7-Figure Exit to Starting From Scratch
The next level requires new behaviors, habits and mindsets
Baggage. We all have it. We carry it from relationship to relationship, job to job and business to business.
Whatever you’re doing now, your past experience will affect your actions. Consciously and subconsciously, you’re carrying around outdated habits and using old ways to do new things.
That’s a lesson I’m learning the hard way right now.
Between 2011 and 2021, I built a social media agency that didn’t rely on me, then sold it after the growth period that followed a challenging six months.
It was the right decision, and I don’t regret a thing. But after the big exit, a new question started to surface: what’s next?
The paradox of success
You don’t suddenly stop being an entrepreneur after you sell your business. You don’t suddenly change as a person. You still have that drive to make an impact, money, and progress.
But the paradox of success is that those things that made you successful in the first place could hold you back in the future.
I didn’t want to rush into anything. I didn’t want to lose all the freedom I now had. I wanted to do something that made the absolute most of those resources that were uniquely mine.
Between the exit and the new business, I ran experiments: teaching, writing, going on podcasts and publishing Ten Year Career.
I got to know a lot of creators.
Most of them were producing courses, books and social media content. Some were doing consultancy and coaching as solo entrepreneurs or with teams. It was almost impossible for them to build a business that didn’t need them like I had done with my agency.
After a “summer of ideation” with my husband, where we went out and about and chatted about ideas for businesses we could start, based on a strict set of 7-parameters and a rule of not buying any domain names or moving forward with any idea but one, we found the thing. Coachvox AI arrived in the world.
Starting afresh
Coachvox AI is a platform that enables thought leaders to clone themselves with artificial intelligence. Creators, coaches, authors, and entrepreneurs sign up and train an AI version of themselves that sits on their website or inside a membership group, collecting leads and engaging with their audience on their behalf.
In an agency, you clone yourself with SOPs and well-trained team members.
As a creator, you clone yourself with AI.
But back to the baggage. How do you go from building and exiting a busy agency with a team of self-sufficient account managers, trainers, sales and operations professionals to starting a new AI SaaS with no team?
It turns out, with difficulty.
Changing the game
First, there’s the difference between running a lifestyle business and a performance business and the mindset shift required there.
Then, there are the differences between the business types (agency and software), which means that how you approach challenges requires a completely different approach.
Then there’s how you start a new business from scratch compared to when you have resources and being sure to identify and use them.
Lifestyle business to performance business
This personal shift was the first one to crack:
Goals: Optimise for how much impact you can create instead of hitting a certain level of monthly income that funds your dream lifestyle. I let go of the metrics that don’t matter and figured out which new ones to track. I stopped overthinking travel and lifestyle beyond my perfect repeatable day and changing location every 2–3 months.
Cycles: Investing profits back into the business to build it further, not into passive investment streams that are unrelated. This is based on a belief in the product and betting you can turn profits into more of the same. I edited our Coachvox AI projections to include reinvesting profits and stopped other pursuits.
Potential: Hiring people because of their ambition and potential, beyond how well they carry out their responsibilities at the time. Now, their success and progress requires them to expand with the business, and being hungry to do so. I hired candidates with more sass, looking further afield for those unexplainable sparks.
Agency to SaaS
These wildly different business models meant a shift in my approach:
Sales: Agencies sell a service and then deliver it into existence. In software, you sell a product that already exists. This requires insane levels of patience in product development and letting go of ultimate control to developers who build the thing. Practicing patience is challenging, as is finding the balance between following up and driving good engineers away.
Customers: Agency clients were worth thousands every month. Coachvox AI is $99 a month. Creators sign up for different reasons and aren’t committed straight away. Cancellations were disproportionately painful, and I took each as a personal failure. Now, each is a chance to learn and plow feedback back into improving the product.
Customization: At the agency, we flexed our approach depending on the client. At Coachvox AI, we built a product that works for our target customer, and they use it to suit their needs. Case-by-case would be a problem; if we built everything every creator requested, we’d be clunky and janky. We don’t promise every feature; we keep a list and review it as a team.
Scale: Our agency had just 50–60 big clients, but our software already has hundreds of small ones. Customer service has different requirements in response lengths, content and how much can be automated. Doing things that don’t scale eventually had to stop because it costs the scale we’re ultimately looking for. For every message, we zoom out and think of how we improve the product, not simply how we respond to that individual.
Starting from scratch
But business models and business types are insignificant compared to the massive mindset shift required to attack a new mountain from scratch, especially when you’re not starting from scratch in so many ways.
I was starting from scratch in these areas:
- Building a software product
- Running a SaaS business
- Managing a remote team
- Working with affiliates
- Artificial intelligence
…and the first six months were a long list of forgetting about resources I already had and not using the ace cards I’d spent a decade collecting.
I was approaching starting my second business in the same way I approached starting my first business, even though I had different resources.
Old habits die hard
A recently self-employed friend invited me to a networking event for startups, and I wasn’t sure whether to go. I applied to funds for investment rather than calling around my best contacts. I didn’t use my mailing list and social media profiles to share the plans before the product was built.
Agency baggage was being carried through, lifestyle business baggage was popping up, and startup baggage was coming along for the ride.
I acted like a complete newbie until I realized something was wrong. Then I made a change. I remember I was well-versed in these areas:
- Playing to team members strengths
- Understanding creator pains
- Writing, marketing, press
- Listening to customers
- Figuring stuff out
…and started aligning my plans, calendar and to-dos with actions that played to my strengths rather than simply following my old blueprint for starting a business.
A beginner’s mind is useful. But it’s powerful when combined with the ace cards you already have.
Making rules
Taking into account the baggage shifts in mindset and business models and the plans for the future, I’ll leave you with the rules I created to operate within.
The awareness led to a new lens through which decisions are filtered. Where we spend our energy and what we build and do is now passed through these baggage checks:
- Am I considering this because it’s right for now or because it fits a pattern of what I’ve always done? (How do I use past success to ensure future success, not cost it?)
- Does this approach make the most of my unique ace cards? (If not, how can I use my existing resources better?)
- How would I advise someone in this position with the same resources? (To find perspective, objectivity and common sense.)
Wherever you are right now, whether working on something that’s been going on for a while or completely new, the next level requires new behaviors, habits and mindsets.
Here’s to having the self-awareness, courage and intentionality to find them.
