From a $20k loss to a $1m year with Meredith Noble
“And it was the first time, too, that I felt like, oh, man, I thought I was an entrepreneur. I thought this was in my bones. Why can't I figure it out? ” - Meredith Noble
From a $20k loss to a $1m year with Meredith Noble
Meredith Noble knows what it’s like to start from the ground up. On today’s episode of the podcast, she shares the ups and downs of growing Learn Grant Writing, from having her office literally explode to tripling her revenue by making a few key changes. Her story is inspiring and her advice is spot on for anyone looking to take their consulting business to the next level.
Highlights:
Navigate entrepreneurial challenges, gleaning wisdom from failures, and seeking mentorship for guidance.
Don't be afraid to blow up your business model if it's not working
Grasp the concept of moving from budget-friendly to higher-end course models, accentuating your offer's value.
Focus on your ideal customer and get your pricing right.
Delve into dealing with challenges in entrepreneurship, extracting knowledge from failures, and finding guidance through mentors.
Realize the importance of delegating tasks, hiring the right talents, and systemizing for an effective team collaboration.
Discern the strategy of keeping a steady concentration while pursuing multifaceted interests to maintain progress.
Connect with Meredith Noble:
Meredith Noble (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/meredith.noble/
Learn Grant Writing (Website): https://www.learngrantwriting.org/
Find Us Online: https://www.confessionswithjessandcindy.com/
Connect with Cindy:
Cindy Wagman Coaching https://cindywagman.com/
The Good Partnership https://www.thegoodpartnership.com/
Connect with Jess:
Out In the Boons: https://www.outintheboons.me
Transcript:
00:00:00: Cindy: Welcome to the Confessions podcast. I'm Cindy Wagman.
00:00:03 Jess: And I'm Jess Campbell. We're two former in-house nonprofit pros turned coaches and consultants to purpose-driven organizations.
00:00:11 Cindy: After years of building up our separate six-figure businesses from scratch, we've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall and have lived to see what sticks.
00:00:20 Jess: We're on a mission to help other nonprofit coaches and consultants looking to start or scale their own businesses past the six-figure mark by pulling back the curtain.
00:00:30 Cindy: Whether you're still working inside a nonprofit and thinking of one day going out on your own, or you've been running your consulting business for years, you understand that working with nonprofits is just different. We're giving you access to the business leaders who serve nonprofits as their clients. You know, the people who truly get it.
00:00:52 Jess: No more gatekeeping, no more secrets. This podcast is going to give you an inside look at what running a successful nonprofit coaching and consulting business looks like. Basically, we're asking people how much money they make, how they get paid, and what has and hasn't worked in their businesses.
00:01:10 Cindy: Listen in as these leaders share their insights, their numbers, and the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to building a nonprofit coaching or consulting business. We're going to empower you to make the power moves that give you the income and freedom you set out to create from day one.
00:01:27 Jess: You ready? Let's go.
00:01:31 Jess: Okay, Meredith, so I'm thinking there's a story before and after style of how you maybe used to stack and organize your business to how you currently structure it. Can you give us some insight into what happened?
00:01:47 Meredith: I can. All right. So, February 13 last year, the house that I was using as an office. A little tiny house, I heard some. Weird sounds coming out of it, so I went to go investigate. Came in, the heater is backfiring. I run to it to turn it off, and the house explodes. No joke. Their natural gas line had been ripped off of the exterior of the house because we get so much snow in Alaska, and it had been filling underneath this tiny house. And so when I had hit that power button, I'd created a spark which caused this explosion. Literally, the whole house lifts a couple of feet. There was a camera that would only record if there was motion, and you could see the fireball that was, like, around the perimeter of this tiny house. And so that happened. That was a Sunday.
00:02:43 Meredith: And the following day, my co-founder and I were beginning a process we'd never had before called the weekly sync with our team. We'd always had sort of like, little one off meetings, but never anything super organized. And how I'm showing to connect these two dots is that like that was leading up to that, to even getting to the point of this week having a weekly sync, the business was in a state of chaos. My life was in a state of chaos, and it was all just so perfectly illustrated in that moment of literally blowing up, right. That was a massive turning point of, like, we knew things needed to change. And so that's what led into this money management and mission day approach we bring to the work we do, and we can unpack it in a moment. But it really came to a head when it was so sick, so fatigued, loss of voice. And if you don't have your voice, you can't run your business, right? I mean, it was just such a reckoning, a time of reckoning. So, yeah, that is definitely the story behind the scenes.
00:03:43 Jess: Wow. Yeah. Nothing like your house blowing up to really shake things up. My gosh. I'm so glad you're safe. For everyone listening in, welcome to Confessions with Jess and Cindy. We are joined today by Meredith Noble, co founder of Learn Grant Writing. I'm going to shout out Joy. I know she's one of your students and she's the one who connected us. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what your business is, Meredith, and how you get paid.
