Jen Casey (JC): So for those of you who don’t know Rachel, she is a business strategist and a Facebook Ads ninja. Rachel, I would love for you to share a little bit about who you are and what you do for those people who don’t know you yet. 

Rachel McMichael (RM): I call myself a business strategist and a coach, but I’m not one of those coaches who is like, “Well why do you think you should run ads?” I’m more like, “No, THIS is what’s wrong and this is how we’re going to fix it.”

I work with female entrepreneurs, online course creators, and coaches and help them leverage the power of Facebook Ads to grow and scale their businesses. I believe there’s no better way, no faster way, to grow and scale your online business in this era of marketing than with Facebook Advertising. I’m all about paid advertising. I have an online course called The Academy. I also have a group coaching program where we take female entrepreneurs, online coaches, and course creators and help them tap into whatever it is that’s holding them back.

JC: Boooom. And you actually started in the health and wellness world, right? I did not know that!

RM: I did! So I found out back in 2012 that I was pregnant. I was an executive for a company in Dallas, but I was living in Mississippi at the time so I was traveling a lot. When I found out I was pregnant, I remember sitting down with my husband and saying, “I just don’t think that this makes sense once we have kids. I need to find something different.” I researched everything. I thought maybe I could be a CFO for hire and I looked at all the different things and I couldn’t find anything exciting. I also wasn’t super healthy at the time, but I saw my friends were getting healthy and fit and I thought maybe I should do what they’re doing. They seemed to be pretty successful! So I thought, “I’m going to see what they’re doing.”

I reached out to one of my husband’s friends and said, “Michelle, tell me what you’re doing.”  She said she was part of a network marketing company, but she was also a certified personal trainer. I was like, “Well, then I’m going to go get certified!”

I knew nothing about health and fitness. In my mind back then, my honey nut cheerios and orange juice were so healthy to eat and drink in the morning for breakfast. We ate macaroni and biscuits for lunch every Sunday. We were so not healthy!

 

JC: That was so me too! I remember coming home one day and being like, “Yeah, I’ve been really healthy. I’ve been eating a lot of Panera.” My mom was like, “You realize that’s just bread, right?”

RM: It’s just bread! So I decided I was going to affiliate with this network marketing company, but also  get trained as a certified personal trainer. My plan, as a pregnant person with no real nutrition or heath experience, was that I was going to start teaching in-person boot camps. I quickly realized that was not an effective strategy for someone who was trying to grow a baby. It was time consuming and I was having to trade dollars for hours! I just didn’t feel like it was a good long term strategy, so I put a lot of focus on the network marketing side and creating what I called online boot camps. Again, this was six years ago, so it wasn’t super popular to do back then.

I started creating online boot camps and did a lot of research. I had no degree in marketing at the time.  I’m a certified digital marketer now, but back then I knew nothing. So I started a blog and started posting recipes. I don’t know why anybody found me worthy of taking advice from, but my online boot camps started to take off as did the network marketing side. I realized during the process that my spin on health and fitness was, “I hate working out, but I do it anyway, so you should too.” 

I learned so much during that season. I loved that my clients were getting results. I had clients that were losing 50 pounds and doing incredible things. What I loved even more than that was actually the network marketing side and helping my team and my coaches find success in their health and wellness businesses. I started having people coming to me saying like, “Hey! You built this blog, you built this website, and you have this funnel. Tell me more!” So I thought, “I want to help people with that.”

I decided to start charging the same rates I would charge as a personal trainer to help people with that piece of their business. One of my coaches said, “Hey Rachel! Why don’t you just do that?” I was like, “Nobody would ever pay me to teach them how to run Facebook Ads and do funnels and stuff. Everybody already knows how to do that.” I just assumed because it came so easily and naturally to me that everybody already knew how to do that stuff. Who would ever pay someone to do that when they could just do it themselves?

 

That’s what really morphed my business. So I actually released the network marketing and health and wellness piece of my business so I could fully focus on the thing that I really loved the most, which was the marketing. I got certified in digital marketing because I did want to make sure that I was not just teaching people the way I thought was best, but plugged into proven strategies and systems that I knew would work for the masses and the people that I wanted to serve. And so that morphed into, again, working primarily with female coaches and course creators who were just like me and helping them in the areas that I knew I’d mastered.

 JC: I didn’t realize we had such similar stories because I used to think, “If I have to post ONE more friggin’ recipe, I’m going to poke my eyeballs out with a fork!” I was DONE.

