Ask Me Anything: Lindsay Answers Your Business & Life Questions

Hey everyone, Lindsay here! The other day I sent an email out to my list asking them to ask me anything, and I will respond on my birthday May 1st. Well, the response was overwhelming, and I didn't think that if I typed out my answers to every single question, I didn't think they would be read as much as if I just spoke in a video and slash podcast. So that's what I decided to do.

What a cute idea Lindsay. After 33 years (Yes, I know a long time, but I love my work), I've been pivoting my fitness nutrition and wellness coaching business to online. I am a high value coach looking for high value clients. My niche is women over 40. I've been working hard on it for nearly a year. I had a coach, but I'm struggling to get genuine leads. I don't know what my actual question is, but you'll no doubt have an answer for me.

When we're struggling with getting genuine leads, it's usually because we're not hitting it right with the copy in our messaging. I've done so many sales breakthroughs and worked with so many coaches over the years that I know the primary problem for not getting leads (which I don't like that word because I feel like it takes the human out of it) is usually because our messaging is going over their heads.

That could be because you're not communicating what problem you solve for people. You're not communicating who it is, and you're not just nailing it with the copy. It comes down to really deciding that when people read your work, you want them to feel like you're reading their mind. You want them to feel like you get them. You want them to feel like you're in their head, and that should be our goal whenever we're writing copy.

It comes with those first impression moments - on our website, the headline, the Instagram bio, all those first impression moments really matter. Take a look at those things as starting points, then go into your copy and dig in. Are you really speaking to that person who is in the thick of it right now? Why did you start your business? Are you talking to that person who you once were when you started? It all comes back to messaging.

I would love to know your usual daily routine. What time do you get up? What do you do during the day? How long things take, including your homeschooling, exercise, how long your breaks are, what time you finish, etc.

Usually a typical day for me is like Groundhog Day - the same thing every day, and I'm happy about that. I wake up at 4:30 in the morning (Wednesdays I wake up at 5 - I get to sleep in a little bit), but Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, 4:30. I turn on my prayer app (I am Catholic), I listen to the rosary while I walk downstairs, let my dog out to go to the bathroom. Then I take my vitamins, put them on the counter, wait for the dog to finish. He comes in, he gets his treat, I go upstairs, I get my workout clothes on, I brush my teeth, and I do my workout for the day.

Mondays and Thursdays are primarily focused on legs, I walk on the treadmill. Tuesdays and Thursdays are upper body, walk on the treadmill, go get ready for work. I work from home, so all of those rooms I have to go to are all upstairs, so I'm not disturbing my kids or anything. I work from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Right after that, I head downstairs, and usually I need to reset my brain. I describe it as sometimes my brain is floating in the air. Wearing different hats - homeschool mom, coach, working - there's a lot of different shifts I have to make mentally. Usually I will start by just washing the dishes. I need to reset my brain and time to think. Then I'll clear off the table (my kids are home all day obviously, so there's always chaos on the dining table), clear up space and then we start our homeschool.

They usually wait for me. I wish they would have the motivation to do things while I'm working, but they usually wait for me to come down. It's fine, they're young yet. Then we usually do something together depending on what kind of day it is. Then we break off into our own things. I have a seven-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 15-year-old. The 15-year-old will go and do his own thing. Gracie, who's 10, she will sit at the table with us. She'll need guidance with math and new concepts. And my youngest, we work together and do our work - language, reading, math, all the good stuff.

Then my husband comes home, usually starts dinner while we're finishing up, which is a blessing. We eat pretty early - like we're senior citizens! We like to get done early so we can either go outside or just relax depending on the weather (I live in North Dakota so it can be a little bit tricky with the seasons) and have some space to do what we personally like to do or do something family-wise.

We end the day pretty early. Around 7:30 I'm feeling pretty tired, so I always give a shout out like, "Let's start getting ready for bed. Go take your bath and brush your teeth." Everybody goes in their room. I don't think they go to bed that early, I don't expect them to, but they love their bedtime routine with me. My two girls like to be read to at night, say prayers, and we go to bed. That's it. Pretty early, and usually hopefully if I'm sleeping by 9-9:30, I'm happy. But sometimes I hear the 10 o'clock siren (we have sirens at 10 o'clock, it is obnoxious) and I'm like, "Oh I need to go to bed because I'm gonna be dragging tomorrow."

Happy early birthday! I love your mini-course approach, and I'm currently building some AI-powered mini-solutions with upsells, which I'm excited about. My question is, could this be viable, purely as part of organic funnels with no ad spend?

