Ep 108: Breaking Business Plateaus with Smart Growth Strategies with Cheryl Texeira Transcript
Erin [00:00:02]:
Hello, welcome to this week's episode of the Scaling Expertise podcast. Thank you for joining me. While I talk to another expert who has scaled her expertise while she also helps you scale your expertise. It's going to be a really great conversation. Please welcome Cheryl Texera, who is the founder of the Soo Advantage and is a business and marketing specialist. Thank you for joining me. Cheryl.
Cheryl Texera [00:00:33]:
Hi. Thank you for having me.
Erin [00:00:35]:
Yeah, we're going to have a great conversation. I mean, you are the scaling person, put it that way. And so it's going to be a great conversation, great information for the audience. Before we dive into the substance, can you please introduce yourself, tell us who you serve and how you serve them.
Cheryl Texera [00:00:54]:
So I'm Cheryl Texera, of course, and I am the founder of the Soo Advantage. It is a program that is, that combines strategy, operations and optimization into one program so that you have all the pieces that you need in order to get your, your mind and your work focused on specific areas and outline a strategy and the operations of it and then how you will optimize with using data. So that's really my how I serve them and then who I serve ranges from any business, from a startup all the way up to businesses bringing in around $2 million in revenue. So I help, I just, I help those particular business owners get to the next level and then the next and the next through optimization processes.
Erin [00:01:49]:
What are, what pains or what's going on in their business? They go, I need to go talk to Cheryl.
Cheryl Texera [00:01:56]:
So usually what happens is they have a plateau of some sort and they aren't sure how to get that or they've had a slump. So even a business that maybe is, let's say making a million dollars a year, all of a sudden they have a big slump. And it could have been something that they changed or something that, you know, maybe the market changed, something like that. And so what we do then is help them dig in to the details of what is actually going on and help them position their business as a place where people would feel like a fool if they can't, if they don't buy from them. So that is really the, the core of our whole system is getting a, what we call a market dominating position and a bold promise for your offer. Once we have those things in place, then all the other stuff is much easier and people respond better. I often have clients who, before they even implement any assets, like create any assets for their business, just what comes out of their mouth. Now after doing these exercises to get, get their market dominating position, they start getting More clients like right away.
Cheryl Texera [00:03:04]:
In fact, I just got a report from a client I've been working with for three weeks and she was making 2500amonth on a specific product that she sells. And now she made. Well her first week she made 4, 800 and the next week 6, 800.
Erin [00:03:21]:
Wow.
Cheryl Texera [00:03:21]:
So she was only making 2500. It was a massive change and we really have only implemented simply her using the new language in her social media and when she goes live and stuff.
Erin [00:03:34]:
That's amazing, amazing results. That's fantastic. So tell us the story of how you got to where you are today. Did you start out as a strategist or have you evolved over the years?
Cheryl Texera [00:03:48]:
I have, I actually had a 25 year career in IT. I started as an application developer and worked my way up and became a manager in operations. And so we were building software systems for government, you know, for government systems. And, and we, we had project management offices but it wasn't until later and so I already had my certifications in project management and in the framework of Scrum, which is an agile project management framework. And, and so I started leveraging that in my business. You know that was really the big part of it was the, the sorry, I'm blah. I mean we can edit that out. Yeah, so, so what the idea is with project management is you go from idea all the way to production.
Cheryl Texera [00:04:43]:
Right. And so I got really good at extracting requirements from people and really getting that information of what they really want and desire out of their heads and onto paper in something that makes sense to them. And that's where I believe I really excel in helping people create their marketing positioning and then, then in that process. So I, I started my business like two years before I retired and I started just teaching business owners how to use the framework of Scrum to stay out of overwhelm. And then as I learned more and more about marketing and then how my project management skills was, was really helping because one of the skills that you have to have is organizational change management. People resist change, right. And so we had basically that's marketing. You have to market to them to get them to buy into the new system coming.
Cheryl Texera [00:05:37]:
And so I really learned a lot about how to do that in that in those projects. And my projects were big, they were multi million dollar projects. So you know, I wasn't afraid of tackling something big like that. And so I started teaching that and then I've just slowly evolved as I've learned more and more about marketing and then I really dove in about A year and a half ago into this new system called the profit acceleration System. And it's, it's a proprietary software that we use that helps us identify all these different areas. We have an actually 40 different areas that we can, we can evaluate and look at and tweak and we go off of the, the concept of compounding growth. So we just tweak little areas like 5%, 10%, 2%, 1% and it all compounds on each other and adds up to creating some real significant boosts, which is one of the reasons why our clients have such good success so quickly because it just all starts compounding on each other.
