Hey there, bold leaders. Welcome to another episode of The Bold Money Revolution Podcast. I am so excited to be here today with Michelle Tubman. She is a current client. She is in our The Bold Profit Academy Plus program. She started out in The Bold Profit Academy program, and I’m here because I want to share her journey with all of you because it is epic. I was just sharing with Michelle that she actually helped me and flipped something for me in my own mindset that I want to really talk about and share with everyone here today as well. We’re going to be talking about the one thing that I learned from Michelle that has helped me in my business and flipped my mindset.
We are going to talk about how Michelle, as a busy ER doctor physician into COVID times, has managed to start and grow a business; how is she doing this, how is she using her time to get the results that she’s getting. Michelle always has the best insights about her growth. She’s a real learner. What that means is that you can look at your mistakes and you can look at your ups and downs and take something away that is meaningful and purposeful, and then intentionally put that into action going forward. There’s so much here that I think is so important that we share. I’m excited to do this. Welcome, Michelle.
Michelle Tubman: Thank you. I’m very excited to be here.
Tara Newman: I’m so excited for people to hear what you do. Tell us what you do.
Michelle Tubman: As you mentioned, I am an emergency physician by night, then by day, I’m a life and weight loss coach. I’m really on a mission to teach women that their body and their weight is never their glass ceiling, that they can live the life that they feel that they deserve, the life that they want regardless of the body that they live in. When we encompass that belief, the weight just comes off. It’s magical to witness. I am super passionate about sharing with women everywhere what that process looks like. I’ve lived it myself and women need to hear this message and it’s just what fuels my business forward every day.
Tara Newman: Specifically, who are you talking to? Who is your target market? I know you have some specifics nailed down.
Michelle Tubman: Yeah. I target professional women who are in higher levels in their profession who are generally in the 35-40, 50-60 age group, and women who have at least 60 pounds to lose. Most of the people who are clients in my business or who listen to my podcast have been dieting for decades and have come to this point where they just feel stuck and trapped in this bigger body that’s holding them back from advancing in their careers, getting the love that they want, all of these things.
Tara Newman: What I love about this—and you and I have talked about this—is how you, as a physician, stand in this really interesting place of really being able to have the credibility and the credentials to speak out in support of overturning this diet culture and some of these fads, hacks, and tactics that women are being just perpetrated with in their news feeds. You’re able to give this from a place of evidence based and science, but you’re also able to speak to the fact that as a physician, there are problems in the system.
Michelle Tubman: 100%.
Tara Newman: I really love that positioning for you. It’s so powerful.
Michelle Tubman: I love that it also gives me my side gig, inside my side gig is to really work on changing medical culture as well because not only do we approach the treatment of overweight and obesity—and even using those labels wrong causes just irreparable damage to women everywhere—but there’s also fat shaming implicit in the Western medical model as well. Both of those things need to be addressed. I feel I’ve positioned myself in this perfect place to help women and to help my colleagues in the medical profession understand a little bit better what it actually means to be a woman living in an overweight body and the reasons why we got there.
Tara Newman: Yeah, so important. I want to just back us up for a second. We’re going to go in the middle and then we’re going to go back and we’re going to go forward. Michelle joined my program at the end of 2020; she joined The Bold Profit Academy. Then she booked a call with me a year later because we were promoting The Bold Profit Academy Plus. I was surprised because Michelle hadn’t been coming to our calls. The reason why I want to talk about this is because for me, as a program owner, one of my mindsets and my concerns as somebody who feels very responsible—and I know that a lot of women feel very responsible for the work they do, they care a lot, they feel very committed to the people who they work with and that they want them to get results—and I wonder when I don’t see people on calls if somehow they’ve fallen off, if I could have been doing a better job. We go into this whole narrative around making it about ourselves. I think about people like, “I wonder where so-and-so is,” and sometimes we reach out and things like that.
When Michelle came to this call, I was like, “Gee, this is really interesting. I hope she’s done well. I haven’t seen her.” Of course, I didn’t realize she’s in the trenches of the emergency medical space during a raging pandemic. It makes sense why you might not get the calls. When she showed up to the call, first of all she said—I love it—her husband gifted her the program at the end of 2020. How did that feel to receive that from your husband?
Michelle Tubman: Oh, it’s so good. I am married to the best man ever. He has been nothing but supportive throughout this whole process. I joined you before I even had my business.
