The Art of Online Business

How Income Stacking Can Add A Zero or Two to Your Annual Revenue With Holly Haynes

• Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie • Episode 861

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Holly Haynes is back to talk about income stacking and how it can transform your business. Holly, who has built a seven-figure business while consulting for Fortune 500 companies, shares her insights on creating diverse revenue streams. 

We explore the benefits of having multiple products and services that cater to different customer needs and levels, ensuring a steady flow of income while serving a broader audience.



Watch the previous episode ‘Building a 7 Figure Business During the Pandemic While Raising Twins, Featuring Holly Haynes’ 



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Holly’s Links:

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the second episode of the Art of Online Business podcast, where Holly Haines is a guest, and she will be talking about income stacking, and I'll explain to you why that's so important for your business in a quick moment. But hey, holly, welcome back.

Speaker 2:

Hi, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

You're very, very welcome For you.

Speaker 1:

Who's listening when I say second episode?

Speaker 1:

Holly and I just had a really good conversation moments ago and there's a whole other episode about that in the show notes below and if you missed that episode, holly helps female entrepreneurs create simple, scalable offers and systems to grow to multi-six figures without relying on social media, and she's an expert. We talked in the previous episode about how Holly said like not everybody needs to follow the same business path, and she launched her course and I think you said it was 200-ish dollars and you had four people in it and then you went right to launching your mastermind. Was that right? That is correct, yes, right, except for a professional consultant who has been consulting big businesses for 20 years. So that's her background. She's consulted Fortune 500 companies. She's built her now seven-figure business while working full-time in the throngs of the pandemic, retiring herself and her husband and navigating what it's like to raise two two kids. As I'm sure you're listening to this podcast, you can remember how confusing those pandemic times were so holly now runs her strategic coaching business, the crush the rush planner company.

Speaker 1:

She also is the host of a podcast that's named crush, the. It's a top 100 business podcast, and she does this while raising her two twin daughters, and she also runs her business with her husband. She's based out of Ohio, and now we're going to talk about income stacking, which I understand that as taking your expertise, and Holly's going to explain it much better than me. But if you are curious about how to take your expertise and teach it in different ways such that people at different levels can still learn from you if they're more at the beginner, the intermediate or they need more advanced, higher level support that way you don't have to worry about income in your business because it's coming in different forms and you're also able to help people and serve people in different ways different forms and you're also able to help people and serve people in different ways then keep listening to this episode, because Holly teaches this and she does it. She practices what she preaches, so to speak.

Speaker 2:

So thank you for talking to us today, Holly. Yeah, I'm excited to share more.

Speaker 1:

I'm excited to hear more. So, in your words, can you break down what income stacking has done for your business, why somebody would want to pay attention to this technique, this strategy?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I mean I didn't call it income stacking when I started doing this, but this is kind of the term that has helped us really have multiple products and services, serve multiple people at different levels. And so I shared the story in the last episode about launching a course and it maybe wasn't the best fit for me or my audience and basically realizing that I had no audience and making $800 off of the launch was not really going to be the retirement plan I had hoped for. So I flipped the model and this is step one in income stacking is really coming up with a signature program and so I launched a mastermind called the collective co -op. Now, but I was like you know what I'm going to help. At the time it was like five women. I'm going to go all in, like I'm going to do basically what I did with some of the really big companies that I worked with and I'm going to help them put together a strategic plan and how to implement it, like I've done it for years. There's no reason I can't do it. But it was very high ticket, very high touch, and for me it worked really well because I'm not we're not talking about hundreds of people, we're talking about like four or five. My audience was like nothing at the time and so I was making a really big impact and really honoring like the time that I had to give. And so that's where we started.

