Heather Sager  01:32

Well, hey, friend. It has been a hot minute, but I’m back, baby. I am back. The podcast is officially back. I am ready for an incredible another year with you here on the Hint of Hustle Podcast. This is the premiere, season premiere of 2024. I take some time off, obviously, to have this little baby nugget who actually is sitting behind me right now sleeping in his stroller. We just got back from our morning walk and I figured what a great time for me to sneak in. Hopefully, he does not wake up here in the next couple minutes. But it has been a fabulous, fabulous I don’t know how many weeks? 10 weeks, 11 weeks. I do not remember how old my baby is because evidently we have to count by weeks, which as a mom of an infant baby to ask me to do those things. Side note to the side note, I go to his pediatrician appointments and they asked me his birthday and I literally stare back at them half the time. I forget his name and his birthday which makes me sound like a terrible person and if you don’t have children, you might be judging me a little bit but it’s a very, very normal thing, this mom brain.

Heather Sager  02:53

Anyways, I am back I am so stoked. So much has happened in these last 10 or 11 weeks. Again, I don’t remember the number and I am just so stoked to share it all with you. But for this comeback episode, I want to do things a little different because my brain is a little mushy and there’s been a lot happening. There’s really been, it has been the most wild and incredible year that has been so fundamental in learning about myself foundational and rewiring, how I operate in my business, redoing literally everything in my business over the last year. There are so many freaking lessons and I did not have the energy or the insights to be able to to talk about them in a way that would be helpful back in October and November. But now that I have some space, I have some great lessons to learn from the year but I just did not want to ramble on a mic just between us. I wanted to really be intentional about this. 

Heather Sager  03:55

So I asked my copywriter, Sara Vartanian, who is with me all of last year. I mean she and I have been working together now on the copy in my business for more than 18 months. She is incredible. She knows my voice, knows my business, knows my offers better than anyone. I asked her to come on and interview me about the roller coaster year where we overhauled everything in the business so I’m gonna kick it over to that interview. So she’s going to take the reins and interview me and I hope you enjoy it. This one’s so so good. We just wrapped up on the interview earlier this morning and there are so many nuggets in there that, you’re just gonna love it insights from pivots, to perfection, to planning, for modeling your programs, to listening to your intuition and making changes, to simplification, to engaging your communities. How do you get better at doing that? when you make decisions? When do you pull the rip cord on something? We cover so, so much so I hope you enjoy this. This interview where I switch sides of the microphone, and I’ll be back next week. 

Heather Sager  04:58

We, I have some really incredible episodes lined up this year, including a ton of incredible case studies, a live coaching call. I’m going to be sharing where I help a business owner nail their signature talk topics. I have some guests coming to talk about visibility and omnipresence without the hustle. I have a lot in store for you for the next few months, I cannot wait to share them with you. So thanks for being listen to the show. I hope you enjoy this interview and I’ll talk to you while in the interview ut then again next week. Bye friend.

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Sara Vartanian  06:01

So Heather, you and I spent the last year and a half working together. First, we got to work on launching the Speaker Society, and then you brought me on for the entire year to work with you which was a blast. And I distinctly remember this time last year sitting with you, well, with you I said.  We’re in Voxer, where we spend most of our conversations and we were talking about this evergreen funnel we are going to create for the Speaker Society. But I remember we were like going back and forth, it was kind of a long conversation like I think I got I’ve got a cup of tea came back to the couch kept going because it just it was felt like it was almost like, we were pushing it and it wasn’t quite right and you weren’t quite loving it, right? 

Sara Vartanian  06:40

Like this, like you’re like, okay, I want to do this evergreen thing, I want to bring people into my offer but I’m not sure that this is what I want to do, and I even like I looked at the title before our call. We had how to deliver ridiculously effective presentation so your message always lands with your audience, and we liked it. But we went back and forth, talking about how you’d always bring these people into Speaker Society. But there was this moment, during our call when you were like, wait, this problem that always happens is that people come in. They’re super excited, they have these best intentions, but then they put off building their talk. And of course, when they put off building their talk, then they don’t actually get the thing that they wanted when they came into the Speaker Society which is getting on more stages getting out there. So time stretches, they don’t hit their goals and you were like, they just need to create their damn talk.

Sara Vartanian  07:32

And so, from that that sticky point led to the creation of the Signature Talk Accelerator, and I want to know if you’ll share, how do you think by identifying that like, how did you come to that conclusion that I’m going to go from bringing people into this program, the Speaker Society where they do it all, to really narrowing down on this is a one thing that has to happen before we can do the rest? 

Heather Sager  07:58

Yeah, okay, whatever can throw back, also, all of our conversations are long. I don’t do anything short, Sarah.Okay, so looking back to when we made that decision around going into the Accelerator, here’s what’s fascinating. The online space says the first program that you create will not be the program that like I don’t know, grows. It will not be your big moneymaker in long term. It’s not gonna stick with you long term.  I always thought that I was the exception to that rule which I think all of us do. We think like our first love child of an online course is the thing. Prior to starting the Speaker Society, like I had a hard time letting go of that to build the Speaker Society. 

Heather Sager  08:48

I’ll just phrase it as I had a lot of ego wrapped up in my program and how I was teaching it. And here’s the funny thing. Actually, I say ego wrapped up into it. It wasn’t really that it was had a lot of really happy students. So it was hard for me to identify was people were joining the program, so my prior program and the Speaker Society, and they were showing up on the live calls, like we have really highly attended live calls and we always got great feedback. Everyone loved it. They loved the community, they loved my coaching style, they were always getting really great takeaways to use in their business, and a lot of times those takeaways were on the like perimeter of speaking. They weren’t always necessarily speaking related because I have a lot of business experience and a lot of business thoughts so people would bring their questions. 

Heather Sager  09:36

So what I actually found is this moment right now that reflecting on that I’m gonna say it better than I would have said it at the time. I found that people were really falling into what I call the the planning trap or the perfection trap. I talked about this on the podcast before. We’ll link to the episode where I detail those. But what I found is because building a talk in a new way is uncomfortable because it’s new, and there’s so much pressure to get it right. In my program, so created the space where people really could avoid it and do the fun sh*t which would show up on the live calls and talk about, hey, I have this opportunity. How could I pitch it or how could I do this? And they would want to brainstorm and a lot of fun around all these other things but there was this avoidance of the thing they needed to do which was to rewire how they thought about their topic and relearn how to communicate. 

