Episode 97: Taking Your Business to the Next Level with Janet Fish – Transcript
Rennie Gabriel 00:10
Hi folks, welcome to Episode 97 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration around your business and money. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel. In past episodes, we spoke about how to understand the numbers from your business, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in 5 - 10 seconds, what determines how close you are to Complete Financial Choice®, and how to run your business without being in your business. And last week, we had Dr. Shelia Whiteman, talking about how to stop the embarrassment of bladder leaks. Sounds a little odd, but how could anyone possibly concentrate on a client meeting or giving a presentation when that concern is on their mind as well? Today we have as our guest, Janet Fish. Janet is a reformed corporate executive turned serial entrepreneur. She found her passion in coaching others and known as a P A K - "Professional Ass Kicker", Janet challenges her clients to get out of their own way and get into massive action using the 10-step process she's developed while coaching over a thousand entrepreneurs in 16 countries. Janet helps her clients start or grow their business, make lots of money and invest it for their long-term growth and security. She is the host of the Break Through Your Profit Ceiling Podcast, and the author of the Amazon best-selling book, Quit Your Day Job - 10 Steps to Finding Financial Freedom, and it's already in its second edition. Janet, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast.
Janet Fish 02:01
Thank you, Rennie. It's so great to be here.
Rennie Gabriel 02:03
Yeah, well got some idea of what you do, but tell me more and more importantly, tell me why you do this.
Janet Fish 02:11
So I've been a coach for, so 2005, however many decades that's been. 17 years?
Rennie Gabriel 02:19
How do I say this? 17 years. I failed high school math but sometimes I can do basic arithmetic.
Janet Fish 02:26
Yeah, I'm not so good at that. That's not my strong suit. But yeah, so I've been doing it for a long time. I love it. I love doing it because I love to serve my clients. I love the . . . So I have two kinds of clients. They're all entrepreneurs. But I like to serve the solo-entrepreneur who's not yet making, I don't know, maybe I'd say $300,000 and less. So that's my sweet spot. And what I love is, let's say I take an entrepreneur who's making $5,000 a month, and I take them to making $10,000 a month. I mean, that completely changes their life. That's why I do it. I have a client that's making, you know, $10,000 a month or $30,000 a month, but they want to get to the million dollar a year place. And I can help them get there. That's why I do what I do. I love helping people. I like to say, see the amazingness in them before they can see it in themselves.
Rennie Gabriel 03:22
That sounds like so much fun. Now, one of the questions I always ask my guests, and I try and lead by example, by donating 100% of the profits from the work I do to charity. Is there a particular charity that you support?
Janet Fish 03:36
Yeah, there's two that I support. One is, it's actually Bay Area based, but it supports underprivileged children. And so, and it's an outdoor type of thing. So it takes underprivileged children and takes them out on trips - camping and canoeing and Yosemite and those kinds of things. And then there's a local animal shelter, animal rescue, because I'm a big lover of the animals. So yeah, those are the two main ones that I support.
Rennie Gabriel 04:07
Fabulous. Well, I think you've already said it is that your target markets are entrepreneurs, and I would guess solopreneurs Well, what would you say is the biggest failure whether it was personal or business?
Janet Fish 04:22
For me personally?
Rennie Gabriel 04:23
Yes.
Janet Fish 04:24
Well, I've built seven businesses, and not all of them have been successful. So I would say, and I don't, I can't say there's been one major colossal failure, but I'll say that, you know, there are businesses that I've built that just didn't, I didn't have the target market right at the right time. And I've learned from all of them but I haven't had it like a colossal, oh my god, I lost a whole lot. But I have had businesses that just didn't go because not the right thing at the right time, maybe it was me not... Early on, I think I built products, and then I hoped people would buy them. Rather now I build products that people... I sell products before I build them. Because I want to make sure that I'm building something that is a market, the market is there. And so I mean, I think that, I think that I probably fell, I probably fell into that early on in my entrepreneurial journey of like, 'Oh, this is, I think this is a great idea. I'll go spend all this time and build it.' And then no one bought it. And I was like, Okay, let's regroup and see how we could do things better next time.
Rennie Gabriel 05:35
Yeah, it's the opposite of build it and they will come.