Speaker 2:

That became our sort of signature program and it allowed me to really understand, like at a high touch, like advanced level of business owner what are they asking, what do they like that I teach, what am I good at, what do I like doing? And then, you know, not every person can invest in a high ticket offer like that. And so I was like, okay, well, let's back it down, right. So we've got advanced, let's go to intermediate type offer. And so what I did is I pulled out the most popular question that I got inside our co-op, which is how do I build an audience? I started my business but I don't have an audience. How do I build an audience?

Speaker 2:

And so we created a program called anti-social school and it's basically me teaching how we grew our business without using social media, which has grown over the years in so many cool ways. But it basically was like the most popular question of our advanced offer now in an eight week program. So it's not like I'm teaching something different. It's still the same messaging. I've taught it before, but it's like a different level of access to me, right? Instead of nine months, it's eight weeks, right? Or instead of 17 topics, it's one topic.

Speaker 2:

And so then we worked backwards again, right, and we said, okay, if they're not ready for an eight-week program and mid ticket, I would say, is anywhere from like a thousand to five thousand dollars, like what's something else that we can offer, right? So now we've got different levels of income coming in, and so we've created a membership, which is a starting point, right? So you're like oh man, I really want to join in a social school, but I'm just not. I don't know, holly, or my business isn't that far along, or I'm not sure what I need. It's like great, let's start here.

Speaker 2:

It's a little taste of basically me taking pieces and parts of our co-op, our mastermind, but only teaching a little bit of it, and you don't get all the access that you would in a mastermind or an advanced program. You get access to me once a month. You can ask questions all you want, but it's not real-time feedback. You have to show up when we have our calls. And so basically over the period of, I would say, three years, we spent basically every couple of months rolling out a program that has different level of access and different level of activity, based on where I thought my clients were at and what I really liked teaching.

Speaker 2:

And so now it's really cool because I'll have people that will come in and they'll start at our membership and then they'll go to antisocial school and then they'll go to the mastermind and then we've got an alumni program now at the mastermind and then they leave the alumni program and they're like, oh, but I don't want to leave, like I've been in your community forever, and then they'll join the club again because they get to hang out with everyone. And so it's really cool to see it like all come together now because we've created this like ecosystem where our services and products like, feel like a family which personally, if you listen to the last episode like that feels very authentic, to like who I am and like what I teach and what I value. And so it's been really cool to be able to serve clients at different levels, that sort of meet where they're at.

Speaker 1:

Right, Because when you mentioned that term I'd asked you about it before we hit record about building a purpose driven business. You said that that has to do with building a business around your life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think so often. I mean, we get busy right. Like you might have multiple jobs, you've got multiple businesses, and all of a sudden you're like, you're in the phase of busy and you're like what's my purpose? Like what do I want my day to look like? And so I always say, like, design your dream day, like your every day, and then work your business around that. And so you can see that in our product suite and our income stacking of, like I have mastermind calls on a certain day, I have club calls on a certain day, which gives me the flexibility to have days where I don't have calls and I'm not doing a ton ofon-ones. And it's not to say you have to follow the same model, but you can start with this like signature program that you're like you love, or signature offer or whatever it is, and then you can pull out pieces and parts and craft it to sort of fit where you want to go.

Speaker 1:

So the anti-social, the anti, the anti-social club, anti-social school.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, anti-social school. What's-social club?

Speaker 1:

anti-social school yeah right, anti-social school. What's your mastermind called it's called the collective co-op and your membership is called the club and you started with the mastermind, pulled out the most popular question and created that like a, basically an eight-week program, which is called the Anti-Social Club.

Speaker 1:

Right, and then you started pulling out pieces of that, and that's how the membership came to be Now. My question for you then is so what? Well, how do you teach people to do this income stacking for somebody who's listening right now, Like a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast, already have a successful course that sells anywhere like $297 up to like $700. Where does somebody go, who? It's almost like they're in the middle Like do they go up?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, that's a great. I mean, I think you have to. There's two things you have to know what do you like to do and what is what is your audience asking? Because you have a successful course or signature method? Like my guess is you're getting the same questions over and over and over again, right, like when people come through it.

