Wendy McCallum (01:35)
Hey, coach, welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum. So glad that you're joining me here today. We're gonna talk about something that's kind of seasonal. It is really specific to a problem that I see coming up over and over again with the coaches that I support inside my BBB, which is my community for newer coaches, coaches in the first five years or so of their business.
And I see this all the time. We talk about it a lot in November, which is when this episode is airing. And that is this idea that they're not gonna be able to make their revenue targets in December because December is a slow month, because people aren't buying in December. And coaches get really stressed about that. I wanna give you an entirely different lens on that. I want you to really think about what might be possible for you and how it might change things for you if you actually...
stopped trying to hustle in December and sell anything in December. And instead you looked at December through a completely different lens, which is a lens of a time to really, reset, rest, recover, and get ready for new year for January sales. So I am going to, walk you through how you can set up your business rhythms. And we're to talk about what those are, how you can prep smarter.
and how you can leverage buyer psychology so that you can truly rest in December and still hit your revenue targets come January. So the first thing I want to talk about is the rhythm of revenue or revenue seasons, as I call them. And this is something that you may have heard me talk about before. I'm going to share my personal revenue seasons as an example of how a successful coaching business can work.
where the coach is not making the same amount of money every month. In my early years of coaching, I did what probably many of you have done. I set some goals when I started setting revenue goals, which I did not do in the first couple of years, and I've talked about that before, that was a bad idea. You have to have goals in order to grow and succeed. Otherwise, you're just running a hobby business. But once I started setting goals, in those first years of setting goals, I fell into the trap of setting a gross monthly goal for the month.
and keeping that gross goal the same for every month of the calendar year. So let's say my goal was in those early years, I wanna make $5,000 a month gross. I wanted to make $5,000 a month in September and I also wanted to make that in November and I wanted to make that in May and I wanna make that in July and I wanted to make that in August. Every calendar month was the same. And that is probably how many of you have set up your goals. The problem with that is that
It doesn't match up with the natural seasons of coaching and with buyer psychology. So you're going to end up frustrated by that. going to end up feeling like you have failed, which is how I felt in those first few years of setting revenue targets that way. Because what would happen is inevitably there would be dips, there would be lows, there would be months where people just didn't seem to be interested in the offers, didn't seem to be buying the same way, didn't seem to be engaged in the same way.
And in those months, it was very, very difficult for me to meet those targets. And so I would just hustle harder and I would be more frustrated and more burnt out. Typically, December is one of those months. And that's why I'm doing this podcast, because it's November and I want to talk about December. I changed all of that, though. I have stopped working with this goal system that has a
revenue goal, an identical revenue goal for every month. I've stopped doing that. I don't take my gross goals for the year and divide them by 12, and that's how much I wanna make a month. I don't do it that way. I take my gross goals for the year, and then I look at my calendar, I look at my life, but I also look at the typical, what I now know to be the typical peak buying seasons in the coaching industry, and I plan my monthly targets.
based on that and they are different for every month and there are seasons to it. So for example, in my coaching business personally, my highest revenue months are always September, October and early November and January, February. Now that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes have months outside of that that are huge months. I do if I'm launching something and oftentimes I'll try to fill in gaps by purposefully launching something, but.
Those months are the ones I can rely on as my big months every year. And I also know that my lower revenue months are almost always going to be July and August, sometimes part of June, I have some balanced months in between. So the months in between, I know I'm gonna be making sort of a, have lots of systems now in my business of revenue, which is what I teach in the BBB so that I have recurring revenue every month. And I know that I'm gonna be making at least this month,
at least this much in each of those months. But there are months that are really like big boon months for me in terms of revenue. And January is always one of them. The point here is that your revenue goals don't have to be identical month to month. In fact, it's a bad idea, I think, for coaches to set them as identical month to month. Because like I said, you are setting yourself up for failure with that because it doesn't match up with your real life, the seasons of your real life.
