Back in December, Emma got on a call with me and opened with, “I don’t think I’m ready.”
She was an ads manager with one paying client and about $800 a month coming in. Nine months later, she booked a $20,000 month.
Same Emma. Same skill set. Same two little girls at home. So what changed?
If you’re trying to figure out how to scale an ads management business, and you keep telling yourself you’ll go all in “once you’re ready,” this one is for you, my friend. Emma laid out the whole roadmap on the podcast. And real talk? It’s a whole lot simpler than you’re making it.
You Don’t Need a Marketing Background to Scale an Ads Management Business
Let me introduce you to Emma. She’s a Brit living in Florida with two little girls, ages five and one. She started her business a little over two years ago because she wanted to be home and present for her kids.
Before that? She worked in management in child protection in the UK. Not marketing. Not sales. In her words, the two careers “couldn’t be further apart.”
I love this, because every time I have a student on the podcast who came from marketing, somebody listening says, “I can’t do this. I don’t have that background.”
Emma is here to tell you she came from something drastically different.
What it cost her to start over
Emma loved her career. Leaving it was, in her words, “a real grief process.” Then came immigration, which meant she wasn’t allowed to work for a long stretch while her husband carried the household on a job that kept him away from home.
“I was super stressed about money,” she told me. “I hadn’t earned any in years.”
This woman had every reason to play it safe. Keep that in mind when we get to what she did next.
The year of $800 months (and the course that didn’t deliver)
Emma found ads management while she was looking for something flexible she could build around her kids. She bought a course. In her kind British way, she told me it “unfortunately was not great.”
But she met one of her very best friends inside that course, and they took a second one together. Emma started landing clients. Kind of.
Here’s what that first year looked like:
- Five clients total. Two of them were family members.
- Two coaches and one local business made up the rest.
- By December, the local business was the only one left.
- Her income was sitting around $800 a month, and it was a rollercoaster the entire time.
You’ve got to kiss some frogs
A lot of people buy one program that leaves them wanting more and decide, “I’m not investing in anything else. Everything is a scam.”
I get it. But even the worst program I’ve ever bought had something in it I could take with me. You take it, you move on, and you find a better match.
Emma did exactly that. That first course gave her a best friend, and that friend is the one who joined Strategist Society and raved about it.
Now for the tough love. If you’ve bought five courses and you say all five are garbage, but they have testimonials and they’re working for other people, maybe it’s not a course thing. At some point we have to start looking inward.
Ask yourself: am I using one bad investment as my reason to never get help again?
“I Don’t Think I’m Ready”: The Sales Call That Didn’t Feel Like One
By December, Emma had done one of my bootcamps and was listening to the podcast. She’d had her baby and she wanted to make a real go of her business.
So she grabbed a ticket to my Strategist Era virtual conference. She went in thinking, “I’m not ready to join Strategist Society. I don’t have the income. This is something for the future.”
Her husband overheard the sessions and said, “You need to book a call, because she sounds amazing.”
So she booked the call, and she opened it by listing every reason she wasn’t ready.
We talked about her business, her debt, and her goals. And I told her, “I think you are ready. I’d like to offer you a spot.”
Her husband overheard that part too. He looked at her and said one word.
“Join.”
Why I said yes when I usually say “not yet”
When someone comes to me with one client and $800 months, I usually tell them we need to wait a little.
But I never want to hold someone back because of where they are financially right now. Where you are today does not dictate where you’re going.
I know this because I was that person. Early on, I begged to get into a mastermind that was only for course creators at six figures. I didn’t have a course yet. They told me no. I said, “Let me in the door. I will be there.” Six months later, I was.
Someone’s drive and what they hold themselves accountable to tell me so much more than what’s in their bank account. Emma had the drive. She had the reason it needed to work. And she told me, “I’m going to do the work.”