Heather Sager  10:29

So in that moment, when we were on Voxer and we were rambling around all these ideas for this very fancy and complicated funnel. I remember sitting there going holy sh*t, what’s the problem we’re actually trying to solve? And the problem was the avoidance of creating that first shitty rough version of a talk that’s necessary so that we can get to refine it. We can’t perfect, something that you haven’t started and so we have to get people into that. So that’s really where the Accelerator came from because my thought is like, if I can just trap them in a room, like I do, virtually, with my private clients and like, rattle it out of their brains so we can get to the part of refining it. Oh, my gosh, that would be a game changer. So that was where we started the brainstorm. One of my favorite activities, is the wouldn’t it be cool if, and then I come up with the most ridiculous ideas, and the wouldn’t it be cool if, we could teach it live? And originally, if you remember this originally, like, wouldn’t it be cool if I taught it like live over eight weeks? And then it was like, wouldn’t it be cool if we actually did it like six weeks? Like, could we do it a month? And then I remember telling you, what if we could do it in three frickin days? Like, is that even possible? 

Sara Vartanian  11:43

I remember that. The iteration of like, what if? What if? What if and then we got to the three day part. Now, when you were thinking about the three days, how did you know, and that’s question marks. We didn’t totally know until we did it. But how did you knew that people would come in and get their talk done in those three days? 

Heather Sager  12:13

So let’s let’s, I’m going to, like, is there a metaphor I could use in this moment? But no, let’s just go for a mental visual, so picture for a moment. Okay, here we go. Picture fruit by the foot. Is that, do you have that in Canada? Okay, well, fruit roll up a really long fruit roll up, right. And what was happening in my original program, or when I’ve been teaching, speaking over the last, I mean, a very long time, I was trying to teach people the entire fruit by like the entire journey, which this might be a terrible metaphor, because we all will shove that entire fruit by the foot in our mouth but like, let’s just ignore that fact for a minute. 

Heather Sager  12:51

This entire fruit by the foot, right? I was trying to get everything I knew around speaking, giving them all these little tips, tactics, strategies, teaching them pitching, teaching them how to title their talk, teaching them how to get on stages, how do we adapt that to the different stages? How do we make money from it? How do we market ourselves? And the truth is speaking programs that I see online for how to become a professional speaker, they cram all that shit in. However, the majority of professional speakers out there in the world are not making money. I can’t remember what the actual statistic is, we should put that in the show notes on the episode. But like the average speaker salary across the board was super freakin low. 

So I started asking myself the question like, what is the difference when it comes to me and what I’ve done and what I’ve done with my clients, how is it that we’re able to be profitable? What it comes down to is, so many people are teaching marketing, they’re even teaching sales, quite frankly, and this is hard blow on a lot of people’s egos but getting on a stage and getting books is not hard. It is not hard. Actually, getting on the stage is the simplest part of it all. But where I realized there was a huge gap in this whole online market is there was no one teaching how to build an effective talk, not a marketing talk, not a schmucky like here’s how to do a webinar, slide by slide but teaching really good, persuasive, entertaining feel like what you see of the people that you see online that are huge influencers that are just really magnetic with a microphone, nobody was teaching that. It was all through the lens of how to be a good marketer. And I just thought, that’s not what I’m here for. I know the people I want to serve really want to make an impact. So I’m not willing to sacrifice the talk, like I could be like every other speaking program and condense how to build your talk into one module. But that would be doing my clients a disservice because they would still just be fumbling trying to figure it out, falling back on their ways of their natural communication skills, not the communication skills are going to take them where they want to go. 

Heather Sager  14:58

So back to the fruit by foot, fruit by the foot, I had to, I had to chop it in half. I had to essentially say, all right, I have to be willing to, this is gonna sound weird, but downsize the promise of the program which terrified me, because I’m like, oh, the promise is everybody wants to get on stage, they want to get paid. That’s what they want. That’s the whole thing. But then I realized is it’s my responsibility to get my people to fall in love with the idea of becoming that magnetic communicator, that fundamental communication skills has to be the destination and if it’s not, they’re in it for the wrong reasons. And what I find is my person, they’re actually here because they want to make an impact with the care about those things. Versus if I were to go out and be like everyone else and say, Hey, here’s how to get paid, hey, here’s how to, here’s how to get more stages. Here’s how to be omnipresent. It was attracting a shortcut mentality. 

Heather Sager  15:55

So what I had to do to get it down to three days was to kill all the darlings. Is that the expression? I don’t know, I hate those. But I had to go all right, I have to leave those other things alone and just focus on the talk, which funny enough, Sara, I don’t know if I shared this with you. That was the original promise of the very first beta program that I put out. It was just the talk. I added everything else along the way because I got a little distracted by all the fancy stuff online. So I had to get back to my roots and teach what I know, which is a high quality talk. 

Sara Vartanian  16:31

I love that. And I think as you’re saying you had to get back to your roots, that there was you had in this program, you were able to lean on this framework that you had created way back then so it wasn’t really new, right? In some ways you just had honed in on the specific way that you taught. Do you want to talk about framework a little bit?

Heather Sager  16:52

Okay, so this is one of the things I laugh, I mean, okay, I don’t know if other people do this, or if I’m just super weird. Well, I know I’m weird in this specific area. But I I recreate the same damn thing over and over and over and over again and I thought maybe I’m like, Ha, I’m being really just like stupid. I’m being inefficient. Why am I like recreating? Don’t recreate. But what I’ve realized is actually that re creation process for me is when I start recreating the same thing over and over again, it tells me oh, this is an actual thing. Okay, side tangent. I haven’t had one of these yet so here we go. 

Heather Sager  17:32

Back in my corporate days, I worked for this guy Brandon, who now runs his company called Cardone ventures. He’s like a big freakin deal online. You should Google him. Brandown Dawson. I worked on his team. That was the company that I worked for for years, not Cardone ventures, but his old company. But I used to build his presentations and I used to plan all the events for that organization as part of my role. And I remember when I first got started, I knew nothing about content. I knew nothing about building presentations or events. I was planning events, but I look at the content on stage was not my wheelhouse. But Brandon, he was a CEO and it was one of his, like, most important projects. So I started working with him, shoulder to shoulder like every single day. And he was a huge or is a huge dreamer, entrepreneur, a lot of big ideas and he’s like an external processor. So I had to learn very, very quickly planning this really large scale event in Vegas, that he would have all these wild ideas. But I learned that just because he had the idea and said it out loud doesn’t mean that he’s really tied to it. So I learned in working with him for I mean, 10 years we’ve worked together, but I learned fairly quickly that if he would have an idea and then he would bring back up a version of that, yes, three times within a specific time period. I knew that was the idea that I need to act on. Otherwise, everything else I could just forget that even said it, he would forget it too and we would just not worry about it. So like it was a three times rule so I had forgotten about that. 