I was geeking out on all things funnels, but my team in network marketing wasn’t ready for that. They were like, “Just teach me how to send more DMs!” And I was like, “No no no, check out this cool funnel!” People at the newer levels just weren’t ready for it, at least back then because this was years ago. I was like, “Fine. I’m going to find the top people in network marketing and I’m going to teach this to them!” So after that, you started running ads for people as well?

 

RM: Yeah! I opened up an online agency, a web design and Facebook Ads agency. We have availability from time to time for web design clients, but that’s not the focus of what I do now. The majority of what I do is I spend time on two main things. One is The Academy, which is my Facebook Ads program, and the other is a four month group coaching program that kind of goes along with The Academy and helps online entrepreneurs and coaches hone in on the issue that’s holding them back so they can get that business breakthrough they’ve been looking for.

JC: And this whole idea of leaving network marketing, or even just expanding your network marketing business, and transitioning into creating your own courses. There are so many women that follow and listen to the podcast who are in that spot where they’re like, “Ah, I’ve been doing this for two years. I’ve had a lot of success, or maybe I haven’t had success, but I feel called to create something else because health and wellness isn’t my passion.”

That transition period of evolving a brand feels so scary when you’ve never done it before. What was that like for you when you were like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to close up my network marketing company and stop doing personal training!”?

 

RM: Terrifying, absolutely terrifying. The first thing to go was actually the online personal training. I still held onto the network marketing for a little bit longer. I knew my passion was helping others who want to be business owners, so the network marketing still made a lot of sense for me because I could mentor my team. It’s so funny to look back because I remember thinking, “I need to let this go.” I was hanging on even though I really wasn’t into it anymore. Everyone knew I wasn’t into it anymore. My whole team knew, my up line knew, everyone knew, but I still kept hanging on. When I finally called my up line to say I was leaving, I thought she would be mad or disappointed and she was just like, “DUH! We knew this was coming.”

I had to release that because I needed to give fully to the thing that I was meant to do. When I stopped I thought that it was going to feel paralyzing. I thought that I was going to think, “What if I go bankrupt? What if I don’t have this consistent check coming in every month?” What it really felt like was a complete weight and burden off my shoulders.

I felt lighter as soon as I did it, so I knew right then and there that I had made the right decision. And I never looked back.

 

 

JC: What do you think was your resistance? Was it guilt? I hear so many women say they don’t want to leave their team behind or they worry what their up line will think. The biggest thing I hear from people is, “What will my followers think? They’re going to be so confused if I change my messaging!”

Girlfriend… people are not watching your stuff that closely. It gives you that permission to just accept that you’re not that special, but that’s a good thing.

No one is as obsessed with your stuff as you are. Everyone’s busy with their own lives. They’re not going to be shocked and surprised and need a day to process the fact that you changed your brand.

 

RM: Right?! I think a lot of times our ego gets in the way and we think we’re so much of a bigger deal than we are!

Mindset has been the number one thing in my business that will move me forward and it’s the one thing that will hold me back. Every single time.

I’ve realized that if I focus on what other people think then I hold myself back from serving the people I was meant to serve and living the life I was meant to live. I have to stop worrying about the people that would never do business with me anyway, that are never going to be interested in what it is that I know I’m meant to be doing. The people who are supposed to be with me… they’re going to be with me! And the people who aren’t… they’re not. 

 

JC: Preach! I would say probably nine point nine times out of ten, it’s not what other people are thinking and saying, it’s what WE are afraid other people are going to think or say. 

RM: We make up these stories in our head and nobody’s even told us this story. We’ve told it to OURSELVES and we fell for it and believed it. It’s not even something that anybody has ever said! It’s so interesting.

I do network marketing again now, actually. I have a network marketing business in addition to what I do with the business coaching. So many times we use past stories and past beliefs and make them mean something today. You know, the fact that I asked people to trade pictures with me in ninth grade and they all said no or lied to me and told me that they didn’t have any pictures to trade, has somehow made me think having sales conversations with people today needs to be hard or scary. Well, ninth grade Rachel… I mean, was that horrible? Of course it was horrible! Was it embarrassing? Of course it was embarrassing. Should I still be hung up on it 20 something years later? Probably not. Is that still my reality today? No, so why am I letting something that happened way back then directly influence what I’m doing now and hold me back from serving people I’m meant to serve or from having conversations with people I’m meant to have conversations with?