including needing to take holidays, the busyness of the December month, for example, taking downtime then to spend time with your family, and also with buyer psychology, which we're going to talk about in a minute. Sustainable, profitable businesses are built around what you want your life to look like. This is something I am passionate about. The first thing I want you to do before you even start thinking about like buyer psychology and then when people are more likely to be buying is look at your actual life. When are you?
in a position to work harder. What are the months where you can really commit and dedicate yourself to, for example, launches and sales periods? Because those are a lot harder. And, you know, you need to know what a launch cycle looks like for you. Again, that's that's for another podcast. But I typically work with, for example, within the BBB, it's an eight week cycle. So I will have an open house every two months, not every month, every two months. And there's a very specific plan around that.
eight week cycle in terms of what I'm talking about and when. So for example, this podcast is airing at the beginning of November. I know that. I also know that in November 2025, there's an open house happening on November 20th. So one of the things I will do is I will in this podcast episode, invite anybody listening who wants to check out the BBB, wants to meet me virtually in person, as I like to call it.
to come to that open house and you can sign up for that anytime at wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB. The link is also in the show notes. So that is the third quarter of that eight week sales cycle is me trying to remind people and doing some more clear marketing of the open house itself. So just telling people about the open house, reminding them that it's happening, sharing the link to sign up for it.
asking my BBB coaches to share it with their coach friends, all of that, that happens in that third quarter of the eight weeks sales cycle. But what I don't do is have an open house every month, because that's exhausting. And I also have a two week break after the end of this eight week cycle. So the first two weeks, the first quarter of the eight week cycle is actually a break. That's just where I'm talking about things. I'm talking about topics that matter to me. I'm sharing valuable content with people, doing like...
whatever networking and marketing comes up, but I don't have anything that I am like hard pushing, hard selling. So I know my sales cycle. I want you to know your sales cycles too, so that you can tie those in with your real life. So you can look at your calendar and you can say, look, I can do that. I can do like a hard sales cycle in the fall, but I can't do that in the summertime. So there are no open houses in the summer. Why? Because I...
Take the summer off. The summer is a downtime for me and I don't wanna be in that eight week marketing cycle for the open house that maybe is happening in July or August. I don't wanna be in that in June, July, August. So I have an open house typically at the end of May, sometimes in June and there's one in September, but there isn't one in July or August, right? So I want you to do the same thing. Look at your calendar. What actually works for your real life? Build your business around your life, which allows you
to set different revenue goals for different months of the year and still make your whatever your annual goal is for the year. The other thing that you wanna be thinking about with the rhythm, this rhythm of sales is the buyer mindset at various times of the year. And I think there are some really predictable seasons of buyers mindsets in the coaching industry, which we're gonna talk about in a little bit.
Let me tell you this, this is a no-brainer. January is a month where people are ready for a reset. They're ready for a reboot, they're ready to buy. So, and December, not so much, right? So January is that fresh start season. It's when people are making resolutions, people reset their budgets typically at the beginning of the new year. So they have money maybe that they are ready and feel comfortable investing in their own personal growth and in change. And people are feeling generally more
optimistic, know, they're feeling excited about a clean slate, fresh start, all the rest of it. In December, though, which is the month I'm really going to encourage you to think about laying low in and backing off of any kind of selling launching. December is a month where people are overwhelmed. It's typically a very difficult month for a lot of people. There's lots of, you know, oftentimes emotions are running high.
The to-do list is never ending. There are all kinds of functions to be going to. So people are feeling really overwhelmed. They're feeling like they're probably financially at their limit because there's a lot of spending, obviously, that goes along with the holidays as well. And they don't have a lot of bandwidth for change. It's just not a time where people have extra energy or interest in making personal change. mean, how many times have you said it yourself that you will start that thing in January? That's just the mindset.
of December. So align your launches this year with when your audience is ready and when you're ready because like you're like everybody else you want to break in December too. The last thing I want to be doing is working my butt off in December not being able to take any time off with my family. I love taking I usually take almost two weeks off. The only thing that I'll do in December usually in that second week is I'll coach I'll do BBB office hours.
but I take a week off of BBB, else needs a week, coaches need a week off too. And I really don't wanna be doing a lot of launching marketing selling in December and you don't either. So you can align your launches with when your audience is most ready too. And it just happens to be that for most of us, our audience as well as us as coaches are gonna be most ready, most energized, most excited, most optimistic in January, not in December. So this is kind of a no brainer.
