Tune in on your favourite platform to hear about THE Insta post that got Anna out of podcast retirement. Plus The Elevatory's vision and mission for this podcast and all the value you can expect from it.
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the very first episode of The Elevatory podcast. I’m Anna Jonak, the founder of The Elevatory. Now, for those of you that have not come across us before, we're a boutique coaching agency for ecommerce business owners looking to reach a sustainable six or seven figures in their business, using an authentic approach to their marketing.
Now first off, let me just caveat what sustainable means. And that is essentially that we want a marketing infrastructure built around your business so that you have leads and sales every day without those horrible spikes in revenue. And what I mean by authentic marketing is that you do YOU. All right. I don't want you sliding in someone's DMs if you hate it. I don't want you dancing on Insta reels if you're shy and you'd rather be hidden under a rock, if it's not aligned with your values, I don't believe you should do it. We basically believe that there are 101 different marketing strategies out there, and we can find a match for your brand and your values.
"I don't want you dancing on Insta reels if you're shy and you'd rather be hidden under a rock"
And we want you to be able to be excited about showing up in your marketing, because it is in alignment with you. And you're reaching people just like you because of the way that you market. All right, now, if you'd like to learn a little bit more about The Elevatory, I'm going to send you over to theelevatory.com We as a team of experts work with you one on one across all aspects of your business. We look at everything from strategy to numbers and metrics. That's my favourite, that all important marketing. So we're talking Facebook Ads implementation, Google Ads, SEO, organic marketing strategies, you name it. You essentially get to plug into a whole team of coaches who are experts on each and everything. And they're going to give you their expert advice on what you should be doing specific to your business.
We really believe it takes a village to grow a successful business, which is why you are plugging into a team when you come and work with us. So, as I said, go ahead over to theelevatory.com and you can learn more, but now I really want to get into the meat and bones of the show today.
I actually had a podcast a few years ago. Um, it's been two years since I've been on the podcast scene, but life got very busy, and something had to give. And at the time it was fires, floods, Covid, it was all a bit crazy. I'm sure you all felt it. It's been a crazy few years indeed. The podcast was one of the things I had to walk away from. But I'm in quite a different stage of my life now and definitely a different stage of business.
And I'm very excited to be here now and to bring a little bit of a different flavour to the podcast scene. And that is, I want to bring you a bit of a no BS approach to chatting business and marketing. I've been around for seven or eight years now, I've worked with thousands of clients, launched millions of dollars’ worth of courses and high-end programs. Been around the traps. I've got a few things under my belt, but what I do right now, or what is happening for me right now is as I look around the marketplace, the coaches, the marketers, the clever copy, the marketing tactics, the commentary being used, it just makes me feel, a bit sick to my stomach and also a little bit angry for you guys out there.
The fluff, the lies, the smoke and mirrors. I think it's time to call BS on some of this stuff because it's really not helpful for new and young business owners and those, maybe we've been going for a while, but you're pedalling. You're pedalling really hard, and you don't know what to believe anymore.
"The fluff, the lies, the smoke and mirrors. I think it's time to call BS on some of this stuff because it's really not helpful for new and young business owners"
So I think it's really important that we start to shine a light on what's good, what's bad, what's real, what's not, and help you make decisions on how you should be pursuing things to grow your business. Because I want to make sure that you have a real look at the time, energy and strategy that goes into growing a business that actually can give you an income that feeds your family.
All right. There's a lot of stuff and noise out there that is not going to be helpful for you. And I see a lot of people on my phone calls, we do a lot of discovery calls and I end up being the bearer of bad news with regards to the person's ability to grow their business ie. they don't have their business model set up, right; their margins are off; they don't realise how much money they've actually got to make in order to pay themselves. They see e-commerce as a passive income and it couldn't be further from it. There's a lot out there in the marketplace guys, and I really want to shine a light on it and just kind of, you know, like I said, call BS.
