Driving Online Growth By Building In-House Capability With 8-Figure Mentor Tamara Loehr (#134)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

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[00:01:33] Jeffrey Feldberg: Tamara Loehr is an online strategist and impact investor with over 25 years experience building an exiting seven and eight-figure online wellness brand. 

Tamara believes in profit and purpose with all her companies where giving is embedded to the United Nations, SDGs. Her mandate of ‘Buy 1, Support 1, Give 1’ is driven by a community of conscious consumers who are leveraging their collective purchasing power to support female founders that give back. 

Tamara's current focus. Beusail is disrupting the way large organizations engage, reward, and retain employees. Beusail's program helps companies drive impact and purpose from within by empowering their team to transform their lives and transform the world. 

Tamara is a proud YPO North Star founding member is a YPO Mentor Chair Board Member, and former president of her EO chapter. Tamara is a globally recognized and award-winning entrepreneur, including a Gold Stevie Award in New York for Fast Growth, Fast Starter, Top 20, and third place in Smart Company. 

Welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast. And wow, do we have a terrific episode lined up for you today. And all you female business owners that are out there this one is for you. 

And if you're not a female business owner for all the guys out there, you know what I think you can learn a lot from this as well. We have a very special guest with us today who's going to be sharing with us some terrific insights of how you can build, optimize and scale your business in a very unique way.

We'll be talking about how you can have a successful liquidity event and an exit, but as usual, I'm getting ahead of myself. So Tamara, welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. There's always a story behind the story tomorrow. What's your story? What got you to where you are today?

[00:03:44] Tamara Loehr: Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So for me, being an entrepreneur, it must definitely be in my DNA. I started very young, I finished school quite early and went to university and graduated at 18 and got pretty good grades.

I'm a creative by nature much to the disgust of my parents, not doing lower or something like that at uni. And I went out and got a fairly great job in an agency and loathed it. Certainly didn't like the whole marketing agency scene. So I started my own business at 19 and I did that for 10 years and built that to one of the largest agencies in my country, Australia, which you can tell from my accent.

 And then I found my tribe. And it's really interesting for so long I was the only one who was doing a business and getting a business to over a million in my twenties. And I was the big fish. And then all of a sudden I found Entrepreneurs Organization and got into a forum with seven other guys.

And at the time I was actually working with a lot of mergers and acquisition houses, which you are well aware of. And they were coming to me and saying to me, look, you've got a digital marketing agency. Can you spend some time with this business and show us some online growth. And I got known as the 10 million in under two years girl and I would go in and I would explode their online sales and the great thing about that for an exit was, is that if you have a traditional business and it's growing 5% year on year growth, if I can show in under two years, this massive hockey stick of growth in their online sales, then they can actually get a higher exit because they can do the valuation based on future projections. And then my forum said to me, look, you're doing this for all these other businesses.

Why don't you do it for yourself? And I went well, that would be fine, but I can't really think of something I want to invent or create. And they made a startling statement, which was four out of five businesses fail. Why don't you take sweat equity in one of those? So sweat equity for those who are listening is where you exchange your services in exchange for equity.

And this is particularly important in early-stage businesses where they can't necessarily find capital. There's a lot of scarcity for early-stage businesses. That's the end of one mil mark. So I would go in and provide my services in exchange for equity and grow those companies and exit them. So the first one that I did, I was doing a couple of hundred thousand but was certainly not breaking even.

But there were an MVP, a Minimum Viable Product managed to grow that to 14 mil in its third year and exit that one. So, the more you do that. The more people around you are curious and say what would that look like if you had capital? So since then, I've done some raising of capital.

I'm also a shareholder in a $20 million fund. Yeah, so really applying my digital marketing skills to help businesses grow that part of their business in particular so that we can get a good exit. So that's me, it's a long story, but by the time we get to 45, it usually is. 

[00:06:54] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, Tamara I absolutely love that. There's a lot to unpack there, starting from the age of 19 and just really learning the ropes on your own. And I would imagine when you first started being a female in business, I would suspect was probably harder back then than it is today. 

But what was that like for you when you first got going and you're new, you're learning things. How did that work out for you in the beginning? What were some takeaways for you?

[00:07:21] Tamara Loehr: Well, What was interesting is they all assumed I had a boss because I like to do the opposite. And when I was younger, my parents, you know, certainly wealthy the third generation miners. I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I was like, okay, I know I need to invest in property.