00:04:11 Meredith: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the co-founder of Learn Grant Writing with my business bestie soul sister, Alex Lustig. And we help those that are burnt out in their careers become paid grant writers so we can architect lives that we love. And how we do that is through the Global Grant Writing Collective. It's an online course community and coaching program designed to help those that have no experience in business or grant writing scale until they hit a year in consulting revenue or more.
00:04:42 Jess: Okay, amazing. We need all the details, like, how long have you been running this? How much is it? How many students do you have? What's the container? Give us the good.
00:04:51 Meredith: Oh, yeah. I mean, if you want to go back to when I started it, that probably counts. In 2018, of course, I made, what, $2,000 in the first year. It was 10,000 in year two. It's just such a slog when you try to teach yourself everything the hard way without pursuing mentors that have been where you want to go. That's a major takeaway for me recently. So it's not... so we basically were... it looked successful. I had written my first book. I had launched the course successfully. I had 100 students in there. But when we turned off the consulting revenue and leaned entirely into the course business, we lost thousands of dollars every month, which you only get to do so long before that piggy bank is empty. And it was the second time I was on, like a near death moment with the business in terms of being out of cash flow.
00:05:43 Meredith: And it was the first time, too, that I felt like, oh, man, I thought I was an entrepreneur. I thought this was in my bones. Why can't I figure it out? And the December of 2020, I remember this because of all these 20s, we lost $20,000 that month alone. And my business partner had quit her job to come work with me full time. She'd taken a huge pay cut and literally there's four weeks of money in the bank left. So it was a true... we have got to turn the ship around. Which is exactly what happened. In the darkest months of Alaska's winter, we looked at who do I actually love to serve?
00:06:22 Meredith: Love, the one that gives me energy. We have to triple our prices, completely change how we sell this and the offer. So, like, overhauled everything in three weeks. And that was really the birth of the Global Grant Writing Collective. So taking it further than just teaching grant writing, but how do you make money as a grant writer? And in January, we were 7K of monthly recurring revenue, which, keep in mind, that is then available to you for the next twelve months. And so two years later, we did a million a year in revenue. Literally two years later, turned that sinking ship around. And it was entirely based on actually focusing on a single customer we loved and getting the pricing and offer correct.
00:07:04 Cindy: So tell us the pricing and offer.
00:07:06 Meredith: So we just increased our prices and it's now $6,000 a year. Yeah, no, it's great. We talk about increasing prices. I literally just did a pricing workshop a couple of days ago. I mean, it's such a juicy topic and of course it's so easy to dish it out and then hard to do it yourself. Right. And how we're set up is it's a twelve month commitment that then goes month to month. And the reason we have it set up that way and it's genius. And I hope people copy that, is that people go through... are you familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect? It's basically this concept of where when you start something new, you're highly competent, but not competent. And then when you figure out how much you don't know, you crash and burn. That's usually at month four to month six. And that's when most grant writing programs kick you out. Semester long, college class, et cetera. Right. Like you're actually at your lowest and that's when you most need an intervention to keep going. And when momentum really hits like that flywheel is cranking. I have found it hits at month eleven.
00:08:04 Jess: I love that. I love that so much. And you guys have so much--
00:08:08 Cindy: Conversation.
00:08:09 Jess: Yeah, we did just have a conversation about that. And there's so much similarity, synergy between your program, your fractional fundraiser academy too. Cindy, so this is going to be a fun conversation. Okay, so you're sitting in doomsday ville and then you're like, how do you even pull yourself up? You strike me as someone that maybe invests in oneself and surrounds yourself with people who maybe are a few steps ahead of you. But I know for me, when either I've been in that place or I'm surrounded by people who are in that place to really hunker down or refocus is very difficult. It would have been way easier, frankly, to quit. So what did you do? What were some steps you take? Who did you lean on? I'm just imagining the listener, right. And someone else is struggling with their cash flow. They're ready to pull out. They're not into this anymore. What did you do to turn that ship towards that $2 million just two years later?
00:09:19 Meredith: Yeah, it's tough because you don't know if it is an invitation to pivot or if it's an invitation to quit. And you only have the clarity of that in hindsight. So this is a complicated issue. Here's what I can say about it. Recently, I learned a definition of learning that I'm really loving, which is learning is behaving differently when faced with the same circumstances. And so what distinguishes us from others is that we learn very quickly, and we have failed fast. So when things don't work, I'm very quick to just admit this is not working. I need to go a different direction.
00:09:58 Meredith: Now, from a tactical perspective, how this looks is when I was completely out of ideas, had no idea what else to do. Alex suggested that we take a Learning Day, which was basically a full day, clear the calendar, no email, no meetings, no work. We just go online or pre order a book or take a class or do whatever it is that you need to do to try to solve a problem that you're stuck on. And that was literally like how are we going to save our business? And so she had brought to me this program that she's like, "I think this program could help us." It was way too expensive. I felt vulnerable committing to it because I knew that I was in a vulnerable state. I'm desperate for a solution. So am I grasping at this as the holy grail? I don't know. But I also have nothing else to do, and I'm willing to just give it a go, right?