Janet Fish 05:38
It is.
Rennie Gabriel 05:38
Yeah. So I remember, since we know each other, I remember you said there was a partnership that cost you a lot of money when it failed.
Janet Fish 05:47
Oh, that's true.
Rennie Gabriel 05:49
Yeah. I think you said something about it taught you the lesson of understanding values.
Janet Fish 05:56
Absolutely. So yeah, it was a project that we did. It was a big project. We raised a lot of money. It was building, it was a land development deal in Mexico. And the partner that I had was just on a totally different page from a perspective of values and integrity, and we spent a lot of money to buy him out and that was a great lesson.
Rennie Gabriel 06:16
Okay, so tell me what the typical feelings are that a lot of your entrepreneurs experience?
Janet Fish 06:24
You know - here's what I know, I know that being an entrepreneur is hard. Right? And I think that what a lot of entrepreneurs do, is they try to do it all alone. You know, they start a business, and then they, you know, they're out there all alone. They don't know what, they're working really hard, but they don't know what to do - they don't know the right order to do it in and they do it all by themselves.
Rennie Gabriel 06:50
Yeah, and I say over and over again, that wealth creation - doesn't matter if it's business growth or even relationships - it's a team sport, not a solo sport. And the entrepreneurs who are attempting to do it by themselves, they don't have maybe an execution master, they don't have a coach, or they don't have a business manager, someone in their corner. It's just a struggle and it's mediocre results.
Janet Fish 07:13
In addition, because I think, I mean I'm a business coach so I'm big fan of coaches, whether it's golf or, you know, business, or whatever, I'm a big fan of that. But over and above that just having a bunch of buddies that are also entrepreneurs, I mean, mentors are great and all of that's great. But at the end of the day, when you're like not feeling it, or going through what we've gone through for the last couple of years, just being able to hang out with a bunch of people who are in the same position, and having those conversations, just for the support of it is so critical. And I don't think people do enough of that. I don't, I think they spend too much time challenged by themselves, instead of just picking the brain or just calling somebody and say I'm having a bad day, let's have a conversation to make me feel better. Let me, let me vent because I needed to do that.
Rennie Gabriel 08:04
Now one of the things that I noticed, in terms of the way a lot of psychologists work is that they'll ask their client or their patient, whatever you want to call them a question, and out of that person speaking out loud, the things they were just spinning around in their head, they hear what they're saying, and come up with their own answers a lot of times. But what it requires is having another human being who's willing to be a dedicated listener to them.
Janet Fish 08:04
Yeah, yeah. And it's just the feeling of not being alone. I mean, I think we've, if the last two years hasn't taught us anything, like we know how to be alone, like, how do we seek out the people that can support us when we need it? And be there for them. I mean, it's as important to be there for them as it is for them to be there for us.
Rennie Gabriel 08:52
Exactly. It's mutual. It's accountability. It's mutual support.
Janet Fish 08:56
Well, let's, let's face it, you and I are in a group, "Dinner at Your Place", which is, every Friday night started as a direct result of the pandemic in March of 2020. Right? And I go every single week, I know you don't go as often, but I go every single week, but for a long time during 2020, like that was the only, like, interaction I had other than maybe clients or, but I mean, that was a place that we could all go to just hang out on a Friday night because we couldn't leave our houses and just to have a glass of wine or have a, you know, glass of water or you know, a coffee and just chat. At least be with each other. And that was, for me, it was really critical during some of those rough times.
Rennie Gabriel 09:39
Yeah. Well, you know, let's talk about someone who follows your advice and the result. I'm thinking of Kiki. Tell me about what was going on with her business and, you know, based on the work you did with her, what was the outcome?