Tara Newman: I know.
Michelle Tubman: I had this idea, I wanted to do it, and I didn’t know where to start, what to do. I came across you, I liked what you stood for. Before it, my husband, Rob, came to me with this email that he had registered me in this program.
Tara Newman: How did he know to register you? Did you tell him?
Michelle Tubman: I show him everything. This is part of the reason why you didn’t see me for years, I bought all the things. I bought all of the programs, all of the people. When I first got the idea of starting this business, I got completely overwhelmed by the online space. There are just so many loud voices in there. I didn’t know who to listen to. I bought all the loud voices and then I found you. You’re a quieter voice in the online space but I read your sales page and everything resonated. I showed my husband every point you made on that page. I had an explanation as to why I felt that was important for me. He had the sales page and that’s how he knew. When I signed up for the Plus program this year, I went back to my husband, I said, “Do you remember this program you bought me?” He did, and I said, “You know what, I’m signing up for the next step.” He’s like, “I think that’s a really good idea because Tara is the only one that you actually ever quote in this house.” Even if you are a quiet voice, you are certainly the loudest one in our house.
Tara Newman: I’m not going to lie, partners and husbands love me. Some of them even message me on Instagram and I’m cool with it. I’m like, “Listen, if I’m improving home lives everywhere, I’m really good with that.” He had bought you that program and you said to me, “He bought me this program,” and we’re going to talk about you making your way through the program but you were like, “I really was able to build my business off of this and now I’m ready for that next step.” That was such a gift to me to hear that you did well, in that you were an implementer because that’s really what that program is all about is really making sure that people implement. I want to back up for a second. I’m curious to know what was it where you were like, “I’m going to start my own business”? What was the impetus, what’s the goal, what’s the aspiration there?
Michelle Tubman: I think it started because of my own journey, like I’m sure is the case for many business owners. I struggled with my own weight for decades. I did all the programs. I did the Weight Watchers. I saw my doctor who told me I should do keto and intermittent fasting, which I tried on his advice, destroyed my life, stopped my periods, did a whole bunch of negative things because it wasn’t right for my body. At the peak of my frustration, I found a coach. I didn’t know what the heck a coach was at that time. I was super skeptical but totally changed by my life, the way that I thought about food and my body, and all of the things. I thought, “Women need to know this. Other physicians need to know this.”
When the pandemic first started, I’m up in Canada, and the messages that were coming out from our government were to not come to the ER unless you were super sick. For the first few months of the pandemic, the ERs were quiet like in a spooky way. I had some time, a little bit of extra time, and I felt like I needed something positive to focus on because at the beginning of the pandemic, everything was scary. We didn’t know what it was, what was going to happen, we had memories of SARS, and people were having traumatic flashbacks to that, and were like, “What’s coming?” I felt like I needed something positive to focus on. I went and got the same training that my coach had. It was through that process that I realized I love coaching. It fills my soul in a way medicine doesn’t do, I need to do this. I thought, “I guess I have to start a business.” That’s literally how the thought process went.
Tara Newman: You’re doing important work with what you’re doing but you see a need and an opportunity to do something even more meaningful and mission driven, and to have this impact in a greater way. I know that’s a big motivation for you. What else is motivating or interesting to you? You’re fantastic with the insights and I think it was you who first said to me, one of the first things I think you said to me—and correct me if I’m wrong—was “I don’t know much about business. I didn’t go to business school. I wasn’t taught business.”
Michelle Tubman: Yeah, it’s true. But I think that thought of “I don’t know what to do” stopped me for about five seconds, and then it was like, “Ooh, this is a challenge. It’s not like nothing more than a good challenge.” You don’t get to be an emergency doctor without thriving on the unknown, on challenges, and navigating through all of that. I think that’s a secondary motivator for me. I want to know what can I do with this, where can I take it, how can I grow and stretch, learn, and be challenged. All of that’s very motivating for me as well.
Tara Newman: Yeah, what’s possible. This is a place that feels like there’s a lot of possibility for you.
Michelle Tubman: Yeah, exactly.
Tara Newman: Does it feel infinite in its possibilities?
Michelle Tubman: Yes, it does.
Tara Newman: When you’re in control of what’s possible, it starts to feel like anything’s possible.