Heather Sager  18:59

And then in my business, I realized I had kept recreating the same frameworks or laying things out in the same way. And I had this moment because so many people want to teach online efficiency and batching and being blah, blah, blah. I was like, Ah, shit, I’m doing it wrong, like why am I re doing like recreating all the time? And then I realized, no, that process is actually a clarification process for me, pointing to exactly what my big, good idea is. So coming back to my framework, I originally created this framework for how to build a magnetic talk back in 2016. Back when I was in corporate building presentations, at the time, I wouldn’t call it a framework. At the time, I wouldn’t have been able to articulately tell you what the elements were. But when I was actually back in 2012, that large scale event we did that every single year and we would have, I don’t know 20 to 30 speakers, which were employees, the companies, they would teach workshops, and they didn’t know how to speak and I was responsible for making sure the content was high quality. So little me at the time 2011, 2012, I was an event planner, again, just learning about content. Well, I evidently was responsible for it. So I sat in the boardroom and made everybody come pitch me their presentation and I would just give them feedback. And then I started noticing patterns and themes and I just decided to be the person who would develop an expertise in this. 

Heather Sager  20:25

So even back then, what I was asking questions on were all elements that are still today in my framework for the talk building process. So yeah, it’s not new. So fast forward to now, what I’ve gotten is way more detailed with it. It used to be just be broad stroke categories that I would would talk about, and I would teach elements in but now I’ve gotten to the point where it’s categorized, but then it’s also like, systematized where it’s step by step so it’s just gotten better. And the way that I’m teaching it now is even clearer. So I went on lots of tangents on that one but yeah, that’s been the evolution of my like my process of recreating and the what’s in the program of the Accelerator today, it’s just a hell of a much better version of what I had. 

Sara Vartanian  21:12

I love that you call this out, like the backstory of that, because right now, if you if you look at, like STA when you go in there, it’s it seems so simple, right? Like, it’s like, here’s a simple six steps, this is what you’re gonna go through. But the evolution to get to that place where it looks like it’s simple and all these systemized processes it was, you know, it’s years in the making. But it comes back to what I feel like was our sort of theme for the year Heather, which was like, how do we simplify this? And even hearing how we pulled apart? What was the Speaker Society so that you pulled out the talk, that also allowed some simplicity to happen, because it became really clear then, right? You know, the Signature Talk Accelerator is about my messaging, and everything else is about market and monetizing. And I think from there, we had a lot of clarity around where to go with the launch plans and where to go with your website because we also wrote your website last like this let past year. So let’s talk about that. So once we pulled out from Signature Talk Acelerator that this is going to be all about messaging that really helped clarify the launch, like what we were going to do for the launch. So we did something a little bit different with the launch, Becoming The Known Authority, the private audio training, instead of doing a webinar. How did we come to that and how did you come to that knowing that we wanted to do the known authority? How did we narrow into that? 

Heather Sager  22:37

Okay, this is where this is, okay, this is where a couple things come into alignment. So at this point in time, when we early last year, we were trying to figure out, okay, at the Accelerator, this was the path we’re gonna go like, once it was clear, three days, it was like, let’s go. But at that time, things were very, there was a lot of decisions being made. So if you’re a new listener to the show, kind of backup for a second, I dissolved a business response partnership in January of 2023, which was on the coattails of a very fast marriage into that business partnership in the summer of 2022. So I’m on this like iteration of oh, crap rebuild, exciting thing rebuild, exciting thing rebuild exciting thing, like it was so liberating. So exciting, so refreshing and also it was really tired, like tiring. Emily and I were laughing. We’re like, we’re so tired as we’re both rebuilding our companies. 

Heather Sager  23:32

So thinking back in this moment is we we have put a lot of money and a lot of time and energy building up The Speaker Co to now dissolve the Speaker Co is sitting there in that position of going am I going to keep the name of the Speaker Co? Are we like this program we had built which was an iteration of Speak up to Level up like, are we going to keep this? So I could have just said nope, we’re going to axe the program and build a new one. However, the community I had built up over the last part of the prior four years, they were still showing up, they were still asking questions around their message, they were still showing up working on their messaging, their marketing, their monetization. And so it became clear to me around okay, there’s still in need for this. But we have to separate those two things out a bit. So there’s a little backstory on that as we there was a need, but we had to separate them. So finding that distinguishing factor of Signature Talk Accelerator, we’re going to build that first draft of your talk. And then the Speaker Society is the backend membership to refine that message, market that message monetize that message and continually work on that process but the talki s not done the first time we build it. Spoiler just like I said with the program, the first program you build is not the one that you’re gonna maintain. The first hockeyville is not the first one. 

Heather Sager  24:45

So I had to have something to really help people develop the skill of speaking, but at that point in time, I needed money. Let’s be real of dissolving the partnership, hiring you on to the support with the launches, we didn’t have a launch in November, December, January. I was going to launch the Speaker Society as Speaker Co in February but now retooling everything, literally, this is all happening at once. I’m like, I don’t have the energy to do a webinar looking at the month of March is, which is we knew we wanted to launch. I knew from experience, March, a spring break and as a mom at home, I had two kids. Now three, but I had one kid in preschool and one in second grade and I am unwilling to work over their spring break so and we were traveling that year. So I’m like, I can’t do it spring break. I always hear everyone else around the country around the world. They have their own versions of that. 

Heather Sager  25:43

So in my head, I’m like, how is this going to be helpful? How is this going to help, like plan a launch, but people are also trying to do what I’m doing, which is be with our kids and family and none of the weeks align in the month of March. And I couldn’t wait till April, I needed the money in my business. So I think we’ve all been there before around like, when is the right time to launch? I don’t think that there like that question is dumb. I think it’s a poor quality question that only leads you down rabbit holes of going, this isn’t gonna work for me. So instead, the question that we ask is, how could this work for us? So I said, you know what the reality is, I don’t attend shit live? Why do we place the expectations on other people that they need to be there live? Why do we get so upset when our show up rates are low, knowing that we don’t show up to sh*t, either. We’re building stuff in our business. So I just asked the question. And going back to what’s the problem I’m trying to solve. The problem is I needed people to go through my launch content in order for this new, very kind of out of the box container of a program to make sense for them. 

Heather Sager  26:47

So I’m into podcasts, obviously, I have a podcast. I had been hearing these whispers around private podcast at the time. People really weren’t using them for launches. yet. I think it had started happening. I had seen one very large influencer using it right about the week before I dropped mine so we were building in tandem. But I thought why not just make it so people can listen, when it’s convenient for them. Also, make it convenient for me that I could teach it without having to be live. So we came up with this brainchild of a launch and it was the epitome of building the plane as we fly. I think half the time we were flying without the plane, like we were like trying to get the plane to catch up but we were we decided to the private podcast launch. We called it an audio training, not a private podcast and that’s where we started. And then we started adding elements to it. But the premise or the reason for it was I needed something to work within my schedule and my life and I knew my audience needed the same. And funnily enough, it was the whole reason why I was doing the Accelerator in the way we were. I wanted to do it and more of a like jump in, get it done mentality so people can move on and get to the the good parts of marketing that talk, getting themselves out there. So they were both unique formats around how I was teaching. And so I felt, I mean, heck, we’re doing everything new, why not just try a new launch funnel too? 