And they do all these things and I need a business that's profitable and I don't want to chase all the other accounts that all the other agencies, what I call the sexy accounts. I wrote a list of all the clients that were high paying, recurring like their high compliance. So they needed a lot of reporting.

They weren't really great at online yet in particular community relationships online and creating those communities. So I started that hit list and then went after those clients and they were big. So they would say you know, go back to your boss and come back with a proposal. And it was quite funny because sometimes within a year, sometimes two, they go, there is no male bosses there.

You own this company. And I'd be like, yes, they said why didn't you tell me? And I said you made that horrible assumption. So capability isn't based on age and I was very confident in the fact that if I got results that it didn't matter about my age and it didn't matter about my gender, certainly.

And in most cases, you know, I was in male-dominated industries, but if know the things for me was the competence in getting the outcomes. I say a lot when it comes to online, that impressions of vanity engagement and sanity and conversion is king a bit like the saying that the having accounting that turnover is vanity profit is sanity and cash is king, but that's my version online.

And you know, always getting really great results with people that were getting sales. They were growing their businesses online and I could carry that into the next meeting. So referrals became a really big thing for me. So yeah, I think confidence and getting outcomes for your customers.

That's really the important thing for me to be able to soldier on in my twenties. But to be honest, if I had have known what I know now, I certainly would have got a mentor a lot earlier in my twenties. I would have found my tribe a lot earlier in my twenties because it took me 10 years to get to a million.

And it took me two years to get to 10 million and I really put it down to those two things. So try and always be the smallest fish in the room. 

[00:09:38] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. And really, it sounds like Tamara, the heavy lifting that you learned firsthand, it didn't just stop with you because you're now paying it forward. And if you take your 10 million in two years, and. You take the part of having a mentor, which I couldn't agree more with you. You're doing something very special for female business leaders.

And why don't you share with us what you're doing and what that's all about, because really your younger days of just being new in business, that was really pivotal and foundational of what you're doing today? I just love the tie-in, perhaps you can share with our listeners what that's all about.

[00:10:16] Tamara Loehr: Yeah, certainly it was interesting because when I had a mentor and I saw the power in that, and I've been so blessed with amazing mentors, and I said to myself, you know what, when I get to YPO, which is Young Presidents' Organization, you have to turn over 20 million a year before you're 40.

The average income was 45 million a year for members. And it's all accredited and certified revenue. They have to get access to your accounts and get that signed off by a certified accountant. So that was my goal is to get in there now. Unfortunately, less than 10% of members are women.

And I said to myself, as soon as I get into YPO, I'm going to pay it forward and I'm going to mentor women in business. So I started doing that actually at the start of COVID. I was inundated actually. Almost 200 women who reached out to me who said, look, I need to pivot to digital yesterday.

And that's your wheelhouse, so can you help me? And I went to my mentor and I was quite overwhelmed. And I said how do I possibly mentor so many women? I can't, I've got investors, I've got my own businesses that I'm running. And he said again in true mentor style. Why don't you just give them your IP?

And which was really an interesting concept because you know, I had created these SOPs, these Standard Operating Procedures for how I scale my businesses online. And I do follow the same process religiously. Every time I invest in a business or acquire a business. So he said to me, look, why don't you give it to them?

It was actually quite organic. I got together 22 women mainly in America, but from all over the world, they were doing a minimum of 500,000 in revenues. Some were doing up to 80 million in revenue and still hadn't achieved digital transformation. And we can go into what that means a little bit more in a second.

 And I took them through the process of building optimizing and scaling their businesses online. And the one thing that was a standout was at the end of that nine-month process of taking them through that and mentoring them on the strategy, but then helping them with the execution that coupling of mentoring and execution is really where you start to see the outcomes because if you just mentor them alone, what happens is they run away and they run down a rabbit hole and end up spending a fortune on things that you know or going down the wrong rabbit hole because everything online is very tech-focused. So being able to provide them that online strategy through mentorship and coupling that with help from a C-suite CTO.

My C-suite CTO, who's also my business partner. She helps in the program and she specializes in companies 100 mil plus. So she knows what she's doing. And it's certainly not something that all of these women could afford to put in their own business will get access to. So just those two alone is really where the magic is.

And we saw an average of 44% growth in their online revenue in, under a year. We saw four of them go from a million to qualify for YPO, which is outstanding. That's 500% growth in some cases. And we had two that were approached. Who weren't looking to exit, but were approached to exit. So, that was the first group.