Every product is able to survive without ad spend. I only spend money on ads for one product. I don't believe that you have to build a business with ads. I didn't spend the money that I spent on ads until 2024 is when we were really full-on ads. I do not put money towards all my low-ticket offers because I don't feel like I have to, and that would just get messy, complicated, and quite stressful.

I believe in building up your business organically before you run ads, because before you run ads, you should be financially able to do it and mentally able to do it, because it's a big mental game. So I recommend if you're going to focus on organic marketing, which you should because that should be the backbone (let's say tomorrow Meta was like, "we're not going to do ads anymore," you don't want your business to fall flat on its face), you don't want to rely solely on ads.

You should have a good organic marketing backbone, which means your website should be properly set up, your social media presence should be good, and you should have some sort of content medium, whether it's blogging, video, podcasting, whatever it is. You can do all of them, but you should have that to hold you up if you don't want to do ads yet or you just don't want to do it. It is possible. I built my business that way, and anybody can as well. It just comes down to the messaging, the offers itself, and then how you sell it every single day.

Question: As a busy woman, mom, wife, who does all the things? How do you carve out time to work on your business and create a course? And do you have any time and technology tips for keeping it simple? I'm feeling very overwhelmed.

When I first started 10+ years ago, I didn't have three kids. I still always had a full-time job. But the one thing that I always told myself was I can really only work on my business during nap times because the two kids I had at that time were little. The only time that I could use to sit at the computer was when someone was taking a nap.

I don't have it in my vision to want to quit my full-time job - I actually really enjoy it. But I do want a business that doesn't need me eight hours a day, because why would I want to create a full-time job for myself? That would be crazy.

So I really learned how to maximize my time. I've always been really good at time management, that's always been a passion of mine. I built a business that only needs strong, concentrated doses of me every day. If I wanted to build a course or a new product, I take things day by day. I work in small bits, but when I do work on my business, it's very potent and I'm not sitting here going from tab to tab. I'm very specific with how I use my time and very intentional because I have to be - there's no room for me to be lazy in building my business.

There's no room for me to sit and think and ponder over things that don't really matter. I take action, so if I'm gonna sit and do something, I'm gonna make sure it's for a purpose. I'm not gonna sit there and just look at what everyone else is doing - that is a complete waste of time.

If I want to work on an offer, I first start with the concept of it. I put it in Asana. The next day if I want to kind of play around with it and see how could I make this into an offer, I do. I have two or three offers in my calendar in Asana right now that I just keep pushing forward until maybe a Saturday morning when I don't have any client calls and the house is going to be quiet, I'll work on it. But I don't pressure myself into building something or rush myself. I just do little bits at a time.

Everybody has different days so we can't compare. But I think what we can do is be really intentional with the little time that we all have. Don't rush it or feel like you have to compare to me or anyone else, and just take one thing at a time.

If you find that the thing that's hindering you from creating a course is the tech, then find something easier to make it all work better. I found that when I was using Sam Cart or any other payment processor before that, that would always kind of stop my creative juices. If I create a new course, it's going to be a pain to hook up Sam Cart to this and blah blah blah. That's why I switched to Thrive Cart a few years ago, because it made it really easy. I could just create a course, create the checkout page, boom, it was done. I didn't have to connect a bunch of things or band-aid stuff together.

So if your tech is overwhelming you, think about why it's overwhelming you and what you could do to make it better, so you can unleash that creativity that might be hindered because you don't want to do all the techie stuff.

Happy early birthday! Here's my question: I'm a Christian therapist who coaches other Christian therapists to remove imposter syndrome and build confidence in their calling. Is what I offer too general and does it need to be more specific than what it already is?

Are your Christian therapists Googling "How do I build more confidence in my calling?" Or are they Googling "How can I get more clients? How can I get more bookings?" We've got to get out of our head and think about what people are actually googling and thinking about the first thing they wake up in the morning: "I hope I have a new client in my inbox."

We got to speak that language, otherwise it goes right over the head. No one's probably googling "how can I build my confidence?" They don't see confidence as the issue. What they see is they're not making any money in their Christian therapy practice. And that's who you need to talk to, the person who is in that space.

You started your stuff for a reason. You probably went through that imposter syndrome and the confidence issues, but what were you actually really suffering from in your words at that time? That's the language that you need to use.