Let go of whatever that sales target was for December. Don't worry about that. Instead, add that to your, whatever the difference is, to your January targets. Make your January targets maybe double what your goal was for December. And then you can position whatever the offer is that you're going to make. You can really position it like just really in alignment with that buyer mentality, which is like, this is the exact reset, reboot, clean slate.
program that you had been dreaming of and hoping for as the new year begins. Okay, so what do we do in November? If we make this decision, okay, I'm not gonna do any big pitches, sales, launches, anything like that in December, what do we do with our November? Well, there's so many great things you can do in November. I mean, I would really...
be thinking about how can I set myself up for the easiest January? And what are the things that I need to do in order to launch whatever this offer is in January? And how can I get most of that done now? So the first thing you need to do obviously is decide on the offer. If you don't know what your offer is gonna be, wanna think about the offer. I always say when you're trying to decide what the offer is, look for the gap. So, and one of the ways to look for the gap is to actually ask your people. Like, what is it you would...
you're most looking for in January and where is, what is the thing that you would love to have for me but that I don't currently offer? If I was to create a dream program for you, what would that look like? Like go and ask your people, survey them or ask them on social media or reach out and do some interviews of some of your favorite clients who you've worked with or some potential clients who've been sort of hanging around on the edges, the periphery but haven't actually signed up for anything yet. Go do that research and create a program that fills that gap.
Then what you're going to do once you have some clarity on the offer, by the way, it could be an offer that you already offer, but you're just going to do a special promotion on it in January or a special launch push on it in January. So it might be an online program that you have or group coaching or a one-on-one offer, but you're going to want to go and you're going to want to look at what you have in terms of launch assets. Now, typically launch assets are going to include
at least these three things. A landing page, so somewhere where people can get the information about your program. Now, I also love a sales page. So what I mean by that is it doesn't actually maybe live on your website, but it is a PDF, like a branded document that sets out all the things that you would have on a landing page, all the frequently asked questions, all the details about the program, who it's for, who it's not for, what transformation you're gonna...
is being promised in this program, all of those things. But it's a PDF document that you can send directly to people to do direct marketing. Because I think that right now people are not buying from landing pages very much. And so any form of direct conversation and communication that you can do is the best way to build a lead and actually make a sale. So if you have a sales asset that you can send them instead of just a link to the website that they click through on Instagram or in your bio or
you whatever, you're probably gonna have better luck with that. So a landing page can be a page on your website, but it can also be a PDF landing page that you send to people. So I'm just opening that up for you. I usually have both. So you're gonna need a landing page. You're also gonna need some marketing copy. So some email copy that you're gonna send out to your newsletter list and or to anybody specifically that's interested in this program or you think might be a good fit for this program that you wanna start.
sales conversation with. So you've got to develop those emails and then you're also probably going to need some social media posts depending on where you are on social media, what your platforms are. You might want to pre-create some reels, some videos explaining the program, some maybe some static posts, those types of things and the captions for those.
the other thing that I would think about doing in November is creating some really specific emails that are warming your audience up for the January offer but not selling it to them yet. This is something that I do every year so you know this all of this is a whole lot easier as you can imagine if you also get ahead on your content which is something that I'm really passionate about
all of this gets a lot easier because you can start pre-planning content because you know what's
I really want you to think about it over the course of the whole calendar year, not just this
I'm always thinking pre-launch, so before that active launch period starts, I'm thinking, okay, what can I be doing giving people that's of reminding them of the fact that they are actually the right person for this offer that I'm going to offer them in another month, right? So it's a month.
for me usually pre-launches a month of really great valuable content. Sometimes I'm identifying or talking about what I call the problem before the problem. So if my course solves one problem, what's the problem that is keeping people from solving that problem with me? So what's the objection that's keeping people stuck or the challenge that's keeping people stuck so that they actually don't feel ready to tackle the bigger problem that my paid offer is gonna solve?