Erin [00:06:45]:
That's amazing. Well, you did foreshadow that as an app developer that you would have the accelerator, which I'm eager to dive into a little bit later. So. But I'm stuck on something you said which was two years before you retired. So you mean from federal. What do you mean by two years before you retired?
Cheryl Texera [00:07:06]:
Yeah, I was working for state government, so I got it 25 years and then my business was starting to take off, so I bought out my last five years and I retired.
Erin [00:07:17]:
Oh, very nice. Very nice.
Cheryl Texera [00:07:18]:
Yeah.
Erin [00:07:19]:
Well, let's talk about scaling for a minute here. So what is your definition of scale? How do you look at it?
Cheryl Texera [00:07:28]:
To me it's maximizing profit. Right. It doesn't matter how many employees you have or any of that. You can have just yourself and scale to maximize your profits. It really depends on how efficient your systems are and then how much you're willing to do for, for your company as opposed to having other people do. Do for you. But that's what we work on is maximizing profit because the profit is what feeds your family. Right.
Cheryl Texera [00:07:57]:
So, so imagine if you have a company that's, you know, generating a million dollars a year or something like that. There's probably a lot of expenses that over the, over time you're spending money on things that you don't need to spend money on. So one of the things that try to cut 5% out of, out of our business owner clients spending because that 5% goes immediately to profit. Oftentimes we can find our fees just by doing those cuts. So we definitely look over that as one of our first things that we do and then we move into the market dominating position.
Erin [00:08:38]:
Yeah, I think people under value the what we can get from optimizing our operations. I mean, you know, obviously there's a lot of focus on pricing, obviously there's a lot of focus on volume and you know, but the you Know, making sure that we are being as efficient as we can with how we deliver. You know, again, whether we're a solopreneur or we have a team, can make a really big difference. And, and I think that operations, especially for the solopreneur or, you know, small, they think it's a big company thing. They don't, you know, guilty. You know, and even though I get it, but I'm like, okay, you know, here's my tech stack. This is what we, you know, we have our, you know, SOPs and stuff, but I don't think about how much it could move the needle. I think about how it can make my life easier, but I don't think about it from a profit perspective so much, which I feel like.
Cheryl Texera [00:09:44]:
Yeah, well, and the thing is that, that when you free up your time by being more efficient, then you have more time to be the visionary of your business. Right, right. And when you, when you get caught in the day to day and you're just in that grind all the time, you forget to be the visionary and you lose sight of where you're going. And that's what happens to a lot of solopreneurs and then they're off on this tangent and this tangent and this tangent, they lose focus. So it's really important to do those operations and it really starts with a good strategic plan and then making sure that your projects that you're working on are aligned with that strategic plan and the goals of that strategic plan and that you're implementing each one of those projects instead of okay, great, I did a strategic plan, now I'm off to other things and I'm not going to do that. It's just something I filed away and I'm not really looking, you know.
Erin [00:10:37]:
Yes.
Cheryl Texera [00:10:38]:
To do that. You want to make sure that you're staying focused on that and it isn't just for big companies. Because if you are a true visionary, you could scale your business to multi millions of dollars and it could become something that you could sell eventually. And so you definitely want to have your operations in place with standard operating procedures and policies, that sort of thing, because one, it increases the value of your business when you have those things. And two, if you ever do need to like, if you scale too quick, you want to have operating procedures in place so that you can delegate quickly and get people up to speed quickly. I know that that can be a growing pain for a lot of businesses that suddenly are an overnight success, you know, after five years or something of struggles and they're boom. They, they go. And now they can't keep up with the operations, and so they downscale again because it scares them.
Cheryl Texera [00:11:32]:
So by standard operating procedures and even roles and responsibilities, because, you know, we're all wearing hats, right?
Erin [00:11:39]:
Yes.
Cheryl Texera [00:11:40]:
And so all those different hats, that's a role and it has responsibilities, and with those responsibilities, has standard operating procedures. Think how much easier it is to hire when you know exactly who you're hiring.
Erin [00:11:53]:
Yes, absolutely.
Cheryl Texera [00:11:54]:
Yeah.
Erin [00:11:55]:
Yes, I certainly feel those pains. I mean, we talk about, you know, working on our business instead of in our business, and especially, you know, the expert who, you know, building a business on what's inside of their head, like getting it out and getting it operationalized and just, you know, all those things that is easier said than done. People have very. Have a really hard time doing that, and they have a hard time imagining that the somebody else can be as effective as they can. But that's just weakness in their operations.