I created an audit through the Dream Client Code, but just haven't been able to get any sales from it. What am I doing wrong?

It's gonna be copy. It's always gonna be the messaging, because that's what people see. They don't see the results. They don't see what you built. They see the words in front of them. So if you're in the Dream Client Code, go to the lesson "Little to No Sales" and watch that. Sometimes we get in our heads and maybe like five people have seen the page and you haven't made any sales and you're obsessing for no reason. But this is going to give you some data to actually look at so you can make a good decision as to whether you need to make changes to your sales page.

Happy birthday! I'm not a mom, but I am semi-retired. I think we have similar goals to not work a ton so that we have time and focus on other life priorities, but also engage professionally. What's your secret to managing your time to be an awesome coach, mom and wife?

I don't really have any idle time. I don't like being idle - I like to be going. So that works for me, having the responsibilities, the blessings that I have on my plate. I'm able to do that because of the personality that I have. That's who I am here to be.

I don't like the phrase "to not work a ton" - I don't resonate with that. I work hard on everything in my day. At the end of the day, I go to bed knowing that I worked hard at my job, I worked hard with my family. Everything is nice and tightened up every night before I go to bed. That makes me happy.

But I don't even think about working on my business hard. I just know how to make it function in a way that isn't going to need me so much. We're not plugging away and typing and doing all the things every single day. We built a business that doesn't need us as much because with the tools we have available to us now, there's literally no need to do that. The day-to-day stuff should not take you very long.

I think it all comes back to the roles you play in your life. How can you make it better? Look at your day. Could I get up a little bit earlier? Could I go to bed a little bit earlier? What are the things in your day? Is there room for improvement? Is this just going to be a season where it's going to be a little bit harder? As your kids grow up, every season is different.

I recognize those seasons and I'm very flexible with them. Family stuff happens, health issues - all these things can just be thrown at us in a matter of seconds. So being flexible with it is important. And if something happens where you need to step back, have you built your business so it can survive without you plugging away at it every day? That's super important.

I have a successful offline chiropractic business. A lot of coaching and teaching is already built into how I work with patients. Now I'm intentionally building an online business - courses, digital products and an email list. If you were in my shoes, what would you focus on first for audience building? And what would you definitely not waste time or energy on?

I would work on just showing up where you're needed. Where are your people and what's gonna catch their eye? What's gonna make them feel like you're reading their mind? What's gonna make them feel like "finally someone showed up who's talking about this"?

How can you stand out in your industry? There are people in your industry. There's so many people - we're not a unique thing. There's tons of business coaches. There's tons of coaches just like us. But what can you disrupt? What can you ruffle some feathers with?

What bothers you? For me, it's the discovery call thing. You don't need to do discovery calls. I will say that until I'm blue in the face. You don't need to quit your job. What are the things that the people in your industry are preaching that you're like, "no, that's not true"?

You can stand out by using those as your foundation and then create your offers based upon that, so you're different. People will buy your stuff when it's different from everyone else's. Then get the basics up - your website, social media, be consistent on it, your content medium, all of those good things. Build up that organic marketing so you can add on to it when you're able to, with paid marketing.

As a homeschool mom, I personally love May - school is winding down and summer is almost here. I do have a few questions: What's your nine-to-five? What made you pivot to creating digital products versus just coaching clients? How long have you been coaching and creating digital products?

I am a senior project manager in my nine-to-five.

I've always had digital products, but I only had one signature one, Santa Coaching Academy, for many years, and that's what I promoted via launching back in the day. That was just an exhausting life cycle. So I moved to several different products so those can recoup the amount of income that the launches brought me without me having to do launches, because that just wasn't in the cards anymore for me.

Santa Coaching Academy was created in 2018. Before that, I had a couple other digital products that I would sell, and I've been coaching since 2011, business coaching since 2014/2015, so a long time.

As a homeschool mom, what's your best advice to other homeschool moms working from home? What curriculum do you use and how long do you spend teaching your kids?

Don't compare yourself to other homeschool moms who don't work a full-time job. That comparison is real. I'll get in my own head and see other homeschool moms starting their day with their morning basket, and then they do this and then they do that, and then it's lunchtime, and I'm like, I am still working at that time.

Homeschooling is very similar to online business because we can get stuck in a comparison trap so fast, comparing our day with someone else's and then making it mean something about how we have our day. People put their highlight reels on social media and their perfect day is of course going to be on social media. It's not going to be their worst.