Sara Vartanian  28:15

That was yeah, let’s go for it. And I think what was really interesting that we added into as we were having these conversations back and forth was a chance for folks to also get coaching from you because we know that you know when people have that chance to bring you questions and sort out some of their questions that those were people who were more ready to take the leap into Signature Talk Accelerator. So we came up with some of those, we kind of figured out what was going on, right like those hesitations or objections that were happening that would make someone say, ma’am, I’m not ready for this. Do you remember talking about that?

Heather Sager  28:55

I don’t know if I remember that exact conversation. But what I, here’s what I will say. I think, I think one of the struggles a lot of people have around speaking is most people are fairly good at conversations around their topic, right? It’s easy to sit in front of someone and just start talking and it becomes really clear around Oh, this is Oh, no, no, they’re thinking this way. No, it’s actually this way and you can have a dialogue and that’s why I think most people struggle to make it a talk because it’s a monologue, not a dialogue. And when I think about digital courses or I think about lunches, that’s a big struggle that a lot of people have is, but what are people thinking? So we get all up in our heads trying to shove everything at them like a firehose, assuming everyone’s thinking the same thing and they’re really not. 

Heather Sager  29:42

So taking another page from my playbook of my history as a speaker, most of the sessions that I have done over the last 20 years have been facilitated workshop style presentations. And what I have built in I mean, my old my old company, we launched a I don’t know if I’ve ever I talked about this publicly, it was called The Learning Development Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. That was one of my big projects I did in 2015, 2016. And so we were there, we had condos right around the corner. So I would go and stay in Arizona for a while we were learning the screens. But I would lead workshops that were sometimes single day, sometimes two week boot camps. But I would build these relationships in this containerclive with a group. And what I always always did with these groups is my opening of these, whether I was teaching the entire time, or I was opening in my team was teaching the remaining sessions, I had this knack for pulling out of the room, through questions around where people were starting from. I would ask open ended questions, but very strategically, and so people don’t go off the rails, but I always get to know the room, so that I could curate what I was doing even though I already knew what I was doing. I can make it feel very, very custom. I did that naturally. So I’m a really, really talented facilitator, and I love that style.

Heather Sager  31:01

Transferring over to the online space, we don’t have a lot of opportunities for that. And especially on Zoom rooms or when you’re teaching a digital course, you have to make a lot of assumptions. So in my program in the Society and back to Speak up to Level up, I would get people in the sessions, pull stuff out of them and we had time because these were 10 to 12 week programs. Ultimately, these were containers that people would be in for six to 12 months so there was time for that. But there was not time when you only have three days. I could not go into those three days, not knowing where people were at. It wouldn’t set them up for success, and it would definitely not set me up for success. So out of that necessity to need to know where people were and how they were feeling about this idea of a signature talk and are they even ready for a signature talk to even though their topic. That was a big one. They needed to know their topic before we got to the three days because we could not waste any precious time trying to figure out what’s the thing I want to talk about. Now we got to build the damn thing that you’re talking about. 

Heather Sager  32:02

So out of sheer necessity, we had to infuse engagement into that launch, we had to be asking them questions, we had to find out where they’re at, we had to figure out what they were worried about. And we did that in a lot of different ways through surveys through I think we retitled this like five times but we eventually called the Green Room coaching sessions, where people can come and talk to me live, and that it was a clear necessity for the three days to function well, because if we waited, if we waited till that moment, I don’t think it would have gone. 

Sara Vartanian  32:33

That something really unique that you do in that the way these launches went. So many times people want to get all that messaging and that information well in advance. And I get it because obviously it’s maybe less of a hustle during that time to sprint. But I think what you do really well and then, you know we had a fun partnership with over this last year was that we had some really core foundational things we knew we’re gonna do. Okay, so we had our sales page, mostly built out, but there was space but there was always a space to get information or get this feedback from folks and we built in these touch points, so that we could be really responsive. 

Sara Vartanian  33:11

So when you had the, you know, the coaching sessions, but like you said, I believe that on the on the sign up for the audio training, we also asked him a question like, why they came, and that really helped us write in for invitation emails to have people come. So while we had some emails ready, we also had the space to say, okay, you know what, we need to add this in, or we need to pivot here. I remember also, from those greenroom talks, what kept coming up was people were saying, like, do I really need a signature talk? They were kind of like, stuck on that word, right? Like it felt scary. And we are able to change that and say, let’s have like a damn good talk and address that. And we dressed the whole topic piece about like, how do you figure out what to write through those through emails? And again, we wouldn’t have had that information, if you hadn’t have, you know, having some live time with them. And if we hadn’t been asking questions along the way, and been hoping to hear things. You did the same during the Signature Talk Accelerators too. I got to come and watch you in action which was awesome. And at the end, you know, the end of every day there was that survey happening as well where you were finding out like, what was it I think? What went really well, like your aha moment and sort of where you were feeling stuck, so you could have a look at that and actually prep, like, get ready for the next day and you’ve come in with a story that just seemed to pull everyone back together every morning. I remember that during the sessions.

Heather Sager  34:33

So something okay, so this is what’s it’s weird sharing some of these things because I want to be cautious around. I know I am very uniquely wired. So if you’re listening to this, and you’re like, oh, like I gotta do it this way. I’m not saying this is the best right way to do it. In fact, I do not believe in a best right way to do this. I’ve hammered on this so so many times. I think we all have to know our style. Know where we thrive, know where our skill set end and that’s I think a big one. I know that I’m really, really good thinking on my feet because for years, I’ve thought on my feet. When I started facilitating workshops in person, I was not so good. I said the wrong thing. I like got some pretty bad probably reviews in it right? I’ve always been a good like, good speaker. I don’t think anyone would ever put me in a bucket that I was a terrible speaker but I was always good but it was not good at that so I’ve developed that skill as we went. 

Heather Sager  35:31

And the one the one thing that I’ve had one of the many things, we’re all great at certain things, right? But one of the things I’m really good at, and I’ve noticed this theme in my entire career is I’m really good at connecting the dots. If I had to thought about this years ago, I’m like, if I had to summarize what my very, very unique skill is, I don’t even think this is the thing like it’s the skill of creating context, which sounds very by that is, I make sure that anything that I bring up, it’s not stuck in a silo. I’m able to help people understand how the thing we’re talking about or how the things somebody else just talked about connects to other things. It connects to them, it connects to the bigger picture, it connects to what I’m about to say. I’m always the connector of ideas. 