00:10:47 Meredith: But that Learning Day has actually stuck with us, and we do that about quarterly, where it's just for everyone in the team. So if there's something that you're stuck on and you want to learn more about retention or you're stuck and you want to learn about a specific marketing thing, take the day, go learn and pursue that. So that would be like the tactical bit of advice, I would say, because it is hard coming through that time.
00:11:11 Cindy: Okay, just out of curiosity, did you end up investing in that program? And what was it?
00:11:18 Meredith: Yeah, it was $10,000. It was Haley Burkhead's recurring profit program, which I have this, like, love hate relationship, too. That would probably be my confession. Love what I learned, because it 100% turned around our business, and I attribute our success to it. Absolutely. And there are a lot of things that I didn't love about it too. But I think that's again where that discernment is very key. We all get to go ala carte shopping in the world and decide what we like and don't like and apply what you want and leave what doesn't serve you.
00:11:57 Jess: Walk us through. I think I heard you say that you were doing this kind of done for you consulting and then you made the pivot to doing the kind of like teach people how to run their business and do this kind of course group coaching program, hybrid situation. Those are two very different business models. They require very different audience sizes and it's just very different. And we hear a lot of people that want to go from kind of that one to one done for you work to scaling to the one to many arena. What are some of the steps you took to go that route? What did you have to say no to? To be able to say yes to the things that you wanted to focus in on? I just know a lot of people are curious about that adventure, that journey. I'd love for you to demystify or not how much work that involves like all of it.
00:12:55 Meredith: We could talk about the rest of our time. Essentially what I did was the course business was my side hustle, so it always came along on the side. But then there would come times when I really wanted to do something big like write a book and it was too conflicting with consulting work to ever actually get that work done. So what I would do is just consult hardcore, save all this money, stop consulting, live off of that to then pursue and build up the other business. So I did that at least two times for four months each. And then I'd run out of money and I had to either go consult again or there were a variety of things I had to do. Once I had to take a loan from the bank of dad, right?
00:13:38 Meredith: So that was one way I did it because I did find that it's very hard to move them along an equal parallel path because they are very different. The other major trap I fell into, which I see is common for consultants trying to make that leap, is your consulting business is subsidizing your dream. So your dream can never stand on its feet on its own. And it's hard because you think, well, one to many, I'm going to just have thousands of customers not realizing that actually with every new customer if your price is not adequate, you actually lose more money. That was a situation I found myself in. I was charging like $400 for the course serving you for a lifetime. So every new customer I gained right, you now can see the trap, but I didn't at the time when my cost to now this is like a new calculation I came up with with Alex, which is cost to acquire a customer and serve them. So I call it CASC.
00:14:37 Meredith: Sometimes you'll hear CAC cost to acquire a customer, and I find it very misleading because marketers will be like, well, if you spend $99 but you make 100, do that all day long. And I'm like, not really. You've got cost to service them and innovate. So when I did that exercise and realized, okay, my cost for a customer was closer to $900 to really serve them in the way I wanted to serve them with the staff I wanted to have, this $400 product was sending me upside down. So I can take it then into probably talking about exactly how I made that transition, but I'll throw it back your way to see how that landed.
00:15:16 Cindy: Yeah, I mean, take us through, because you kind of alluded to this, but I think you're going to talk about it more, which is you have to simultaneously increase your pricing and figure out what actually needs to be to run it. But also it sounds like you had to step away and let other things go. And so tell us a little bit about and also, I think a lot of people don't understand the sales that goes into selling a product, like a course and how much work that is. So, yeah, let's just keep going.
00:15:52 Meredith: Okay, so a couple of other things come to mind. One, everything you say yes to is a no to something else. And so when it came time to say no to things like a $50,000 contract I've held every year for five years, it took me a whole extra year to actually extricate myself and break up, even though I knew I needed to. Because I knew that so long as I kept that commitment, I could not leap into my higher level. So tactically, I had next to my desk a list of things I said no to, proudly. And I would write on it, no to a meeting, no to the ask for anything, and I would build that. So I built my confidence in my ability to say no, right. So I think that's very helpful because we can't expect to build million dollar companies on $10 tasks, and that comes from my mentor, Dan Martel.
00:16:41 Meredith: But the reason I say that is that we can't expect different results and. Then behave the same way. And it's very hard to do when you're so especially with consulting, like you're so used to operating in a certain way, it's hard to extricate. It's hard to say no from things that, you know, is like paying the bills. And that's why we charge a lot for consulting in the first place. Save that money, use that then to roll with that's–
00:17:06 Jess: So good. Let's keep going. I know.