You have to adapt to a schedule that works best for you. For me, we do it in the afternoon. When I first started, I thought, well, I'm gonna have to homeschool in the morning and how am I gonna do that? I have a job. I'm keeping my job. That's not in the cards for us, and I'm not waking my kids up at 4:30 in the morning to read - we're just not doing that.

For curriculum, we use a variety of things. I really like Masterbooks math for all the kids - we've used that for years - and their language up to a point. Right now we've gotten to where we just read together in a chapter book. I find that works better for us, pulling away from so much structure.

Recognize where your kids thrive. My kids are so different. Being able to adapt to that and giving them what they need is important. The things that we do together - because I believe in doing things together - is science and history and anything faith-based. We do all that together. We don't keep things like that separate. Doing as many things as we can together really helps save on time as well, and we always take Fridays off.

My youngest (Violet) is with me a little bit longer because she needs me more. We do our together stuff on Mondays or Tuesdays - that takes over an hour, not very long. And then they do their own thing, however long that takes, and Violet will probably add another hour.

I'd love to know what's your top piece of advice for a business owner struggling to grow on social media.

Stop identifying yourself as struggling to grow on social media and just use it as something fun that you can use to communicate to your people. A different approach to looking at Instagram, for example, is like, this is a free app that I can use to talk about my business. That's pretty cool.

Make it fun for you. We can really sit and think "I lost two followers yesterday" and "that person liked my post yesterday and now they don't" - I don't care if people like my stuff or not. This is just what I have to say and I'm going to say it.

Don't look at it as "I need to grow every single day." How do you know that someone didn't open up the app, see your post and smile? How do you know that someone saw your post, went to your website and bookmarked it? You don't know any of that stuff.

If you stop looking at it as "I need to grow, I'm struggling" and look at it as "this is my bullhorn for communicating to people," then it just becomes a whole lot easier. It all comes back to messaging. If you feel like you're not connecting with your people, I know that's frustrating, and I wish that I had the answer because sometimes I feel that way as well. But I don't care, in the nicest way possible. I don't care. It's there, and that's all I'm gonna do. I can only say and post what I can post. I have no control after that. And that's so freeing once you accept that.

My question is on ads. I really like the business model you've built with small offers and big ticket one-on-one coaching that doesn't revolve around a ton of calls yet still a lot of flexible support. In order to see the small ticket sales success you have, did it require ads or how much is attributed to ads?

I have one campaign going and that's for the Dream Client Code, but I sell several other offers every single day. They could come from people who have purchased the Dream Client Code or they come from social media or find it on my website.

Run ads when you're financially and mentally ready to do so, but build up your buzz on social media, talk about your new thing, sell it on your posts. Have it really easy to buy on social media. Create blog posts that have calls to action. Get creative with how you talk about things, celebrate every new purchase, celebrate everything so you're building the buzz and people on social media start getting used to you talking about your offers.

That's how we can organically make those sales. And then all that income that's coming in, you can put some away. When I have $500 extra, I'm going to put that towards ads. Build yourself a little ad nest egg.

In your experience, do you find automation to be valuable to assist with small business lead generation if you're still growing your client base?

Automation, as far as I go with it, is like people buy stuff and they get added to my email list. You know, clients come in when they're ready. I don't rely on automation to get clients. I rely on myself and my results and the results that my clients get to bring in clients.

If people comment or they message me a certain word, I have ManyChat rolling so it can give them the link for any offer that I've created. For example, if you comment the word "code" on one of my offers or message me that word, I have ManyChat sending them the link right away. That's obviously super helpful.

When I first started selling the Dream Client Code via ads, it got really overwhelming because I didn't have an automation set up and I would come in in the morning and I would have all these messages. I thought, I need to give these people the link when they want it, not 12 hours later. So that's made a significant difference and I use that for several products.

Can you show us your weekly schedule of time given to family, your full-time job, and your coaching business?

For coaching clients, I only work with clients right now on Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings. So those are kind of like my set times, and that's how it's always been for many, many years. Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings I will work with clients. So two, maybe three spots a week available for clients to book, and that's it. And it works pretty well with the amount of clients that I have coming in.

Thank you so much for answering my questions. I appreciate it. I'm a newbie coach, love group dynamics, but terrified to handle the big group programs. Plus, I don't like Facebook. Everybody's doing memberships now, but still I don't have any audience yet. My question, based on group format, what would be the best business model for me to get started?

