a young family like mine, you know, I felt in many ways we were aligned and I knew we had expertise that I could benefit from. So I’d chosen him for those reasons. But I went into that program with the feeling and understanding that what happened in that program was 100% down to me. And it’s one of the shadow elements of the coaching industry that’s grown up around business coaching where some people have invested in coaches not gotten results, and then they’re either blaming the coach, or they start to make up unhealthful stories about themselves. Like, well, I’m not cut out for this, or I can’t do this business. And what you need to realize is if you take full responsibility, then you cannot fail. Failure is just not possible when you take full responsibility for everything that’s happening. So when people say, should I invest in a coach or not? I really think it all comes down to the energy behind it. If you invest in a coach as a last ditch attempt and it’s, you know, it’s fear-driven and you think, Oh my God, I’ve got to do something, and Oh, you know, it’s like, to me that’s like, you might as well go to Vegas and plonk your money down on the roulette table or whatever, because that’s gambling when you do it that way. But when you would say, when you approach it from, okay, I’m now, I know that I have to do whatever it has to happen to make this work, and there is something I can get here that will support me, and that was not just the strategies that the mentor teachers, all of the things that happen in coaching programs like the accountability, you get the peer support, just that that upleveling happens when you step up into a new environment, but above all, to me it’s like how you see yourself differently. It’s how you hold yourself differently when you know that you really have backed yourself and you’ve invested in yourself.

Kim Sutton: There was a time Bernadette, when I thought I wanted to be a coach and I’ve thought a lot about this since I put the offer out there, I put an offer out that I would coach a couple of people for free to have their testimonials.

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: I would never do that again.

Bernadette Doyle: No.

Kim Sutton: Never. So I ended up getting two free coaching clients. One person did so much work, it was amazing and the growth that I saw was just phenomenal. The other person, it was free coaching, so from one week to the next, and the person who did so much had the income to fall back on. The person who didn’t succeed had nothing to fall back on. If it didn’t work out. There were some circumstances behind the scenes that I won’t get into, that we’re not going to be good, and that person just didn’t do anything from one week to the next. And there were always excuses. At that point, I didn’t know about tough love, so I would just nod. I was at that point, I was a horrible coach. I’m not a coach anymore. I am not gonna try my myself, or my skills in that level, but I do call myself a mentor because I’m going to give you the tough flow of feedback. But I wanted to say at that point, come on, you have one kid who can do their own laundry and clean up the house. I have five who are running in circles around my head, and I can still do more in a day than you’ve done in the last two weeks.

Bernadette Doyle: Yup.

Kim Sutton: And working with clients these days on their marketing funnels, there are those clients who I tell them what they need to do, what I need. You know, I need your colors. I need your logo, I need your ideal clients. I need this and that, and about 30,000 other things. There are the clients who two weeks later still haven’t gathered one piece of that information for me and want to have another call. And there’s the clients who don’t even, I don’t know if they have like a clone of them sitting next to them, but by the time we hang up the call, I’ve already got it all. And I’m like, Whoa, Whoa, okay, I got some work to do. But those are the clients who I see get their funnel up there, get it out, and start filling it and making income before, I mean, it feels like sometimes as soon as we turned it on, we start seeing those straight notifications come through. You just made money, you just made money, and it’s because they’re not just sitting there.

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah, I have some thoughts on that.

Kim Sutton: I’d love to hear them.

