Brittany Smith and Shelley Lentfer- $10k Increase In Revenue And Doubling Clients Within A Year

Brittany Smith 0:02
All right, so we offer women’s only group training here in Newcastle, Australia, we train on the beach and in the park, and we run sessions for women of all ages, including mums, who can bring their babies along to the mind and buy our babysitting service while they work.

Shelley Lentfer 0:19
And so across all of our business, and we, we exist to create a strong community of women who inspire each other to live their variable slides.

Brittany Smith 0:32
So our story

flashback to 2016, shell and I both worked in the business, which is operating under a different name. And the opportunity came up to buy the business and we both jumped at it to fulfill a lifelong dream of being

Shelley Lentfer 0:47
business owners,

Brittany Smith 0:48
while also helping women live their best life, we received so much feedback over this time that will changing these women’s life. Yeah, you know, their relationships with their husbands change themselves with their kids,

Shelley Lentfer 1:01
energetically losing weight. So

Brittany Smith 1:03
that feedback combined with our big dreams and huge plans and lots of passion. We thought that was the summer. Yes, that’s all we might Off we go, Ah, well, there we go.

Shelley Lentfer 1:19
So two years on, we left. So that brings us to November 2017. We were overworked, we were underpaid. And we were just totally burnt out. We couldn’t afford to do life. Now. We were full time volunteers in our business. And just reflecting on that time, it was depressing, really, really depressing. You know that one body only been depressed.

So it turns out that

Brittany Smith 1:52
dreams and passion do not guarantee success.

Shelley Lentfer 1:57
And yet so as this slide suggests the business was drowning, we had one client in one client out, we but we just couldn’t figure it out. And as we mentioned, before, we were operating under a different licensee, we’re operating under a different name, which was part of the licensing model. And we weren’t aligned with this branding. But we were under the illusion that it was somehow keeping us from going up completely under.

Brittany Smith 2:25
And one huge lesson for us was that you can’t hand over any part of your business blindly, which is what we did, before Dylan cassens. And by the end of 2016, this left us $20,000 in debt, and what every set of money that we have in that business, and which is going on. So yeah, huge.

Shelley Lentfer 2:50
Um, and our systems were out of whack. Like

Brittany Smith 2:53
we had no confidence to create new systems, so operating using outdated processes that the other business had left, and these are not serving our business or helping us to grow.

Shelley Lentfer 3:05
And so we felt like failures. And you know, actually, it was more than a failure. We believed that we believe in you that we were failures. And from that another really big struggle for us was as we were going out every day and training our clients and inspiring them and uplifting them, which we loved our clients that wasn’t inauthentic. But it started to feel really inauthentic as we were struggling and drowning on the inside. And then try to put on this like happy Frank to be up to our clients. And that, again, is really physical, emotional stress on us as well.

Brittany Smith 3:40
And it wasn’t through lack of luck, we worked our butts off. And we thought if we just keep working hard, eventually pull through. Like we invested in the seminars, but listen to the podcast, read the books. And we were working hard, but we’ve been not working smart. But still nothing happened. Yet, we’ll have some but we’ve got to a point where we were done. There was nothing left to give more physically, emotionally and mentally fit.

Shelley Lentfer 4:10
And we thought about the words that describe us at that point. And it was we were demoralized. And we were really embarrassed as well that we’re overwhelmed and confusion. Like why wasn’t it working? Yeah, yeah.

Brittany Smith 4:30
So as heartbreaking as it was to think about closing our business, I mean, this is our baby. We’ve spent the last two years investing everything we had into this, but we had enough and we knew we’re going to fail our clients. So we’re going to feel like total failures. So but

Shelley Lentfer 4:47
but the cost is just too great. But for Greg and myself now relationship was struggling that way, great friends, but professionally and personally our relationship was under a lot of strain. I’m sure a bunch of you can Imagine that our personal life, relationships are under a lot of stress, like without fiance or husband. And you know, I had a young family and we had a you know, like there was there was a lot going on, we had no work life balance. And it actually was voluntee life balance. But there was just it was just really hard. So we made the decision to shut the business in November 2017. We were literally it was this time last year that we were having these conversations that was you know, how are we going to wrap this up and bring it all to a close.