Heather Sager  36:21

Back when, before I started as an actual, like content speaker, I was an emcee. This was like, this is how I got started, I was emcee all the time back in my days in Miss America. People would bring me in shows or emcee their fundraisers, like I was the emcee or when my nonprofit days. I would emcee or auctions, or when I started in corporate, I would emcee the staff meetings, or I would help back in high school, I was the mistress of ceremonies in our high school graduation pre thing like this. That’s what I do so in a role that I’ve always been drawn to, and I think it’s because I’m really good at making sure okay, this piece of content is coming, or we’re fundraising on this thing throughout the entire program, if you will, that keeps people engaged but it also helps people connect the dots. And that draws more interest, it draws more awareness. Like there’s just so many things around that. 

Heather Sager  37:15

So I have to start with that piece is I, this is naturally how I see things is how does this connect to something that you will care about? That is how I’m driven. That’s how I teach people to communicate. That’s the whole under like, root of my program at the style that I teach, took me a long time to teach people how to do what I do naturally. But with that with the program, so I remember we were working on this really, the night before. We were like okay, we know we wanted to do a daily survey. And let’s be honest, part of the daily survey is I wanted to check in, did I break people’s brain? I needed to know like, are they okay, like, is it? Is it? Is it good? I didn’t need the kudos like I got those in the sessions. But I needed to make sure like what they were learning. 

Heather Sager  38:01

So we started out I think the first pass the questions the team came up with, they were more survey based and what I have learned a very long time ago with surveys is I find surveys, mostly unhelpful unless we go, what are we going to do with this? What are we going to do with this information? So coming from that place, I remember sitting there looking at the questions going, okay, what am I going to do with this? Well, what do I need to know to be able to enter in day two to set them up for success because what was really important is, they had to get the stuff done on day one in to happen successfully. If we clogged up their brain and got stuck on day one, the rest of the three days were screwed, like it wouldn’t happen. So I had to think about what are where are they going to get stuck and how do I get them unstuck as quickly as possible? So I needed transparency into their mental health at that moment, into their comprehension, into their like energy levels and their outlook around their ability to get this done. Those were all big things. So I said okay, what could we ask them? 

Heather Sager  39:15

So yeah, we asked questions around my favorite, what are you proud of accomplishing today? What are you, what was still feeling like sticky for you? What was your biggest aha of the day? Those were the three that I remember off the top of my head, but the one I didn’t glad I asked this question but the the one that surprised me the most and the one that got me just gives me body chills right now of just this big warm hug is that question of what are you most proud of? Because I could never anticipated this, the answers especially by the end of day two and day three were business owners going, holy sh*t, I’m and that what they were sharing was I I’ve never finished a course before, or I’ve never, I would never have gotten this far had I not had this pressure cooker. 

Heather Sager  40:07

So in this coattail of the question around where you stuck or where you challenged, it was like, I use this expression a lot. You know how, like when you rip off a band aid, how it stings for a second, and then you go, put your hand on it, and for some reason that like warmth of your hand, I don’t know if it actually does anything, but it just makes us feel better about that like, right? So what happened was I as it’s like, where’s your agitation? Where is that challenge that you’re having? And then I followed it up with but what are you most proud of accomplishing today? It reminded them what they have accomplished, not just where they’re challenged. And that that proud of moment, what created the sense of empowerment in the group. People like sat up taller, they had a little bit more swagger coming into that second, especially third day, they were tired as all hell, but they were feeling damn proud of themselves. And it wasn’t just Oh, Heather, you’re amazing. This is the best thing ever. Although we did get a lot of that. There was so fun to the chat of people like how is this happening? Like it’s wild. But they felt so competent, they felt so empowered, and they felt so excited if they could accomplish in three days, like what they could do next. Unstoppable. So I think I don’t remember what your original question was. But that yeah, oh, feedback, the feedback really, really created, it wasn’t okay. It was for me, but really, it was for them. I did the feedback so that it can help them keep going and I think that was, that was something that even we had agreed

Sara Vartanian  41:49

I don’t think we realized how powerful it would be for the folks as well. And I know being there live because I attended to do it myself to talk, but also to, you know, take down notes as your copywriter and make observations and I really did see that in the chat like that change from that first day. They were super excited but unsure like what’s going to happen. And then the way that they would start to say like, like these moments are moments that you know, going from context that you were just talking about recent that was a huge piece for them where this chat was flying and going and they were like, everything is making sense now. And the excitement that they would have and by the end let you know that we had like tears but good tears right in the group. It was good.

Heather Sager  42:39

Troubling moments of tears, and that was the event that I got deemed spicy.

Sara Vartanian  42:45

They also, yeah, they came up with spicy Heather as a as a headline for you. The title for you say.

Heather Sager  42:51

Yeah, that was that was that? Should we? I was curious from your perspective. What instigated that name, spicy, Heather.

Sara Vartanian  43:01

Oh, my gosh. Thinking back to the thing was that. You, you called, you had some real talk, essentially. It’s call it where you’re like, listen, it’s totally normal. You’re feeling like this, but we’re gonna do this anyways, essentially. Like if that’s what you’re feeling that’s totally valid and totally fair, but we’re gonna move forward. And you’re gonna get there and you’re gonna see it or something along those lines. But you always deliver it with like, a good story and a smile.

Heather Sager  43:42

It’s the direct, it’s the directive, you’re not doing what? Nope.

Sara Vartanian  43:47

No, you started us off that. That was really interesting to you that you called out those traps and you mentioned them earlier in this conversation around like perfection and planning trap, you actually call this out to the beginning of the whole three days to say, here’s where you might get stuck along the way and how that’s not gonna happen. Like, it’s not gonna happen here under my watch, and three days, but these are the things that may happen, or that you may be feeling like, and nobody disappeared. Nobody dropped off. Everybody kept showing up. And I thought that was really key. Like it really interesting too and I think that speaks to so much about the energy that you bring in you were able to hold that group for a day because it wasn’t three hours. It was a day. We were in a workshop like for like, what, seven or eight hours other than lunch break that were in there.

Heather Sager  44:38

It was yeah, fairly open. So it technically was 10 to 4. 9, no, not nine or 10 I think was maybe 9 o’clock. No, it was 10, 10 o’clock. 10 to 4 each day, something like that. Where it was like a no, it was 9 to 3 and 1 to four. That’s what it was. It was two three I’m so sure y’all know structurally In my brain, I looked at it as blocks. I had six, three hour time blocks to a day and a lunch in the middle. But the reality was day one and day two, I stuck around over lunch and did hot seats. Day, in the evening of day two, day three, 

Sara Vartanian  45:16

I’ve been pretty confident you stick around as well for other questions.