I want you to know. I want you to thrive and survive or survive, thrive, whatever, you need to kill it out there. And you're not going to do that. If you get side-tracked by some of the stuff going on in the marketplace. So we want to be here, we're all honest and raw. And I say we, because you'll be chatting to myself and my coaching team.
Let me give you some examples of some of the stuff that is annoying me presently. And then what I'm going to do is actually take you through a little bit of, um, a recap of a post that really, really peed me off at the end of last year, which was really my impetus for coming out of podcast retirement. It really started to spur me on to talk about this stuff.
And I haven't really stopped ever since then, but let me start with those examples first. Okay. So, you know, I'm sure you've seen it in your Instagram and Facebook feeds that will get you to a 100K in a hundred days. Caveat. If you've got a successful business already, you've got a proof of concept and you've got strong foundations and a really good core offer. They don't tell you that.
Why don't you add 5,000 friends to your Facebook profile and DM them all? Again, another big strategy that's out there in the marketplace. I'm sure that you guys have had, lots of people DM-ing you. I'm sure they’re in your inbox. Quite often they're run by VAs as well.
Look it works. I'm not going to lie. It is something that works, but you gotta be super careful that you don't get your account shut down. There's a lot of bad juju that can come with some of this stuff with Facebook. I've seen people lose their accounts for really minor things. But also, I guess you've got to keep coming back to values, alignment, and authenticity. Is it in alignment with how you want to market?
Something else I see a lot is people talking about their three-day work week, which is kind of, will make sense with what I'm going to talk about in a moment. You know, there's a lot of “you don't have to hustle so hard. It's not about the hustle anymore.” “Okay. Just work three days, you can make a successful business.” I don't believe that. Okay. I believe that yes, in a few years, if you're lucky, when you've done the hard yards and you've got your head around stuff, and if you're juggling a family, god it’s a whole other kettle of fish, but you can get there eventually. Yes. But it's very unusual for you to start doing a three-day work week on your business and getting it to the place you want it to be fast.
Something else I see a lot as well is about manifestation, you know, you can manifest success. Now. I'm a big believer in mindset. Love the universe. I'm all about trusting the universe and kind of spirituality. But I still think you've got to work hard and I don't know why that suddenly has been dropped out or seen as a bad thing, the hustle. Now don't get me wrong. If you're working long hours on the wrong things, then yeah, we've got to pull you up on it, but it's hard work.
You know everybody puts it in. All the people that I see in my industry right now that are at the same level as me, like seven or eight years into the journey, they work damn hard. They might do three days a week now. They might have memberships that work pretty well. But they're not doing the hours that they used to put in. I've seen people do all sorts of stuff. And I'm going to talk more about that as we go. Anyway, it's just time to shine a light on this stuff, and that's why I'm here.
Now, let me talk to you very quickly about the particular post that actually really got my goat. Now, I sound like my mum, but it really did. And she said something along the lines of, can we normalise that we don't need to be part of the 5am club. This week, I spent every morning watching Christmas movies, calling friends, and then getting started with my day. And this month will be an $80,000 month. The picture that came with this post was of a woman on a lounger drinking cocktails in beautiful swimwear, you know, great but it pissed me off. Why? Partly because I'm not there yet. Numbers wise, yes. But lifestyle wise, no. I've got kids. My kids are eight, seven and five. I get up between 4 and 5am in the morning because partly because I want to spend time with them. And even if I don't want to spend time with them and I want to work on the business, they interrupt me a million times with me needing to shout at them to move, or they want their hair done or something.
I've got a team, that need help. I've got clients that need feedback. We've got marketing going on. You know, this is my season. Like I've got a lot going on in my life and I've got a lot going on in business and I'm just not at a place where I can just watch Christmas movies and not get up at 5am.