00:17:09 Cindy: Tell us a little bit about that you increaseD your prices. Yeah, the sales piece, I feel like, is a big myth for there's just so much--
00:17:20 Jess: Well, that and the audience size. You can't sell a course if you've got 25 people on your email list, which, I mean, I guess you can, but not enough to pay your bills.
00:17:29 Meredith: That's exactly it. So that was the situation I was in when I first wanted to launch my course. Like I really didn't have a big email list and what I did have was pretty low quality. And this was before COVID so I knew that people like to learn from workshops, live workshops, even though I knew that's not where transformation occurred, because you need more time on a real project. But people didn't believe that, right. It's like, here's the chocolate, so I can give you the broccoli. So what I ended up doing was within six weeks, I just had this idea. I'm like I am going to teach a workshop to 200 people in the theater in the local town, and I'm going to give glow sticks and pizza and it's going to be a party. So that's what I did.
00:18:12 Meredith: And actually, one of my clients in a different town in Soldotna hired me to that sold out. I sold those for $90 for a four hour workshop and then sold the course at the end, which I still find to be my most courageous move to this day. Like where did I get the right? But so all of a sudden, I have one in [inaudible] Soldotna and Anchorage. And if you know anything about Alaska, the distance between different communities is significant. We are talking like 9 hours between these different communities at least. And I had them back to back Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. No joke. But did it because the sold out. No one sold out. So they asked if I would do another one that sold out, too.
00:18:51 Meredith: The Anchorage one then literally over 250 people all dressed up in sequins and bright attire teaching this live workshop of how to do grants and then sold the course afterwards. So I totally sidetracked. We were talking about--
00:19:05 Cindy: So got you. [crosstalk]
00:19:08 Meredith: Yeah. No, I still am. Just like, I want to be that girl again. I look back on that and I was like, I was level ten four years ago. What have I been doing? I've been playing it safe.
00:19:20 Cindy: Oh my God. Okay, so how many courses or enrollments did you have from that? And tell us about how you also used it to grow your email list.
00:19:30 Meredith: So I think I had 70 people that ended up becoming customers, course customers from that. Again, remember, that was when I wasn't charging near enough and it was like live launching closed. There's lots of things that are problematic with that, but that's what I did. And then the $90 per seat was like 20 or 25K in revenue doing the workshops-ish.
00:19:50 Cindy: Yeah.
00:19:52 Meredith: So yeah. So that was how I built the email list, was actually by doing the workshop to build that list. But remember then this was like running it for a year where it looked really successful. But that was when I really realized that I actually have a ton of people I don't really like serving. This is not quite right. And when COVID hit and everyone wants to go after Cares Act money, we spun up an agency hiring seven of my students within two weeks. And that was when my co-founder came on as a project manager for just 5 hours a week. And we made bank that summer writing grants. And my favorite students were like, "Hey, wait a minute. How are you doing that? How are you finding clients? How are you contracting? What are you charging?"
00:20:38 Meredith: And we realized that is actually a conversation we like to have. So when we were on our near death moment and needed to reinvent ourselves, I essentially was restarting an email list too because that... I didn't have a list of people wanted to become freelancers.
00:20:57 Jess: Okay, Meredith, we are back for another round of our rapid fire questions. Are you ready to play?
00:21:04 Meredith: Let's do it.
00:21:05 Jess: Okay. What did you want to be when you grew up?
00:21:08 Meredith: Transportation engineer.
00:21:12 Jess: Interesting.
00:21:12 Meredith: Sounds weird, right? But I remember going to Salt Lake as a child and I was marveling at the complexity of the bridges and highways at all of those massive intersections. The irony is I now have my blood boil when I see our built environment and how unfriendly it is to other modalities beyond cars. So it's very interesting that that's what I was drawn to at first and now I actually can't even get close to the topic because I feel too strongly about it. My emotions hijack me.
00:21:42 Jess: Oh my gosh. Wow. It's funny how those childhood things really stay with us, right? You talked a little bit about some of your favorite books that you've read when we were chatting earlier, but what are some of your favorite podcasts you like to listen to?
00:21:56 Meredith: Can I make one more book plug? Because I just love--
00:21:58 Jess: Sure.
00:22:01 Meredith: Victoria Song's book Bending Reality: making the improbable possible I think is a subtitle? That book has changed my life. Can't live without it. If she had a podcast I'd recommend. Hmm. So I would say I really enjoy Renee Warren's We Wild Women. She is a PR expert, she's Canadian and she has just a lovely podcast. Wonderful guests. They always leave me inspired where I actually have to stop and take notes with whatever I'm doing. It's a wonderful podcast.
00:22:28 Jess: My gosh, amazing. I love finding out new ones that I've never heard of. And a fellow Canadian, Cindy. Okay, I'm totally an Alaska newbie. I am not familiar very much at all about your wonderful state. So if someone was coming to Alaska for the first time, what would you recommend they do first?