Brittany Smith 5:38
But lucky MPa came along,

Shelley Lentfer 5:41
I just say the Indiana Jones music.

So I was actually searching for what to do next. And I had started a precision nutrition online course. And I saw this ad for some business course business coaching course with this NPA. And like I had one foot out of the door, but there was one foot in and I thought we can’t give up without a fight. And that firefight. I literally mean, Pompeii. Yeah, okay, great, we will close the business. You agree? Excellent.

So yeah,

Brittany Smith 6:16
and I was even more skeptical than shell, I was like, we are not spending another single set that we do not have on a business coaching program, probably some online gimmick that promises the world until there is nothing that

Shelley Lentfer 6:31
I knew that she was going to be like that. So I made the appointment.

And just Britt came along, I think just to shut

Brittany Smith 6:40
her up. And we have a conversation with Rick. And I think the turning point for me was when we spoke to another local business, who was doing the MPA program, and there were similar business apps and had massive success with the program. So I thought they can do it,

maybe we can do it, too.

Shelley Lentfer 6:57
And so Britt, and I did get to the point where we decided this was how we wanted to move forward. But we then had to go home and convince our partners that this was the way forward for us. And but that was really hard. They had stood beside us and saying, you know, done all this with us. And I just I just remember the fights that I would have with my husband. And it was coming from a place of you know, carrying that. But it was just that it was just a really, really tough time.

Brittany Smith 7:29
And not only Yeah, were they supporting us financially, for the past year, over two years, they were watching us crumble with self doubt behind closed doors. I remember looking at my fiance at the time in the eyes, empty streaming down my face, I can’t win anymore. I’m just not a good business. And I’m not meant to do this. And it was like I walk away from it, you know, you do what makes you happy. But you are so good at this job to to quit.

So you know, maybe you should give it one last try.

Shelley Lentfer 7:59
And so in the end, we did get there willing support, you couldn’t force them into it, which was really necessary. We couldn’t go on without their support. So we joined the program, and we would not be operating without NDA and their support. And when I reflect back 12 months ago to when we started with NPA, we were relying on their energy and their belief, their trust and their confidence in us because like I’ve said before we were done.

Yeah, we were in such a bad place.

So

Brittany Smith 8:36
the plan, so we NVA we

did a thorough health check on our business and the current state it was in and well, no wonder we weren’t succeeding. Let’s just say that. We haven’t covered all the areas of that business that needed that holding us back, and formulating a plan. And to be honest, this felt overwhelming all over again. But this time, it was different because we had someone in our format, someone backing us

Shelley Lentfer 9:01
and someone experienced. So we broke the plan into manageable chunks. And the points you see on the screen now we did all of these in March this year. So we rebranded to pineapple, which is what you see now. And and we we were continuing to run group fitness. But yes, so we did the rebrand. We brought in membership contracts, we increase rates, and we bring to the studio. Now honestly, these were things we didn’t want to do. They felt really, really scary. And we actually thought this was the final nail in the coffin. But we had to trust the process. Yeah, and we move forward.

Brittany Smith 9:36
The next few things we did was close a location and release some stuff. Now these are probably the hardest things that we’ve had to

Shelley Lentfer 9:43
do.

Brittany Smith 9:44
You know, we had lost a lot of sleepless nights over doing these two things. But we had to put energy into the parts of our business that we knew were going to give us the most success and within pay support, managed to

Shelley Lentfer 9:57
do them and then we needed to grow Roll out business, we needed to get growth so that we could invest back into our business and invest in our clients.

Brittany Smith 10:09
And most importantly, we had to grow as leaders, this took so much growth, Michelle and I are really good at managing ourselves and working together. But we knew we couldn’t do this on our own, we need an excellent team around us to help us

Shelley Lentfer 10:21
work. So with the self work that we did, with MPa, we became great leaders and now have a brilliant team around us helping us to achieve our goals. And we really believe that we could not have achieved this in 12 months, let alone ever without our weekly calls with Rick and the other NPH community, who really call us on our limiting beliefs. And we realize we have, yeah. And so it’s all good to have a plan. But a plan without action is absolutely meaningless, so rebrand, everyone loved it, we just stand on our own. But the positive response was overwhelming and overwhelming in a really good way. This time. Yeah, the contracts, the increased rates gave us our margins that we needed, which allowed us then to be able to reinvest back in the business, and the studio. So we were operating out of my home. And so it was really significant to move that out of my house and into a studio was really important for our family.

