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TRANSCRIPT:
*this transcript was mostly generated by AI, please excuse any mistakes 
We are alive CEO, Chet Holmes, international. And I have with me, Sian, which you would never know that her name is pronounced Shawn, because it’s S I a N. And tell me how to pronounce your last name. I can’t even believe it. We went live and I’m like, oh my God, I don’t know how to pronounce your last
name.
Lenegan, which is I believe Irish, thanks to my husband. So there you go.
Okay. So we have Sian with us. I’m so grateful that I’m able to bring you on here for everybody, because w they hear me interacting with all these different people and our clients, but they don’t get to hear enough from all of the people that assist with our coaching and assist with our clients to get them results.
And Sian, you’re such a wonderful shining star. I always love interacting with you and you know, it comes, I think it comes from your background. You know, growing, scaling your business, selling your business and your really. You’ve told me this before I’m financially free. I don’t have to do this. I do it because I love it.
I think you would even said, and it come and it, it shows in everything you do. And it’s, I’m so proud to have people like you, a part of what we do at Holmes international. So thank you for hopping on with
us today. No thank you. And I can’t believe that I get to be in your proximity because of the story and my introduction to Chet Holmes international as well.
So it’s an absolute dream. I love it.
Well, let’s, let’s dive in. So, um, we’re going to cover today for everybody that’s listening. We’re going to cover some interesting things. Um, we’re going to share about Sian’s journey with her own business and what really. Barked that desire to help others, uh, and it has to do with profits.
So I’m sure every, every business owner is leaning in going profits. Really? Yes. And you even coined the term of predictable profits, which everyone is like, yes. Tell me more. Who doesn’t want predictable profits when 65% of businesses don’t make a profit. So, and then we’re also going to cover, uh, I want you to share for everybody this case study, one of them.
Wonderful shining, uh, examples of a great client that had some struggles, but at the end ended up generating like a quarter of a million dollars a quarter. So a million dollars a year on automation. It’s a hard thing to do. It takes pigheaded, discipline and determination, and we’re going to cover the three things you need to be successful in a campaign.
So shine, please. Can you share with us a bit of, um, your story of your journey? Business owner. And, um, particularly the one that I, that I love that you were sharing earlier. Yeah.
So my story with my company, I had a digital agency and we started back in 2008 because I thought it was a fun time to start a business in a recession.
I started that business and very, very quickly, we grew to six figures. But then reality gave me a checkup from the neck up and we hit the floor. And I just remember this moment. I’ll never forget it. It was the 12th of April and I was sitting on the floor with a pizza box. I had sent all my stuff home from work because I had no idea how to pay everyone.
We had no work to do. And I just thought, wow, this boom and bust rollercoaster, this feast and famine rollercoaster, it’s finally caught up with me. So sitting there crying into my pizza and I thought, I either need to close the dang agency, or I need to figure out how to educate myself on sales, how to educate myself on having a pipeline of clients.
So I picked myself up and we actually went door to door, which was really hard. It’s one of the things though that I think is, you know, made me and given me so much resilience, we actually went door to door, saved the business and the rest is here.
Wait, wait, where did you get the idea to go door to door?
Cause that’s not some very normal.
I knew that I just had to move. I just knew that I just had to move. So I just put my shoes on and I just started walking around, walking into businesses and saying, this is what we do. Is this something you need? And I genuinely think we, we knocked on about a hundred doors and we had three clients.
So there’s the 3% rule
was literally turned and my husband had just come back from Afghanistan. So it was a really dope. You know, kind of thing to do. Um, but we did it and I’ve never looked back,
wait, the pigheaded, discipline and determination here, hold on for a hundred doors to physically walk into them and knock on them. I mean that in itself, Speaks volumes to you.
What, what was the drive at that time? Because w was it partially because you had a team that you had to help keep the lights on for and yeah.
Yeah, it was my team, you know, I created jobs. I had, I had. Mortgages resting on my shoulders. You know, my husband was in the military. He was in the Marines and he served in Afghanistan.