00:22:47 Meredith: Hmm. What time of the year are they coming? That's the question.
00:22:50 Jess: You tell me.
00:22:52 Meredith: Okay. I would give them a plot twist. Everyone comes to Alaska in the summer, but I would encourage them to consider March because that's when you can still catch the northern lights. We actually have daylight that's still until 8:00 or 09:00 PM especially by the end of the month, you gain six minutes of daylight a day. There's so much to do, especially with winter sports, of course. Like, you can go ice skating, you can Nordic ski, literally, there's any number of things. So I would say consider a winter trip because your friends are not.
00:23:24 Jess: Totally. Okay, and then last question for our listeners, what is your morning routine?
00:23:30 Meredith: Okay, so I typically... no, three days a week I have a routine, okay? And it's super nerdy, and I call it the 'Chick Sent Me' method, which is essentially like I literally have all these habits I've been trying to build into a laminated sheet, and I'll write down what habits I did the previous day and tally them up in a half page journal entry. And I don't care if the day before, like, I stayed up late, was out with girlfriends, ate junk food, et cetera, and have a low points day. What I care about is over time is the trend line increasing. And what I notice is that if I'm paying attention to that, I can keep myself from burning out or overdoing it, overextending yourself, like sort of a leading indicator. And so I do that a handful of weeks. But I'll be honest, I struggle with a morning routine. Lately I've been digging, like, waking up really early and going and getting a coffee. That's a completely new behavior for me.
00:24:26 Jess: Totally love it. Okay, cool. Thanks for playing.
00:24:29 Meredith: Oh, yeah.
00:24:33 Cindy: Okay. You mentioned sort of the live launch, the intensive. There's some issues with that which are fair. There's a lot of fair critiques around it. So how do you launch now or how do you enroll people in the program now or sell, I guess.
00:24:55 Meredith: Core value, scale simply. This is an industry that massively overcomplicates and my theory on that, because it's at least a lot of women in this industry, and we like to just do everything ten out of ten, and we make things way harder than our male counterparts are, and they're making a lot more money. So we need to remember that. So essentially, we took everything. Now it's all evergreen. So essentially there's a number of ways to give me your email. A free grant writing course, a webinar, whatever, free resources quiz. Then through an email sequence, you get two emails a week. They're just automated, right? I don't write any email copy.
00:25:37 Meredith: Screw that. I was tired of jumping out of bed Wednesday at 09:00 PM because I forgot to write the stupid email, right? And then I drive you into watching this webinar because that's how I can communicate what we do. And most people then purchase on their own. Now we have the option to come to a call if you want to ask questions, right. It's a very simple process. So we get new customers every single week.
00:26:01 Cindy: Amazing. Did you follow a process or someone who sort of suggested this or just from trial and error?
00:26:12 Meredith: I mean, I'll tell you one thing, my trial and error got me nowhere. This is a really interesting concept that I've been trying to come to terms with. Like my intuition is valuable, but intuition and business doesn't. It actually leads you so astray. It's incredible. My opinion on that and so I would say that model, I learned from Recurring Profits Program but I also learned that from Dan Martel has a software academy, which we're not software, but I like how software businesses are run recurring revenue. So I really kind of looked at those two and mirrored after it. Yes, we've optimized on our own intuition and learnings along the way like the concept of twelve month commitment that goes month to month. Then I don't have to go recommit. You can stay as long as you want. It's on me to earn. You staying for three years.
00:27:01 Jess: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that. Like what is your retention rate? Or on average, how long are students staying a part of your program? Because I think that's actually really genius of you that you are going to the people who have already raised their hands versus constantly focused on just the new, new, new. Of course you give them attention. You always need new in, but it sounds like you're really doubling down on the people that have invested in you.
00:27:30 Meredith: Yes. So essentially there comes a tipping point in a business where I believe until you've made your first million, just go ham with new customers. You are a salesperson and everyone needs to embrace that knowledge, embrace that role, not hide from it or try to hire it out. So we did that. But now it comes to if you're getting a new customer but you're losing a customer that week, you won't grow. And every business has their tipping point of that, right? And so the only way to change your growth trajectory is to reduce churn. And the only way we reduce churn in our business is I have to know that you're making money. You have to succeed.
00:28:08 Meredith: If you make money, you'll stay. And it's not because you don't have the tools. They have the tools. What I'm finding is we have deeply rooted money mindset, issues that were stepped by age seven and that is affecting our sense of worthiness. And if we actually charge and if we take the action that we know we need to take, right. So we've now become really it's been a big focus for a long time, but I never felt like my ideas or our ideas for radically changing the trajectory of how quickly someone succeeded. We're having like a quantum leap effect until what we're about to try right now, which is actually integrating some interesting AI into our course to speed up the rate at which you get through the hard time consuming stuff so we can get to those mindset issues faster. Because I'm finding that is really like the biggest barrier to someone's success.