We use completely unrelated stories that happened in our past to almost trick ourselves into saying, “Well, you know, nobody wanted to come to your birthday party, so nobody will want to…” And that’s so ridiculous. It’s not even true. It’s a fake story we’ve told ourselves and it’s limiting us.

 

JC: It’s so true! I fall into this trap as well and I think for most successful people who are moving quickly and taking action on their goals, different things are going to come up as you’re expanding your visibility.

Still, many people are setting goals and making decisions based on past versions of themselves. There is less growth that can happen when we’re existing or operating from that type of mindset.

I love that you’re super into mindset even though you’re so techy. I’m all about the strategy myself and it used to be the main thing that I talked about and coached around, but now over the last year and a half, I’ve made that shift. I can give people the BEST strategy on the planet, but if they don’t have the beliefs of a successful person, they’re not going to take action. What are your biggest beliefs about business and success?

 

RM: I truly believe that anything is possible for anyone. It’s just a matter of going and doing it. I think where most people get hung up is that they don’t believe in themselves. They don’t believe it’s truly possible for them so they don’t take the action they need to get the results they need to get.

I mean, I have a great ads course, but so many people will take the course and never run an ad. It’s not because I didn’t teach them the strategy. It’s not because they don’t know how to run an ad. Something in their mindset paralyzes them from putting themselves out there because they’re scared of what other people might think or what someone might say or what if I lose money. All of the what ifs. In this day and age, there’s nothing that can’t be done, but there’s only a small fraction of people willing to do it and never give up.

Steadfastness in business is the key to success. The only way to fail is to quit. If you keep trying and working at it, you will see results.

 

 

JC: There’s an interesting belief you have within that as well: failure only happens if you give up and giving up is not an option. One of my really good friends started building an online business and was having the early day breakdowns. She was going through that moment like you did in fourth grade when you were trying to learn long division and you were the only one in the room that didn’t get it. You know, she’s going through that phrase of entrepreneurship. I was just like, “You need to develop the belief you can figure anything out.”

I realized in talking to her the other day that that is one of my beliefs about success and business that has helped to propel me to where I am today. I don’t necessarily understand things right away. I have a learning curve just like the next person. I’m not extra smart. I don’t have a particularly extra high IQ. I’m very average in all boxes, but I have the belief that I can figure anything out. You could be the most talented person, you could be the prettiest person, or you could be the smartest person, but if you’re not taking action on any of that shit, then nothing is getting done.

 

RM: Exactly. There’s a learning curve and you have to EXPECT a learning curve. Many of us who have come into entrepreneurship came in after we’d already done things in business. Maybe we had worked our way to the top of a company or we had been a really great teacher for the last five years.

We mastered it, but we forgot what it was like on day one.

I remember my very first job at Old Navy. I didn’t know how to fold the clothes the way they needed me to fold them, I didn’t know how to unlock that dressing room, and I didn’t know how to work the cash register, but I learned and became awesome at those things. And my first day in public accounting… I didn’t even know how to turn on a laptop y’all. I had to learn all the systems. I had to learn the jargon. I had to learn all of those things. I learned and I mastered them!

We come in to our business and feel like we should have it mastered in a week and already be at the top of our company in three months.

Now is that possible? Of course it is.

Are there success stories of people who started something and within three months were millionaires? Absolutely.

But so what?

What if it takes five years for you to learn and master it? Is it still worth it?

To me it is, every single time. I always want to be that student who says, “What else can I learn? How can I continue to improve? How can I serve people better? How can I help my community better?”

I’m okay with not being the master and not having it all figured out. Just as you said, everything’s figureoutable. I think that’s where a lot of people start and stop really quickly. They think it’s too hard. Well, everything we learn how to do it first is hard.

 

JC: The questions you were asking are the questions that successful people are asking, as opposed to those who are struggling.

The better questions you ask, the better answers you’ll get.

When you’re asking how you can serve at a higher level, your unconscious mind is like, “Boom, here’s 10 ways.” But if you’re asking, “Why haven’t more people followed my page today?” You will also get answers and they probably won’t be very motivating ones!

 

RM: So true! I’m working on a project right now and it’s not going exactly like I expected. I’m not totally obsessed with the results right now, but I know there’s something I’m missing and I’m going to figure it out. In 2019… it will be figured out! It’s not a question of, “Am I going to figure it out or am I going to quit?” No, no, I’m going to figure it out. It’s just not working like how I want right now.

JC: There’s no time for sitting in a corner and rocking back and forth! You mentioned you’re in another network marketing company now and you’re doing extremely well. What does that look like alongside or combined with your coaching business?