So he was going to retire shortly after that. And I knew that I wanted to give us an extraordinary life. So I got really clear on what the hell I was doing this for. And it’s something I go through with clients as well. You know, I need to know what are you doing this for? What are your goals? Why is this so important?
Because you have to have a compelling. To pull you through when you need that pigheaded, determination and discipline. So, you know, just knowing what, what are you doing this fall will get you through those tough times. But I decided after, you know, after I said, okay, we’ve, we’ve won a few clients here.
We’ve, we’ve plugged the holes in the boat. I decided that was the moment that I was going to fanatically educate myself about this. And I went and did an MBA and I went to a Tony Robbins event. And that was where somebody gave me a copy of the ultimate sales machine. Oh, I got chills. And I picked up this book and I read it.
I couldn’t stop consuming it. And I just thought, I need to somehow make this my own. And so I created a core story for the business and I created my own version of a dream 100 campaign. And I had fallen into this kind of accidental net. Of working with technology businesses. Cause I was really good at helping them take their features and benefits and turn it into a story and turn it into good kind of marketing copy.
So that was what I work with. So every month I would choose a hundred businesses in, in a radius and I would send them out a letter saying these are the seven mistakes tech businesses make on their websites. And, um, Follow up on LinkedIn, I’d follow up on email and had this whole little campaign. And so every month I said 200 business.
Something in the mail and follow it. And it became a really fun game. That out of a hundred, there was one, there was one month where I had sent Kit-Kats and letters and everything Kit-Kats are irrelevant. It’s just what was on sale at Costco.
It became a game to see how many responses I would get. And it became, it became fun. And that one month the kid cats landed with the letter and this guy called me up and say, I can’t believe your letters arrived. I need someone to help us with our website, but I need it right now. So jumped in the car. I drove out to him and I came back with a purchase order for, I think it was like 60,000 equivalent to $60,000.
So I joke about my $60,000 Kit-Kat.
And it happens every single month and something beautiful happened. I never had to worry with clients came from. And that changed the business. It changed our lives. My husband’s retired and we bought our dream home and, you know, just business became fun, a lot more flow. And I got the whole marketing and sales thing
finally.
Well, can you, can you share a bit of that transformation between what you were doing before that was the feast or famine versus the dream 100 with an educational approach?
The biggest shift that I can explain is, you know, when you’re a website design agency, for an example, you have to be there when people are looking for what you do.
So you have to be there the moment that people are like, yeah, I need to do a website. I need a new website. So what happens is you’re competing to get found by those people, and then you’re competing with everyone else who’s who wants to win that proposal. This bloody red ocean of competitiveness. But what I found that was when, when I switched and instead of marketing, just to that 3%.
And then when I switched and started building relationships, getting people to know who we are, what we do and enjoy our content. When they needed a website, we already had a relationship. So that’s where my, my path to permanent profits was kind of born because I thought if I fill up my path full of people who are on their way to eventually needing what we have, I’m filling up this past two permanent.
Marketing becomes more fruitful. Marketing becomes more profitable. The ROI is better and there’s a whole lot less stress because I know that I’ve got a hundred people this month. Next month, next month, by the end of the year, I got 1200 people on the road to getting to know who I am. And eventually they’re all going to buy.
Fascinating, you know, so we just went through as you know, cause you were also there with the dream 100 bootcamp and people just choosing a hundred businesses is so difficult for them at times. Right. It’s like, it’s like yanking teeth. Get them. I don’t, I mean, share with me, please. Like your experience.
Like for me, it’s like, they don’t want to come here. To that many, right. They’d rather just spray and pray and wish for the best. Right?
Yeah. And dilution is not the solution here. You know, you need to get specific. You need to understand who your best buyer is and who you’re aligned. So when I start working with clients, I do quite a lot of work on this before I even start.
And I promise you, when you put the elbow grease into figuring out your ideal customer profile or your best buyer profile, you put that work in when you have that piece, that foundation document, when it comes down the line for us to then start automating things, start using advertising. It pays dividends to have worked out who that best buy is, who that aligned client is.
So I put about 80% of my work here. When I start working on any marketing strategy with the client.