Michelle Tubman: Absolutely. I have no problems dreaming. I can sit and fantasize for an hour about how this could look five years from now, a decade from now, and how it’s changing the lives of women across the globe. It’s all very exciting for me to hold on to for sure.
Tara Newman: All right. When you started, it was basically like, “How do I start? What do I need to know? What don’t I know?” You said you were just buying things, almost like the struggle was in not knowing.
Michelle Tubman: That was definitely the trap that I fell into. I thought that the solution was to buy all the things, to buy all the programs, which in some ways helped, because it’s like I didn’t even know the lingo. I would hear warm leads, cold leads, opt-in, funnel, evergreen, pivot, all of these words that made no sense to me. I felt like I needed the language and then I needed a first step. That was the hardest part for me. Then once I got going, I quickly realized that having so many courses and buying so many programs was actually slowing me down and making the process much less fun for me and more overwhelming than it had to be, so I put an end to that.
Tara Newman: What were some of the breakthrough moments that you had last year that took you from no income to income and wanting to step up to the next level of building your business?
Michelle Tubman: Oh, Tara, there were so many things. When I first started, I didn’t want to charge anybody any money at all. I was terrified of charging money. In my mind I make a good enough income as a physician, I don’t need more money. Women need to hear this message is what I kept hearing. If I charge for it, then women aren’t going to hear it. I had to get over that big hurdle in my own mind that it not only was appropriate for me to charge, it was necessary for me to charge for the benefit of my business, but also the benefit of my clients. That was a big thing. Second thing I think for me was physicians, we were, as a group, Type A personalities, we want to do everything right, we want approval. We want the A+ grade on everything. I really had to accept imperfection and take steps that were a little bit messy.
Tara Newman: This is a really big factor for experts. I love working with experts because you have actual expertise that people want that’s credible and that’s easy to build to create quality programs and build premium pricing around. You’re there to do the work. I love that. The challenge is exactly what you’re saying, that there’s a lot around having to be right, having to know it all, not wanting to look silly, or you don’t have all your sh*t together, needing it to be perfect, being valued or rewarded in the past for those things, and very much like you said, you didn’t know anything about business, and why the heck would you? That’s why I love, as an expert in business, partnering with other experts because that’s the complete picture. Having that open-mindedness and curiosity and allowing yourself to be a beginner is such a huge step.
Michelle Tubman: Huge step, and certainly not an easy one in the beginning. But I really credit the success of my business on me being able to do that, to let go of some of the expectations that I had on myself, also letting go of the fear of being judged harshly by other physicians for taking a stand that isn’t mainstream in the medical world as well. There were a lot of things that I just had to say, “You know what, I acknowledge that this is there but I’m moving forward anyway.”
Tara Newman: This is another truth that I just want to call out, a lot of the people that I work with—I don’t want to use the word disruptor, I’m going to use the word differentiation and differentiator—are people who have seen a need, an unmet need, an underserved need or population of people because they’re willing to go against the grain and they’re willing to take a stand for something. At the same time, that behavior is really uncomfortable and requires so much courage to go and speak out against the normative voices.
Michelle Tubman: But I think the more I do it, the more I know I have to do it, if that makes sense, and the easier it becomes. It’s on all fronts. I have to stand up against the body positivity people because they criticize me for encouraging women to lose weight, and yet I have women who have been traumatized by the body positivity movement because they have very legitimate reasons for wanting to be a little bit healthier and being a little bit more comfortable in their bodies. They need a space for that. It’s just everywhere. The weight loss space is huge and women have been immersed in diet culture and been the victims of the diet industry for so long that they can’t hear outside of that. I feel like I have to be loud so that they can see that there is another way to approach all of this. Standing up to all of the critics is something that gives me a little bit of excitement now, honestly, because it obviously needs to happen, it needs to be done.
Tara Newman: I always define bold as not necessarily loud but being willing to say the things you’re unwilling to say, being willing to do the things that you feel a little unwilling to do is what’s actually bold. I remember another thing you said to me, which I think is very relevant probably to the people listening to this podcast, is you realize you had to silence the noise.
Michelle Tubman: So true. There was so much noise to silence. In the online business space, there are very clear messages that come out of that space that tell me how I was supposed to run my business, much like diet culture, that never felt right for me, and then not knowing where do I go if none of this feels right. The answer was you as it turns out. When I first started, I looked for other weight loss coaches who were doing work similar to mine and spent time listening to them, which on one hand, it was helpful to figure out where the space was, but when it came to talking to my people and writing my content, I couldn’t get their voices out of my head. I even got to a point where I had to disengage from that too, so I could find my own voice, my own way of talking about what I offered to the world here.