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah. Well, you see this, two things we talk about. One is strategy, and one is execution. So if you want to get results in any area, but let’s stick to business right now. But the first thing you need to get clear on is like, what’s my strategy? And that’s where working with a mentor can be really helpful because a mentor can go, okay, well if I look up where you are, you know at point A and you want to get point B, based on my experience, this is the route I would have you go through. So you know, I do that with my clients and it’s like helping them get clear on who’s your audience, what’s the price point, what should you launch first, what will the back end be, how will this all come together to help you reach the revenue and profit goals that you want to? That’s one part of it, but strategy is really only 20% of it. I mean the 80% that makes the difference is execution, which is how quickly do you implement? How accurately do you follow instructions? And what you’re telling me, and the two types of clients that you’re talking about there, is the, you know, one of them has execution down, so they know how to organize themselves and that, you know, if they’d given homework, they know to go off and do it. And the other one, just hasn’t mastered that area of their life yet. Which is also probably why there’s a difference in their financial situations too. It’s no coincidence that the person who’s making more money has mastered execution, and the person who’s struggling financially, it hasn’t. And that’s not like it, I mean, I’m talking about mastery. So these are is execution is a skill that you can develop. For me, it’s around using data. So using data, not emotion, because I’ve had clients who comes to me and say: “Oh well, I’ve done all of these things.” And I ask: “Okay, well let’s, let’s just specify this exactly, how many sales conversations that you had?” “How many people would have you reached out to you to have sales conversation?” “How many offers have you made?” “What actions have you taken to grow your email list?” And when you start to drill into it, you know, you can discover that I’ve been doing all of these things, yeah you were sat in front of your computer screen for eight hours but you actually haven’t been, you know, focused on the right things and being super productive. And so, one of the things I’ve put in place is like, is really close tracking, because we can play games with ourselves about where our time is going. I use a time tracker, you know, to track what I spend time on every day because I want the feedback. And in business this is really important as well because making money or profit in the business, you know what’s known as a lag indicator. It’s typically the results of many other things, attitudes, behaviors, skills, actions. And so you know, sometimes it can take 90 days between you starting on a course, and the results showing up in your bank account. It can also happen, I’ve seen it happen much quicker, but this is why you need to get good at like, tracking the lead indicators. So one of the things I teach my clients is like, let’s measure the actions you’re taking. Because I’ve identified what the core actions are that if you take these actions over and over and over, the money is inevitable, it’s coming. And what happens I think is, you know, and I sort of think that this is the difference also between amateur thinking and pro thinking. But amateur’s like, they only pay attention to the end results and then not actually owning the day to day actions that they take that they need to get there.

Kim Sutton: I absolutely love that, and I think that amateurs also look at overnight success stories, and they think that actually our overnight success stories and they’re, Oh my gosh, no, I love that you brought up, you know that it might take 90 days before you start seeing the fruits of your labor. My team and I had been going through all of our old podcasts episodes one at a time, and I just need to shout this tool out because it’s awesome. We use Yoast SEO on my site, and we’re making sure that every episode, so for example, your show when it goes out, that the SEO is green, green is good.

Bernadette Doyle: Yup.

Kim Sutton: And a lot of them were red when we started doing this, and it’s been probably four or five months, but just making those little changes, some of them were big changes. On the earlier episodes, my web traffic in the last six months has tripled.

Bernadette Doyle: Wow, congratulations. That’s amazing.

Kim Sutton: But those are those little things that we know when we started doing them and we can, is it quantify the right word?

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: We can quantify our actions because we’re seeing that that was time well spent.

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: My youngest sister is my Operations Director, and she’s Ivy League graduate, and she didn’t have any marketing experience when she came into my business. So there were a lot of questions asked about why, you know, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? Her background was, she was a grocery store manager for 15 years, and it’s almost the same thing there. You think about the promotions that you’re going to have 6, 9, even 12 months in advance sometimes. I mean to our American listeners, you know that as soon as November 1st hits, the day after Halloween, those Halloween decorations are all gone and the Christmas music is playing in the store.

Bernadette Doyle: Yup.

Kim Sutton: So that’s how we need to look at our business. What do we need to set up now so that you know, by the time the next holiday comes around that we start to see results. But now she’s seeing, because she’s very instrumental in helping get all this SEO stuff fixes. She’s seeing the traffic go up, she’s seen the downloads go up, she’s seen the inquiries about working with us go up, and it’s all like, now we only have 50 out of 600 episodes fixed so far, and we are just, we’re seeing stars because if this really was the action that got it all started, and I can’t even imagine what the traffic going to look like after all the episodes are fixed.

Bernadette Doyle: Absolutely, absolutely. And you see, the thing is, that an amateur would hear what you’ve just shared and interpret that as, Oh, if I do SEO, my traffic is going to triple my website, visitors are going to triple, which is what your results were, but if they come with an expectation that it’s going to happen overnight, they possibly wouldn’t have even made it to 50 episodes because they would’ve started on one or two, I’m gone, I’m not seeing results here and then therefore I’m giving up on this.