00:29:08 Cindy: 100%. Yes. Here for all of this. Okay. I kind of want to go into the AI. But before I do, I want to circle back to one of the first things we talked about, which is because you are so focused and you have clearly made time to work on your business and to continue to innovate, to continue to look at how you do things differently. And I think a lot of people struggle with that, even just like creating the time to build this, right? As we talked about letting go of other things, and that's really scary. But now you have a bit of a system for yourself and for your team members around making sure that you are spending time on the areas that are most important. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
00:29:59 Meredith: Yeah, absolutely. So our business operates under a season or a series of seasons and cycles. So I'll give you a couple of examples. Like we do what used to be quarterly planning, but we've actually shifted it to three seasons, sort of like a spring, summer, fall, winter. And that's looking at, okay, what are the three rocks that we're going to focus on? That one big new initiative and the two things we're going to optimize. And it's very hard to discipline yourself to three things, even when you give yourself four months to do it right. So that's a cadence that we have. Or we do customer discovery every fall, always reorient ourselves.
00:30:40 Meredith: We don't make an assumption that we know what you need because your needs are changing. So who can we focus on to make sure we're serving at the highest level? That's a fall cadence, right? I guess we have our annual,, I need to reback it up. So first of all, we should go big, go small. So annual planning occurs for us every late June, early July. My business partner and I go take a trip and somewhere really rural and remote. This last year, we went to McCarthy, camped in literally a rustic cabin and went to the swimming hole and just brought a piece of paper and post-its and let all the ideas rip. So that's setting the intention for the next year.
00:31:15 Meredith: Then we set the seasonal, like the quarterly rocks. Set your quarterly plan, and then we come down to the week by week level. So I find that you can't project manage with extreme detail beyond eight weeks. For some reason, that's like the limitation we find. So we kind of have these two month increments where we're optimizing from a project management perspective and making sure everyone's feeling dialed. But when you get to the end of that two months, you have to refresh for your next two. Because sometimes those are informed by something you still have to figure out.
00:31:47 Meredith: Then so from the week, then we get down to the day, and then from the day, even the three things you're going to accomplish this day. So there's a cadence that we operate under and probably what's most like a useful technique that your group could take away from this right now is how we look at a week. So we have themed our days as either money days, mission days, or management days. One of the biggest challenges consultants face is that they try to meet with clients and do work on the same day every day. And it doesn't work. It's better to have a management day where you stack all your meetings, which for me are Mondays and Thursdays, mostly Mondays. Mission days are like working on the business by getting away from the business.
00:32:41 Meredith: So if someone's listening to this podcast, it's actually pursuing like a mission day type activity. Or if you go to a conference, or if you pursue in some continued learning, or you even just invest in your own self development counseling, it's a mission day. Then money days are like these are the activities that correlate directly to your bottom line. And these need protected. And one of the ways we protect these are having what we call deep work Wednesdays, no meetings, no Slack. You predetermine what you're doing. If you're done in two or 3 hours, take the rest of the day whenever. But it's a deep work day. And that started the day after that house explosion. That's the sort of cadence we put into place. So I hope that that makes sense. It's a lot to describe automatically.
00:33:32 Cindy: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense in terms of I mean, basically what you're describing is blocking your time. So doing like things with like things and creating and protecting time for you to actually do the deep work because that is what is going to move things forward.
00:33:51 Meredith: Yeah, and I think this is where I see a trap often. So I was in a program that was like, see, and then you block your time and you can do some deep work for 90 minutes in this little block of your time. I'm like, that's not how deep work works. And so when we try to blend like a money day with a management day, it doesn't work. So it's really important to choose a whole day gets the whole theme. So mine is management money, mission money or management mission. In the number of mission days, you have correlates to your revenue size. So a lot of times people get hung up on like, how much time should I spend on the business versus in the business. If you're sub 100K in revenue, most of your time used to be on money. Three days a week at least money days. Once you're like us, like we're a million dollar company and growing, I need to be spending more time on mission at least one full day, if not two days a week.
00:34:50 Jess: Cindy, are you wondering what I'm wondering?
00:34:53 Cindy: I don't know, [inaudible].
00:34:56 Jess: I'm curious. Meredith, do you know what your top five strength finders are?
00:35:01 Meredith: Oh, no, I'm classic. Where? I don't even know what those are. Do you think you know what they are? I was going to go test afterwards.
00:35:04 Jess: Yeah, you have to take a test and let us know because--
00:35:10 Cindy: We were just talking. So a lot of the things that you mentioned, we just talked about in our Mastermind retreat that we had. So it's like, first of all. Yes, we are on the same page in so many ways, but one of the things we were talking about was strengthsfinder and what people's and Enneagrams. Which do you know Enneagram?