Tara Newman: Yeah, that’s a real big part of my secret actually, people are always curious as to how I think about things. I don’t ever look for inspiration within my niche. Sometimes things come across my feed or somebody will share something with me, but for the most part, I’m looking in other industries, I’m looking in other businesses, way outside of the online space is like a favorite place for me to look and hang out, and really to let that fuel my creativity. If this is how they’re doing it in e-commerce, how could we do this in service and to really look outside and bring in things from there?
Michelle Tubman: I actually do the same thing. I think that’s another reason why I love my business so much is that I have to be constantly learning. It gives me a reason to go out and learn more. For example, a lot of women who struggle with weight have a history of trauma in the background. I have been doing lots of work lately on being more trauma informed, having a trauma sensitive approach to my programming and my coaching. I’ve been spending time in that space and really enjoying it. It’s been more additive to my work and not so much distracting.
Tara Newman: Anything else that was like a big shift for you last year that was an insight, or maybe something specific to The Bold Profit Academy that you found particularly helpful?
Michelle Tubman: There were so many things. I want to say springtime of last year was really starting to get rolling, I had a full roster of one-to-one clients at that point, and my business was a disorganized mess because I was putting out fires, finding solutions to problems as they came up, and I had no plan for the future, no structure, no support in my business. I had zero idea of where my finances were in all of this. One of the things you gave me and what The Bold Profit Academy gave me was some structure and a way to think about my business plan for my business. Doing Profit First was a huge deal for me. We could do a whole other episode on the issues I have around money and things like this. That was huge.
But really what it was, was you gave me a structure on how to think about my business and plan it so that it starts to run a little bit like a well-oiled machine, rather than me just figuring things out as I go, putting a backbone, a foundation in place for my business. Also, just hearing the approach of the way you teach and all of the other women that are inside your program, I feel like we’re all on the same page and we all want to serve our clients. We want to do it from this heart-based place that feels good for us. I think that was the important piece. When you teach us the EMS Framework, I literally structure my whole life around that framework.
Tara Newman: Isn’t it fantastic?
Michelle Tubman: To the point where I actually write in my journal every morning what I’m going to do for my energy today, what I’m going to do for my mindset today, and then what my top task is in my business and my life. My whole life is this framework now.
Tara Newman: It changes your nervous system, doesn’t it?
Michelle Tubman: I believe it does.
Tara Newman: There you have it, folks. It’s medically approved. My EMS (Energy, Mindset, and Strategy) is medically approved, doctor approved.
Michelle Tubman: It’s funny because I talk at the hospital all of the time about my business. My colleagues know about you, Tara, because I’ll say, “My business coach, she teaches this.” I actually have some physician colleagues who say, “What do I have to do for my energy and mindset before I come to work?” which I think is just mind-blowingly awesome. You’re far-reaching, Tara, more than you know.
Tara Newman: Thank you. I want to back up to the money thing though for a second, because you’re like, “We’re going to gloss over this,” and I’m like, “No, we’re not.” The Profit First system is beautiful. I appreciate that you enjoy the structure in The Bold Profit Academy because that is something that I really appreciate about, how that container is created and the way the different frameworks, guides, workbooks, and the implementation pieces are created that you can basically just take them and create your own structure or process within your business based on those things. Also, your business is supposed to be disorganized. You were one person, you’re starting out, growth is messy, I say this all the time. What concerns did you have around the money piece of running a business?
Michelle Tubman: I have this belief, I don’t know where it comes from, that I don’t like money, that money is dirty, that if I have too much of it, that makes me a dirty person. I am still knee deep, more than knee deep, I’m neck deep in student debt from medical school still. I can’t even look at my own personal finances and make a plan to solve that problem. When it came to my business, I swear for the first seven months of it, I just 100% ignored the whole financial piece of it. The whole money thing just makes me very uncomfortable. However, I’ve had to work with some of this because you need money to run a business, you need to be aware of where your money is, where it’s coming from, where it’s going if that business is going to be sustainable. It’s probably the biggest thing that I struggle with inside my business now.