Kim Sutton: Oh heck no. That was like, it took at least probably 60 days to start seeing any significant growth, yeah. I mean, I took seven years in my business to earn what I am now. Bernadette, when I started my business, I was looking for a way to earn a little bit of extra income. When my husband started college, I was already working a full time job, but he compressed a four year degree into three years. He couldn’t work and do his degree at the same time, so I started freelancing, totally trading dollars for hours. I didn’t have confidence in myself. I thought I was competing with people overseas, I started a VA business, and I was charging $8 an hour. I am not charging $8 an hour anymore, I am into the multiple hundreds. But that was not an overnight thing either. There was that little bit of confidence, a lot of confidence growth. I mean I couldn’t even have gotten behind this microphone with you seven years ago, I would have been to chicken. But every little tiny toe forward, those little baby steps forward grow into the miles, and the marathons, and yeah, that huge growth that we see over time.

Bernadette Doyle: Absolutely.

Kim Sutton: So take us a little bit further along your journey. What are some of the other significant shifts that you made? And what did it look like for you?

Bernadette Doyle: So, of the year that I worked with that mentor, that wasn’t, I actually worked with him over a period of four years because I was getting results, and I’m like well if I’m getting results I’m going to stay in, you know, invest in with him, and in myself, and this program. And my business grew that first year, my business tripled. So I did over 300,000 in sales in that year.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh.

Bernadette Doyle: And then I was like, well, if I could triple again, like I’ve got a million in sites. And then I found out I was expecting baby number two, and the first thought I had when I found out I was expecting him was like, Oh well there goes my million. Like you know, because obviously I can’t, I can’t make it a million the year that I have a baby. And then I caught myself in that thought and I was like, why can’t I? Like, if I set this intention I’m going to make a million dollars. And then the next thing that happens is this baby shows up. What if he is not an obstacle? What if he’s actually part of helping me to get there? And it’s just a completely different way of thinking. It’s a completely different way of looking at the situations that we find ourselves in. Again, you know, as I said earlier, if you think that making work into a deadline makes you effective, try working to a birth line with baby number two. I really knew how much I needed to have systems in my business. So with baby number one, I just haven’t appreciated how much had to be automated, and how much would have to be hands off for me so I could take the first few months, and just really enjoy being with my baby. So I went, system’s mad and I started batching my content creation. I handed over way more to my VA, who was awesome and ready for more, but the control freak in me had not up until that point, handed over to her and we put things in place so that after he arrived we were able to run. And what I love about this was in 2008, so whereas like evergreen marketing and automated marketing is really kind of common now. Like, it really wasn’t then, but we figured out a way of doing, like if I look back, it was like an automated online launch. We’d put all of this content together and it was all fully automated, and we didn’t have infusions after that, but it was hands off for me. And in the six weeks after he was born, my business generates, had 50,000 us dollars.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my goodness.

Bernadette Doyle: And it was just such a wonderful feeling because I was with him. I embraced him with this little notebook, and then there’s notebook every day, I have to write things down because I’m baby brain, I couldn’t remember anything (laughs).

Kim Sutton: I still have baby brain (laughs).

Bernadette Doyle: What do you got? Five? You had twins. So I’ve got big respect for you. I used to have this little black Moleskine, Moleskine notebook and I’d write down, take care of JJ, hat’s my son, take care of JJ’s mother. Those my two things every day that I knew I had to do, and everything that came after that was a bonus. So my focus was just on him and I honestly, I look back, that was such a wonderful period in my life, and whereas I can’t really been able to fully enjoy my first child as a newborn. I was really able to enjoy that time with JJ, and like, we just had, I remember just wonderful family times and also just being, you know, with his brother who was a toddler then, his brother was like not quite too, and just a really happy time and allowing myself to be really supported by my business, and supported by the structures that in place. And I think that’s really what I want women to know that it can be like this. So many people, so many women I see go into the online world and what they do is they just create another job for themselves, and it’s actually a tougher job than it. My offline job was 20 years ago because these days you can’t switch off. You know, if you’ve got Facebook notifications on your phone, it’s paying all the time. You can have email addiction, but you have forever checking your email, which is why I don’t even have email capability on my phone these days. I’ve not never set up my smartphone jugs that Email.