So we've decided that's a really good formula me to be able to mentor more women. If I did it in isolation I would probably only be able to impact 10 female businesses a year. But now I'm able to do a hundred a year and take them through this process and they still get access to me both one-on-one and through a group environment.

And you know, to think that's a half a billion worth of revenue that we're helping grow. It's quite exciting to me. 

[00:13:49] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. So much is going on there and we can just go down so many rabbit holes, but before we do that Tamara, why don't you share for our listeners you talk about digital transformation. What does that really mean?

[00:14:03] Tamara Loehr: Well, it's interesting because a lot of people realize that they need to be digital. I mean, you know, yourself being in business, you need to remain relevant. Otherwise, you will get left behind, but digital transformation for a lot of businesses, unfortunately, meant going out and hiring an expensive agency.

And I say this with open hearts, but honestly, agencies are the new versions of lawyers, they're the only ones who win. So the person who can spend the most acquiring the customer wins and before small business, you know, it was our playing ground. We could take land grab pretty easily online fairly inexpensively, but now with the flooding of VC money and the attention on online land grab and obviously everyone pivoting to digital. It's supply and demand.

So now to acquire a customer like in my field, which is beauty, if you're a good marketer, you can acquire a customer for $80. Now, if you're selling something for $30, your break evens a while away. I know some venture capital-backed companies that will bleed until eight months for their breakeven.

And to me, that's atrocious. I like to break even on the first sale and make sure that my businesses are structured in a way where I get them on subscription or repeat business and have a great lifetime value of a customer and LTV. So what I suggest to people, if you want to pivot to digital and you want online to be a key driver of your growth, then you can't delegate that you need to bring it in-house, and you need to understand the fundamentals as a CEO or a founder of what digital is and how it works so that you can manage it.

Because at the end of the day, the fish rots from the head. And if you don't know what the key drivers are and what the strategy is and help drive that internally. Then you're not going to land where you want to go. So, you know, bringing CEOs into the program and preparing them to learn the fundamentals, bringing their marketing managers along so we can help them with the execution and provide that intel that perhaps the founder doesn't have access to, but really giving them that process so that they can scale online and where your focus goes, your energy flows.

For me, it's about showing up every week and looking at these numbers, looking at the data, knowing what the key metrics are that we need to be focusing on so that we can make sure we not only grow our online growth, but we also have great metrics compared to industry standards. And this is really important when you exit, I always get a higher multiple for the companies that I exit.

Because the cost per acquisition, the lifetime value of that customer all of those are a lot lower than the industry average, which gets investors very excited first because of that factor, because they want to figure out how I do that. But secondly, because I have all the SOP and I have the infrastructure internally in order to drive that growth, that we're not dependent on a third-party agency to be able to grow this business. And those two things really do help get a higher exit for me when I'm exiting a business that is online. 

[00:17:11] Jeffrey Feldberg: So we now have a bit of a foundation that we can build off of, but let me ask you this before we jump into that. When you look at yourself as a female business leader, a business owner, when you first started and you fast forward to today, has anything changed? Where are you on that?

[00:17:27] Tamara Loehr: Well, you know, hopefully, we are all evolving and growing. Having a thirst for learning is almost compulsory for entrepreneurs, but I think the thing that has really changed is I don't work in the business. I work on the business. I made sure that I share in the equity. If you have someone with skin in the game, that's a lot different.

So, you know, I love to partner with women who want to transition to entrepreneurship but don't necessarily want to jump out and quit their job and invest lots of money because they don't understand it. So really investing in your people and their pathways is really important. And then the third for me is impact.

Actually, I believe business can be amazing force for good. Within YPO alone, we do $9 trillion in America. So imagine if that was a business that was for good. So everything that I do is by one support one female founder, and give one to the United Nations sustainability goals. So, you know, like the business, the first business that I did as sweat equity, we were doing 40,000 meals a week by the end of that.

And we had buy one, give one, and embedded in that so, we were giving a meal to a child in school in Africa, and we all know education is the way to shift things. So you know that to me, when you get to her latest stage in your business, you go through the just trying to survive and then you thrive and you do a bit of payback and then you move to this point of legacy and impact.

And for me, it's how do I empower more of these businesses that are mentoring to be a net positive? And what I mean by that is sustainable, you know, giving more than they take, utilizing their business to really make a positive impact on everyone that it touches. Whilst I'm mentoring them in digital transformation, we do have a number of enlightened men in the program, by the way.