Speaker 2:

And so I pay attention to those and say, okay, you know, I keep using Sally as our example, but like she has an amazing course, but she doesn't have an audience to launch to. And so that was the question that I kept getting is like, have all these ideas? I have this thing that I want to do and I put it together, but there's no one there, or I launch and I get crickets, or I don't know how to talk about my business. And so I was like, okay, let's build your audience. So that's what we do in eight weeks is like, literally, I teach you how to build your audience.

Speaker 2:

And so I would really think about like you could write down five questions that you get, you know, when you're teaching your course, or questions that people ask in the comments, like usually there's a common theme and then, if you're in the middle, you can go two directions. You can go super high ticket, like let me teach you over a weekend, host a retreat, like you could do something really cool like that. Or you could be like hey, for $17 a month, like we're just I'm just going to do this, right, like I'm just going to send you like one email a month and it's going to answer your questions, right. I mean, it kind of depends on your business model, but coming up with ideas for other people is like my favorite thing to do. So I was like okay, like let's figure out all these different ways that you could take your signature idea, based on feedback that you're getting, and create something that people actually want, because they're telling you that. And then you've got different price points that you can play around with.

Speaker 1:

That sounds so cool. How do you use AI in this process, if at all? I'm just curious.

Speaker 2:

So I've never actually used AI to come up with product or service ideas. I mean, maybe I should, I don't know. My husband was just reading, like all the things that Apple was doing with AI and I was like, oh man, this is so cool. I've used AI for like product or service names, like I'll dump in the description and like try to get a name. And then I use AI a lot. Specifically, google Gemini is my favorite to repurpose content, so really repurposing things that we've created, like podcast interviews and things like that.

Speaker 2:

But I don't know I don't know if AI maybe I'm old school. I don't know if AI can replace that. I'm sure it can. I'm sure it can do all the things, but I feel like you take all the data that your clients are telling you like, the answer is like right there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I'm not going to hijack. You're going to keep talking, please, cause I got more questions for you. Here's something I will say or I will share. I record my. It's not my idea, I just heard it from cool guy named Rick already and then took it, but I record all of my one-on-one coaching calls, as I'm sure you record all of your group coaching and one-on-one calls too, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Do you use Fathom or what do you use for your notes?

Speaker 2:

So we don't use Fathom, but I use, like, the Zoom version of that where it like takes notes for you.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So what I've been doing and it's worked really well is I take the transcript from those calls and I dump it into a Google doc that's called, like my ads, coaching knowledge base.

Speaker 1:

And now I have two of them because build up one document, yeah, they're big Right. But then I download those PDFs and when I have a question like what are the most like, if I want to know the most common questions I've been getting recently or podcast ideas that would help with like the kind of questions that they've been asking, I just upload those PDFs to. I use ChatGPT and ask it that and then it goes through and it just lists out either if I ask all the questions or the most common ones, or it will think, based on what it analyzes, like best kind of episodes. So that has worked really well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a great idea, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure Gemini would work better, actually, because I think Gemini is slightly better than ChatGPT.

Speaker 2:

I don't know. I just love Google and I really had good luck with ChatGPT, but I feel like Gemini, for whatever reason, feels like more my voice, like what I would actually say. I don't know why. I think chat gbt has come a long way, but we actually, so you can take your your income stacking model right, like each of your offers and create threads on them.

Speaker 2:

So I'm sure you could do this too, right? So, like, I have a thread that's called anti-social school and anytime I like write something about it, I'll dump it in there and then it will help me, like, create sales emails or whatever, but it's based on the level right that you're teaching inside that product, right? So the club emails are a little bit different than anti-social school, which are a little bit different than the co-op or the mastermind, and so we've created these threads inside Gemini, which have helped keep it all straight.

