124: Ex-Attorney Turned Multi-Millionaire Teaches You How to Build Wealth with Rachel Rodgers

Today, I’m speaking with Rachel Rodgers, an intellectual property attorney, business coach, and the CEO and founder of Hello Seven, a coaching community that teaches women how to build wealth.

After founding her own law practice, Rachel realized she had a knack for marketing and running a business. Her clients noticed too, and started asking for advice. Rachel followed the demand, pivoting to full-time business coaching and hit $1 million by March of her first year.

That pivot has grown into Hello Seven, a business Rachel has bootstrapped from $0 to 8-figures. Hello Seven is one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. and is listed on the Inc. 5000. Rachel is also the author of the best-selling book, “We Should All Be Millionaires”, and has been featured in publications like The New York Times, Forbes, and Entrepreneur.

In this episode, you’ll hear about leaving the safety of a 6-figure salary to pursue a passion for business coaching, the ROI of writing a book, and Rachel’s light-bulb moment that allowed her to scale from 7 to 8-figures.

Inspiring Quotes

• “I didn’t want to get comfortable with a fancy paycheck. Then, I would never quit.” – Rachel Rodgers
• “One thing about haters is they always have their facts wrong.” – Rachel Rodgers
• “As soon as I got into something that I wanted to be doing, it was on fire.” – Rachel Rodgers
• “Whenever you feel like your back is against the wall or a shift is necessary, the first step is just to take stock of what you have.” – Rachel Rodgers
• “If you feel shame about a business problem you’re having, you’re shielding yourself from the solutions.” – Rachel Rodgers
• “The biggest lesson of 7 to 8 figures is every time I don’t follow my instincts, I regret it.” – Rachel Rodgers

• 00:00: From law practice to business coaching

• 05:58: Breaking the mold in an old-school industry

• 10:09: Dealing with negative press
• 14:04: Charging for consulting 

• 19:40: Persuasive copywriting 

• 25:37: Why Amazon considers ideas from all employees

• 35:00: Committing to getting great at something

• 41:06: Growing pains from $5 to $10 million

• 49:12: Writing a book to grow your business

• 55:48: Her biggest regret from 7 to 8-figures

• 01:01:54: How to hire when scaling to $10M+
• 01:05:43: Thinking like a billionaire

Brad Weimert: Rachel Rodgers, it is so good to see you. It has been many years at this point.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes, definitely. Not for like DMing or texting but years since seeing you for sure.

Brad Weimert: For sure. Well, and probably a couple from trying to make this particular thing happen.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes.

Brad Weimert: So, I appreciate you carving out some time.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. You literally have chosen a podcast topic, right, that is your basically all of your guests are some of the busiest people. So, most in-demand people.

Brad Weimert: That’s true because very often in the multimillion to kind of low eight figures, I’ve heard lots of people talk about this over time. It’s this black hole of chaos, of trying to move from wearing many hats to getting to the point where you can “work yourself out of the job.”

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. Exactly.

Brad Weimert: And you’re right. Most people, myself included, probably do a terrible job handling that and/or trying to figure out what’s going on. And there’s not a roadmap. And so, one of my ambitions with this podcast is to help people figure out the roadmap. And Hello Seven is your company which you built to eight figures plus, have been doing for years. And I’m hoping we can dig into some of that. But before we do, I love for you to give me a little bit of background on how you got started in business and how you launched Hello Seven.

Rachel Rodgers: Yeah. Well, I got started in business because there was not a lot of great job opportunities. It was the 2008 recession. I graduated from law school, 2009. I went into law school thinking I’m going to leave law school with a six-figure job as an associate at a law firm. That’s what I was looking to do, even though that’s so not my personality. When I look back at that, right, that would have been a disaster and I would have probably gotten fired pretty quickly. And in fact, their hiring processes are good enough to like, basically, I had many, many interviews. I had many second interviews. I had very few job offers. I did get a few and it was like the one job offer that I got that was six figures like over 100,000 was working for big oil for this law firm that represented big oil. And I was like, “Hmm.” That feels unaligned but I was like, “Hmm.”

Brad Weimert: An indirect alignment with your personality.

Rachel Rodgers: Right. Exactly. I don’t like it but I would love that paycheck. So, I did think about it for a little while but I didn’t take it. So, because of that, basically, out of necessity, I had other job opportunities too but none of them had enough good elements that I was willing to take it. I was like, “You know what? You know what would be better than working for too little money, doing something I don’t want to do, or working for a good amount of money doing something I don’t want to do? What if I just started my own thing?” And the reason why I did that too is because I was like, “Well, I’m already broke.” I’m used to being a broke college student then I was a broke law student, right? So, I might as well just be a broke entrepreneur now until I can build it up to what I want it to be. Because I didn’t want to get comfortable with a fancy paycheck, and then I would never quit or would just take a long time or be hard to do.

So, that’s actually what brought me to entrepreneurship and my first business was a law practice. So, that’s what I did. And I represented mainly a lot of entrepreneurs because like myself, right, during the recession, a lot of people were starting their own businesses. And so, I just looked in my own network and found clients through that and ran that for about six or seven years and I had a couple of associates working for me and a team. So, I got an early start on like learning how to build a team, managing a team, learning how to be a rainmaker, getting the clients to come in, and all of that. And I discovered what I liked about business and what I didn’t. So, mainly from that business, I learned that I love running a business. I loved managing a team. I loved the marketing and bringing clients in and connecting with clients, the relationships. I loved all that. I hated drafting contracts. I hated all of the transactional work. I enjoyed the negotiation. But after that, somebody else do the paperwork. I don’t want to do that part.

Brad Weimert: So, you hated being an attorney is what you’re telling me.

Rachel Rodgers: Basically. Loved being a business owner. Hated being an attorney. So, either way I wound up doing Hello Seven is that these same clients would say to me, “Your practice is scaling. You’re growing your practice. You’re growing your team, all of that. How are you doing that? What are your marketing strategies, these things that you’re doing like teach me how you do what you do.” And so, I just started giving my legal clients business advice for free and a friend of mine and mentor was like, “I’m going to need you to charge for that.” That’s a changeable thing. Now, I was like, “Oh, really?” Because I was thinking like I can only charge for the thing that I have a degree in that I’ve been professionally trained to do. That was my thinking. And she’s like, “No, no. If they’re asking and they want to buy it then you sell it to them but you charge them. Don’t give it to them for free.”

