Nicole: Hi, and welcome back to Lead Better. I'm Nicole Harlow, and today I'm talking with Dr. Kela Smith. Kela is a naturopathic doctor with a PhD, running two businesses side by side. She's got the Hormone Puzzle Society on the clinical side, where she works with women on fertility and hormones, and she also has Grow Your Wellness Business, where she coaches practitioners. She's also the author of Solving Your Infertility Puzzle. I wanted to have Dr. Kela on the show because she's made the jump from six figures to seven figures. And so today we're going to dig into how to do that. She's going to talk us through her framework for getting — what are the money beliefs that stall a sales call and kind of keeps you stuck in that, like, you know, you know what it is, where you're just like, I really can't get past this like threshold. And we're going to talk about things like qualifying people before sales calls and what a half a million dollars of investing in her own business actually taught her. Let's get into it. I'm here with Kela and I'm super excited to have this conversation today. Awesome. Okay, so I was looking at your Instagram. So one of the things I love to do to prep for these interviews is just like check out some content that you're putting out there. And that's where I get a lot of my questions. And really, I'm in the podcasting world because I'm just really curious. So I like digging. Yeah, I like digging in and asking questions. And so we're gonna kind of dig behind the scenes of your business. And one thing that makes you a little bit unique in some of the guests that I've had on is that you're a seven-figure business owner. Yeah. A lot of us listening, and myself included, we're still in that six-figure realm, right? We might be just, you know, hitting that like multiple six figures. Maybe we're starting to climb a little bit. But I love you to talk us through as somebody who's done it. Like, what are some things that we need to kind of think about? Maybe it's a mindset shift, maybe it's technique or ways of running our business that will help us get from that six to the seven figures. Cause I know most of us listening would love to be at that space.
Dr. Kela: Yeah, it's a couple of things. So I created — I love frameworks and methodology. So I created a little framework on how I went from six to seven, and I call it — I mean you have a framework for it? I do. I call it — we love frameworks over here. Yeah, me too. I mean, I do it in my clinical practice and in my, you know, my business practice, and it's so helpful. But so this is called the Thriving Business Puzzle. And I created it as a puzzle because my main philosophy is my Hormone Puzzle. That's my client side of my business. And so I feel like if one piece is out of alignment, it throws everything off. So this puzzle, it starts first with vision. You have to know where you're going, you have to build the life first that you want, and then you build your business around that life. So you have to get clear, crystal clear on that vision and what you want. And if you want to go to seven figures, then that needs to be one of your goals. If some people don't, they just want to be at six figures and that's fine, but get really clear on that vision first. Then I like to talk about offer. What are you actually creating and selling? You have to know. I talk to so many business owners that don't really understand what the offer is that they're selling and what is the signature offer that your person, your ideal client actually wants to buy. So that's another big piece of this. Don't just create something because you think it's gonna be good for your ideal client. Figure out what they want. You know, survey, look on Instagram, what are people saying? What are they talking about? What are they saying they want? Not just what their pain points are, but what do they actually want? Look on Reddit forums, really get crystal clear on what your ideal person wants and create that offer around that for them, and then create the messaging that goes with that so that you can sell that. Then we have to get visible. I know a lot of people, not maybe so much six-figure business owners, but if you're still at that five-figure mark or even four figures, a lot of us are scared of visibility at that point. We have to get visible. You have to get out of your own way, get out of that critter brain saying, like, I'm not enough. Who am I to say this? I don't know what I'm gonna say, I don't know what my messaging is gonna be. And you just have to jump in that pool and get visible. And I always have this mindset of it's not about me, it's about who I'm trying to help. And the person that needs me is sitting on their phone right now, waiting for me to say the thing that I need to say. So get visible. That's a big piece of this Thriving Business Puzzle. And then sales, get good at sales. I find so many of us are scared of sales, and now some of us might have teams. I've gone back and forth, I've had a huge sales team. I've now brought it all back in-house where I'm doing some of the sales because I find I sell the best. Yeah, maybe I haven't found the right team, but it's the one thing I've not been able to replace in my business as well, right? But so if you're doing the selling, get really good at sales. Don't be scared to say what you offer, how you can help people and get really good at the — when people are pushing back or the objections. Oh, the objections. Yeah, get really good at handling objections because that's another piece of it. I find so many of us will be on a sales call and we'll get that objection and then it kind of stops us, and then we're like, okay, well, we'll follow up with you next week, and then we get ghosted. So get good at handling those objections, get good at closing that sale on the call because we want the clients, we want to help people, but this is also a business. We also need these sales to come in so we can continue growing and get to that seven-figure mark. And then in the middle of the Thriving Business Puzzle is us as the CEO. We have to start thinking of ourselves as the CEO and not the practitioner. You need to be working on your business, not as much in your business. And if you're still growing and grinding and hustling, I was there, I get it, but you have to take some time, even if that means just blocking your schedule one afternoon a week where you're the CEO and you're thinking, How am I growing? How am I scaling? And what is my capacity for holding that? Your nervous system has to be able to hold your growth. And the more that you are stuck in that growth mindset or that, you know, your nervous system is in that fight or flight, it's going to block you and keep you stuck. So maybe that CEO day is you're working on your money beliefs, you're working on your identity. We have to shift into that — I'm the CEO, I'm not just the practitioner in the business, because then if you're not the CEO, you're just working a business. You're not the business owner, you're the worker. So, and so that's the Thriving Business Puzzle. You know, we start with impact, we lead into the freedom. What does our life want to look like? We build the business around that, and then that creates the income, and we can go to that seven figures, eight figures, and beyond.