And here’s what most people get backwards. When you’re at almost zero, it’s actually easier to grow than when you’re already at $15,000 a month. At $15K, we have to undo a lot of stuff. At zero, we hit the ground running.
What a good sales call feels like
Everybody is afraid of sales calls because they’ve been on the receiving end of really bad ones.
I asked Emma if she ever felt pressured. Her answer: “I didn’t even feel like it was a sales call. I felt like it was a conversation.”
That matters for your business too. Learn sales from the people whose calls left you feeling confident, not cornered. Emma now runs her own discovery calls the same way. “I don’t just talk at people,” she said. “It’s a conversation where we collaborate.”
Her close rate is, in her words, “really high.”
What Actually Helped Her Scale Her Ads Management Business: Standards of Excellence and Accountability
I asked Emma what one thing made the biggest impact on her business. She did not hesitate.
“Standards of Excellence. Without a shadow of a doubt.”
Not a funnel. Not a rebrand. Not a new offer.
Standards of Excellence are the five daily non-negotiables we live by inside Strategist Society:
- Five touchpoints
- Get up and get ready
- Move your body
- Fuel your mind
- Share
Emma called them “truly life-changing.” Here’s how they showed up for her.
She set the target in week one
Her first week inside, we did our Champagne Year planning and set her good, better, and best goals. When we recorded this episode, she was two days away from hitting her best goal.
She got up and got ready
Emma will tell you she has never been a makeup-and-hair person. She started getting ready every day anyway. “I’m ready for the day, so I’m ready to do these things,” she said. “I’ve already got more energy.”
It sounds small. That’s the point.
She did her touchpoints and marketing minutes every single day
In January, her first full month of doing her Standards of Excellence, she signed two new clients.
She also had multiple discovery calls that went nowhere because people weren’t in a position to commit yet. She kept showing up anyway. Some seasons she cut the number of touchpoints because life was happening. She never cut the habit.
She showed up helpful where her clients were already looking
Emma works with coaches and course creators. When someone asks a question about ads, funnels, or strategy, she answers it. Other people see it.
“I’ve had so many people contact me from that,” she said. “They have seen that I provide value, and they then come to me.”
“I’m very lucky.” No ma’am.
At one point, Emma said she was “very lucky” to have a steady stream of people booking discovery calls from referrals.
I had to stop her right there. It’s not luck.
When you put in the work on your marketing minutes, clients start showing up. They may not come directly from the person you reached out to, so we tell ourselves the two things aren’t connected.
So I asked her. Were you getting clients before, when you weren’t doing your marketing minutes?
“No.”
That’s the whole lesson. People go months with no clients, start their marketing minutes, and “out of nowhere” the clients arrive. It was never out of nowhere.
She did less on purpose
Emma isn’t in there consuming a ton of content. I tell her, “Here’s one thing. Go do your Standards of Excellence.” And she does it.
“I consume what I need to consume in that moment,” she said. “That works for me.”
It would work for 99% of people. Keep It Simple, Sweetie.
Why coaching beat another self-paced course
A lot of people assume you have to go through Conversions for Clients before Strategist Society. Emma didn’t. She already knew the basics of ads management and ad strategy. What she wanted was to become someone people sought out.
(If you’re still learning to run ads and land your first clients, Conversions for Clients is where you start.)
Self-paced courses have a time and a place, and hundreds of our students have been successful that way. But some of us need a kick in the butt. I’m one of them. I’ve always had a coach.
Emma is the same. “I had some success,” she said, “but I wasn’t getting the success that I wanted.”
The accountability you can’t hide from
Emma Voxes me most days. A lot of the time it’s “here’s my day” and I give it a heart. The second she needs me for something real, I’m there.
“I feel like I’ve got to report,” she said. And that is exactly why it works.
We track this, by the way. Last year, every single Strategist Society member who Voxed me at least once a week grew their business somewhere between 2 and 10 times. Every one.
“But you have 65 people in there”
How can Voxer coaching work with 65 people? Won’t you have to repeat yourself constantly?