So, I just started dabbling with charging for it and I had a side hustle, right? So, I’m running a law practice with a team. And then my side hustle was, let me see, let me try business coaching. And so, I had one client that I brought on and in six months, her business went from I think she had made like she was trying to get to… She had just made $100,000 and she was constantly on tour. She had a young child. And so, I basically rearranged her entire business so that made a lot more money and she could stay home with her son. And so, by the end of like six months, she was like, let’s say at half a million, something like that. And I was like, “Oh, I’m good at this.” And then she told everybody that she was making because she was so happy with her results. So, that brought in more clients and all of that. And that’s how I got into business coaching.

Brad Weimert: I mean, a couple of things. One, I can’t imagine that the legal community looked at you doing business coaching and thought, “What a great legal professional here.”

Rachel Rodgers: First of all, the legal community hated me from day one, let’s be clear, mainly because I am not a rule follower. That’s not who I am and they expect you, especially as a young lawyer versus like you have older lawyers, right? You need to respect your elders. And this is a great example of kind of what we were talking about before you hit record of what’s going on right now, right? These were older attorneys who were saying, “This is how you practice law. When you graduate, you don’t start your own practice. You go work for a firm. You find a lawyer to like sort of hitch your wagon to and be appropriately trained and mentored. And then maybe one day you get to go out on your own.” And I did not follow any of that pathway. Truly, out of necessity, I couldn’t do that because of the recession even if I wanted to.

And I guess there was some opportunity to do that but I wasn’t willing to, right? There was not enough good things for me to do that. So, they were annoyed with me from day one. And especially because when I started my practice, I started immediately getting press like immediately, within months. I figured out, remember Help a Reporter Out, HARO? Did you ever use that?

Brad Weimert: I didn’t but I know Peter Shankman, who was the one that started it.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes, exactly. And so, I learned about it and I was like, “Oh, this is free?” because I had definitely more time than money.

Rachel Rodgers: And so, I was like, okay, great. Every time there’s a legal question that’s like within the realm of my expertise, business law, IP, employment law, those areas, I’m going to jump in and answer these questions. And so, that’s what I started doing. And then once you answer a few and get a couple of placements, then journalists just start coming to you because they know you’re a good source. Whenever they needed like a business law and then also they did stories on me on starting a practice right out of law school because it was a story that we had thousands upon thousands of law school graduates and there were no jobs for them. So, that was a big story in those years. And so, I was always a source for that, too.

So, that brought me a lot of attention from other lawyers but it also brought me potential clients and these sort of old establishment attorneys, some of them. Obviously, there were a lot of people who were great and who actually did mentor me. There were definitely lawyers that I could call when I would be like, “Okay. What do I do in this scenario?” So, I had sort of like my board of mentors but there were also lawyers who hated the fact that I had the audacity to start my own practice right out of law school. I mean, I clerked for a judge for a year first but that’s not enough for them. And then the fact that I just did it my way and was also very visible about it too like I wasn’t hidden in my corner. I was getting pressed constantly more than them, you know? So, they didn’t like that.

So, yeah, they definitely wrote scathing articles that I’m sure if you search my name, you probably have to dig now because there’s been so many press mentions. That’s not about that. But for a while, I mean, it affected sometimes clients would come to me and say like, “Why are these horrible articles about you?” And I’m like, “These people have never talked to me a day in their life. They don’t know me. They’re just incensed by my mere existence, you know?” But that was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me, especially in the world that we live in today, right? There’s so much commentary. There’s so much judgment. Every little thing that you do, first of all, one thing about haters is they always have their facts wrong. You know what I mean? So, they love to hate you, not on things you actually did, but things that they, I don’t know, I heard through the grapevine or made up. I don’t know.

So, there’s so much of that that thank God for that preparation, right? Like, I’m grateful for those lawyers now, all these years later because I really don’t care. I’m not somebody that is really worried about what everybody is saying about me. And I think that that was an education. That was trial by fire. And I definitely did care when I just had just started but I think it built up that muscle in me where I’m like, “Oh, these people don’t pay my bills, right? Like, they don’t affect anything. I can do whatever the hell I want. I’m grown.”

Brad Weimert: So, that’s true and I love that sentiment. At the same time, we live in a world now where public perception often is guided without fact. And so, you get enough negative press even if it’s completely not rooted in truth and pick any one of a dozen examples in the last five years that has gone public around the world. How did you internalize that? So, you get a whole bunch of negative press where even though they don’t “pay your bills” the press does, right? And people do judge based on press. Did you have concerns about sort of the branding of your firm when you had a negative press come out?

Rachel Rodgers: I did. I did have concerns about that. But you know what? Like, I literally spent probably a week or at least a couple of days on the couch crying and sad. And I was pregnant at the time with my first child.

Brad Weimert: I’m sure that made it easier to control the emotions.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes, totally. 100% under control. Just stoic. But I think what got me off the couch was first my husband being like, “You’re going to let these dudes stop you? Look how convicted and how focused you’ve been. And all of a sudden, one hiccup, and now you’re shutting down?” So, that was his stance. But then also, and honestly, his phrasing was more like, “You’re going to let these motherf*cking old white guys tell you what to do and stop you?” And I’m like, “You know what? When you put it that way, no.” But then also, I was just thinking about what would I say to my daughter if somebody was saying negative things about her. Would I say, “Go in your corner and cry,” or would I tell her to defend herself?”

And then what helped me was I started just reading about like how do you respond to this? And I had a friend who was a publicist and I asked her to and I found Tim Ferriss has an article that he wrote many years ago about responding to haters. And he talked about how in letter from a Birmingham jail, that is what Martin Luther King Jr is doing is responding to his haters. And so, he said like, “This is a masterclass on how to respond to negativity or not only negativity but just like basically adversaries, people who are against you.” And so, I was like, “Okay.” So, I went and read the letter, and then I wrote a response using that as my guiding tool like using letter from a Birmingham Jail as a template. And I wrote a response and I turned off comments and just shared it. And what happened is it galvanized all of these young lawyers who were like, “Yeah!” You know what I mean?