I get it. So I have a, I have a quick, I know I’m interviewing you, but I have a really great story
of
this that just happened this morning. It really quickly, because we went through, you know, I’m living the dream 100 too as I’m training everybody else on it, you know, and we’re seeing great results.
Um, and I identified three organizations that I realized if I just focused on those three, they could fill my pipeline for the next decade Just three. So I know the strategic partners, um, but what I did this morning with my team is that we identified those three and we did Facebook ads to them. And in the audience, I was focused on my client database.
People that have worked with us in the past, people that are unengaged and have unsubscribed from our database, but no us and I was getting $25 a lead from the. bigger list was getting $5 a lead from those that have engaged with us ongoing and for the three that I’ve never heard of us before, but very targeted because I went through the dream 100 process.
We were getting $1.40 on those leads and we’re getting 10 times the, in the reach From the same group I’m like utterly shocked, like, yes,
three, 100 worked again. win
that’s the magic, when you get some clear on who you’re targeting, that is the magic
magic. Okay. So another great story that you have that I want everybody to hear and know the people that are watching this.
I’m seeing them come in and out live. You can say, hello comment live for those that are listening to the recording afterwards, you can’t. But the, the beauty of us being on a. On social is that people can say hello. They keep popping in and popping out. So say hello. Okay. So, um, you had a brilliant story up one of your great, uh, success stories with a client that I just love because everybody is always trying to find a way to have business working on automation or where they don’t have to, you know, strong arm, every lead and sale that comes in the door.
So can you share with us this. Story. I’ll let you give the, the what happened and then we’ll dive into the details.
Can you share. So, you know, every client comes to me and says, I want more leads. I’m worried where my next client is coming from. And everyone says, what’s the easiest, quickest way I can get clients.
And the first thing I have to say is there’s no quick, easy way you have to put in the elbow grease and the pigheaded determination. So when you, first of all, figure out what works and it’s like, it’s take, it’s taking one strategy and working on it and tweaking and testing things until you get that thing with.
So I had a SAS company that wanted to launch a new product into interior designers. And we, first of all, went out on LinkedIn and we started having conversations with designers to find out what are their pains, what are their problems? We then produce educational based content to help them solve those problems.
From there we said about the outbound reach, we said about the dream 100 camps. Okay. And we were bringing in clients, we were bringing in leads. So that took about three months for that, you know, setting that up. But
they didn’t believe they didn’t believe that this would work for them.
Right? Yeah. They said this, this is not how we sell SAS.
This is, this is not going to work. And I said, well, no, this is a brand new product to market, so no, one’s going to know what to search for. So there is no 3% that’s searching for what you’re selling. Right. So we have to educate the market. We have to take them on a journey of getting to know us, what we do, and then eventually buy from us when they can see the benefit.
Wow. So we, so we did this whole outbound strategy and it was fantastic because it started working. We were getting a lot of feedback. We were getting a lot of research. We then took everything and we then produced. Path to permanent profit. And we designed the messaging, the lead magnet, the followups, the campaigns, and we then put everything onto order onto automation.
And we were getting, uh, 15 new clients a month and it, it was ending up about a quarter of a million dollars in sales per quarter on automated. And it was just such a successful campaign that we’ve left that on evergreen and then we’ve started. So I always say, you know, try and create one pillar that works really well when that’s working really well.
Then you can start building another pillar and then another pillar. And that’s how you scale your sales and marketing, but you’ve got to get one thing working really, really well before you start adding new things and don’t get trapped in shiny object syndrome and do something for a month and say that didn’t work.
And it did happen with that client, right? They said it wasn’t working.
Oh yes. They said, well, we don’t think this is working, but they weren’t tracking the right numbers. So I said, well, here’s a KPI dashboard that I made for us earlier. And I said, this is how many leads are coming into our world every week.
This is how many conversations we’re having. This is how many are converting. So I think it’s worth. And they, they had to, um, yeah, they had to, they had to have that humble pie, but now it’s part of their ongoing strategy. And since then we use dream 100 to add a joint venture program to them. And now they’ve got multiple huge brands that are now joint ventures now promoting their educational based content.