Emma’s answer: “That’s absolutely ridiculous. I never have to tell you anything twice.”
I cap the program on purpose. I know your business, your clients, and your kids, and I’m not pulling up notes to do it. Y’all aren’t meetings on my calendar. You’re part of my life.
It’s also where the hard client stuff gets handled. Emma doesn’t like conflict, and she hates letting people down. With support in her pocket, she learned to say, “This is not my issue. I don’t have to fix it.”
What a $20K Month Actually Changes
Let’s talk about what this looks like outside the bank account.
- Her husband is home now. After a long stretch of barely seeing him, they get to be a family in the same house.
- The debt that was sitting on them is getting paid off.
- She bought new windows for the house. Paid for, not put on a credit card.
- She broke her elbow and had to go to the hospital. A year ago, that bill would have sent her into a panic. This time? “Yeah, it’s fine. I’ll just pay it.”
- She bought Disney on Ice tickets for her daughter without budgeting for them.
- She has a waiting list of clients who have paid deposits and signed contracts.
That last one changes how she sells. She isn’t getting on discovery calls desperate to say yes. If someone isn’t a match, she sends them to someone who is.
Austin and I had one of those moments recently. His truck died, and we paid for the tow and the repair. He said, “I’m so sorry.” I said, “Why are you apologizing? The money is there.” Seven years ago, that would have wrecked us.
The part that’s bigger than money
Emma shared something on the podcast that took courage.
A few weeks after she joined, at the end of December, she was diagnosed with postnatal depression. She told me she believes that choosing to invest in herself is a big part of what pushed her to go get help. “I think without it, I would’ve just continued to flounder,” she said.
I’m never going to be a coach who pretends to be a therapist, because I’m not one. I’m there to support you. Emma did the brave part.
She also joined a gym, hired a personal trainer, and found a community of women who have her back. “There isn’t any area of my life that Strategist Society hasn’t had a positive impact on,” she said.
Emma, thank you for sharing the hard parts. Some woman reading this needed to know she isn’t alone and that there is another side.
Your Roadmap to Scale an Ads Management Business
Here’s the path Emma walked:
- Stop waiting to feel ready. She didn’t feel ready. She booked the call anyway.
- Set your good, better, and best goals. Know what you’re aiming at before you start.
- Hit your Standards of Excellence every day. Yes, including getting dressed.
- Do your touchpoints, even on the short days. Fewer is fine. Zero is not.
- Get accountability you can’t hide from. Somebody should notice when you go quiet.
- Do the one thing. Stop consuming and start doing.
I asked Emma what she’d say to someone on the fence who doesn’t feel financially ready.
“I completely understand, because it is scary and it’s a commitment. It’s really hard, as a mom especially, to invest in yourself when there are all these other things you could be doing with that money. But you will not regret it.”
If you’re stuck and you want to scale your ads management business to those $5K, $10K, $15K, and $20K months, book a call with me at thestrategistsociety.com. It’s no stress. If I can support you, I’ll show you what that looks like. If I can’t yet, I’ll tell you, and I’ll send you off with resources to use until you’re ready.
You are meant for goals bigger than you can even imagine right now. But we all start the same way. One foot in front of the other, and one touchpoint at a time.
Now go do the dang thing.
This post is based on Emma’s spotlight episode of the Serve Scale Soar podcast. Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts. Until next week, go out, serve your clients, scale your business, and soar into the success you deserve.
** This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you if you use one of the links to purchase. This helps keep the podcast going and I only share products I have used, tested, and love.”
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Meet Brandi
Brandi Mowles is the host of the Serve Scale Soar® podcast which is a podcast dedicated to helping service-based entrepreneurs scale their online business to five-figure months so they can soar into six-figure years. Brandi is a wife, mom and in less than one year, created a six-figure business. Now she is spilling all her secrets so you can too.