Like, they felt seen and represented because it was kind of like these older lawyers saying, “This is how you do it,” and these younger lawyers saying, “That world doesn’t exist anymore. So, what you got to do is not a pathway that we can do, and we’re not just going to roll over and die, and we’re not going to go sell French fries like with $100,000 in law school debt.” Right? Like, something else has to give and we have to find another pathway. And so, basically, I responded to them and that wound up bringing audience to me. So, I think defending yourself is an important element, especially when people have facts wrong and your goal is not to win everybody over. Your goal is to get it off your chest and say your piece, right? Like, you’re not going to be able to necessarily get everyone to agree with you. And that’s not the point.

The point is to say what you have to say and represent your interests and defend yourself which I think is important as well. Not in every case. Sometimes people are just saying such nonsense that it’s not even worth responding to but there are circumstances that are. So, that’s how I responded to that. And it didn’t stop my practice. I mean, some people saw it and still hired me. Other people never saw it. And it was what it was.

Brad Weimert: So, you move into coaching and the first business coaching thing that you do, the coaching space today, I think, I look at coaching and Easy Pay Direct, we have a huge foothold in the coaching space. And now it turned into this coaching, consulting, high ticket space. But originally that was kind of the personal development space and it was Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins and they sort of created this new space speaking of an industry that had a prescriptive design. That was psychologists and psychiatrists.

Rachel Rodgers: Right.

Brad Weimert: And that was it. And then it moved into sort of personal development, which really had not incredibly positive throughline for most of my youth. If you mentioned reading a personal development book at 15 or 20 or 25 even, you got looked at sideways by tons of people. And today that’s different.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. I even think it was different for me when I was young because I think part of it was because I was going to church. So, there was a lot of Christian self-help and Christian self-development and that was popular. So, I think that had a positive spin on it but you might be right.

Brad Weimert: Well, I mean, I think that’s right. That’s my internal narrative. But certainly, the industry didn’t exist the way that it does now in terms of business coaching and personal coaching. I bring it up because when you launched, when you first did, “Maybe I’ll just sell this thing and somebody is willing to pay for it. Let’s do it,” did you have any sense of following the model that was already out there for business coaching or personal coaching?

Rachel Rodgers: No. I feel like there wasn’t much of a model, and if there was, it was hidden, right? So, there were very few people, especially women who were even talking about having seven-figure businesses. And that’s actually what caused me to start Hello Seven because I felt like all of the messaging especially geared towards women was like, “Have a six-figure business. Have your little puppy of a business,” like pat you on the head kind of energy. And I’m like…

Brad Weimert: And when was this?

Rachel Rodgers: This was…

Brad Weimert: ‘14, ‘15, ’13?

Rachel Rodgers: Yeah. I started my law practice in 2010. And then I started transitioning probably 2015 to 2017 because you don’t just quit law. Like, that’s not how this works, right? You got to finish up all those cases in order to leave the law. So, it was a two-year process of wrapping up that practice and kind of doing business coaching, sort of like winding down the law practice, winding up business coaching during those years. But even before that, I was looking for business coaching myself because I wanted to grow. And I had never been an entrepreneur before. I have some entrepreneurs in my family and friend groups but they were like not very successful like they had started things but I really didn’t see them grow significantly. And so, I was looking for my own advice.

And so, I was looking in the industry too. There were not a lot of people making seven figures for sure or at least if they were, they were not talking about it. And usually, it was kind of like a landing page where you opted in and then you went on a journey, but they weren’t showing you their whole business model on the website. So, you really didn’t know how it all worked. You might hear from the grapevine like, “Oh, they have this course.” And then once you take that course, maybe you can get into this other thing. And then there’s this inner circle thing that like you only hear about and you have to like catch it when the applications go live. And it’s also like, let’s say $25,000, $30,000, and back then that sounded wild to me and to a lot of people. So, those, I mean, I feel like there was no blueprint to follow, truly.

I honestly followed the legal blueprint, which is kind of like, okay, I started charging for consults after a while in my law practice because I would get so many potential clients that I’m like, okay, let’s start sifting through these with the ones that are serious. So, now we charge for an initial consult. So, like I went from doing those for free to like $500 per session. So, that’s really how I started was just kind of like a pick my brain kind of thing, ask me whatever you want for $500. And then the first one-on-one client that I had, I followed the model of a life coach that I knew who did like a six-month coaching package. So, I did something similar to her and charged peanuts to help someone make hundreds of thousands of dollars just because I just didn’t know, right? I was just getting into the game and trying to figure it out. So, I definitely was on the figure it out as you go plan. Not like here’s the business model we’re working towards.

And I would just try everything. So, I did retreats. I did one-on-one. I did group sessions, I did classes, I did six-week classes, eight-week classes. I mean, I did every version of coaching that there was for like a two-year period and then got really tired because it was like a thousand things to deliver, a thousand things to sell and market. And I was like, there’s got to be a better way. And then I kind of combined it all and streamlined it into a mastermind. That’s what I did. I want to say that was probably like 2017-2018, when I started simplifying. So, yeah.

Brad Weimert: So, in those initial two years, how far did you get from a revenue perspective?

Rachel Rodgers: Great question. I think I hit a million for the first time in 2017-2018, somewhere in that range. And it grew very quickly from there. It was really actually very interesting. So, my law practice plateaued for a couple of years. Somewhere, it was like we went from 450 to like 650. And to me, that was plateauing because previously before that, I had done big jumps. Like, I went from $60,000 my first year in business to 300,000 the second year. And so, I was kind of expecting that kind of growth to continue. And that’s not what happened. We kind of plateaued, and I think we plateaued because I was really not interested in practicing law. So, it’s like I want to sell and get clients, but there’s something in the back of my mind sabotaging it because I really don’t want the work. Like, I don’t want to do that work. Even managing my attorneys to do that work was a lot of work for me, you know?