Speaker 1:

I like that. You know I'm going to. I'm going to go revisit my AI because I need to increase my my sales email skills, if you will. I got more questions about income stacking, but I also the listener needs to hear I know you talked about it in the first episode, where you were building this business in the wee hours of the morning, while you were still working your full-time job, and how you and your husband were discussing, since you had success in the business, what it would look like for you to devote your time to it. I would love for you to share a little bit about how you and your husband were discussing, since you had success in the business, what it would look like for you to devote your time to it. I would love for you to share a little bit about how you worked your schedule up. But first, can you talk a little bit about how you teach other women to scale their businesses and do the same thing?

Speaker 2:

You mean to create their schedule.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I created this concept called CEO Week and literally I wasn't planning on teaching it, I was just doing it for my own sanity of like, how do I keep myself together? So I knew that I approximately had eight to 10 hours a week to work on my business, which doesn't sound like a lot, but, as we shared in the last episode, it's like 412 hours a year. So it's a lot. You can do a lot with that. And so what I did was two things. One, I always scheduled business hours right.

Speaker 2:

So, just like scheduling a workout which you guys have heard before, this is not new and it's like most of the time my business hours were six to seven in the morning. My girls got up early. I had to work all day. I'm not a night owl. I would so much rather work at like four in the morning if I had a choice. But, like, my message would be figure out the time that works best for you. Like, just because I'm a morning person doesn't mean that you have to be one. So I would set my business hours and then I would set theme days, and so, inside CEO week, I teach you it's a free challenge of how to create theme days that work best for you and your family, and your job and your business, and how it all flows together.

Speaker 2:

And so an example of CEO week would be Monday would be my CEO day. Most people have heard of CEO day before, but for me that's when I would really think about okay, what's our strategy for growth. This week I had one hour to think about it, like set a timer. What am I doing this week? Right? Tuesday we're typically my write my podcast, write my content day. So Tuesday I'd have one hour, I would write a podcast episode. Then I would turn it into other content.

Speaker 2:

Wednesdays were typically my podcast interview days. So I knew like, hey, I got to be presentable today, I got to get up. I'm not going to try to do other things. Thursday I would try to do my client calls if I could. And then Fridays were usually like finance, accounting, pitching, like sort of a mix of all that. But I walk you through like the business activity scale and what that looks like, using themes, so it's really easy. So, like no one wants to get up at 6am and be like what do I work on right now? Right.

Speaker 2:

And so it was like oh, it's Tuesday, like I know, I know that I got to write a podcast today and if I could just get that one thing done, that consistency you heard all the time over time really just helps me stay motivated and on track. And you could do really sort of fun themes, like if you're building a website, it could be like well, thursday is website day. Or Thursday is learn how to run ads day, right, like ads can be overwhelming, but Quajo is going to teach you how to do it. So every Thursday, you're going to like focus on hey, I'm going to work on ads today.

Speaker 2:

If you think about it, on Tuesday or Wednesday, instead of getting overwhelmed, you're like no, I'm just going to add it to my list. I'm going to go back to it on Thursday and it sounds like so, so, so simple. But I have had so many people, or a thousand people take this and they're like they come back and take it again Cause they're like man, I need CEO week. Like my kids just went back to school, I got to redo my theme days Like I need it, I need it. So I'm excited for you guys to try it.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's in the show notes below. Please, like you're listening to this episode, you should go down and sign up for that for sure, because all he knows what she's talking about. How many people are on your team, by the way?

Speaker 2:

That's a great question. Six right now but not everyone's full time right Like they're, you know, it's like a couple hours a week here and there. So we do have a decent team now. That was a big goal of mine, but not until recently.

Speaker 1:

Not until recently so this.

Speaker 2:

Your business hit seven figures with a much smaller team yeah, it was mostly me for a year, and then I hired a VA who she's still with me now and then my husband, and then we started really getting smart about. Okay, we need some really smart people around us. So I have a copywriter, a website team and a podcast team, along with a operations. I call her my, like my executive assistant. She's like does all the things behind the scenes, so so we do have a team now, but at the beginning we were very lean.