So yes, slightly hashtag jealous. But more than that, the issue that I have guys is that it paints an unrealistic picture to so many people of what growing a business looks like. If that's all you see in isolation, a woman talking about her life like that, while you were hustling and doing all the things, how's that going to make you feel all right.
It misses her before Netflix days. It misses her life and all the stuff that took her to get there. There is so much of this stuff out there in the marketplace right now, where people see an end result and they see where people are right now and the people that are there right now, talk about how easy it is right now, but it wasn't always easy.
And that is the stuff that we should talk about so that when you're in that stage of not easy, you feel like it's just part of the journey. And then you get it. Because I can bet my bottom dollar that the lady in this post, she's not fresh out of her business gates. There's no way that she just suddenly like made 80K a month just from sitting there three days a week, lounging around drinking cocktails.
She's gonna have invested money. She's going to have worked long days. She's probably, you know, had coaches to help her get there. And I bet she's probably had multiple businesses. As I said the ladies at my level right now, I've seen the journeys they've been on; the changes to their programs, the years of content that they output, you know, for free not making any money, working really hard.
So, you know, this is why I want to talk about this stuff. I'm all for people having an amazing work life balance and aspiring towards outcomes like that. I think it's commendable and I really commend the results that this woman has got. And I don't want to take away from that. It's amazing, but just don't go out into the marketplace guys and talk about stuff without giving people a true picture.
"I don't want you to feel like you're doing something wrong. You work your little toosh off. You have a big vision; you work hard and you'll get there one day."
I don't want you to feel like you're doing something wrong. All right. You work your little toosh off. You have a big vision; you work hard and you'll get there one day. All right. And in between, there's going to be highs and lows. It's going to be great. It's going to be horrible. You know, Facebook changes its algorithm, something else happens. You know, the bottom drops out of the business. I've gone through business ups and downs, where I lost a hundred thousand dollars one year. Didn't just lose it. But the business, went backwards because the market changed, and ad costs went up. You have to pivot. So I want to talk about this stuff. I want to talk about the realities and it's not to be a Debbie downer. It's just to be realistic. I want to lift you up along the way, and I'm going to give you direction on how to cut through a lot of this crap and how to get there a lot faster. I'm here to support you, champion you to get you where you want to go, but I'm going to do it without the BS.
All right. Rant over. That is why I'm back. That's why I'm out of podcast retirement. That post is the one thing that started to get my goat and I just see more and more of this stuff. But I'm not just here on my own. I'm going to be here with my team. We're here to give you a real, raw look at everything, business strategy, marketing mindset. We're going to answer questions like how much do I need to turn over in my e-commerce store before I can draw a wage? More than you think. How do I create a passive income? Let's talk about the journey to passive income, like how you get to the point when something can become passive and all the work that goes in to that point.
And e-commerce is not passive income. I will reiterate that. Will your margins cut it. In some cases, guys, they won't, your business is broken before it starts because the margins are wrong or you're going to be working for years and needing to turn over a significant amount of traffic, not traffic sales to get the numbers that you want to pay for your family.
Should I be using Facebook ads for my business? Well, that's one we're going to cover next week. I'm actually going to sit down with my head of digital Caroline and we're going to dig into exactly who Facebook ads is for and who it's not, when you should be using it, and when you shouldn't be. All right.
So we're going to answer all this stuff and more straight down the line. No fluff honesty all the way. And if you've got a burning question that you want a no BS answer to as well, please, please, please email it to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. I would love to be answering your questions. Like literally ask me a question and I'll give you the answer. We'll tell you what happens and what you got to do. Outside of answering your questions, we are here to bring you really short, sharp shooting episodes each week that are going to educate you, inspire you and where I can, give you a bit of a wakeup call so that you can make a significant change in what you're doing to give you the outcomes that you want in your business. All right? I'm excited to be back and I cannot wait to share more with you next week. And in the coming weeks, that's me, signing off, speak to you soon.
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Website: www.theelevatory.com
Phone: 1300 634 230
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