But anyway, so we had plateaued, and I think we got up to, let’s say 700, 750, something like that. And I could see a clear pathway to get to a million but I just wanted to pivot because I didn’t want to practice law anymore. So, I finally started admitting that to myself and winding down. My first year doing business coaching full-time was $1 million a year and we knew that like by March because we had made so much money, we were already on track for that. And then I think we exceeded it the first year. So, it was so interesting that like as soon as I got into something that I wanted to be doing, it was like it was on fire and it grew very rapidly from there.

Brad Weimert: If you had to do that initial, and I want to get into the post-million phase here, but if you had to do that initial phase of life, would you have gone to law school?

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. There’s no scenario where this version of Rachel would not exist without law school. Because what I did in law school was hone my writing skills and my public speaking skills. And those two things are what my business is built on and also critical thinking strategy. That is also a crucial part of being an attorney. That’s really what they were teaching me how to do at a base level is it was with law, right? Because you would get cases where you completely and utterly disagree with one side or the other, and you have to argue it both ways. So, you have to write a legal brief. And first of all, you only have a certain amount of words to do so. And you have to use the facts and case law and all of that. And you need to prove your case, like defend this person that you don’t want to defend or maybe you do like the case and you defend them, but then you also have to argue the prosecutor’s side as well.

So, it just taught you how to think critically and strategically even when you didn’t believe in the thing, right? Like, it was like the thinking that it was forcing you to do was so valuable. So, that and then also legal writing is I always talk about this. One of the things with legal writing is like so you’d write a brief. They give you an assignment. You write the brief. And then what they do in the grading of it is they go through line by line and cross out every word that does not need to be there, right? Like, you have an extra that. You don’t need that. You don’t need to say there here. You don’t need this word. You don’t need that word. And you go through line by line and have to cross every word out you don’t need because you have a word count, and you need every word to count and to matter because you’re defending someone for their freedom. It’s important.

And so, they train you on how to do that. So, I just have learned how to be concise, how to express complex ideas, how to tell the story that I want to tell, that I want the judge and the jury to believe. So, it’s like persuasive writing like there’s so much value in the writing skills that you get from law school. So, like We Should All Be Millionaires, my best-selling book would not be what it is without those skills. So, I think the writing skills were crucial. And then doing mock trials where you have to make arguments. Sometimes you have no case. Like, the facts are not on your side, the law is not on your side. And so, then you use a public interest argument, right? And so, I was good at those. That was my go-to. And I was known for that in law school because, of course, that’s where I’m always thinking about like social justice and moving us forward as a society.

So, all of those public speaking skills, persuasion, all of that, it’s like learning that is so incredibly valuable. So, that’s what I really got out of law school that I’m extremely grateful for. And also, just learning how to be in environments where I’m uncomfortable, where I’m being challenged, and rising to the occasion. Like, that’s always going to help you in business because that is what being an entrepreneur is.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I love that. There are a couple of things that hit close to home there. The first is I try hard to separate meetings inside the company between scheduled actionable meetings and creative sessions. And the parallel here is when you talk about taking the other side of the argument, generally in actionable move-forward meetings that are scheduled that have an agenda, we don’t make space for that. It’s like, yeah, yeah, but let’s move it forward because I don’t want to f*cking debate in every meeting.

Rachel Rodgers: Right. Exactly.

Brad Weimert: Not the time or place.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes.

Brad Weimert: But I do need to hold the space for the debate. And it’s important to bring up the other what-if scenarios and to sort of steel man arguments. So, I love that. That’s a very cool takeaway. The other… Go ahead.

Rachel Rodgers: I was going to say, have you heard about Amazon, their principle on ideas brought up by employees to managers or to directors? Have you heard about this? I saw something. It was one of their leaders who works at Amazon. He was talking about this on social media recently and he was saying that at Amazon, they have to consider every idea brought to them by an employee. So, if an employee has an idea for a product, if they have an idea for like how to do something better, efficiency, process, whatever, they have to consider it. And if they don’t consider it, they have to write a two-page letter that is public. So, like basically their whole team can see it or there’s a significant portion of the company can see it. And they have to argue, the director has to argue their reasons why they’re not considering and why they’re rejecting this idea.

So, it’s sort of how it functions is it trains basically all of the directors to listen to their employees and to hear their ideas. And they said that that’s where, what is it called, AWS came from was an employee’s idea. And so, that’s why they have this policy like they want to hear their employees’ ideas because employees see things that you don’t see as the leader. They’re in touch with things that you’re no longer in touch with that you used to be in touch with but now there’s some distance. There’s like several layers of team members before it gets to you. So, I just thought that that was really interesting. And it makes me think of what you’re saying like having these creative sessions so you can hear from your team what their ideas are.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. That’s interesting. I can also hear at least 50% of the people listening, thinking, “God, that sounds f*cking terrible.”

Rachel Rodgers: It does in some ways but I think in a smaller company, I think we have to just find a way to make sure that team members have an outlet to share their ideas.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, for sure. Well, I think that there’s consistently a balance between staying open-minded and also the reality that you’re going to have a lot more context than a brand-new employee or an employee in a certain role, right? And so, it’s juggling those two ideas in your head when you’re trying to lead.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. It’s true. It’s true but we’re not always right. And I think the more we get in touch with that, the better because I think that we can get into this but I feel like being an entrepreneur, the whole process is basically killing your ego, just slowly but surely over a long period of time.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I completely agree with that. And part of it is and we were talking about this, I think, before we kicked off but part of it is when staff comes to me and asks me for an answer, my question 98% of the time is you tell me. What the f*ck are you asking me for?

Rachel Rodgers: Yes, yes.

Brad Weimert: You tell me. What do you suggest here?

Rachel Rodgers: Yes, exactly.

Brad Weimert: I’m not your problem solver like I’m not here to fix all your problems. I brought you here to help me fix the problem.