And both in product-based and service-based businesses because lead gen online for services is very relevant, but I'm really talking to them as well about, it's not just about the money. It's not just about the exit. Though those two things are really important. How do we both stand for both profit and purpose?

So for me, I think my younger days, I would have said, you know what? Just enjoy the ride businesses again, go get a mentor, go find your tribe and work smarter not harder with a purpose, have a true purpose for why you're doing everything. Because if you don't, it can go the wrong way. 

[00:19:55] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, absolutely terrific insights with what you're sharing. So Tamara let's jump in here now, and you've seen so much, I mean, you've written a book, Balance is BS, your marketing companies are in the top 2% of all agencies in the country. For our listeners that are looking in some of them may be thinking, you know, Tamaraw you have all the success, maybe you're smarter than what I'm able to do how do I start? What would you say to that business owner?

[00:20:26] Tamara Loehr: Well, what's interesting is I'm not like a lot of the people who are in YPO who came from private schools. I'm an Aussie country girl who went to a public school, who certainly has never got any handouts. And really, had nothing to do with any of those things that the private schools or the MBAs or any of that stuff.

It's really about your ability to be able to solve problems. So if you're wanting to take the leap into entrepreneurship the only thing I would say is don't look at it and listen to the people who say, become an overnight success and millionaire overnight, and all these get rich quick sort of things, really sit down and derive a plan as to what the business will do to serve you, your family, your community, the other people inside that business and the world at large.

And spend some time on what it is that you love about what you do. Now, don't forget that 47% of women in America are now the breadwinners, all that's telling me is that they're running somebody else's business. So they're very capable of running their own. The issue with taking the leap into entrepreneurship is a number of things.

The first thing is access to mentorship, and unfortunately massive scarcity of female mentors who are eight figures and nine figures. I don't think I've met many in my time that I've been doing this. So that's the first issue. And that's really important because as female entrepreneurs, we are juggling. I've got young kids, we're traveling, 70 staff you have all these things going on.

And it is different for a woman, it just is. So, you know, having that female mentor to be able to navigate both family business and itself is really important. The second issue is access to capital. Women get 2% of all capital. And I'm pretty sure I know where it's going. It's going to women like myself, who've got a track record, certainly not start-ups in their first gig.

So how do we break down that barrier as well? And for me, that's very much about providing them a platform where they can take the leap into entrepreneurship as a side hustle and then make that transition over time. So starting with your first number, what is the number I need to cover off just so I can quit my job and get the flexibility that I need to be able to focus on my business.

And then the second thing is about how do I get that business then to a million dollars. And then how do I look at raising capital and eventually an exit because there's not enough women exiting businesses, you would know that. And the reason is there's not enough businesses getting to a point where they justify capital, which is usually the five mil plus sort of mark where You can really get access to some good capital and partnerships, strategic partnerships. So we need to focus on how do we get women to that point, but taking the leap is all about confidence, access to mentorship, and reducing those barriers in the absence of capital so that they can get to a point where they can thrive. 

[00:23:23] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Tamara what's been constant throughout your narrative here is whether you're a woman who is looking to get into business for the first time, or maybe it's a female business owner who has had a business for a number of years but the difference is really that mentorship, that coaching, the ability to learn from someone who's been down the path for some time has had the, in the trenches experiences and that you can learn from.

And I think for our listeners, that's such an important takeaway. You don't have to do it alone. There's people and resources out there like Tamara who can help you get from where you are now to where you want to be tomorrow and down the road so much more quicker. And what's interesting Tamara in the Deep Wealth Experience, in our 9-step roadmap as an example, step number two is something that we call X-Factors that Insanely Increase the Enterprise Value of Your Business. And one X factor is something that we've been loosely talking about. We call the four points of clarity and within the four points of clarity are very specific key performance indicators or KPIs that you can measure depending on the KPI on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly basis.

So when you're looking at the businesses and you're mentoring and helping and coaching these female founders and business owners, what would be some KPIs that coming out of this episode, they can at least be aware of, or even begin to think about implementing in their own businesses. What would be some of those really key and essential KPIs to know about?

[00:24:55] Tamara Loehr: Yeah, I think when it comes to online, there's a number of KPIs and they differ depending on the job and at the business, whether they're a service-based or a product-based business, but for me, It's very much about the loyalty and the cost per acquisition. So the issue that I find is sales online is no different, any other funnel.