This is something I talk about a lot. You can use freebies, free content, little mini courses are great ways to address the problem before the problem, right? So again, I usually use the example of alcohol coaching, but if you've got a client who is really looking to permanently change their relationship with alcohol and they know that something really has to change for good, but they have never taken a weekend off alcohol trying to get them enrolled in a, you know,
60 day alcohol, fast, whatever you want to call it, break from alcohol right out of the gate is going to be really difficult because they don't even have confidence they can get through a weekend, get alcohol free. So the problem before the problem is helping them build their confidence that they can even get a couple days, right? And there's so many different ways to look at that depending on the niche that you serve and the problem that you help people solve. But December is a month where you can be talking about the problem before the problem. You can be helping people solve that.
you can be warming them up for a January offer. So that's the other type of sort of nurturing content that you're probably gonna wanna develop in November. this would be a good time for me to get on some podcasts and do some podcast guesting or other creative ways of sort of pre-marketing.
building the audience for this offer that you're gonna sell in January. you wanna get really clear on what offer it is that you're making. You're gonna wanna make sure your launch assets are lined up for that. If you already have a landing page for the program, go back and tweak it. it actually speak to...
the dream client has have things changed since the first time you offered this thing, like get that landing page really tuned up. Think about maybe making a sales PDF that you can easily send to people as a marketing tool. Once you start a conversation with them, maybe in the DMS on Instagram or through email and then create your email copy for the actual launch. How are you going to tell people about this offer? And then any social media content that you might need to launch this thing. Also create some nurturing content.
get some ideas for warming up your audience in December. So December's all about talking to people. It's all about just starting the conversations, not sales conversations, just conversations, just connecting with people. And maybe, like I said, try to help people solve the problem before the problem. Okay, what else can you do in...
November, December in order to set yourself up for a great January. I mean, this is a really good time to be thinking about batching, getting stuff done in advance. And I just want to talk to you about how I do this.
I don't want you to get overwhelmed when I tell you how I do it. And I want you to remember that I have been in this business now for 15 years and I'm at a point where I have a very regular revenue stream. I make good money. I can afford to have some people help me with some things, but I actually don't have that much paid help right now. I am currently working without a VA. I'm doing everything myself again because I lost my VA in June. And I do have somebody who helps me with copy who's fantastic.
but mostly I do this stuff myself. I plan all the podcasts, I do all the recording, I do a lot of my social media myself. I am always about four to six weeks ahead. What I mean by that is that I have my copy, my marketing, my podcast episodes recorded. I have everything done about four to six weeks ahead.
That is only possible because I know my launch seasons. I have a launch calendar. I have a plan for the year in terms of what I'm going to be talking about and when and what's happening in my life and when. And if you don't have that, you can't really effectively and efficiently batch your content in advance. It just doesn't work. I am recording this podcast episode. It is September.
10th today. This podcast episode I think is scheduled to air on November 3rd, the beginning of the first Monday of November. So I'm recording this episode almost two months in advance. And that's because I decided on the topics for my November podcasts, when I had a meeting with my copy person at the beginning of September. So we're always a couple months ahead in terms of planning the content for the podcast. And it's all really strategic, right? I'm, I'm talking about things, you know, this month that are
relevant to the season that you are in in coaching relevant to the calendar month that we are in and I need to pre plan those and think think sort of be thinking ahead and that's what I want to really encourage you to do as well. I also have all my copy done so my newsletters right now for October so again it's September 10th all of my September newsletters are scheduled they're done they're completed they're scheduled those were done in August all of my October podcasts are done scheduled show notes everything's done.
and we are in process of scheduling all of the October newsletter content. So that will also all get scheduled and done, I believe actually it may be done at this point. And what I'm working on, like I said, is now recording content for November. So I'm always ahead of the game and it is so much easier to run your business that way. It is such a weight off of me to know.
that I have all the podcast episodes already recorded, uploaded, done, and dusted and scheduled for October, because it just takes a lot of pressure off me. There were some years with my other podcast, the Bite Size Balance podcast, where I would be like maybe a week or two ahead on the podcast, and that was stressful to me because I always had to be creating new episodes. Now what I do is batch. So today, recording this podcast episode, I will probably record at least two other episodes today. I can usually do three max a day.