Rachel Rodgers: Exactly right. And also, too there are times where I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m going to be honest. I need 12,000 more pieces of information before I could possibly give a decision or even potential ideas on that, whereas you have all of that information already in your head because that’s your job every day. So, you come to me with at least three options. I’ll help you pick but I’m not coming up with the solutions.”

Brad Weimert: You got it. And the other reality is that even if you do have the answer as a leader, the more you just solve the problem, the more people will continue to be habituated to come to you to solve the problem. And so, you really have to even though employees hate this sometimes, and it seems sort of pedantic and unnecessary, we’re always conditioning some behavior. And if I let my dog run out the front door once when the door opens, then he thinks it’s okay. He f*cking runs out because it’s more fun. And I have to make him sit every time before we go because he needs to know that. And he needs to know that that’s the pattern. And while nobody wants to be compared to a dog, we’re all animals. So, also my dog’s probably a lot cooler than everybody listening. Sorry about that. Not sorry.

Rachel Rodgers: I think there’s a bias there, but yes, honestly, one of the things that has helped me to be a better leader is being a parent and leading small people because small people, obviously, like children, they obviously don’t know certain things so you don’t expect them to know. So, you’re constantly training and educating and all of that. And it’s kind of like that with employees because even if they have experience when they come to your company, they don’t have experience with your culture, your values, how you do things here. And they require so much more training than people think they do. And so, it’s not assuming that they know and making sure that you have taught them or that it’s somewhere in the process, in the onboarding, in the training that they’re learning these things and then being held accountable to it. So, you’re saying dogs. I’m saying children. So, no one’s going to want to work for us ever again. We know you’re adults. That’s not what we mean.

Brad Weimert: I feel great about it. Well, I’ll tell you, the other one that I think about is myself. I think about when I want to get myself to do something that I’m rejecting and the answer is building a habit around it, without question. The answer is getting out of the space where you have to force yourself to do something and building the habit. And the way you build the habit is make sure that in the moments when you don’t think you should be doing it, you do it anyway. And eventually, your go-to is just to execute. It’s just to do it.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. It’s so true. And it makes it so easy as well. There was a second thing. There was a second thing you were going to say in response to the law school thing.

Brad Weimert: The second thing was everything you were talking about relative to honing messaging for an argument and limiting words, that is directly applicable to all marketing that people do, specifically in the world that we live in, where you’re limited to characters. So, even when you weren’t but you have to think, we kind of always are, you have to think about headlines, subject lines, sub headers, the first paragraph, the first sentence, how long you can keep attention, and scripting a sales letter, scripting a video sales letter. All of those things, every word matters. The order of the words matter. The emphasis matters. And so, that training that you’re going through for entrepreneurs that don’t feel like they’re good at messaging or copywriting or marketing, first of all, certainly you can outsource it. But if you want to get better, the answer is revision, revision, revision, and it’s read through it. It’s eliminate words and take it from there. But the less words you can communicate in, usually, the better grasp you have on a topic.

Rachel Rodgers: Exactly. Exactly right. So, it’s very powerful tools. And I highly recommend law school but not necessarily to practice law. I mean, if you want to practice law, yes, go to law school but I’m very grateful for the education that I got there and even just the ability to practice law for several years. I’m glad that I did that too because I learned a lot about myself, especially running a law practice. I would have never known that I love business and I love being an entrepreneur had I not gone out on my own. So, I think we have to follow that first step or that next step, even when it makes zero sense to us because it’s often leading us to wherever we want to wind up.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I have a family of attorneys. All my cousins are attorneys and I have lots of thoughts but I think that without question, it’s a great background for business. I also have a million thoughts on sort of traditional schooling but one of the benefits for sure, specifically in a harder path like law school is just committing to an outcome, and deciding, “Hey, I’m in it until I’m done.”

Rachel Rodgers: Yep. Exactly right. Even when it’s…

Brad Weimert: And I love that about that path.

Rachel Rodgers: I mean, my first semester of law school, mind you, I graduated summa cum laude I want to say or whatever the next one is. I can’t remember but it’s one of those, with honors for undergrad. And then you go from graduating with honors to law school and, in the beginning, I mean, it was almost the end of the first semester and I was like, “What is all this Latin? Criminal law?” I mean, that was killing me. I was so confused by mens rea and what it meant and it was not a straightforward definition and like all these different Latin phrases. Torts was a hot mess express for me. Like, some of my first classes in law school, I was like, “I’m really bad at this and I’m about to fail.” Like, I just graduated with honors and now I’m back at the bottom and I’m trash, you know? And I have to get good at this thing. That is really difficult.

I just think those experiences, any of those, because every time you can look back and think to a time where you were really bad at something and you committed and you got good, it just builds that confidence that like, what’s the next thing? I interviewed Sheila Johnson, who is the first, black female billionaire in America. A lot of people think it’s Oprah. It’s not. It’s Sheila Johnson, who was the co-founder of BET. Her and her husband founded BET and they sold it. And that’s when she became a billionaire. And she was telling me how they got divorced and so now she wanted to go into a new industry. She’s 60 years old and decides to go into the hospitality industry and build a hotel. And it took her ten years just to clear the land and basically get this hotel built. They had every disaster and every challenge happened.

So, she didn’t open the hotel until she was 70 years old. You know what I mean? Isn’t that wild? So, it’s just I was like wow. You really can reinvent yourself at any time and you can do anything that you want at any time. So, that was really fascinating to me that we have that option.

Brad Weimert: We do now. It probably is easier when you have $1 billion.

Rachel Rodgers: It certainly is. It certainly is.

Brad Weimert: But the point is still very, very valid.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. I don’t think most billionaires probably start something brand new and go into a whole new industry at 60 years old. That takes ten years just to get the doors open, you know?

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I mean, there are a million interesting things about that but it also proves the point of for a lot of people when you’re a child and you think about retiring on the beach or this picture of the “American dream” of retiring and sipping pina coladas on the beach, it’s a complete unrealistic expectation that the personality type that it would take to be an entrepreneur would ever even want that in the end of the game.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes.

Brad Weimert: So, not totally misaligned to want a new business at that point.