 Leads come in the top and you take them through a pre, a core, and a post-process. But what people do online and they do in person actually is they tend to stop at the acquisition. They get the customer and they go, yay we got the client. And then they move on to try and find another customer.

Instead of thinking about what is underneath the hood that I can leverage in order to get my LTV, my Lifetime Value of a customer up and to get my loyalty up, to get them referring and becoming raving fans. So for me, the metrics are all about how do I get them through the customer value journey all the way to the end, to the point where they're a high-paying customer. They're referring their friends, they're leaving reviews and they're called advocates. Those sorts of metrics are extremely important for an exit because one of the things I'm sure you look at is churn and churn is how many customers are working your way through.

And eventually, you may work through all the potential customers as opposed to you want your churn rate to be really low, as opposed to a business that has loyal customers who are coming back time and time again. So for me, it's looking at what are the metrics that we need inside this business?

I love subscription-based businesses. I love repeat businesses. And then how do we focus on that number in order to get it higher? And we have our goals. So we build that in first, then we optimize it. So we're not going to go out and spend thousands of dollars and bleed money on ads because that's only lining Zuckerberg's and Google's pockets.

We're going to split test and see what works and what doesn't. And we're going to refine that process, that whole customer value journey process to get that cost per acquisition, as low as possible. And then what we're going to do is then we scale it. That's the exciting bit then we can turn that up.

And, when we look at the beauty industry, which is $80, as I said, as an average cost per acquisition, we're getting our leads at the moment for $1.10. Phone numbers and emails, so the person who can acquire the customer for the lowest is obviously going to win. And the person who can take them through that customer value journey to the point where they're raving fans and they're bringing friends along, or they're referring other people in their industry and their peers or you have someone who is buying the product and going on subscription.

Those are the three key metrics that I look at, but each business is different, but when you go through a due diligence process there are key things that I look at, barriers to entry if it's a subscription or not, competition, all of these things are stuff that I look at and go, okay is this something that I can win at and is it scalable? 

[00:27:47] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. So definitely some strong strategies, some takeaways of what to do, but let's flip it Tamara so you've talked about what to look for, what works. What would be some of the more common mistakes that not just female business owners, but business owners in general are making that perhaps 80% of the mistakes being made are coming from these two or three mistakes, whatever those would be?

[00:28:11] Tamara Loehr: Good question. And I see this a lot. I call it the magpie syndrome. You're always picking up shiny objects and it's the discipline to focus on verticals. So, Let me explain that a little bit. When it comes to online, you need to be granular. In fact, you need to be micro-granular when it comes to your targeting.

Otherwise, you end up throwing out a massive net that has humongous holes in it, and all the fish getaway. The first thing I do is I focus on the numbers, the data doesn't lie. And I go, where is our revenue coming from? And the old rule, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients.

Then we look at that 20% of those clients and go, what verticals are they? So once we establish what those verticals are. So for instance, in my Eco Lux beauty, it might be conscious moms or new moms that have just had a child. And they're really conscious about what they're using in the bathroom.

What they're putting on their skin, all of that sort of stuff. So that's one vertical that we can focus on. And why that's really important is you have less than two seconds to get their attention. And thanks to Tik Tok. It's under one second. So we need to be able to speak to their pain points fairly quickly.

Now, if we're trying to capture and some people say to me, my customer avatar is 22 to 65. And they are breadwinners and stay-at-home moms and beauty-conscious people and makeup artists, and they carry on. I go, that's way too much, way too broad. We've got to narrow that right down and just pick one vertical based on the numbers of what we know is our ideal customer.

And then we want to go deep and narrow on that vertical, most people I see are trying to in all their businesses, whether they're online or offline in both areas, they're going broad. So they're trying to be everything to everyone and they end up mediocre to everyone. So if we can pick off a few of these things and then really focus on those and drive the revenue on that vertical to over 10 million dollars online alone. 

Then I said to them great, fit that one through the goals. Now let's look at the next vertical and that's the best way I feel to scale a business. If you've got two or three of those verticals, that's when you can get to that over $20 million sorts of revenue which is an exciting place to be. But the discipline of being able to do that is really important because people just like to not say no to customers. Now they can still come and buy your services or your product. That's fine, but we're not going to actively go out and attract them.

We're not going to actively target them. We'll spend money on targeting them because these are our verticals. This is our discipline, and this is how we scale our business. 