Brittany Smith 11:17
We also implemented a system called auto casa, which is a new client onboarding process. And this allows us to start living results and getting to know our clients from the get go. And as a result of these new clients are signing up, like, Oh, I got a new team. So we stuck to the MPA plan hiring and as a result, we’ve got incredible.

Shelley Lentfer 11:43
So where are we now.

Brittany Smith 11:45
So 12 months later, this is where we are, we have had success on so many levels with a financial goal that we’ve set for ourselves three months ahead of schedule, finally allowed us to pay ourselves more than $100 a week for the first time.

We have incredible client base,

we have amazing traders without grown as studio in nine months. And a problem we never thought we’d have to look for bigger studio expanded as timetable, we have created these systems, which allow us to operate effectively, and also create a framework for our clients to see tangible results. Most of all, though, we believe in ourselves. And we know that we can do business now.

Shelley Lentfer 12:33
And so personally, a lot of 2018 was dedicated to really getting the most out of NPA like we’ve given ourselves 12 months to try and turn this around. But alongside of that, anyway, there’s been some pretty big personal things for us. So Brett got married overseas to the beautiful, lovely team. And

I am very,

very soon, it has been a big thing for us. And we haven’t thought about puppies for four years trying to have a baby. So they’re two really significant things. And we’re both looking forward to the future and with a thriving business, not just a volunteer. So what this practically means in numbers, though, is that the numbers don’t lie. We’ve had our best month ever, in November of this year. So right now we’re going to hit 22 and a half thousand dollars in income for that month. And having a look at the 12 months snapshot. So November last year to now you can see we’re at 12 and a half thousand to 22 and a half. So that is a 78% increase in income.

Yes. Looking again,

at that same snapshot for clients, we were at 58 clients this time last year, we more than doubled that. And we’re actually at 130. And this is growing daily. And the other thing is we’re at capacity is one of the core parts of our business, which is the mums and bubs that we mentioned earlier. So we’ve decided to close our books so that we can really maintain our core values and purpose. And this is a strategy that we thought we would never forecast on clients is to by June next year, we’re set to be at 160. And we are on track to do this. So maybe even early again. And then when you have a look at our financial forecast. So the financial year in Australia ends at the end of June 2019 to end of June it is each year, we’re set to hit 20 260,000. And you can see that for the previous years we just floundered around that same level. And then yeah, so and this is now giving us the freedom to invest back in the business in our clients and so

beautiful stuff. Yeah.

Brittany Smith 14:49
So our key takeaways, all you anything is out there, we’ll get a lot of follow over day interactions. Have, we had the most success where we trusted the process? We had to put in the work. There’s countless, we put in countless hours. But when we saw the results, they gave us the energy to keep going. So a key takeaway from our work hard but also smart. Stay in your power, choose a growth mindset. Make your decisions from a place of love, not feed. The fortune is in the follow up, Rick, I know you like that one. And our biggest takeaway is that even the best coaches need coaches.

Shelley Lentfer 15:36
So thank you and fee Thank you for taking us from the brink of shutdown to growth beyond our wildest imagination,

Brittany Smith 15:43
hundred percent challenge. I have grown so much and as people and business owners, the knowledge base that we have in business strategy is incredible. But the thing I’m most proud of that is that we have become doers, not just dreamers and he is a very grounded support system and it allows you to achieve tangible results, not just glamorized success, overnight success stories that you see, you know, maybe on your social media accounts.

Shelley Lentfer 16:12
And so the future’s bright, we look forward to another successful 12 months with NP and there’s opportunity everywhere and it’s so exciting, and so we can’t say it enough. Thanks, Rick. Andre, Shawn Katrina, the whole NPA team and community, we literally will not be without you.