Tara Newman: Yeah, and if that money is then going to make it out of the business and into your bank account to pay you.
Michelle Tubman: Yeah. I have no intentions of quitting medicine, at least not anytime soon, but what I want my business to do is to be able to retire my husband from his job. He has supported me through medical school, residency, it’s been all about my career for a very long time now. He’s not super fulfilled in his, so I would like to give him the freedom to go and explore whatever he’s passionate about. That’s really important to me. More than paying myself, I want to be able to retire him. That’s a pretty big motivator for me.
Tara Newman: I know. You and I are going to have a conversation about that this year and then we’re going to plan it out. Then you’re going to come back on the podcast and you’re going to tell people exactly how important it is to do that work because every time a woman says to me they want to retire their husband, I’m like, “There are a handful of things that we need to create and there are a handful of things that we need to talk about that are going to cost money. That money has to come from somewhere, which means you need to get comfortable charging and making money, and loving money and having it come in because it’s not going to be dirty, it’s going to allow your husband to go and find his passions.”
Michelle Tubman: I will take any help you can give me on that.
Tara Newman: We’re going to reverse engineer that whole thing for you and then we’re going to talk about it again. I appreciate that those have been your experiences with money. I talk about my experiences with money a lot on the podcast. I have a couple of podcast episodes dedicated to it. We all have unique lived experiences that contribute to how we talk about money. There’s a huge intersection in money, and all the different intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, class, geography, and religion, it’s all there when it comes to money, which is why I have become comfortable, which has been really hard for me, but I’ve made myself very comfortable saying I love money. I say it because people then listen to this podcast and they say, “I literally need to listen to you say I love money over and over and over again.”
Michelle Tubman: When I hear you say that, I feel so tense. It doesn’t feel good to hear you say that. I have work to do for sure.
Tara Newman: Yeah, I get it. It’s been my own challenge and my own growth around that for sure. We get that there’s the anxieties around money, how has Profit First maybe helped you navigate those anxieties?
Michelle Tubman: I think the first thing was it forced me to confront it. I think that was actually the biggest thing. I read the book, I watched your videos, and then I waited for five months to go to the bank. Even just going to the bank is a stressful thing for me to do. Then I go to the bank and I ask for these accounts, and nobody knows what Profit First is at my bank, I have to explain why I want all this and then they look at my accounts, and of course, I’m embarrassed because there’s no money in there because it comes in and then it goes right out.
I think the biggest benefit was I had to actually overcome all of my fears to just go to the bank and get those accounts set up. I do my allocations twice per month, which means I have to actually go into my bank account and see what’s happening, and do the math. Again, it’s structure, it forces me to go in and look at my finances, which it sounds like a little thing but it’s a huge deal for me to actually just be doing that. Then I have goals, I have financial goals. If I want to meet those, I need a strategy and I need to at least face this. Profit First has just been providing the structure for that.
Tara Newman: We acknowledge all of that inside The Bold Profit Academy. We acknowledge that opening bank accounts is going to be the hardest thing. We acknowledge that everybody implements this at a different pace, that we expect there to be discomfort and self-protection and weirdness around like “What do I say to the banker? How do I talk to my accountant?” We give some scripts for that in there as well. Because even the book Profit First makes a lot of assumptions about where we are with both our business acumen and our financial literacy. We really try and hit those pieces that need to be addressed that are pre-Profit First.
Michelle Tubman: But what it’s done is it’s there, the system is there inside my business and so as I grow and my business grows, it’s going to be great, it’s going to be organized, and I’m going to feel much better about it. I’m certainly glad that I’ve taken all of the steps now early in the business. I definitely recognize how important it is for me to work on my own issues and mindset around money. I think this just forces me to do that.
Tara Newman: What made you decide to join The Bold Profit Academy Plus?
Michelle Tubman: Oh, that’s a good question. I love support and accountability. It helps me stay on track. I discovered in the first year of my business that it’s a lonely place starting a business, especially if you have no one in your circle who knows what’s going on. It’s like all of your stuff comes up for you when you’re starting a business and I need women around me who understand what that feels like. I promised myself I would invest in one program only for 2022, and your program just checked all the boxes. I love the way that you teach. I love the structure that’s inside the program. I feel like the other women in the program emulate what I want to do, who I want to be, where I want to go. I had made the decision before I even got on the call with you that this was the direction I was going to go.