[00:30:47] Jeffrey Feldberg: So it sounds like the takeaway here is focus and then while you're focusing have even more focus and once you're done focusing focus once again and just really have a laser-like focus on a particular vertical until you can dominate that master that once you've done that perhaps Tamara as you're saying, there's an opportunity to do the same thing in a different vertical.

And is that laser-like focus on a particular vertical until you master that until you can really own that. That really sounds like it's the key mistake that business owners aren't doing, and that's really the key ingredient to having a successful business of how you can ramp it up so quickly when you have that focus. Would I be correct or not?

[00:31:30] Tamara Loehr: Absolutely. And start with the end in mind. Most of the time I go, okay, this is where I want the business to be. The one that I'm in currently, I want it to be at 300 million. And my ideal exit is to somebody like Unilever who can put it into their engine room and then take it to another level.

So, you know, really starting with the end in mind is important. That's one of the first questions I do when I mentor people is do you want to exit this business? And even if they say, no, I explain to them, we're still going to set it up as if it will be because options are good in a business set up to exit. It's just a better run business. It's not key person dependent. It has the right SOPs. It doesn't rely on the founder. Thinking about that exit, working back from that or that angle, and working back from that is really important and understanding what your bus stop is as I call it.

You may want to take a business to only 5 million and then exit it. Some people want to go further. Some people are creatives and really love that early-stage startup stage. So once it gets to 20 million and you've got management teams and board members and HR and all those things, sometimes that doesn't interest them either. We've got to love what we do. So think about your bus stop. Think about, start with the exit in mind and then work back from that. And, that's my job as a mentor is to ask those tricky questions. 

[00:32:45] Jeffrey Feldberg: It's definitely a page out of the Deep Wealth Experience in terms of what we're doing. Just that preparation before you start having an exit in mind and doing all the things upfront nice and early, because really Tamara when you think about it, your preparation, when you start your preparation for a future liquidity event, and you start that on day one.

How you prepare and what you do will impact on how you actually run the business. And then on the flip side, how you run the business will have an impact on how you prepare. So you get this positive feedback loop and when all is said and done, you're saving your health, your money, and your time. When you do that preparation, you can show up to your liquidity event.

You maximize your enterprise value. As we like to say, at Deep Wealth, you've found hidden skeletons in the closet. You've removed them. You went into the attic, you found those hidden Rembrandts. You put them out for public display. And you now have a company that's going to be attractive to a future buyer.

Now speaking of companies and liquidity events, I have a question as we begin to wrap up this episode, and I know you're a big proponent of digital and being online. I'm curious, how has the coronavirus pandemic, how has it changed the digital world in terms of now having an online business? What have you seen that's impacted us today and perhaps what's going to be coming down the road as a result of this? 

[00:34:05] Tamara Loehr: Well, there's good and bad in every situation. And I think what we've seen is obviously the influx and the growth of online purchases, which is fantastic. But we've also seen a bit of the great divide. It's becoming more like retail where the big guys are certainly winning and taking what I call land grab online. 

Luckily if you are doing it right, if you're a small business and you're remaining relevant and you bringing it in-house and building those capabilities in-house, you can meet that challenge. But as far as I'm concerned, if you're not keeping up with that you will be gobbled up.

The majors are playing in a big way now online. And there's a lot of acquisition going on. Your ability to be able to embrace digital and take your little piece 10, 20 million of something so that you can be positioned for an exit. Just understanding that landscape is really important.

It's doable. It's just supply and demand online. For me, I'm actually mentoring my group more and creating online communities and then going out and doing ads and saying, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. Spending more time upfront on community-based selling where we have a group of people that have like-minded values that are at our ideal customers.

How can we go in there and add value 90% value, 10% suggestive sale? And that takes patience because you need to build their trust. But what it does do is when you do you have loyal customers and your cost per acquisition, isn't as high. So, you know, think about where's your community of customers, where are they online and how can you lean into that community and really just show up and serve.

And if we serve, we don't need to sell. The sell automatically happens. So I'm really encouraging my mentees to do the opposite, not to just put a product up and a special offer and a discount because we all know that discounting is a terrible road to the bottom. So how do we show up in those communities, serve those people, add value, and then acquire the customers that way and spending time with them?

So they're all actively doing that and getting great by doing that. So yeah, some thought for those people who are listening, who had thinking that the cost per acquisition is going through the roof and how do I counteract that? 

