Successful habits breed success, and in this episode, I’m sharing my top 5 habits that have led me to 3 years in a row of 6-figures in sales – habits you, too, can start implementing today!

Get $10 off your Riverside.fm subscription with code LAUREN!

Download my (free) secret sales weapon, the Lucrative AF Lead Tracker: https://bit.ly/llt-sbaf

Connect me on LinkedIn: Lauren Loreto & follow with me on Instagram: @shesbusyaf @brandgoodtime

 

Hey, y’all. This is Lauren Loreto, founder of Brand Good Time, and host of She’s Busy AF the podcast. Today’s episode is one I’ve been wanting to record, since I started prepping my tax documents a few weeks ago, mainly because for the third year in a row, my business was consistent with hitting that six-figure mark in gross sales and keep in mind, I’ve been in business for almost seven years.

So it got me thinking about how I’ve been able to be consistent, and it came down to five common themes. I’m really excited in this episode to share all five of those with you. Today’s episode is sponsored by Riverside FM. It’s literally my favorite recording tool for all of my guest podcasts. My former podcast editor recommended them to me, and it’s seriously been the game changer from recording with zoom.

Namely, the audio files are just really high and what’s great is when I’m done recording, I can download both tracks for myself and my guest, without question. This was something I was having a really hard time figuring out with zoom. Another feature I love using with Riverside is their transcription, which makes it so easy to repurpose my content, which if you know me, you know, I talk about this a lot. Overall tonight, 10 out of 10 effortless platform, whether you have a podcast or considering launching one, this is the tool to use for guest features.

 

Time Blocking

You can check it out for yourself for your own podcast at the link in my description. All right, guys, let’s dive in. I’m gonna share my five habits with you for having those six-figure years. With that being said, the first one is time blocking. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I am just thoroughly obsessed with time blocking. The first year I hit six figures in my business was the year I started time blocking.

I made Mondays and Fridays my off-limits to client workdays. I also didn’t take meetings in those days, which really allowed me to focus on creating sustainable marketing strategies for my business that are still paying off to this day. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are client meetings, and that’s when I also do client work. This is the balance that works for me.

Everybody’s different, but having a schedule and sticking to that schedule was absolutely crucial for me to start making the motions to hitting those six-figure years. Part of this was also only checking my email two times per day. And for the most part, I’m still sticking to this. This allows me the laser focus on work and respond to things later, but still in a timely manner. So number one tip is definitely time blocking.

 

Goal Flexibility

The second habit that I attribute to my six-figure years was the fact that I didn’t marry my goals. Instead, I was strategic with objectives and pursued them with flexibility in mind. Well, what do I mean by that? The reality is that goals without plans are just dreams. Yes, it’s more than just a Pinterest quote. It can be your goal to have a six-figure year, but you need a defined plan that’s quantified, that’s truly quantified to get you there.

In that plan should be objectives, and they should be defined as thoroughly as possible. So I’m gonna share with you some examples I set in my business that fed into our overall sales and market. So two of those big strategies I put into play were number one, truly optimizing our marketing funnel, like truly, and also giving a lot of attention to strategies that are retaining current customers and increasing the lifetime value of those current customers. So once I was marketing and I would say like the other side was sales and to this day, my highest paying clients are the ones I’ve had for two-plus years.

So really paying attention to those retain like retaining those current customers I had was such a big deal for us because like I said, I’ve had clients for a couple of years at this point. Really, those efforts I put into play early were just such a game-changer. It really is about the long game in business. So pay attention to those things that are going to pay off for you down the line, do not put those on the back burner.

 

Tracking Sales & Expenses

My third habit was tracking my sales and expenses. I don’t know why I’m saying “was” because I’m still doing this. So I’ve always been that person who has had to visualize things. Literally, I have a spreadsheet for almost everything important in my life. As soon as I started tracking my sales, I started to see themes and was able to truly break out what was the most profitable and revenue-generating service I offered. I leaned in hard to that, which attributed to a ton of consistency month over month for sales. When we realized what was doing the most for us, we made capacity for that.

I also started tracking my expenses. I got super serious about how I was spending money and I created a budget working super close with my accountant to do so. Today I actually take on my own bookkeeping, to keep that close eye. It’s what works for me. So I spend about an hour a week in my books, looking, assessing, figuring out where I’ve spent money, where I should scale back on money budgeting. I don’t know that you need to do it that often, but that’s what works for me. And that’s what keeps me on pace. That is what’s helped me consistently hit those higher-income years while being more profitable.

 

Marketing Consistency

My fourth habit, you might guess this was coming – marketing consistency, and with a plan. So it’s not only about consistently marketing. It’s about having a plan for your marketing. My first business was a marketing agency and the year I hit six figures in my business was the year our marketing had a written strategy. And I know what you might be thinking – “you didn’t have a marketing strategy before this and you sell marketing?”

No, I didn’t, because at the time clients were kind of just falling into my lap. I was relying on referrals, and as we all know, that runs dry or kind of can lead to a direction of maybe not getting the type of clients that you want. So I realized at that time, it was time to write a marketing strategy and time to care about it. Was the strategy perfect? No, but it was documented, and my team was able to help me execute it at the level in which I wanted us to execute.

We at this point were creating content weekly and honestly, it’s content that still drives traffic to the brand I have today. Yay for website redirects, we love website redirects when you’re rebranding. So I guess moral the story here. If you don’t have a plan for your marketing, and you’re teetering on the edge of a six-figure business, you really need one.

It truly, truly, truly is what is going to game change, how you stand out, and how you build a sustainable business for years to come. If you’re not sure how to do that, that’s my shtick. What I do best is come into your business, look around, peek around, open some doors, write out your marketing funnel from top to bottom and also deliver a 90-day strategy to help you get going on media objectives, ultimately to increase sales in your business.

 

Listening to Data

If you’re interested in learning more about this, click the link in my show notes, let’s chat. Okay. Lastly, the last habit, letting data from my efforts tell a story and tell me where to turn next. So on top of getting super serious about marketing efforts, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just throwing spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks. I recruited my knowledge and spreadsheet-making skills from my agency days and created a dashboard for tracking my metrics across all of my marketing efforts – which by the way, all of my clients get access to this exact dashboard template. So if you’re interested, you know what to do month over month, we assess these efforts. We made pivots in our marketing. We really leaned into what was working scaled back on what wasn’t. And we did it at the right times because we were so on top of these metrics.

Without this there’d be wasted time, and probably not a lot of growth in sales. In my opinion, time is money and you really need to be spending it the right way, especially when it comes to marketing your brand. Y’all, those are my five big habits. I really hope you found this helpful, and if you did, please shoot me a message on Instagram @brandgoodtime, or, share a screen out of this episode of your story. Remember we drop new eppies every Wednesday. Thank you so much for being part of the She’s Busy community. I’d love to thank you by resharing those tags. And with that being said, I’ll see you in the next episode.