Tara Newman: Well, I’m honored and I’m excited to have you. There are two things that I want to ask you about that I want to cover as the “let’s leave the audience with this thing, this takeaway.” The first thing is the objection that I get the most is how much time is this going to take. I think this is a really tricky objection because of a couple of reasons. One, in The Bold Profit Academy, we’re only giving you the things you actually need to work on in your business. Would you say that’s fair?
Michelle Tubman: 100%.
Tara Newman: We’re touching lead generation, we’re touching how to sell, we’re touching how you can position your content for selling, we’re teaching you about creating your offers, we’re teaching about money. Those are the things that honestly every year, every month, every quarter, every year, you need to be addressing in your business. There is, in my opinion, no wasted time in The Bold Profit Academy. You have to be doing that anyway. We’re just teaching and guiding you on how to do it better.
But the second piece of that is funny to me because what is time? Time is going to pass anyway whether you make the decision and take the action or not. However I still get that this is a tricky thing for folks. You are an ER doctor working a night shift, running a business, how are you doing it time wise?
Michelle Tubman: Oh, gosh. I may have all sorts of issues around money. I have no issues with time. I firmly believe that I have enough time to do what I need to do. I am not just an ER doc and a business owner, I am also the chief of my department in the hospital, I’m also working on a master’s degree, I’m also working towards my certification in obesity medicine. I have a family. I have my own personal goals. My life is gloriously full. But what it means is I have to be very intentional and very deliberate with my time. I practice time blocking. I do all of these things.
I think a couple of my tricks are one is I identify every morning the one thing that I have to do today. I’ve said this to you before, and I don’t know who said it originally, but I trust the dominoes will fall. I do my one thing every day. I do it first thing for anything else. If I have a 6:00 AM shift in the hospital, I still get up early enough to do my one thing before I get in the car and drive to work. Then I think because I do have just a finite time to work on my business, I don’t mess around, I make decisions. I make decisions. I take the messy, imperfect action, if it’s the wrong decision, if it’s the wrong action, fine, I learn from it. I move on. I do it differently the next time. But I waste no time waffling. I make my decisions and I move on.
I think if I didn’t have all of these things going on in my life, that’s exactly what I would do; I would waffle, stew, analyze to death, and never move forward. I think if you can switch your perspective of thinking “I don’t have time. There’s too much going on” to finding a way to believe that there’s enough time to get everything done, you start to prioritize things differently and you don’t waste time deliberating on the hamster wheel and all of that stuff.
Tara Newman: I took a note on yesterday’s hot seat call in The Bold Profit Academy because you said something that I’ve been thinking about that I know is true. Sometimes I refrain from saying things because, even you have said this to me, you told me that it was hard to take in some of what I talk about because it’s so different, is that what you said?
Michelle Tubman: Yeah.
Tara Newman: Because it wasn’t confirming what you were hearing in all these other programs.
Michelle Tubman: Correct. But here’s the thing, it’s like I know in myself that when I’m starting to have a very physical reaction when somebody says something, it’s because I really, really need to hear it. I forget we were on a call very recently and I think you were talking to somebody else about doing consult calls. In my head, I’m going like, “Hey, I’m way beyond consult calls,” and I was getting triggered more and more during that conversation you were having with somebody else. After the call, Tara, that’s when I realized that I was operating as if my business were way further ahead than where it really is and that I actually need to go back to offering and doing consult calls on a regular basis. I know when you say something that’s rubbing me, it’s because it’s a truth I need to hear.
Tara Newman: I love money, Michelle.
Michelle Tubman: There it is. That’s a perfect example.
Tara Newman: Yeah, you said that yesterday. You said that you realize that you were operating from further ahead than you were. I’m on your aid of your business and I’m still like, “Please, get on a call with me. Please, book a call. I’d love to talk to you,” right?
Michelle Tubman: Yeah.
Tara Newman: Let’s chat. Let’s chat this through. Let’s help you figure out what you need, what you don’t need, what direction might be better for you to go in. Let’s help you stop the waffling. Waffles are for breakfast, not for business. I’m going to put that on a T-shirt.
Michelle Tubman: Right, that needs to go somewhere.