RM: I spent all of 2018 trying to figure that out. After I left network marketing, I said I would never do network marketing again. So of course, this time last year, I signed on with another network marketing company. There were so many decision factors that went into even joining, to be honest. I already had a very established business and a multi six figure name and brand, so part of me was worried about brand reputation. I mean, I had PTSD from leaving last time and from being spammed and having some icky conversations in between the time when I was not a part of a network marketing company and people were wanting me to be a part of their organizations or buy from them.

I sat down and I asked myself the four questions I ask anytime I make any type of business decision. I ask myself:

Is this a good timing in the marketplace for this business?

Is this the right product and something I’d really want to be aligned with?

Do I trust the leadership of this brand, of this company, or of this up line that I’m going to be partnering with?

Finally, am I going to get paid?

At the end of the day, I want to help and serve, but I’m in business to be in business and make money. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that and I’m not going to apologize for it. I wanted to  make sure that those things all matched up. Well, I found this company I could check yes to every single box. And then it was like, well…I kind of care what other people think about me. Am I going to let that hold me back from something that could be really awesome? So I joined the company. It has nothing to do with Facebook Ads or business strategy or helping people grow their online businesses, but here’s what I realized for myself:

I’m truly passionate about helping female entrepreneurs grow and scale their online businesses. That sounds so generic, but it’s so true. And this gives me another avenue to do that in a way that I can’t do with just coaches and course creators. This gives me another platform to help women who maybe are just looking to make an extra 500 dollars a month or are looking to do more, be more, and have more.

Network marketing was where I found my greatest growth and personal development, so having the opportunity to coach, lead, and inspire other women made the decision so easy for me, but this product has nothing to do with my online business. For a long time I really struggled with how to do both. For me, and this goes against what I would probably teach somebody who was just doing network marketing, because I’m doing both, my network marketing business is not what I lead with. It is absolutely a part of my brand. It is something I take a lot of pride in. It’s something I enjoy doing. But my business brand, the Rachel McMichael Consulting brand, has nothing to do with that. I have actually kept those brands very separate and it took me a long time to do that. At first I tried to mesh them and I think I really confused my audience, unintentionally. A lot of people thought I wasn’t doing ads anymore and was just doing network marketing.

That’s when I realized I had to separate my message and I’m okay with that. I don’t know that that’s what everyone needs to do. That’s what’s worked for me and my brand. I think it’s because I spent so long building the Rachel McMichael brand, but the network marketing thing is still only just a year and a few months old. We’re taking a year old business and trying to mesh it into a six year old business. I don’t know that that made sense for what I’m doing.

The branding is separate, the marketing is separate, and the way that I approach both is separate.

A lot of my network marketing is more of the behind-the-scenes network marketing. It’s individual conversations. It’s day to day when I’m in contact with people versus my other business is very front marketing, attraction marketing, curiosity marketing, Facebook Advertising, funnels, all of those things. The great thing about knowing systems is that I’ve got pieces of that for both brands, but they do look very different and I just had to get okay with that.

I think that’s where most people struggle. A lot of network marketers do more than one thing. A lot of people do what I did first, right? They go from network marketing into something else or maybe they build a big brand and they pair a network marketing alongside of it. I know a lot of big influencers who never talk about their network marketing companies who do great in both arenas. I know a lot of big network marketers who never talk about their other business and do great in both arenas. I know people who talk about both! I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do it. I think we really have to figure out what works for us, for our audience, and for our brands. 

 

JC: So well put and you also tested it. You gave yourself a chance to say, “This might not be perfect and I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but let’s explore it.”

That in itself of just taking action on experimenting to uncover what it actually would look like is one of the only ways you’re going to get the answers for yourself.

 

RM: Absolutely. My audience was really clear with me on what they wanted to hear and what they didn’t.

JC: Which is amazing! From your perspective, what is growing a network marketing business look like in 2019?

RM: It’s very different than it was back then. Consumers are really smart and savvy now. When it comes to network marketing, I think we all just have to be really honest. There’s a stigma associated with network marketing and there is nothing that we are going to do to change that stigma other than to be different.

We have to be genuine, we have to be different, and we have to be about building relationships. We have to stop being icky, stop being spammy, and stop cold messaging people. That doesn’t work. It never works. You will never meet any top leader in any company that says, “Cold messaging was the way that I found my success.”

We have to get real, we have to get authentic, and we have to get savvy about the way that we speak to our audience. We have to tell stories and we have to be intentional. It’s a different business than it used to be.