Rachel Rodgers: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think that’s really fascinating, especially for those of us like seven, eight-figure businesses, nine-figure. When you’re thinking about selling, it’s like, “Do I sell? What am I going to do?” I feel like there’s a lot of people who sell and regret it. Those are the conversations I’ve had recently where I feel like almost every single one of them regretted selling and not all. I think there are some happy sellers. But it is, it’s interesting. It’s like we all work towards an exit and then when we get close to it, it’s kind of like, “Hm, does it make sense to exit or should I just keep running this thing?”

Brad Weimert: Well, let’s get to the exit part but let’s talk about it sounds like the first major hurdle after a million was just chaos because you had tried a bunch of things, created a bunch of different products, retreats, courses, coaching. What was a major shift that you made that allowed you to move from seven up to eight figures?

Rachel Rodgers: Well, I did this really big launch. It took me like five months to pull it off. I had like a Facebook ad person, my husband, and myself. That was it. So, I did the Game of Thrones, Daenerys, like burn it all down with my law practice. At a certain point where I was just tired of the transition, I let everybody, well, my favorite employee gave me her notice. And once she did that, it sort of gave me the freedom to just release the whole team. And so, that’s what I decided to do. Like, in a two-week period, I just let everybody go. And it gave me an opportunity to start over. And so, I did a big launch with a new program. And it’s funny because I went to Mastermind Talks like a week after this launch. So, I did this big launch that took – I wrote every piece of copy, every email, the whole website, like, all the things involved. And it like really burnt me out.

And so, I wound up and it was very successful, made let’s say it was like a $400,000 approximately launch that I had done. Might have been a little more than that. And so, I leave this launch that’s been successful, but now I can’t even see straight. I’m so exhausted from just working so hard to pull all of this off by myself. And I go to Mastermind Talks and talking to friends and things, and they were like, “There’s a better way. There’s got to be a better way than all this bullsh*t you’re doing.” And so, after doing that, I flew home from that event and on the back of a, whatever, napkin or whatever, whatever piece of paper I had, I just mapped out a more streamlined business, where I had one main offer, one main purpose, one main ideal client. And I just mapped that out and then I spent the summer working towards launching that, and I launched it like September, October, and it was Hello Seven.

And it was a mastermind was the core product of it, and it was geared towards people who were already at six figures who wanted to get to seven figures, and I just focused on them. And so, that was the business. Up until COVID, that was the business, and it grew to I think I went from 1 to 2 million during that time period. I started 2020 with the plan to make 2 million again, but make it easier like, “Ah, just make another 2 million but let it be easy.” What a hilarious idea when I look back because, of course, by March, the whole business was falling apart because so many of my clients, they were either in events based in hospitality or their partners had just been let go. Everyone was just scared. So, they just started cutting and including cutting our program. So, we lost a lot of clients in a short period. So, we had to reinvent the entire business in like 30 days or less, you know? So, that was fun.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, what was the shift then? Because, I mean, 1 to 2 to again COVID hits and how did you transform the business at that point?

Rachel Rodgers: Yeah. So, basically, I just took stock and I think whenever, and this might be relevant for people right now. Whenever you feel like your back is against the wall or a shift is necessary, I think that the first step is just to take stock of like what do I have? What ingredients do I have? I feel like it’s similar to I grew up low-income. And so, there were times when there was like no food or not enough food or whatever. And so, you had to just like look in the pantry and say, like, “What’s there? Like, what can I make out of whatever’s here?” And so, I feel like it’s the same thing except the business version. It’s like, what got in your cabinets? And how can you mix that together into something that can make you money? And so, I looked and I said, “Okay. I have this team.” I had a team of coaches that I had built up and been training. I had a new member site that I had just literally launched like a week or two prior for my mastermind.” So, at least I had that asset. I don’t know what the hell is going to do with it now but I had that.

I had a podcast with a lot of raving fans. Like, it wasn’t a huge following but let’s say like 15,000 people listening faithfully every week. And so, I’m like, “Okay. These are the ingredients. You know, we have this brand. What can we do with these ingredients?” And so, the first thing I did was talk to my audience. I just went to them and I think we had like a private Facebook group at the time that was free. And so, I just went there and said like, “What do you want? What do you need right now? Like, how can we serve you? What kind of help are you looking for?” And they answered with everything. They’re like, “We want marketing. We want coaching advice. We want mindset. Teach us how to run the operations. Teach us how to build a team.” It was like everything under the sun.

And I’m like, “Okay. Well, this is everything that I do in my mastermind.” And the light bulb went off that, okay, what if it’s the exact same offer? Mastermind and a membership is basically the same thing. The only difference is the price and how many people are in it, really. And so, I decided to turn it into a membership. Lower the price. There were some things that were really advanced that I pulled out but left a lot of my content in there in the member site and basically took the member site, the coaches, and the podcast audience and just turn that into a membership, which is the club which is still our core offer today. And that one thing, that one shift, thank God that that happened, 2020 ended at 5 million. And then, 2021, we had 10 million, and we’ve been at eight figures plus since then.

So, that 2 to 5 and then 5 to 10, those are two very painful years because you do not have the team or the process or the operations to handle that. And so, we’re just like rapidly hiring, rapidly trying to build process, breaking everything. It’s like you build something and then it breaks because more people come. We launched the club in May of 2020 with 300 founding members, which immediately turned it into $1 million offer because it was 295 a month. And so, the following month, in June, we had 1,000 more people join and that’s when sh*t started to break. It was great from an outward-facing point of view but from behind the scenes, we were like running around like nuts trying to keep up with the growth.

Brad Weimert: Is there anything that you would have done differently through that growth period?

Rachel Rodgers: I mean, honestly, I probably should have hired someone. I don’t even know who like some kind of advisor consultant or something who had high-level operational skills. I just don’t think in my network I had that or wasn’t aware of it. I did hire someone to help me hire like I hired an HR person because we needed so many roles filled rapidly. So, we were a pretty young company with an HR department but, yeah. So, probably hiring, asking for help more. You know what I mean? Because I think when you have a problem, the instinct is to hide, hide the problem, and just wrack your brain and try to figure it out on your own. But the sooner and this is something you learn with entrepreneurial maturity but the sooner you start making a call, as soon as you realize you have a problem instead of just sitting with it in shame, right?