Cheryl Texera [00:12:30]:
Right.
Erin [00:12:30]:
If they can't delegate what's going on up here to other people.
Cheryl Texera [00:12:36]:
Yes.
Erin [00:12:37]:
So when you're helping, I mean, you certainly covered some of this, but more specifically, do your clients come to you and say, you know, I want to scale, or, you know, how do they start that conversation about how they want to grow?
Cheryl Texera [00:12:58]:
Well, they usually start with more of their vision. Right. They're trying to get to this vision and they're coming upon stumbling blocks or they don't know what to do to get like, oh, I've made it this far, but I can't. I can't figure out how to get to the next level. Well, when you have the training that I have, I can easily find all the opportunities. And then my software, the profit acceleration software, helps guide me on where to look, what to look for, and, and all that. So, so even if it's a business that I'm not fully familiar with, I can still dig in because I, I understand the concepts. It's very much like, you know, I have an IT background.
Cheryl Texera [00:13:37]:
Right. And so with I, I never coded in WordPress, for example, before I started my own business. I never did any of that. We were coding in Java and dot net and those languages. But I understand the concepts behind coding. And that's where bringing in a marketing expert who is really trained in these areas can help people because they understand the concepts behind it all, and not just the tactical of what to do, but understanding what the goal is and how it all works behind the scenes and what's going on in the psychology of sales that, you know, really affects change and so that's really what they come to me for is, like, they've got this vision and they've gotten so far, but they don't know what to do next. And so that's how we help them get over that hump and break through those plateaus.
Erin [00:14:32]:
Yeah, thank you for that. And so, you know, you bring us to kind of the intersection of a couple of concepts we talk about. So scale, intellectual property, and, you know, your accelerator. You know, we talk about your business and how you scaled your business, you know, going from, you know, and you. You tell me, like, if you started with kind of custom services and have developed, you know, processes that then got. Brought you to the accelerator or how you scaled your business and the role that intellectual property has played in that process.
Cheryl Texera [00:15:12]:
Yeah, I've created a ton of a ton. I mean, I. I went through the gamut. I did. I challenged a lot of how I scale is through challenges. I challenge myself. Like one. One year, I challenged myself to do a lead magnet every single month for the year and then measure to see how much of an impact that made and then.
Cheryl Texera [00:15:35]:
And then the next. Like, just recently, I did a. I wanted to try some new messaging for my business and with my new. My new program called the Soo Advantage. And so I did a 10k challenge just to see how long and how much. How much work it would take to get to 10K. And so once we do that, then we're proving something, right? We're proving that our 1. Our offer converts and that the language that we're using around that offer is working.
Cheryl Texera [00:16:06]:
And so then once you have that, then you can start putting the assets in place for it. Right. And. And so, you know, in my early days, I wasn't doing that. I was just developing the program, and then I'd sell it there. Yeah, I learned. And go. Because back in the day to the gurus were saying, you know, just sell it before you design it.
Cheryl Texera [00:16:30]:
Could I do that?
Erin [00:16:32]:
Like, sell it and then, you know, make it as the cut and throw it out there? Y. Yeah, Y.
Cheryl Texera [00:16:39]:
But now I do it. And. And I understand now why you want to do it, you know, because it's not just about, well, you don't want to do all that work before you sell it. It's not that at all. It's because you want to get the feedback from your people as you're developing it. And. And there's a lot of different ways you can reward those early clients to keep them engaged and. And keep helping them through, even if your system is a little clunky at first, you know, because that's what people worry is, oh, it's not going to be perfect.
Cheryl Texera [00:17:08]:
It's not going, you know, it's be annoying or whatever. And so instead you just help by giving them different incentives, maybe a little extra coaching on the side to offset that so that they can keep making progress and then you can keep developing your offer. But yeah, creating content is. I have done tons of it, and I have a whole academy along with the profit acceleration academy that I created. And it's all around productivity systems, creating systems, efficiency systems, and strategic planning. All of that stuff that's in a whole separate academy than my. My new program that is really directed toward maximizing profits.
Erin [00:17:52]:
Now, did you ever face any kind of mindset hurdles about going from, you know, kind of customized services to something that, you know is less customized and more. More standardized? Or. Or did you feel like just knowing because of your background, you kind of just knew that you could do that without kind of losing any kind of feeling of quality?
Cheryl Texera [00:18:16]:
Absolutely. I went through mindset issues. In fact, I have always had mindset issues around my business. And so the way. One of the ways I solved that is I hired a hypnotherapist.