00:35:35 Meredith: ENFJs.
00:35:37 Jess: That's Myers-Briggs.
00:35:39 Cindy: Wait, ENFJ. I'm ENTJ.
00:35:41 Jess: I'm an ENFJ.
00:35:44 Meredith: So it's funny. Alex, my co-founder, is also an ENFJ and I never can remember these things. I had to make an acronym for I call it Engineer for Joy. That's like how I mentally remember it for some, but so we are very different. I am a visionary. She is the integrator. Different skill sets, but technically the same. Enneagram or not enneagram? Myers-Briggs. I forget Enneagram. I'd have to go look, I should know these things, but I have the personality type that it would tell you that your personality type doesn't remember these things.
00:36:14 Jess: Well, that's funny that you say that about you and your co-founder, because Cindy and I are also very similar and very different. We have the same birthday, like we're both eldest sister, siblings, a lot of stuff, but then also very different. I don't know that I would like I would say we're both visionary. You're definitely more of an Integrator than I am.
00:36:40 Cindy: Well, so I did the Enneagram test or whatever online. And so there's two dominant ones I think for a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, it's like three and eight. And I was like, "I can't remember both of those sound familiar?" When we were driving with our friends. And then I went and did the test and they're almost identically weighted for mine. So I truly have a split personality. But, yeah, its...
00:37:10 Meredith: Yeah, we did it as a team where we had everyone do it and it was really illuminating. But I also think that we can get a little carried away on these because we do know that they have their biases or they can, right. And so it's interesting because I know they're valuable, but I'm a little bit... like I keep them at an arm's length.
00:37:28 Jess: Totally. Absolutely.
00:37:31 Meredith: That said, I'm being a hypocrite. I literally printed out my Enneagram results after we lost an employee that was really upsetting. It was a lot of, like, where were my weaknesses that need worked on but printed out this whole thing of like what you are like very deep 40 page report. And I totally just gave it to my husband because he's on a work trip. I'm like, "You should really read this."
00:38:02 Jess: Go ahead. Do you have a question?
00:38:04 Cindy: No, go for--
00:38:05 Jess: Okay, back to the subject. I can't. So I would love to know a little bit about your team and who it requires to have the business that you've all designed and allows you to thoughtfully stay in your CEO space because that requires people producing in your business if you're not doing that. So, yeah, what does your team look like now? And how does that compare to two or so years ago when you were sitting in that house waiting for it to be blown up? I still can't believe that happened.
00:38:42 Meredith: So I believe that the reason that we have been able to grow so quickly is because I strategically bought back my time. And the book that I handstand recommends for this is buy back your time by Dan Martel. I am so passionate about that topic that I bought 500 copies of his book when it came out and gave one to every one of my customers and any entrepreneur I meet, I still have a box. So here's what I can say, is that often we think we're kind of guessing at what we need to be hiring or we hear what other people are hiring for and so we think we need that really. It's looking at what if you write down all the tasks you're doing and we look at what brings you the least joy and is the lowest cost to hire out, start there. And that might mean that you're hiring a personal assistant that goes to Costco for you?
00:39:35 Meredith: And that's what you're hiring in your business,, right? So I started immediately by having someone first hire hands down, get some inbox, help, don't manage your own inbox. It's a complete waste of time. You're going to buy back like 5 hours at least of your time a week. So getting that but anyway, so that's how we hired was very strategically. And the one time we didn't hire, I hired marketing director because we were consuming this content that said that's what you need next and you need freed up to be a total CEO. Well, that was an epic inexpensive mistake because it just wasn't the right time and it wasn't actually buying my time back. I was doing it because I thought that's what I needed. So there's that.
00:40:17 Meredith: So I'll tell you what our team is right now, and then I can share you a few things I've learned. So I am the CEO and co founder, so I have visionary responsibilities. My co-founder is Alex, and she's the operator. So you can call her the COO integrator. Then we each have a team member, her team member is customer success, coincidentally, is her sister. And then my team member is marketing assistant, right? She helps with a ton of execution. And below that is an assistant for me, someone that's managing my inbox, uploading receipts, like a business administration person. So our core team of full time people is actually only four, plus this part time assistant who's actually my sister. So we're like this family business by accident.
00:41:16 Meredith: Then we have four coaches that are part time, that we've grown through our program, that provide the community support and are giving me substitutability in ways that I didn't even know I could be substituted. Like I thought for sure I have to lead every coaching call, and I've been discovering that I don't. And they can run that and they do a great job. And then our subcontracting help would be like a website editor. We're just now bringing on an Ads expert. We've never done ads. Our core marketing strategy has always been SEO. But I am pregnant, and so I've got with maternity leave coming up. We're thinking about how do we shift all that marketing energy that I run, and we're going to shift it to Ads because you can't really replace a lot of the stuff I'm doing easily.