I heard Tiffany Aliche, who’s somebody else you should definitely have on the podcast. She’s running a great eight-figure business, too. But I heard her say, “Shame shields solutions.” And I completely agree. So, if you feel shame about a business problem you’re having, you’re shielding yourself from the solutions, right? As soon as you say it out loud to someone, they’re probably going to be like, “Oh, I know someone who went through that,” or whatever. But even if it’s just to have a release and vent and realize you’re not alone, I think that’s so important. So, those are some of the things that I might have done differently but I think you just like those moments, like, how can you possibly be prepared for something you’ve never experienced before? Whether working for somebody else or through friendships or whatever, you don’t have that network, you’re going to learn as you go. And that’s just what it is.

Brad Weimert: Well, I’ll add to that narrative, shame shield solutions, which is for all of you motherf*ckers out there that don’t feel shame but think that you have the best answer, it’s the same cue. F*cking ask somebody else. You get help. When you’re stuck on something, you don’t have to ruminate by yourself and come up with it yourself. Somebody has already been there and done that.

Rachel Rodgers: Exactly right. You know, for everything. And it’s like whatever you think is like the biggest, most epic problem is somebody else’s like, “Oh, I’ve solved that 12 times. Like, that’s nothing.” I mean, that’s how it is with my team sometimes. Now, they’ll bring me something and they’ll be like up in arms and so stressed and I’m like, “Oh, I don’t care about that. That’s not a big deal. Here’s what we do. You know, run this play,” and it’s not that serious. So, yeah. So, asking for help sooner, which is what I do now. Now, I’m like, “Who can I call?” And then I go send a text and before you know it, I have a solution before the day is out. And not only a solution but for all of the things. You’re working on that?

Brad Weimert: I’m still working on that. I catch myself all the time with things that I’ve been thinking about. One of the best exercises for me is to review old goals or read old journals.

Rachel Rodgers: I love doing that.

Brad Weimert: And look at what I was thinking three years ago, five years ago, one year ago. And when I find something in there that is still an unresolved problem, what the f*ck have I been doing? You know, like, how do you let something sit for five years or three or one or ten or a week when it’s really important?

Rachel Rodgers: That is so interesting. I’ve literally never had that experience. I did not think that’s what you were going to say.

Brad Weimert: Good for you.

Rachel Rodgers: Honestly, I think really what it is, is that I’ve solved that problem on some level, but there’s like a new version of it or a new level of it that I’m now facing because I feel like it’s like this cyclical pathway where you’re like, “Oh, I know how to do that,” but you know how to do it here. But now you have to learn how to do it up here. So, I think it’s just the levels but that’s funny.

Brad Weimert: Yep. Well, welcome to my world in my brain. Okay. So, tell me about one of the things that has become popular or popularized in the last ten years, in particular, is leveraging books to grow business. And there are a ton of people that have used this model and really been good examples and in some cases even teaching the process. Tell me about how We Should All Be Millionaires came to be and where it fit into the overall business model, if at all.

Rachel Rodgers: Yeah. I mean, I’m very much a feeler so I’m kind of feeling my way into things and I’m kind of following my instincts in a lot of ways. And I think We Should All Be Millionaires was just something I just wanted to get out. Like, I just had something to say and I needed to say it. And I also chase efficiency, like I love efficiency. And I found with my clients that I was having the same conversation over and over again. And the thing is too is like when I have it one-on-one, it’s different. It’s gentler. There’s a process to help them uncover these limiting beliefs that they have versus when I write in my newsletter, I’m just yelling. You know what I mean? I can just rant and be 100% honest because it’s not directed at an individual, even though I’m thinking of some people while I write it, right?

And so, that’s kind of why I wanted to write the book is because I’m like everyone is kind of talking around things or not really dealing with the thing talking about let’s say the pay gap, right? And that’s between women and men, which is a problem. And I completely agree but we also have agency. And what are we ourselves going to do about it while we also are fighting for policy change, what are we going to do so that we can win now and not wait for policy change that’s going to come decades later? So, I think that was part of and I’m like, listen, y’all, we just need to focus on our money. We need to get focused. And we also need to put boundaries in place. We need to stop doing everything for our partners. Let them get the f*ck off their asses. And they made that child too. Go get that child. That’s your child. You’re not the f*cking babysitter.

And so, like, I just wanted to go on a rant, basically, about all of the things that I had seen with my clients that were driving me nuts and just things that I’m like it’s so obvious to me and I feel like it’s obvious to everyone but maybe it isn’t. And so, I just decided to start writing. And I think when you write something like the outline, when I look at the outline for my original book proposal for We Should All Be Millionaires, it is hilarious how different it is than what the end result is going to be, like what the end result was. Because I think when you sit down to write, it’s like, what does this book want to be? It’s kind of like telling you as you write it. So, you start a chapter and you maybe have an idea of where you’re starting from, and then the other ideas come to you in the creative process, like what stories you need to tell, what strategies you need to teach, all of those things.

So, it just became what it wanted to become. And I had no idea it was going to do well. I was just kind of like, “I just wanted to write this book.” And my plan was I was going to give it to people when they asked me for advice. What should I do about my pricing? Like, what should I do about this person in my life that I need to put boundaries up with? Or whatever, all of these little things. I wanted to teach them how to change their own thoughts. Like, I wanted to teach them thought work, all these things that I wanted to have just in a nice, neat book so I could be like, “Here, read this. Okay, I’m not getting on a call with you. Here read that.” You know, done.

So, I think that was kind of the thinking behind it and I was like, let’s just try it and see what happens. And I really did. I hoped it would help the business as well, and I imagined that it would, but not in the way that it did. Like, that’s not what I was picturing. So, yeah.

Brad Weimert: And how did it help the business?