Speaker 1:

So can you share the vision, like some, some motivational content, if you will, for somebody who's going to take this idea of income stacking and run with it, like, what are some of the things that, like the revenue from income stacking in your own business, has allowed you to do with your family? I know the travel.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean travel is a big one because travel is expensive, especially with kids, and like I mean I always joke like I like really nice hotel. That's like my favorite thing. Like my favorite thing in the world is to just stay in like an amazing hotel. It makes me so happy, Like I love the smell and the service, Like it's like the best.

Speaker 2:

I'm not saying that every time, but like that's my dream. So we've been able to travel once a quarter. I left my corporate job, so it'll be three years in January. Our family goal was to travel once a quarter and just prioritize experiences, so really prioritizing like we have this gift of time which sometimes I forget it, doesn't feel like it, but we do and like I don't want to like ever take it for granted, and so that's one of the ways that we do that and I mean sometimes it's little things like we were talking about before. We hit record. Like my husband and I, when the girls are in school, we try to go to lunch every Friday, like we walk in the morning together, like we joke that we're the family where, like both parents go everywhere, which I don't know if the girls are going to love that or not, but we're there, like we're there for everything, and so that's been really cool to be able to navigate around.

Speaker 1:

I like when you talked about the hotels. I remember back when I lived in China, we had gone to I think it was the Shangri-La in the city that we lived in, and that was the first hotel we went to where they pay attention to where you leave, like your towels or whatever, I guess, consumables that are redone in the hotel, and they give you new ones, but right where you left the old ones, instead of like putting it all back. And I was like the first time I came back to the room and that was done. I I was like whoa.

Speaker 1:

They saw how I used things and then gave me the new things. There I was like this is cool.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's really fun.

Speaker 1:

So more fancy hotels. Sorry, say it again.

Speaker 2:

I said, more fancy hotels, but also being there for my kids too.

Speaker 1:

I mean, they don't know? Well, maybe they do know, since they're in fifth grade, but that's a huge blessing for you and your husband to be at their events or picking them up from school, these sort of things, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you for sharing about income stacking. And can you leave the listener with one thing if they've heard your previous episode with me and they've heard this episode and I know that I said they should definitely go down into the show notes and sign up for your five-day challenge. But if they never got to hear from you again, what is one thing, the last thing that you would leave them with?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, such pressure. I was looking at my board I don't know if you're watching online. I have these like this, like it's not a vision board, it's like quotes and things that I love, and one of them that I have highlighted is, if your dreams only include yourself, it's not big enough, so I mean we were joking about fancy hotels, but the goal behind that is to like show my family, the world like it's not just about me, right?

Speaker 2:

Or you know, the goal maybe is you can create a business where you can support women at any level of business, not just like where you are right now, like more accessibility, and so I think like really just thinking bigger, whereas I think at the grow it's like okay, well, what's the bigger vision of? And ours is, you know, our, our yearly goal is to to help a hundred families this year. So, if I can like help a hundred women impact their family life and like build that dream schedule, like how does that feel? Like that's way different than, oh, I'll just help you build an online business, right?

Speaker 1:

Well said, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. You, before this call and during it, have motivated me. First was sharing about how you were on so many podcasts and that was a catalyst for your business growth. And then second was I'm over here listening to you talk about income stacking and I know like it looks a little bit different in my world as a service provider running meta ads, but you've got me thinking more and more.

Speaker 2:

It works for products and services. You can do it for anything.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and you sparked some interesting thoughts in my brain which I'm gonna mull over with my wife, since we're a team, and thank you, holly. So while you're listening to this episode, you can go and register for Holly's 5-Day Challenge. That link is in the show notes below. If you want to catch our previous episode, either on podcasts like audio only, or on YouTube, audio plus video, then that is also in the show notes below too. And until the next time you hear from me, take care, be blessed and we'll see you in the next one. Bye.

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