Heather Sager  45:21

Yeah, and it was It wasn’t content, right. I stuck around and did hot seats. I stuck around to make sure everybody felt good. Everybody got mic time. Everybody got practice everyday got feedback. They were long days and funnily enough, the group did not know at the time, but I was six weeks pregnant, facilitating those three days. So I was riding off out and then

Sara Vartanian  45:43

Let’s fast forward now. So we had to the fall, you did it again. And this time, I know that you had Krystal supporting you during it. How did it change? Yeah, from the first iteration of the second iteration and in terms of like, what really do you feel like change in Signature Talk Accelerator, but also how we launched it, put it out there, and we have to get it done?

Heather Sager  46:06

Oh, okay. So we have the fun part. This would be a great, we have a whole debrief episode of the live experience with Krystal on the, I remember the episode number, but we’ll link to it. But the okay, content wise and experienced wise, here, here’s the big difference in my mentality going into the two, right? It had been a long time since I had been doing live events. I mean, my whole career was built off of live events in person workshops, or live facilitated webinars. The recorded route is great, but I just thrive live in the moment. I just love that, that that being able to interact with people go off of it, like I’m just I’m very talented in that way and it’s just easier for me. 

Heather Sager  46:49

So back in the spring, when we launched it for the first time, I remember, I’m like, this is my zone. I love the live. And as we went into the fall, the big change, obviously, is I was very pregnant. So when we planned all of STA, when we got everything together, I didn’t know I was pregnant. I found out I was pregnant a couple days before the Accelerator. We rebranded. So all of that planning was in the like, new era of Heather doing live. Let’s do live events, let’s just screw it all we’ll just do live. We’ll do things differently than everyone else. And then right, we moved across the state and I was very pregnant and I had the very big realization of we’re moving away from all of our family and all of our support system. Next year, I’m gonna have a newborn baby, I can’t run full day sessions live. It’s just not in the cards for me. And I’m sure I could problem solve for that, right? I could hire a nanny or I could, but I just had the realization of okay, it’s time to maybe rethink and say, is that what is teaching live what I need or is there a different element? And what dawned on me at that time was, I think I could actually do this a little differently. 

Heather Sager  48:04

So when I went into the fall, I haven’t shared this publicly, but here was my plan. Okay, sidenote, back in 2020, I attended a Brendon Burchard event. I attended HPX live. I brought my husband, my sister in law came with us. We went and did the whole rah rah Tony Robbins jumping up and down, but so on fire style, and it was right before the world shut down, and at the event, he sold his certified high performance coaching certification. And I remember like, first, I remember just watching his whole pitch from the stage and analyzing it. I took all these notes around how he pitched, what resonated with me, what didn’t. I remember talking to James, my husband about it and I was like, no, I just I don’t need that, like, it’s fine. I’m a great coach but I couldn’t get it out of my head. I’m like, there’s something about having a toolkit for coaching style. I’m naturally good at it. I’ve been coaching for years, but I kind of felt this poll to do something a little differently. 

Heather Sager  49:00

So we get home on the airplane and without even being prompted my husband’s like, do you want to do that program? Don’t you? I’m like, no, I’m not gonna spend 10 grand on this thing. I don’t, I’m not gonna be doing life coaching in my business. I remember him going, but is that something that would be valuable for you? I’m like, well, yeah, I want to learn like specific tools for coaching. I think I would use them in a different way. And he’s like, well, don’t worry about the money. We’ll figure it out. You should sign up. I’m like, wow, so so excited. I was gonna attend a five day live in person event with Brian Burchard. I was like, all fired up. It was in May of 2020 and then we all knew what happened March 8, like it was pushed back, and it was pushed back a bit. It was not obviously going to happen. 

Heather Sager  49:40

So Brendon, he had to convert he had been teaching CHPC for years, and he had to convert to virtual and he had also had just moved to the part of the move of Puerto Rico. He had moved to Puerto Rico. So he had to build out a studio and bring in people to figure this out. While watching in real time, a big name in the industry pivot to teach a live seminar multiple days. He converted to four days, virtually so I’ve experienced that. Okay. And then fast forward, he does two certifications a year. He then did the certification again in November of 2020 and me needing adult time in November of 2020 as I was navigating Zoom kindergarten, and wanting to not crawl under a rock and be done. I’m like, I gotta do this thing again. So I signed back up for the certification to run through it. And here, this is where they all point comes in. I was fascinated, because you know what he did, he did not teach the four day live. He got on live lalala so excited. He’s like, alright, now it’s time to learn session one. Boom, he hit play and it was the trainings module, training lesson from what he delivered in May of that year. 

Heather Sager  50:56

And then afterwards, he came back on live and engaged in the group and did all the questions in live and engagement, but the actual training was recorded. And I remember thinking, do people know this is recording like, in the moment, I’m like, wait, hold on and then I’m like, he’s a genius, because he’s wearing a black polo shirt for both so I don’t know that some people notice. But I remember thinking, holy shit, efficiency. And here’s what’s important is some people could have taken that away of like, Oh, he’s lazy. He’s phoning it in, what does he do in the background, but he did an awesome job. He has the same skill of creating context. And he said, hey, I’m gonna hit play on a video because this is the first certification because it’s a training, I know that I can get excited and I could phrases in a lot of different ways. I want to make sure we get this right and you learn this the right way. So for the training portion, I’m going to hit play, and his 12 lessons, they were all recorded. 

Heather Sager  51:49

Okay, so circle back into fall of our summer of 2023. For me, as I was going into it, I’m like, I love the live, I don’t need to teach live, I just need to coach live. That is my jam. So I had intended to run future Accelerators. So future being 2024, I had intended to run it live, but have all the lessons do that same thing, where I’ll take the little piece and play, record. So going into the fall Accelerator, I knew the production level had to be better, the timing had to be very clear, so that I could carve out those specific lessons as a replay, feel a lot more fluid in the in April. So I had to be a little bit more structured, we had to up the production level which you can hear all about that in the other podcasts with Krystal where she interviewed me on that but that mindset was all different. I was thinking ahead around, alright, I’m going to teach this live in 2024 but I won’t be able to be physically, like available for the entire life. So that was the biggest difference in the content between the two.

Sara Vartanian  52:55

I’m gonna pull back out into the whole year now, because we couldn’t we went from January two different in the Fall, and there were definitely these periods of hustle you had in your business. I know you had some rest periods who had built in rest periods for travel with the kids your move and things like that. How did you make it happen during that hustle? Like how, like what supported you to be able to hustle during this time? Be fluid to things that were happening with life. Now that like your pregnancy was coming up. I know you had baby Brooks a little bit early as well and also in your your move, but also the response to getting feedback from folks. Through these trainings, how did you, I guess, manage those times of hustle.