And by the end of tomorrow, I should have all four episodes for November recorded. Start thinking about how you can batch content. And December's a great month to do that. Because like I said, if you choose to not be actively launching and selling things, then you can spend your time actually pre-creating some content. So batching content is a really great way to manage your energy and also just reduce anxiety and stress as a small business owner, as a solopreneur who's doing it all.
So like I said, you can write and schedule your emails for December and your social posts for December now in November. And if you have any other content that you normally put out, maybe you have a blog or a podcast or some other regular client content that you share somewhere, you can pre-record, pre-create that now as well. So, I mean, I do this July, August are the months where I really get ahead of the game.
Because again, those are my lower months. I'm not seeing clients as much. I usually cut my client days down to one or two days a week. run, you know, the BBB still goes in July and August, but it's usually quieter in there. I just have more time to be spending doing content stuff. So July and August are typically months where I will just like, I think I had most of the podcast done for September by the beginning of July. So I will get ahead on things and I will also get ahead on on written copy and content.
And that just makes a big difference when I come into September, knowing that all of that is done and set up and ready to go. It's not about doing more stuff. It's just about doing it earlier. And I really want you to start thinking about that. How can I do things earlier? And this is a really great month to test this out. November is a great month to try this out. Try getting your January stuff and your December stuff ready now and see what a difference that makes in the month of December. You can actually take a break.
which by the way is incredibly important. Think of December as a reflecting and resting month, like a time to reset and gear up for January as opposed to a month where you're trying to sell a bunch of stuff. As we've talked about from a buyer psychology perspective, it's not a great month to sell anyway. Use the downtime to review your year, what worked, what didn't, and what you should keep and change. Now I...
I'm not so organized that I know for sure whether I'm doing a masterclass in December, live masterclass yet in December on how to double your profit in the next year. But I can tell you that the masterclass recording of last year's Two Times Your Profit workshop is available for free on my website, wendymcallum.com. You will find it under the coaching tool, the business coaching resources.
That is a really great workshop to go through. It's completely free, comes with a little worksheet that will help you to get clear on your cycles for next year and to help you plan out this calendar that I'm talking about and also plan your revenue based on your launch schedule and your real life. So that's something that you can do in December as well. But what I really wanted to take a minute to talk about is how creativity in your business and energy in your business, like it requires downtime.
I never get any good ideas. I never really get excited about things when I'm overwhelmed and feeling underwater. The times when I get the best ideas for my business and have the most clarity are when I'm actually stepping back from it. So oftentimes this will happen, you know, when I'm lying on a beach on vacation, for example, or in the month of December, when I'm spending less time sitting at my desk and more time doing fun things with my family or just.
Relaxing, reading books, that kind of thing. I'll come up with really great creative ideas for my business. Boredom is the birthplace of creativity, really, right? Like you need to take that time off. It's so important for you. Creativity needs space. That's how you're gonna get some good ideas for next year as well. Okay, so.
I want to invite you guys, this is kind of your takeaway from this episode. If you haven't done this already, I want you to take a look at your calendar for the next 12 months or if you want started in January. Take a look at your calendar. You can use the two times your profit masterclass as again as a really great tool to help you do this. But you're going to look at.
what months are going to be your launch heavy months, the months where you're going to have more, you're going to be hustling harder and you're probably going to have significantly increased income as a result. What months are going to be just your maintenance months where they're going to be steady, you're going to be doing less active selling, but you're going to be bringing in revenue from some of the recurring revenue systems that you have in place, your bigger funnel to bring in one-on-one clients, for example. And what months are your planned rest months, your planned downtime?