Janet Fish 09:53
Yeah, she came to me as a lot of my clients do. They're making some money, and they're kind of doing In what they've done, they're making kind of what they made last year, but they're not really sure. 'Okay, now what do I do?'How do I take it from, I'm doing okay to doing I'm great, to doing I'm knocking it out of the park?' And so it was all about, let's define who you're talking to - like who your target market is. Let's, we know what you sell. Let's define some specific marketing strategies that we write down and that we execute on. And we just rinse and repeat, figure out what works, rinse and repeat. I like to say simplify and then multiply. Like, figure out what works, and then do more of that, versus a lot of entrepreneurs do a lot of marketing strategies, and they never really look at like what's really working. So they continue to do the things that aren't working, in addition to the, instead of supersizing the things that are working. It's been awesome to work with her because I think when I started working with her, she was really frustrated. Because she's, you know, her business was doing well, but nowhere near the potential that it could do. And she, like me, so she's a nutritionist, she like me, she wants to serve people. She wants to serve as many people as she can. And now she's getting to do that in a much bigger way. And she's also making a lot more money doing it. Which is a happy day, because like us, we like to make some money, and then we'd like to give it away. We'd like to serve other people by you know, giving it away.
Rennie Gabriel 11:24
Yeah, yeah, I've got enough money that comes in from my investments. You know, the stuff that comes in from this work I don't need. What's the one thing that you think is the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make in growing their business?
Janet Fish 11:38
Yeah - I love this question because it's because the answer is email marketing. Right. And I am obsessed with email marketing. I am obsessed, like, it was probably two years ago, that I really dove deep in my own business for email marketing, I really, I had changed service providers. And I really went deep, and it made a huge difference. And then I have all these clients, and I would say 90, 85% of them, okay - I'll be generous - 85% of them are not doing anything with their email list. Or maybe they'll send out an email once in a while. Or if someone opts in for something that they get they send them one or two emails, they don't do an email campaign. So I'm slightly obsessed with email marketing,
Rennie Gabriel 12:19
Can you provide some valuable item that our listeners can use to support their business or get a hold of you?
Janet Fish 12:27
So my offer would be, I have an email marketing masterclass that I teach or that is, you know, that I give, because I think that that's at least the first step into understanding the value of email marketing, and then really doing something with it. Like I teach a workshop where we, we actually go and create emails and we create an email automation and they walk away with actual stuff done. And I just see that as the biggest opportunity that most entrepreneurs are not taking advantage of.
Rennie Gabriel 13:02
Got it. Okay, so how can they find out more about this?
Janet Fish 13:06
So, okay, couple of ways, I would definitely say check out my, Breakthrough Your Profit Ceiling Podcast, because, obviously, we talk about a lot of those things in the podcast. You can find me at Breakaway Business Coaching on Instagram - that's my social media platform of choice. And then you can email me at, janet@breakawayllc.com.
Rennie Gabriel 13:26
Okay, great. Well, I'm gonna put the breakawaybusiness.com website in the show notes.
Janet Fish 13:33
Awesome.
Rennie Gabriel 13:33
One of the things you said earlier on is to focus on what works and for you the email marketing works, and it sounds like you're focusing on it. And that's make, that makes a big difference.
Janet Fish 13:44
Yeah, yeah. I've seen huge, like the people that have taken my workshop, and I have a couple in particular who are amazing executors. And they did exactly what I told them to do. And they, he's like, It's made all the difference in my business. He has like a 70% open rate now.
Rennie Gabriel 14:00
Oh, wow.
Janet Fish 14:00
I mean, it's just, and he's, it's just, I think, like I said, I think it's the biggest missed opportunity for a lot of entrepreneurs.
Rennie Gabriel 14:09
And a 70%. Open Rate is spectacular.
Janet Fish 14:12
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he worked a lot to get there. But yeah, it's an amazing thing.
Rennie Gabriel 14:18
Well, Janet, thank you for being on the show.
Janet Fish 14:21
Thank you for having me. This is super fun. It's great to see you, too.
Rennie Gabriel 14:24
Oh, thank you, Janet. And to my listeners, thank you for tuning in. Next week, we're going to have Sam Wilson, speaking about how to get started investing in commercial real estate. And you can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform, and please rate, review and subscribe. If you'd like to know how books, movies and Society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request the free 27-Page roadmap, a 9-Step Roadmap to Complete Financial Choice®, and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques or inspiration around your business or your money. And if you'd like to see how you can increase your wealth and donate to the causes that touch your heart, please check out our affordable program, Wealth with Purpose, and you'll find it on the wealthonanyincome.com website. Until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.