Kim Sutton: Thank you. I love that you said that because I don’t either.

Bernadette Doyle: Well you’re in good company because, Ann Wilson who’s known as the Wealth Chef, she’s a Hay House author. We’re really good friends and we were co-delivering a content at an event a couple of years ago, and we both randomly discovered in the break that we, neither one of us had email on our phones. And I remember sharing that with the group and going, this is not a coincidence, this is not a coincidence. So we’re both seven figure business owners, and we don’t have email on our phones. So welcome to the club Kim.

Kim Sutton: It’s a little bit of a pain when I’m traveling and okay, there’s been those times that I forgotten to put my E ticket on, but faced with the option of putting email on my phone when I get to the airport and realizing it, or just doing what, you know, we used to have to do, go up to the counter and get a physical ticket. I’m going to go up to the counter and get a physical ticket if I forgot to, you know, do what I had to do at home. I do not need to put the email on my phone because, oh yes. I love that and I have to be totally honest. I mean there are people who Facebook messaged me, and then they get a little bit testy because I don’t respond. I have Facebook messenger on my phone for one purpose, and it’s because my husband will not text me.

Bernadette Doyle: Yup.

Kim Sutton: He just doesn’t know how to open the iMessage thing on his iPhone. He will Facebook message me, but if it’s not my husband, then I’m not responding to Facebook messages unless I’m actually on my laptop and I’m going in for Facebook time. Because I realized that it’s so easy to get caught up in a gazillion messages, and spend an hour on something I didn’t mean to do. I mean, I even turned off my email notifications on my laptop. I don’t get them. I don’t see them pop up anymore because every single new email that was coming in was capturing my attention and the next thing I know, I just spent an hour and a half in my email doing tinkering around. That’s the best way I can put it. That’s G-rated, tinkering around in my email. I did not need to do that. It’s not about working harder, it’s about working smarter.

Bernadette Doyle: Absolutely.

Kim Sutton: So how do you support your clients today?

Bernadette Doyle: Do you mean the programs they offer?

Kim Sutton: Yes.

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah. So about three years ago, I created the Online Profits University, and that largely because I wanted to create like one place that captured everything I’d learned on my entire online journey. So it’s a huge course, it’s not one of these, Hey come and join us for eight weeks. And you know, there’s this content and it’s not a bootcamp, but like it’s like, okay, this really equips you for the long haul online, which isn’t a popular marketing message I have to say, but I just knew I wanted to create something. I guess like, I think of that as like my legacy kind of a program that, you know, if anybody ever came to me and said, I really want to start an online business that I could just point and go, okay, there you go. And what’s different about it is we customize people’s training and that means that when they come in, we kind of take an assessment of what they’ve got in place, what they don’t have in place. You know, I saw a comment yesterday from someone who said: “I’ve been online for a few years, I’ve done all of these courses and yeah, I’m really not making any real money.” That to me indicates, right, there’s a fundamental missing piece, and often the missing pieces paying customers. So people are doing all the right things in terms of they’ve got their sales funnels, and they’ve got their lead magnets, but they’ve never actually validate it. Is there a significant group of people that I can reach who actually want to buy this thing? That to me is why people can end up, you know, creating a lot of the automation of online business and yet still not get results. And when you were talking about different types of clients that you are working with. I suspect that the ones that are getting new order notice in their inbox, you know as soon as they, and their straight notifications as soon as they go live, it’s because there’s been a validation of the offer. Like they’re putting something out that you know, people do really want to buy.

Kim Sutton: Well, in fact that they’re even getting out there and sharing it, one of the recurring themes for the last two or three months has been, this is not a field of dreams. It can be, but we have to, and I’m referring to the Kevin Costner movie, this is not, if we build it, they will come. It’s if, when we build it, we have to get out there and be visible and share it, and let people know it’s there. I mean I’ve had clients who are like, I don’t think this is the right price, nobody is buying, and I’ll dig in a little bit and like, we’ll, nobody’s even seen it, nobody’s viewed that sales page. How can you validate the price if you’re not sending any traffic? So, I’ll go and dig a little bit deeper. How many podcasts have you been on? How many speaking engagements have you been on? How many people have you driven to it through social media posts? None? Well then how can you validate the price of people don’t even know it’s there.