Heather Sager  53:48

So it comes back. Okay, come back to a couple of things. I know myself really well. I’ve been doing a lot of personal development work and personal awareness for the last 20 years. So I know that I thrive under pressure. I know that I’m great under a deadline. I know that I’m good in like sprint mode. I need recovery time. But after doing so many events and live workshops and stuff for years, I know that about myself, had I not known that about myself or had I not like enjoyed the hustle I would have approached last year differently. So I think sidenote, Human Design taught me a lot about that as a manifester. I go into these big urges where I just I have no idea where the energy comes from, but it’s just its go mode. It doesn’t even feel exhausting. I’ll have people reach out and be like, Oh my gosh, you must be exhausted. I’m like, No, I feel alive. I’m excited like I am good, but then I need to go into a season of rest. 

Heather Sager  54:42

So I think the the difference for me in this last year is I actually anticipated that and I knew when our sprint is were like we were all in and then I actually blocked out rest on my calendar which I had never done before. And I’m not talking about vacation time I’m talking about like carve out and the goal of it was to do whatever the hell I wanted. That was and that was weird for me having weeks of having no commitments, that that was it was actually really wonderful. So even though we were sprinting a lot last year, I probably worked the least amount I have ever worked in my business in the last five years will actually in my entire career this last year, and that felt really good. It was fun. It actually was really fun to hustle. 

Heather Sager  55:32

I, it was funny though, you and I would be up a Voxing. I remember it got to the point when my pregnancy pretty quickly actually, I had really, really bad heartburn. So I was pretty much a no good for three o’clock in the afternoon. I really was no good for two o’clock in the afternoon. But I couldn’t even sit here at my desk like I pretty much was pants off bra off in bed by 435 o’clock most nights. And my boys were supposed to be they would come in bring board games we would like do monopoly time together. But those would be the times where you Sarah, our night owl, and you would be like kids put to bed, sipping on your tea at your computer, having your ideas. So you would be like pinging me on the Google Docs and the Voxer and so I would be in bed doing all this from my phone. So what it was kind of this funny like Ying and Yang is we would hustle but it was like hustling at different times of the day. So I would be like doing my quote unquote hustle of getting stuff done or the design on the website. We rebuilt everything on Showit and decided I’ll do it myself, which I’m actually very glad I did. So we we were doing that. 

Heather Sager  56:42

But I don’t know, it was just it was fun. It was fun. But the I think the big part around all of it is it was for a reason. I saw very clear like clearly as the year as the year progressed, it got more and more and more clear of why and how all these things connected together. But the moment I decided to do the Accelerator, and then the the clarity that came from it the first time, I saw the future of what my business could look like and as the year progressed, it got more and more and more clear. So the things we were hustling for, I look at last year was the year where we pretty much bulldozed everything and rebuilt in the scrappiest but also it was sexy, we had some sexy stuff we built but scrappy in sprintiest way. But those shitty rough drafts that we built, oh my god, Sara, last year, we ran our own version of the Accelerator, what we’re talking about have lined up people talks, we did that my business last year. We condensed probably five years worth of things to build in business into a year so that we can get to the good shit, which is now let’s refine it, let it breathe and let it work for us. That’s what we did, which is what we help people do with our talks. But yeah, last year was that in the intensive so that this year, there’s more space to actually build upon it, which I’m very excited about it. I hadn’t really thought about that.

Sara Vartanian  58:02

Yeah, I love that. So I’m gonna ask a question. Then around have incorporated in your business since you were talking about that what we built these foundational pieces. How did investing and having a copy partner strategist in your side for the year help you get there? Because I know that when originally I came in, I came in on a launch with you for Speaker Society and then we had talked about having some VIP day spread through the year but actually ended up becoming a monthly thing. It evolved, and I know we didn’t have necessarily big giant launches. But I want to come back to the the foundational pieces we built and what that was like for you and I guess what you’d say?

Heather Sager  58:42

So I had never, I had never thought at the beginning of last year when everything was happening. I’m like having a phone call full time but having like a dedicated copywriter. I’m like I don’t need that much, right? I’m like, I’m good with words I got like, it’s fun, like it’s launched based, right. And the idea initially when I had contracted you to help me build all my launch copy for the first launch of Speaker Society that in 2022, I’m like, oh, so great. I love hiring a copywriter because it’s like you get all the assets ready and then you can reuse those on rinse and repeat. My friend, Katelyn, who’s a copywriter, she wrote my very first sales emails, like the second time I launched sales he’s known for Speak up to Level up, and I use those puppies for years over and over and over again to launch it. 

Heather Sager  59:24

So I’m like, yes, I’m gonna invest in the asset that’s going to work. The problem being I changed the asset, right? And then I had to change positioning and then we had all these other things happening. So what was interesting is every year in my business, I’m sure like with most business owners, I’ve set out and I’ve had this big ass financial goal. I sit down and say revenue goal, divide that by price of the program. That’s the target for number of students. How do I break it down by quarter and I do the math. You’ll support this claim. I build spreadsheets in this weird obsessive way, mapping out my business possibility pathways, like it is a, it is the thing. It’s how my brain works. I need to do it. My husband laughs at me all the time because if I am having a stressful day, he’s like, do you need to build a list? In my business, my version of a list is I need to do some business math, like I just need to see the path. I need to see the past the possibility through the numbers. And we did that a bajillion times but we kept changing. 

Heather Sager  1:00:23

So what was wild was when we started the year, I had that even with all the craziness, even with the partnership shifting, the program shifting, I still have this like, and we’re gonna do this big ass year I had planned for the Fall launch, big ass numbers. And as the year progressed, it started becoming abundantly clear to me that I don’t need the big ass numbers. I need the foundation to grow so that I don’t go insane in the process. And it’s so funny because I see a lot of people online right now there is this coming of age happening for a lot of entrepreneurs who’ve been in business seven to 10 years, I’ve seen just three in the last week who are publicly declaring, I am firing my staff, I’m going back down to the simplistic, I am burning all these things. They built their businesses really, really, really fast. And a lot of them did not have any kind of professional experience or managing teams or anything on the beforehand. So they were learning how to become a leader and learning how to think strategically and learning how to keep up with that at the same time and they were friggin exhausted. 

Heather Sager  1:01:34

Well, so rightfully so. So we see I see this trend happening a lot right now. For me, I’ve already had the big team. I mean, at one point, my team and my old company I had like 60, 80 people collectively across our different verticals working in our training teams. We are responsible for the learning of I don’t know, 1600 full time staff all over North America, like I’ve had the big thing. I know what it takes to run a big team. The gap was, how do I get from where I am now to that big piece. I haven’t been able to actually step into that role as a leader because I’ve been in this doer mode. 