00:42:12 Meredith: And then, of course, like a whole team of a bookkeeper and an accountant and all of that. But on the whole, it's pretty simple. I think I've learned a lot. And here's, like, the biggest tip I'll give people. Separate your team as soon as you can into your people that help your zero to one and your one to two. So what I mean by that is, like, your zero to one customer is, like lead to customer first purchase. That's marketing. One to $2 is retention on additional purchases and customer success, right? And when we used to blend those roles, people were getting really burned out. There was a lot of confusion. It's hard to prioritize, whereas when you keep those, I don't even want to call them lanes because I hate the saying, stay in your lane. It makes me like my blood boil. But the concept is actually really clean. And so now if I see that Alex tries to take on a marketing thing to help me out, I'm quick to pull that back because I know that then it comes at the expense of her crushing operations.
00:43:14 Cindy: That is such good advice.
00:43:15 Jess: Really smart.
00:43:17 Cindy: Yeah. I love that. We could keep talking forever, but unfortunately, we can't. Also, congratulations on your pregnancy. I didn't know that. But before we run out of time, we have to ask for your confession. So can you share with us a confession? Something you maybe are reluctant to share, but you'll do so in this very private public space?
00:43:43 Meredith: No. Okay, here it is. My confession is that I don't want to be a one trick pony for the rest of my life. And I feel like I'm a little bit cornered into it on the topic of grant writing. And I know that. I'm capable of more and want to do more, but I also have this complex of believing that I don't want to lose momentum and focus before I've fully experienced the wild ride that we're on. So I always run into a lot of conflict where I get excited about something else. Literally, every February, it's like a weird cadence, and I start to explore it, but then the expansive energy starts to feel very contractive because I realize I can't split myself that much. And then I come back to the safe space. And yet I don't want to be known as only do grant writing for the rest of my life.
00:44:39 Cindy: You know what's going to be really interesting when you're on mat leave and you have to step away and not just the space but the business runs without your involvement that much that might change the way you see.
00:44:57 Meredith: Because I've been able to step away from the business for over a year in really big chunks. So fatigued and sick last year that it was bare minimum even with the nausea of the last for four months, it runs actually quite well. It's that I believe we can become an eight figure company and I want to see to that. But I also want to know how does someone run still pursue other dreams and other things that make them really happy without splitting your focus because I hear both sides of that they regret it, wish they just stayed focused versus there are obviously people that can crush doing multiple things why do I feel like I have to stay so narrow. So I have a lot of internal conflict around that and navigating it.
00:45:45 Cindy: Yeah.
00:45:46 Jess: You'll figure it out. As someone that has focused as a low five, nothing feels more trapped making me feel suffocated than only doing one thing at a time. So I'll give you a little freedom to go wild and you share your focus with me and we'll meet in the middle.
00:46:05 Meredith: That's right. You got it.
00:46:06 Jess: Meredith, thank you so much. This was like a really helpful conversation and I can just tell by speaking to you, you're advanced, you know. Like you really got... you got it together. And I know all of your students would be are so lucky to work with you and learn from you. So for folks who are curious about the business side of grant writing or interested in getting into grant writing or just want to learn or watch your business, what's the best way for them to be in touch?
00:46:40 Meredith: Wonderful. Well, thank you for the kind words. Okay learngrantwriting.org if you're interested in learning about grant writing, if you're interested in more of the business side of what I was talking about, go check out sendworks.org. We are sharing our most popular SOP playbooks of how we've really built the bones of the business. We're just getting that out the door. So that would be the place to go.. If you just want to know business, learngrantwriting.org, if you want to talk grants.
00:47:06 Jess: Love it. And do you have any social channels that you like to play on most or where can people find you that way?
00:47:12 Meredith: Yeah, I mean, I'm on Instagram @meredith.noble, but you never know. I am a real hot and cold there. Sometimes I just need to take because it affects my deep work. So you never know. Sometimes I take a couple of week hiatus.
00:47:24 Jess: I feel that. I feel that big. Thank you.
00:47:28 Meredith: Absolutely. Thank you.
00:47:31 Cindy: Thank you again for listening to the Confessions podcast for nonprofit coaches and consultants. If you enjoyed today's episode, which I sure hope you did, you can show your support in one of three ways.
00:47:43 Jess: Number one, post a screenshot of this episode to your Instagram stories or LinkedIn profile and tag Cindy and I so we can repost you.
00:47:51 Cindy: Number two, share this podcast with a fellow nonprofit coach or consultant.
00:47:56 Jess: And number three, leave a positive review on Apple podcasts so we can continue to grow and reach new listeners.
00:48:01 Cindy: And, of course, make sure you subscribe so you can get the latest and greatest interviews as they drop every Thursday.
00:48:09 Jess: And to our fellow nonprofit, coaching and consulting friends, remember, we're an open book and here to answer your burning biz questions.
00:48:17 Cindy: See you next time.