Get started and then really see what you like. You can have group programs and you can come in and just have your specific hours that you go and answer questions in a Facebook group, or not. But the most important thing is to get it out there and really get a real-life experience so you know whether you liked it or not. Sometimes we just get in our heads and we don't even know if this is something that we kind of made up in our head like "I don't like this and I don't like that." But what if you actually tried it? Maybe it won't be so bad.

I've bought several of your offers. I really like your approach, but I find myself buying too many things and not going through them or implementing them. I also have a whole shelf of books I bought but haven't read. If you were me, what thing would you do next to make money back? What would you implement first? What's the first step?

Go find one of my offers that you bought that helps you create. Do you have "1K in a Jiffy"? Do you have "Micro Offer Mastery"? Go do those and start selling your first offer so you can start bringing in some income. Thank you for your support, but don't look at it this way. It's gonna make me sad if you don't take action on all the things you bought. That's what I want for you.

Happy early birthday, sweet lady! I hope it's beyond wonderful. I know you've touched on this before, but as technology and things have changed, what are your best tips for making money immediately?

Go do "1K in a Jiffy". Pre-sell something, create it, get paid to create it, and then keep selling it.

Can you do it without a website? I think you need to - I'll push that with everyone. You need to have something that people can come home to and you need to be found online.

Only if you're comfortable answering: how much, if at all, does faith, spirituality, or personal philosophy show up in how you run your business?

I'm 100% comfortable and confident in saying that I am Catholic, and I use what the Catholic church teaches to fulfill my spiritual needs every single day. But I don't put it into my work - that's not the business that I'm running.

But I know that I am here for a reason. I know that I don't need to worry about anything. I don't need to get anxious about anything. I'm just here to do what I was supposed to do, but I need God to help me. That's why I start my day off with prayer. That's why I do all of those things to help me be present in all the spaces that I need to fill every single day, and I know that I can't do it without God.

I don't need a self-help book. I don't need affirmations. I don't need that stuff, but what I do need is my faith. And so I make sure that throughout the day, I have touchpoints, and I'm checking in.

I've been loving your materials, and so signed up for your coaching club. Here's my power question: If you were me - menopausal, ambitious, a little burned out, still full of life, trying to build a sustainable business that actually pays me to help someone like me without having to dance on Instagram every day - what would you focus on? What would you ignore? What would you double down on for the next 12 months?

Ignore everyone else and do your own thing. Think about your life in the next 12 months. At the end of that, you had all this success. How did that happen? Write your story and then use that as a script to go into the next 12 months.

You have to look at how you want your business built. Yours. Not "how should I" or "how did she do it? I have to become her" - you don't have to do that. Look at yourself 12 months from now. How did all the success happen? Somebody's interviewing you. "How did you manage to do this?" Well, here's how my ideal situation panned out - and then use it as the script to go throughout your next 12 months.

Regarding payment plans, I'd like to offer them a 6, 12, or 18-month payment plan. I read your terms and agreements. Have you had any challenge of your clients not making all of your payments after you delivered your services?

Yes, I've had that happen. I think it's happened to me in the beginning, it's happening to me now. I can't control that. That's unfortunate when that happens, especially when you put your heart into your coaching and you see clients who just disappear.

Of course, I pray that nothing happened, and I hope they're all right. But I also know that sometimes they're just people who are not in integrity. And I think, you know what? That's their problem, not mine. And yes, not getting paid for what I've done - it hurts. And when I think about it, it stings, but I can't dwell on it. I can't do anything about it. Maybe they'll come back and make things right. Maybe they won't.

I have as many safeguards as I can, but sometimes it happens. And no matter what level you get at, it's never going to go away. You're always going to have a couple of those apples in there. But to redeem that, I've had people who will back pay me for things they missed payments on without me even asking. And so there are really good people out there.

I don't think about or do things thinking about the worst-case scenario. I do things because I think it's going to help somebody, and I offer those payment plans because I know that this could help them build their business and not financially drain them immediately and cause so much stress. I'd never want to do that. So that's why I do what I do, and I don't worry about the rest.

You guys, we did it. We answered all of the questions and I got it done in one shot. Thank you guys for spending my birthday with me. Thank you for asking those questions. It really shocked me to see all of those come in. Made me happy. Thank you for being in my world. Thank you for being a student. Thank you for being on an email list. Thank you for just following me. It means the world to me. You guys are the reason I'm doing all of this. I hope to see you on another one of these sometime in the future. But if not, come say hi on Instagram. I would love to see you.