Erin [00:18:28]:
Oh, wow.
Cheryl Texera [00:18:29]:
So I highly recommend it. I actually work with hypnotherapists too, on a regular basis to grow their businesses. And. And it. I absolutely believe in it. It is like the best way to get out of your own way and start really making a breakthrough. But also my training in it helped me because, you know, we didn't like, we didn't start. Get to start from baby stuff.
Cheryl Texera [00:18:54]:
I mean, you get hired, you're expected to do very, very complex coding when you're just a beginner. Right. And so nowadays with ChatGPT, it'd be so much easier. But back then we didn't have all that. And.
Erin [00:19:07]:
But chat GBT can code.
Cheryl Texera [00:19:09]:
Yes.
Erin [00:19:10]:
Oh, okay. I knew, hey, I could do it. I didn't know Chad could do it. I used chat. That's funny.
Cheryl Texera [00:19:17]:
Yeah. And so if you're stuck and you don't know how to code something, you could ask it. You know, it's amazing. Which we didn't have that before, but I think that that training just helped me learn how to just jump in with both feet and just learn how to learn on the job, you know, and I think that a lot of entrepreneurs are afraid of doing that. They think they got to know everything and really you just need to learn on the job. And yeah, you're gonna Mess up sometimes you're gonna have hard knocks. You're gonna have all those things. But it's just information.
Cheryl Texera [00:19:47]:
It's not a failure on your part. You're not born with this knowledge, you have to learn it. And so, you know, to me it's like if you have a dream and you're a visionary, go for it. Go for it.
Erin [00:20:01]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's dig a little bit in more into your accelerator. It's simulator app. Tell me about it and. Yeah, tell me about it.
Cheryl Texera [00:20:11]:
Yeah. So the profit accelerator simulator is, I actually have software. So we have a software that's the full complete software and it has a lot of algorithms in it. So it really does a lot of calculating and ifs and buts and all kinds of stuff in there. So when I do an assessment for a client, then I go through all of these areas. So we have 12 areas that are the foundational pieces of areas, parts of it which are like, you know, cutting cost, pricing, making sure your pricing's right, market dominating position, like a compelling offer and then upsells, downsells, additional products, services, you know, even a drip campaign and that sort of thing. So it's got several of those and then the other 40, there's, there's just, there's a bunch of them. So I won't go into them all but, but there's a whole bunch of them.
Cheryl Texera [00:21:03]:
So what we do then is we have, we go through and methodically we just ask questions, really dig deep and get into the heart of the business owner of what they truly want. And, and then we help them, you know, strategize and actually helps us prioritize by what it thinks will get the biggest return the quickest. Okay. So that we know how to prioritize. And then everything is very projectized, very, you know, methodical and linear. We just do this, then we do this, then we do this. And so the simulator is just sort of a simpler version of it. But it's kind of fun because you can put your, what your revenue is now and what your profit margins are, your gross profit and your net profit margin.
Cheryl Texera [00:21:51]:
And then you can start seeing like, well, if I increase these areas by 5%, how much extra revenue would I have? How much extra profit would I have? And it's all there on the application. And so the profit acceleration simulator actually comes with a little training in it and everything. So you have a training video that'll teach you about compounding growth and how that works and how it's so important to look at it that way. Because. Because here's the thing. Like, I actually worked with a client who I helped them create a maintenance program for their clients. So they're making about $1,000 lifetime value for a client. Okay.
Cheryl Texera [00:22:33]:
So that's not very much. It's really hard. They gotta always be getting new clients all the time. And so then they have feast and famine. It's a real trick. Right. And. And so we created a maintenance program that was just an additional $600 a year for that client.
Cheryl Texera [00:22:48]:
So it was $49 a month, $50 a month. And. And they have 100% close rate because they have such good trust with their clients. And so that, I mean, they were already serving a hundred clients a year. Now they basically doubled their profit just by adding that one little thing.
Erin [00:23:07]:
Yeah.
Cheryl Texera [00:23:07]:
So that's really what you're paying a good marketer for, is not just that marketing, but helping you create, you know, lots of revenue streams and then be able to manage those things. So it's not such a complicated thing that you can't even handle it. But that simple strategic thing that we did, and now they don't have that feast and famine because they have regular income coming in, you know, and the people get, you know, four. Four sessions a year. Right. With that. And it uses their expense. They don't have to pay that X amount of dollars every visit.