[00:36:17] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Some words for the wise. And I know we're talking about digital businesses, online businesses, but really Tamara what you're sharing that goes to the heart of being an entrepreneur. And we're the ones that find a very painful problem, solve that problem, remove that pain for people. 

We're educating. We're not selling. We're just really making a difference out there. And as any entrepreneur knows, we always want to go above and beyond. Go the extra mile. Just because for no other reason, no expectation makes a difference, be the light out there in a sea of darkness. And what you're talking about really resonates.

So Tamara we're at the point in this episode where we're going to begin to wrap up and I'm going to ask you one of my favorite questions. And the question for you is this, I'd like you to think about the movie Back to the Future. And in the movie, you have the magical DeLorean car, which can take you back to any point in time.

So Tamera imagines it's now tomorrow morning, you look outside the window, the DeLorean car is there. The door is open and it's waiting for you to hop on in. So you'll hop into the car and you can now go back to any point in your life, Tamara as a child or a teenager, a young adult, whatever the case would be.

What would you tell your younger self in terms of, hey, Tamara, do this, or here's some life wisdom or don't do that? What would that look like for you? What would you be telling yourself?

[00:37:38] Tamara Loehr: Oh, wow, thats an interesting one because I'm quite spiritual. And I think that if I hadn't have had the struggles, then that's where the biggest lessons are. I would definitely tell myself in my twenties that you deserve to own the business, not help grow it.

So if I knew online was going to be huge. I was making people a lot of money online. What would that have looked like if I had done that for myself? And if I had understood the structure of family office and investing in all of those sorts of things. So whilst I am a creative at heart, I would have said to myself, learn those fundamentals so that you can do this for yourself because the bigger you grow a business with impact, the more impact you can make. I would have certainly done that a little bit earlier, but then would I have had all the fun, not sure I'd learned all those lessons. I think we're here on this lifetime to learn lessons. And that really does help me relate to my mentees when they're in that same position I can say to them, look, it took me 10 years to figure this out.

Let me give it to you now. So you can save that time. Sometimes it's good to be able to reflect and know that you can pass that on to other people. That's the point for me at this point in my life is really about giving back to not only female entrepreneurs, but any business that really wants to make a difference because business is hard and the bigger guys are getting bigger.

How do we help small businesses survive? Because it's such a backbone for our community for everything that we do. And it's not just about online, it's about going down and buying local. It's about supporting your neighbors, knowing your neighbors.

Those are the things that are really important. And I feel we need to come together as an organization and really help those startups get to that point. 

[00:39:13] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific advice, some wisdom, and some insights. Tamara, thank you so much. And one last question for you. As we wrap things up, we'll put all of this in the show notes. So it'll be point and click it'll save the listeners time. If somebody who would like to reach you online, what would be the best place for that?

[00:39:30] Tamara Loehr: Yeah. So you can go to our website, which is the Beusail Academy, and apply for mentorship or I'm on social. I do a room on clubhouse every week, so you can come and actually ask some questions. I try and make myself available to as many people as possible and all the social media channels. And just know that I personally check those myself and answer everyone. So give me a couple of weeks to get back to you, but just please reach out. The worst thing you can do is do nothing and don't think, oh I'm not ready yet. Or I'm not big enough or whatever the limiting beliefs are, put those aside and just know that wherever you are on the journey, if it's not me who can help you, there is somebody I can introduce you to.

And that's something we haven't talked about today, but your network is your net worth. And I do have access to a great network. So how can I help you fast-track and get you to your goal quicker and make a difference on your life? Because when you create wealth for you and your family and the community around you, you can do some pretty beautiful things in this lifetime. So I encourage you to take the leap and reach out. 

[00:40:33] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Terrific. And it doesn't get any better. Tamara is asking you to reach out to her. And again, we'll put all that in the show notes. It'll be a point and click for you. Well Tamara a big thank you for spending part of your day with us here on The Sell My Business Podcast. And as we wrap up the episode as always, please stay healthy and safe. Thank you so much. 

[00:40:51] Tamara Loehr: Thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed it. And thanks for everything you do as well.

[00:40:54] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

[00:40:58] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

[00:41:08] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

[00:41:13] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:41:19] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

[00:41:34] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

[00:41:57] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

[00:42:07] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:42:20] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

[00:42:39] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:43:05] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

[00:43:24] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode of the Sell My Business podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Reviews help me reach new listeners, grow the show and continue to create content that you'll enjoy. 

As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe.  

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth. 

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