Heather Sager  1:02:11

So last year, what I realized was, my goal isn’t to step into that big leader like role. My goal is to work when my kids are at school. My goal is to do things that keep my brain working and keep me alive in like creativity and having fun. I want to be able to go out and buy the car that I want and not have to worry about things. I want to take my kids hiking here in Oregon like I have, I want to go experience things. And I know this is really cliche because everybody talks about this but it became abundantly clear for me that I want to have a nice, large size business, but I want it to feel good in the build. 

Heather Sager  1:02:57

So last year, I made a really clear decision is I would far rather pay you to write the copy so that I could show up in launches and just have fun and be creative. I could do what I do best, which is ramble out my frickin random ideas on my morning walks and then by the next morning, there is a epic email written and you wrote it and it’s in my language and it’s my story and it’s so awesome. I’m like, well, hot damn, that’s just like perfect. It’s like a magic staples easy button. It was wonderful. And so I remember when I’m like, can we do more of this? I need to add more days. Wait, what if I just kept you on retainer? It’s exactly what I did to my virtual assistant, Doreethy, years ago. She has been with me, and finally, it was after probably about six months. I’m like, hi, what would it take for me just to have you full time, like instead of having to worry about projects or hours, can I just pay you and just not have to worry about it and know that you ever handled. So she’s been full time on my staff for four years? I think so. And that’s for me, I’m like Sarah, can I can I have you right? And obviously you still have a full business and other clients. But for me, it was the peace of mind. It was the ability for me to stay in my wheelhouse. And, quite frankly, it just gave me my time back. I took the entire month of July pretty much off when I have this baby early because I’ve been talking about last couple episodes and podcasts before this little hiatus. I did not pull out my laptop for seven weeks. All I had to do was to look at a couple of things on my phone in a Google Doc or you all would just text me the specific question and it was good. Like I did not have to worry and money was still coming in to hell and entire promotion actually to happen while I was on leave one of which while I was giving birth, so that that’s pretty cool. So I’m really I’m very grateful for you and I’m very happy about that investment but like pain to be able to do not just get my time back, but have it go towards something that will give me more time back in the future. All of these copy assets, we create all the systems we created, that’s going to serve me and continue to serve my business and my clients. 

Sara Vartanian  1:05:15

I loved our Voxer conversations, you know that I started so many of them and I’ve saved them which allowed me though to exactly write in your voice and collect things and I have a whole bank of Heather stories be able to cook you know, collected.

Heather Sager  1:05:34

Voxer stays on board.

Sara Vartanian  1:05:35

So let’s wrap this up. So if somebody’s listening, or they want to come back, and they’re, you know, they’re in this spot where they’re like, how do I, what can I do next? If I need to simplify? Where do I need to start thinking, what would you want to tell them?

Heather Sager  1:05:51

Oh, okay, I love that you brought it back to this idea of simplify. So first, first and foremost, even when your intention is to simplify, notice that you’re going to most likely do the opposite. That happened to us all the time last year. We’re like, keep it simple, keep it simple and then I’ll send you a I sent you like a map of like, the most complex funnel on the planet. And I remember you bless your heart, Sarah, you’re probably like, how is this simple? Okay. So in our effort to simplify, sometimes we actually overcomplicate because we’re trying to make everything clear. 

Heather Sager  1:06:23

So just you have to have the humility, to go, to question yourself, even in the middle of executing a plan, just because you have it planned does not mean you need to finish the plan. And in fact, that was something that I think we did really, really exceptionally well last year was even when the plan was already in motion, we were willing to question it. We were willing to say, how can we make this simpler? And I think coming back to your question, or on the hustle piece, how was it able to hustle so much. It’s I’m able to discern, when I look at a to do list, I’m always clear around what absolutely has to happen and what would be gravy. And sometimes we get to the gravy, but for the most part, we’re just executing on the has to happen moments. 

Heather Sager  1:07:16

So if you’re looking to simplify, you have to discern that when you come up with a list of things, you have to know I’m not going to do all of these things. And when you cut that down, you still have to know you’re not going to do all of those things, really stripping back what you’re doing and doing. So cliche and generic, but it’s true, few things better. That’s that’s where the simplicity comes from. So I think there’s a couple things that come to mind beyond that is 2024 is not the year to try testing out a bunch of different strategies to see what sticks, that strategy never works. Like it never works, because you’re just testing out a bunch of things half assed and you’re just waiting for someone else to tell you what’s going to work. 

Heather Sager  1:08:04

In my experience, anything can work if you want it to and granted, this might be terrible advice. So take it with a grain of salt, but I would just say choose the fucking thing you want to do, and commit to making it work. It’s not about doing it an exact way. It’s about asking questions to make it more effective. So there’s a strategy you want to do if you want to do webinars or you want to do a challenge, or you want to do a live event or whatever it is that you want to do, I’m going to say like, ignore what other people say, of going like those strategies don’t work, or you have to listen to your audience. Fuck that, okay, you’re an entrepreneur and you have ideas for reason, you have to choose the strategies that are going to light you up, choose the thing that you want to do, and then have the humility to say, how can I ask questions like we talked about with survey and to say, how do I bring my audience in in a way that’s going to work for them? How do I listen to make sure that the strategy is going to be effective? Because that’s the takeaway. 

Heather Sager  1:08:59

We decided last year that these things were going to be successful. I am not surprised the Accelerator was a rockin success. I am not surprised the Fall would be a success. I’m not surprised that our presale of the new on demand version has been a smashing success. Like those things are not surprises to me, I’d already decided they’d be successful. What was surprising was the journey that people had in the process and that was just by being curious asking questions. So I think that is the takeaway, you can simplify but you have to have the balls to say, all right, like this is the path I’m taking and then commit to it and not get distracted by a bunch of extra things because somebody else told you you needed to.

Sara Vartanian  1:09:35

Alright, well on that note, on simplifying and getting clear and having the humility I think, yes, that’s a huge takeaway. And I know as a copywriter, I wish more people did that. And I want to really say that one of the things I loved working with you Heather, too, is that you’re so good at that humility part like and also that you were so open because if I sometimes could call back to you and say, Hey, Heather, remember how we said about making the simple or I remember like four Voxes ago we said we were going to X. Do you still want to do that and be like, oh, yeah, let me park something. So we were like totally willing to park something sometimes and say we’ll come back to that. 

Heather Sager  1:10:12

Yeah, yep. Oh man, what a year, what a year. Hey, Sarah, thanks for being my host today.

Sara Vartanian  1:10:19

Thanks for having me on here to chat with you for the last year

Heather Sager  1:10:23

Yeah, okay, well for I’m going to take back over hosting abilities. There some follow up episodes. So if you’re new around here and you’re liking what we’re talking about, we’ll link down below the recommendations a follow up episodes that I talked about a lot of things today that I wanted more depth on and specific episodes last year and maybe even prior to last year, so we’ll link to those and yeah, see you again next week y’all I’m happy to be back. Bye, friends.