Wow. Wait, so break. Um, that’s really fascinating. I was going to say something and then it left my brain.
Something was like, oh, I really want to hear more about that. Um, so what were they tracking that they thought that. Because I find this curious, so many businesses, don’t track sales, they really want idea and they pretend like they know. And then if you like, this is what I think our sales conversions are, but they’re just putting it up.
Right. So what were they
tracking? Anything? So being a SAS company, they were tracking how many demos they were doing in a month and they were tracking, uh, how many of those demos were converting. But the problem was they hadn’t taken into account. The number of leads that were in the pipeline, the number of leads that were now going through our nurturing sequence, they hadn’t taken into account the lifetime value of those clients that we were converting.
And. You know, I think that, I think the ad spend was 1800 to $2,000 a month and that was producing a quarter of a million dollars a quarter. I think that’s working. I don’t know what you think, but that’s working
so brilliant. So
whenever, whenever you’re working on anything, in fact, any business, we have to know what numbers you’re tracking.
We have to have a nice, beautiful dashboard. So we know how many people are coming into our world. What’s the, uh, sales velocity, what, you know, what do people. What are the objections and we just, we have to track what we want to improve. So it’s really important to do that. I can’t
express that at all. And the sales velocity you’re tracking how long it takes to get from one step to the next.
Yeah, because with that particular client, their sales velocity was, um, it was about 12 weeks. So from the time somebody had come into the funnel to the time that they eventually booked their demo and then became a client was 12 weeks. So I looked at that and I thought, no, We can improve that we can challenge accepted.
So we implemented a little, uh, we implemented a couple of other added value steps, and we got that down to three weeks.
Wow. Wow. Miraculous. Oh my gosh. Okay. Can you also share a bit about, more about profitability and how more clients can.
Get predictable profits. So one of the things that I’m really passionate about is the average independent business owner in the states, I think makes about $52,000 a year.
And the average independent UK business owner in the, in the UK makes about 30, 30, 6 to 40,000 pounds. And when I had my experience of that feast and famine, and I was living entrepreneurial poverty. That’s what it was. And you end up comparing yourself to people with their Lamborghinis and, you know, people having selfies in private jets.
Okay. I’m exaggerating, but you know, you start comparing yourself. Wow, what am I not doing? Or what am I not doing well enough? Or what am I not getting an entrepreneurial poverty is a thing. So that’s why I’m on a mission to help at least 10,000 business owners crack that and earn what they deserve. So when I talk about the path to permanent profits, I’m talking about how we can create an engine in your business that creates the sales, creates the revenue, the marketing is profitable, and so that you can stop the feast and famine and we can.
And much smoother path because it’s so stressful being a business owner. I think one of your statistics was that 80% of businesses, business owners admit to working weekends. So if you take that statistic with how much an average business owner earns, that’s like less than minimum wage. Let’s quit entrepreneurial poverty, and it’s get off that boom and bust rollercoaster, and start building all of these paths to creating profit in the business because it’s really, it’s really important business owners.
You know, they, they start something out of nothing. They’re like little miracle workers. They start something out of nothing and they build something and they deserve to have prosperity. So it’s really important to get all of this stuff.
You know, oh, what was it? So one of our coaches gave me, I love everything that you just said.
And, uh, to add to it, one of the, one of our coaches had given me this piece of feedback and I’ve, and I’ve remembered it for years. I’ve never forgotten it. They said, well, how much is your hourly rage? Because, you know, I have staff that I think of what their hourly rages, but I don’t think about my own. So if you had to put a value to that, what would it be?
And when I put my foot in the sand and say, this is what my hourly wage is worth, because that’s what I get paid from clients. But I don’t think about it administratively within my organization. Then when I started thinking about what am I doing in my day-to-day world and is that worth my hourly wage? I realized that, you know, my hourly wage is, you know, five times, 10 times more than some of my staff.