And then from that, you're going to really try to create a plan for launch cycles and for the seasons of your own coaching business. And you're going to change, just change your revenue goals accordingly. Trust me, it all works out. I have made, you know, every year now for the last
seven years or so just continue to make more money annually every year and I can tell you that if I was to look at how much time I've dedicated to my business and in the months that I've dedicated time to my business what you would see is that I have had a lot more downtime in the last few years even though I've been making more money than I did in those previous years and that this transition to focusing on those busy cycles there are definitely times in my coaching life where I am all out and I'm working really really hard.
but there are also lots of times where I get to step back a little bit and breathe and relax and really enjoy my life outside of coaching. that has not, doing that has not led to a decrease in my annual income. It has led to an increase in my annual income. So I want you to trust me on that. This is an exercise worth doing. So just a reminder, you don't need December sales to have a great year. You can plan ahead, you can rest, and you can kind of trust that January is gonna be a great month if you do this work.
in advance that I was talking about today. So take the time this week to sketch out your 2025 revenue calendar and prep for January. If you need help in doing that, again, you can access that two times your profit masterclass. I'll put the link in the show notes. Or you can join me for a Clarity Compass audit. That might be a good thing for you to do in the month of November or December. It's a very low commitment way to get my eyes on your business. We get together for 90 minutes. I have you fill out an assessment in advance.
And then we sit down and we talk about what you're doing well, what's working for you, what you've got in place, where the gaps are in your business. And we can really set out a plan for you for the next three months or so in terms of what to focus on and what to kind of let go so that you can get out of overwhelm and you can actually start taking some action. I'm also happy to help people do goal setting in those.
The other thing that you can do is check out the BBB open house. As I mentioned, it's happening November 20th. It's an opportunity for you to meet with me, learn a little bit about the BBB and how that program works. Meet some coaches that are currently in the BBB community is an absolutely beautiful community of coaches. I love coaching it. I love these guys. They're so great. I have some coaches in my BBB who have been with me since the very beginning of the BBB, which was several years ago now.
And they're just so supportive of each other and so dynamic and everyone's doing different things and working on different projects. So it's a really great place to get inspiration from other coaches and hear what's working for people and what's not working. But also just a place to commune so that you don't feel alone in all of this. And then, of course, you get me every week in office hours. You get my eyes on whatever challenge you're currently struggling with in your business, my suggestions, my strategy, and then also an enormous library of resources to go with.
including the masterclass library, which is just full of all kinds of really focused content on particular pieces of building a small coaching business from me and also from experts that I bring in to talk to my BBB group. And you get access to all of the past masterclasses when you join the BBB. So anyway, that's the BBB and there's an open house, is low pressure. I wanna just reiterate that.
I, that is not how I roll. am not a high pressure salesperson. That will not surprise you if you listen to this podcast. But I do love meeting new coaches and I would love to see you there. And if it's a great fit for you, awesome. I'd love to have you in the BBB. So you can come to that completely free open house November 20th. You just have to sign up through the link in the show notes or at wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB. Anyway, that's it for today. Hope your November is off to a good start.
hope that you found this episode helpful and that it's shifted your lens a little bit in terms of what you want to accomplish in December and how you're going to look at January. And as always, if you are enjoying this podcast, can you please do me a solid and share it with some other people? Share it with coaches in your coaching circles, share it with anybody in your, if you're in an alumni group from your certification, share it there. Let people know that this podcast, this resource is out there. It is,
It is hard to get the word out when you're just doing a little podcast like this. You know, I do my best to get more coaches listening to this podcast. But really it's word of mouth that has been the basis for almost everything I've done in my career. And I appreciate that. I appreciate you. And I know that a lot of you are doing that, sharing it. And if you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast and take a second to leave a review. Leave a starred review.
and leave some comments about what you like about this podcast. Okay, that's it for me. Have a wonderful rest of your week and I will see you next week on The Coaching Edge. Thanks for listening.