Tara Newman: I’m putting that on a T-shirt. But that’s how professionals and experts sell high quality programs for a premium price. There’s a consultative selling experience that needs to happen. When we do that, it’s actually very empathetic. I’m watching people in the online space really push ditching sales calls. Listen, not everybody needs a sales call to buy—I appreciate that and you can absolutely join my program without booking the call with me—However, I also want to honor the fact that people might need to talk to me even just for 15 minutes. We create our content in a way that really walks people through the majority of the sales process so that when they do get on a call, it really is just a check-in, making sure, that kind of thing, and they close a lot faster.
I think what the objection is “I don’t want to be stuck on a 90-minute consult call ‘wasting my time’”, and you shouldn’t, that’s not what I’m promoting because that’s the other thing that people teach is like coaching on the call, teaching on the call. That doesn’t work either. But to get in and out on a call in 30 minutes, on average 40 minutes, and learn something about the person, there’s a lot of data you can get. I say that all the time, “There’s a lot of data that you can collect about your ideal client,” and things like that, and the challenges that they’re having, and really be able to empathize and be compassionate.
Michelle Tubman: It’s also a prime example of the need to tune out the noise because that’s exactly why I stopped doing consult calls was because of all of the voices out there in the online space saying that if you want to scale, if you want to grow, you can’t be doing consult calls. The irony of all of this is I had a meeting, a little fireside chat, with all of the people in my program now and I asked, “Why did you sign up with me? I want to hear it.” Every single person alluded to having a conversation with me at some point of time and realizing fairly quickly that I’m the person they wanted to work with. With this knowledge, and this coming right from the mouths of my clients, I still was opposed to doing consult calls because of all of the noise out there. It was as soon as you triggered this in me, Tara, and I accepted this, it feels light and expansive and right for me to be doing the consult calls again. I love it when you challenge me. That’s what I’m here for.
Tara Newman: I really love to be the challenger.
Michelle Tubman: Oh, I know you do.
Tara Newman: We’re just going to raise the bar on what’s going on here. Listen, I think that there are some really great takeaways here, specifically around making the decision. That saves time just making the decision. “Waffles are for breakfast, not for business”, I’m really going to put that on a T-shirt. I love the “Don’t think you’re further along,” especially in the online space, we’re shortening time frames in a way that is not realistic. I always say this, there are businesses that I work with that have been in business for 30 years, it’s a long time. Imagine being in business for 30 years. Even me being in this business for eight years, I’m getting on in my years of business but it’s a third of what maybe some of these other businesses have been around for.
When you’re in that zero to five year space of starting a business, really give yourself some grace. I think we should always approach things with a beginner’s mind. I think that’s another thing that you really shared that you could take away from Michelle, her curiosity and her being an agile learner, really being willing to learn and also being motivated by the challenge, you said. That’s something my dad says to me all the time about being a business owner, is that he’s a business owner because he likes to solve problems.
Michelle Tubman: I think that’s why I like being a business owner as well. I’m coaching because I’m passionate about what I coach about but I love my business because I love solving problems.
Tara Newman: Oh, my god. Give me a good problem. There are times I’ll wake up in the morning and I’ve had a dream about a woman’s issue or something that’s in The Bold Profit Academy and I was like, “Oh, oh. That’s what she can do.” I feel so creepy, I’m like, “I had a dream about you last night but I thought about this.” Any other things that you want to share with the audience, like a tip or anything from The Bold Profit Academy, or anything like that before we wrap up?
Michelle Tubman: Oh, wow. I think you just have to do it. I think as business owners, we like to spend a lot of time reading, learning, and watching what others are doing and then never doing it ourselves. That’s one thing I love about The Bold Profit Academy. It’s not about getting on a call with you and being talked to or taught, it’s about solving problems, getting the work done, and moving forward. It’s just never helpful to be constantly in research mode, you just have to do.
Tara Newman: You gotta ask the questions too, which I think is hard for folks. Now, Michelle, tell people where they can find you in the event that we have a woman listening who wants to be in your audience and wants to be supported by you.
Michelle Tubman: Sure. You can head on over to my website, which is wayzahealth.com. You can read all about why I call my business that there. It’s an amazing story. I’m also on Instagram and Facebook as well. I also host the Mindful Weight Loss with Michelle Tubman, MD Podcast, which you can find anywhere you stream your podcasts.
Tara Newman: Thank you so much for coming on, Michelle, and sharing your journey with us.
Michelle Tubman: Thanks for having me. It was fun.