And yet I feel that I don’t want to put. Uh, on somebody else, I feel that I need to do it, but when I really think of what my hourly is at really shifted me from feeling that I needed to do certain tasks versus having my team do certain tasks. It just was a good mental tool that I still referenced today on a regular basis.
Yeah, you should be working on the highly leveraged activities that are going to move the business forward and that that’s what you should be working on. And that’s what that’s in my growth code program. I take clients from being reactive business owners, to being business owners who know what works for their business, where they have momentum and how they can just take control of that and move that forward.
Then we optimize strategize, and then we maximize things so that you can build this. Pendant on and never worry where your next client is coming from. Because when you get to that phase where you’re not worried about clients, you’re not worried about taking your bucket to the sea and filling up your bucket and coming back and sorting out the leads or going back for another bucket because it’s exhausting.
Instead, we want to build a pipeline. We want to build this pot that is just full of people. Well, you know, everyone on the way to making a profitable business, cause that’s exhausting. You want to go away from the business and have a holiday and not worry that leads are going to stop. You want to, you know, take time off and not worry about.
Th the buckets are empty. No, one’s carrying the buckets for you. So it’s really important to, to get those foundation blocks in place. And a lot of the time everyone’s so busy just trying to get by, get through the day. And it’s hard to focus on the right things at the right time.
I agree. Well, one of the other ways that people can be a part of our world and actually work with Sean too, is within this core story bootcamp.
Can you share with me? I know. So you found the book, you followed it within your own company, and then you came to be one of our coaches as well, which is so exciting. And then you had the experience of the bootcamp. Can you share what that was like going through the course straight boot camp this last time?
You know, I, I love observing people and I love watching. And in the bootcamp, it was just amazing to see the penny drop moments, but, you know, going from the core story and learning how to educate instead of selling, because a lot of the times when I speak to very creative entrepreneurs, when you say selling, they just want to shrivel up because they think selling your soul and selling them.
It’s hard. Like there’s a lot of resistance there, but what I love is when people go through the core story format, I see these penny drop moments where they. Oh, my goodness. It’s, it’s like signing, but it’s not selling. It’s like educating and adding value. And then you create clients and it’s like, you don’t have to sell your soul.
You know, this is, this is a beautiful way of, of creating business. And then when you see then people go through the dream 100 boot camp on how they can take everything and use it and leverage it. And when you see all this. Join up. It’s just powerful and it’s really transformational. And when you see people taking action and getting the things in place and you get messages from clients, I had a ma I had a WhatsApp message from a client the other day saying I’ve just landed a client as a hundred thousand dollars client and you get those messages and it’s just like, wow, this is amazing.
I’m still holding out for you with X shots. I know that you guys are going to reach your goals and he’s going to take you to India. He is
doing amazing. I am proud of him. Yeah,
I’m sure. I’ll chance listening. He’s knocking it out of the park for sure. He was wonderful to see him. One of his biggest, um, biggest deals he’s ever had to was going through the dream 100 bootcamp.
Well, I’m so glad to have you, and it’s been so wonderful. Is there any final, oh, um, if anybody wants to sign up for the course story, boot camp it’s ultimate sales machine.com for slash. I’m sure we’ll have the link, but ultimate sales machine.com/bootcamp. So any last comments that you’d like to share with people that are listening or business owners that have listening last gems of wisdom from Shawn?
It’s really important to know that as a business owner, you’ve already got some success at doing what you’re doing, because you’re, you’ve reached this point and it’s really important to take stock for a second and have a look at where you have momentum in the business already and make sure that whatever those things are that you’re still doing that.
Cause I dunno why we tend to take medicine until we get better. And then we stopped taking the medicine and wonder why, you know, things aren’t working again. So wherever you have momentum, make sure that you keep at it. And when you say something’s not working. Well, it’s not working. It’s just because the data is telling you something that you don’t like.
So look at the data and then let’s see what we need to tweak, test and refine, and just make sure that you keep added with pig headed determination and discipline discipline. Yes.
Oh, such a good takeaway. Thank you so much, Sean. It’s a
pleasure. It’s been wonderful. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
We’ll
do you too.
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