Cheryl Texera [00:23:45]:
They just do 49 bucks a month. And it's simple, easy for everybody.
Erin [00:23:51]:
Yeah, I love that. You know, evening out their cash flow. You know, helping people prioritize is so important. I mean, there's so much information. You know, I am. I mean, I started a podcast because I was a consumer podcast, and I had to, like, take a break at some point because I was getting so many ideas, great ideas, but from all the different people. I'm like, oh, And I just. There's a lot out there, too.
Erin [00:24:17]:
To, you know, kind of only have one voice in your head that's helping you prioritize is hugely important. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Cheryl Texera [00:24:27]:
Yeah. And even the best of coaches need a coach. You know, it's not like I have a coach. I mean, you know, I have two coaches, I have a mindset coach, and I have, you know, tactical coach. It's really important for people to have coaching because you. You can't do it in a silo. You know, you're too. You're too critical of yourself, first of all.
Erin [00:24:47]:
Right.
Cheryl Texera [00:24:48]:
Worried about things, and you get. You get in your own way, and a coach can really help you get out of your way.
Erin [00:24:54]:
Right. That is so important. Well, that might actually answer my last question, which was, what would be one piece of advice that you would give to people who are stuck and looking to reach the next level and maybe. Well, investing in and other people is super important.
Cheryl Texera [00:25:15]:
Yeah, I definitely believe getting a coach. I mean, that is my advice, is get a coach and make sure you're getting the right coach, you know, because a lot of times you'll have coaches that, that focus on one specific thing, like maybe building a automated webinar funnel.
Erin [00:25:31]:
That's great.
Cheryl Texera [00:25:32]:
If you're wanting to build an automated webinar funnel and all of a sudden they're like, well, yeah, we're going to help you build this automated webinar funnel. And you're like, well, I hadn't even thought about that, but okay, right. You know, then you might end up down a rabbit hole that you didn't intend to go to. So definitely make sure you're understanding what it is that you're building. In fact, I had a prospect tell ask me, so what system are we building? You know, because mine is much more comprehensive.
Erin [00:26:01]:
Right.
Cheryl Texera [00:26:02]:
You know, it isn't real specific. It's more of a comprehensive look at your whole entire business so that we can look at all the pieces, help you get inefficiencies out, help you maximize your profit, even cutting costs, that kind of stuff. So. So it really depends on what type of thing you're looking for. Then that's the type of coach you should have. And then definitely, if you are having mindset issues, get a performance coach, a neuro performance coach, or a hypnotherapist who focuses on that for entrepreneurs because it really is a game changer and can make all the difference, like night and day in your business.
Erin [00:26:42]:
That's interesting because I don't know much about that. And I, I will pick your brain later about, you know, who maybe we'll have someone on to talk about that, because mindset comes up. I mean, I will say that my podcast is focused mostly to women entrepreneurs. And I do think we talk about mindset a little bit more than a general audience. And, and everyone I talk to says it's a really important part of the work that they do and the progress that they've made. And so I think I want to, I want to dig into that more. It's not a typically legal topic. There's not, you know, but I think it's really important in scaling especially, you know, there's something really personal about it being your expertise that you are scaling.
Erin [00:27:28]:
You know, it's yeah, it's not just you, but it is you. It's personal. Right. And so you're a little bit more vulnerable, putting yourself out there, so. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. I mean, you know, I, I don't know what number this is, but that, that it keeps coming up.
Erin [00:27:45]:
So it means I've got to, I gotta go pursue this a little bit more.
Cheryl Texera [00:27:49]:
Yeah, you gotta check it out.
Erin [00:27:51]:
Bringing this up. So. Thank you so much, Cheryl. So where can people find you? I know I have the link to your, your app that will be in the show notes, but people want to connect with you, find out more about you. Tell them where to find you, please.
Cheryl Texera [00:28:07]:
Yeah, actually the best places probably to find me are LinkedIn. Cheryl Texera on LinkedIn and I'm also unalignable. So we could maybe meet in a networking or something like that. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, everywhere.
Erin [00:28:21]:
Oh, you are? Okay.
Cheryl Texera [00:28:22]:
Yes. And I have actually my Instagram and my Facebook and my YouTube channel are all called Go Cheryl T. So find it at Go Cheryl T. And, and my website is cherylt.com and then I have a podcast called the soo advantage on YouTube music. So you can find me there as well.
Erin [00:28:46]:
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Cheryl. This has been a great conversation and we'll make sure we have all your information in the show notes as well. And thanks again.
Cheryl Texera [00:28:57]:
Thank you.