Bernadette Doyle: Yup, yeah. It’s one of the downsides of this industry today, that there is that assumption that, Oh, all I need is my online course. And you know, once I’ve got my online course up and running, then everything happens. And my view is like, well, once your courses up, that’s when the real work begins. Because the most important ingredient of an online course is the paying customers. And so that’s what I teach my clients is, you don’t even create the course until you’ve assembled the paying customers. Don’t even go and create the course until some of those people have paid you. So you’re getting paid to create your first course, your program, and develop that way. And that’s how you get paid to grow your business as opposed to investing a whole heap of time, and effort, and money, and emotional energy into something that, you know. Then six or 12 months later you’re like, I’ve put all this time in and I’ve got nothing to show for it.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I love that. The validation is just so huge as of the day that this episode is released. I’m counting down a month until my team and I put out our first course. It will be going out sometime mid October, and we’ve already been working with clients and customers through the content to make sure that it’s valid, and from our work with them, we already have affiliates who are interested in signing up. I can tell you though that I had so many flop launches because I’d never validated it. It was just appear out of the woodwork job, this course or program on people, and then go back into my hole again and don’t even engage. I had no idea if it was going to work. I can’t even tell you how many $0 launches I had, If you can even call it a launch. You have given me some big ahas. I’m still just thinking about Robert Kiyosaki’s quote.

Bernadette Doyle: Check that out, That’s a great book, yeah.

Kim Sutton: Where can listeners find you online, connect, and get to know more about Online Profits University, and the work that you do?

Bernadette Doyle: Well come and check me out on Facebook. I’m on Facebook under Bernadette Doyle, I’ve got a business page. I’ve also got a Facebook group called Business Smarts With Heart. Have you joined that Kim? Are you in that group?

Kim Sutton: Business Smarts With Heart? That’s it? That’s a fabulous name. No I haven’t, but I will be.

Bernadette Doyle: You will really love it, based on the conversation we’ve had today, it will be totally up your street. So I look forward to seeing you in the, and that’s the place that I’m sharing content pretty much daily and it’s not, you know, tip type content. It’s like really content to get you thinking differently about your business, and making better decisions about your business, and you know man making decisions that lead you towards the results you really want as opposed to away from them. And funny that we’ve been talking about online courses, I do also have for anybody here that is creating an online course, a checklist that I’ve created because paying customers are such an important element. The checklist is, How to Tell if Your Course Will Sell. So it’s to guide you towards some things that you need to have in place before you should go and conduct your Thinkific account, or you know, by your Kajabi membership, or you know, spend any time developing your content. Make sure you are actually creating something that people really want to buy. And this checklist will help you identify whether it is, or isn’t

Kim Sutton: Fabulous. And there will be a link in the show notes to the checklist listeners, which you can find it in thekimsutton.com/PP602.

Bernadette Doyle: Yeah, I think that’s better because the link I have here has a lot of hyphens in it (laughs), so they go to where you just send them.

Kim Sutton: Been there, done that, and I thought to myself, why did you use that? Well, listeners, I just want to share that link one more time, thekimsutton.com/PP602. Bernadette, this has been absolutely fabulous. I just want to thank you so much for joining us today.

Bernadette Doyle: It’s a pleasure.

Kim Sutton: Do you have a parting piece of advice or a golden nugget that you could share with listeners?

Bernadette Doyle: Yes. There’s a quote from during virtue that says, God doesn’t give us our dreams without the ability to make them happen. And so my final nugget would be, if you’ve got a dream for a business online or not, or something that you want to do in your life, there is absolutely a way, even if you can’t see it yet, even if you can’t see anybody else who’s already done that yet. And the most important thing is to trust in that dream, and trust that there is a way, and keep that dream alive and stay open to the opportunities that you know, you will be presented with every single day to lead you in the direction of that thing. So keep the belief and stay open.