Rachel Rodgers: Well, I wound up hiring a publicist a year before to help me manage press and then also to help me with the book launch because that’s what a friend of mine did when she launched her books. I’m like, okay, that’s what you’re supposed to do. And I actually went viral like the year before it came out on a totally like not something that I would… I wasn’t attempting to go viral. I don’t know, maybe some people are these days, but I think back then I don’t know how common that was to try to go viral. It was more like it just happened and I don’t even think we understood how, right? We’re like, “What made it go viral?” But anyway, because of that, there was a lot of incoming press coming in now. And so, that’s what made me hire the publicist sooner. And so, it just sort of like when I started to do press and stuff, I did The Drew Barrymore Show and it was all virtual.

But like I was sharing the ideas from the book, and she was having her own aha moments in the middle of this interview where she’s interviewing me. But it’s like she has a moment where she’s no longer hosts and she’s just asking me questions for her own self, you know? And I was just like, “Oh, maybe this is really something that people need to hear.” So, anyway, it sold very well and I also thought as a marketer, I’m going to market the hell out of this book. So, I did every podcast possible, all the media, blah blah, blah. The best thing that has sold the book is literally the book itself, right? So, all I did was get the engine started, but once people started reading it, they would share it with their friends. They would buy five copies for like their clients or their sisters or their moms and doing book clubs and all of those things.

So, it continues to sell a lot of copies every week to this day and it’s because people reading it are like, “Oh, you got to read this,” and they’re sharing it. So, that was something that I did not know could happen or would happen. I just expected brute force everything because that’s what I had done today as an entrepreneur. So, yeah. So, it basically introduced me to a whole lot more people and that then introduced Hello Seven to a whole lot more people. So, we wound up with a lot more clients too.

Brad Weimert: And what year did We Should All Be Millionaires come out?

Rachel Rodgers: 2021, May 2021. It’s funny too because we had created the club out of necessity in 2020, and I already had the book deal at that point. I was actually in the process. I was in the middle of writing the book when the pandemic happened. I had just come back from a writing retreat where I wrote half of the book. So, we wound up creating like the perfect sort of offer ladder accidentally, you know what I mean, where we had the club first. Then the book came out and it was like the perfect next step was to join the membership community.

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, you wrote the book through a period of time where you were at 2 million, going to 2 million again, and trying to make life easier.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes.

Brad Weimert: In what world did you think, “Hey, you know what I should do? I should make my life easier by writing a book”? Because for most people, this is a huge undertaking that is tremendously distracting from operating a business or making things happen. And at the time, it sounds like it’s not even that it had a specific business outcome that you were aware of. That was sort of the secondary benefit, possibly. But on some level, that’s a question. But really the question is would you do that again right now or without that direction, without having an outcome to the book? Would you stop the business that you had going on when you’re multi-seven figure, eight figures, and write a book to get it off your chest? Does that still fit into your playbook?

Rachel Rodgers: Well, I got like several more book deals after the first book deal. So, I’ve had three audible books come out this year. I have another book coming out in June, and then I have a book coming out the following year. And then I basically have many book deals at this point. So, I guess the answer is yes, I would keep writing because I have continued to write. And actually, this year is the first year that the next set of books have started to come out. I got those book deals like two years ago, but it was just a process, right, producing them all. But yes, I think I just follow my instincts and also see what opportunities come. And it’s like, am I excited about this? Does this make sense? Or even if it doesn’t make sense, is it something that I’m hyped about? And I just follow that.

And I think it has served me because I think in some ways you’re sort of setting the stage for an expansion that you can’t even fathom yet but you’re excited enough about this thing to say yes to it, and then it opens doors or it expands your audience or it like readies you for whatever the next level is. So, I think I’m just tuning in to what my desires are, what my instincts are saying, and following that. Now, is that the most linear path to like the most massive amount of money? I don’t know but I would say it’s not, not that because it’s been pretty good for me where when I follow my instincts, and in fact, I have found in the last couple of years, like this is probably the biggest lesson of 7 to 8 figures is every time I don’t follow my instincts, I regret it. And it winds up being a problem.

So, like if I hire now and in the past couple of years if I’ve hired an outside consultant and I disagree with something they’re telling me to do and I do it anyway, I always regret it. Or if I hire like I’ve hired more senior people who have 20 years of experience that they’re bringing to Hello Seven and they advise me to do something and I don’t like it, but I do it anyway because I’ve hired this person and they have all this experience. Always regret it. So, what I’ve learned is I know what I’m doing. And so, just go do it, right? Because while they may have built other things or they may have other expertise, it’s like when you know you know and you just need to follow that and stop rationalizing it. Stop coming up with a logical reason to follow your own gut and your own intuition. Just follow it because it’s the shorter pathway.

Because how I want to run my company is not necessarily how other corporations have been built for many years. And also too ,I know my audience. I know my team. Like, there’s just certain things you know as a founder and sometimes we listen to advisors and it don’t go where you want it to go. So, does that mean advisors have no place? No. Of course, there are people on my team that I listen to all the time because it’s not competing with something that is an intuitive hit that I’m like, “No, don’t do that.” So, now I’ve just really honed in and tried to really tune in and listen to myself and make sure I say it out loud. Because whenever I don’t say the thing and I’m like I’m thinking the thing, but I’m not saying the thing, it always bites me in the ass every time. Have you had that experience?

Brad Weimert: Well, as a hyper-analytical non-feeler, I will say that when I hear people talk about this stuff, I’ll tell you my takeaways on that.

Rachel Rodgers: I can’t wait to hear it.

Brad Weimert: I think that one universal truth is that there are frequently many, many, many paths to get to an outcome.

Rachel Rodgers: Yes.

Brad Weimert: Two, if you do not like what you are doing, if you are not pulled towards the thing that you are doing, it is going to be harder to execute. Period. Doesn’t mean you can’t but it’s going to be harder to do it if you’re running uphill with a headwind. If you can get the wind behind you and run downhill, it’s going to be easier to do it. And I think that those are both really important things to remember. There’s one other but I get distracted by all the laughs.

Rachel Rodgers: Sorry. Well, I also think too when you’re running uphill, it impacts your results. So, even if you do execute, what are the results like? And I think that was what was happening in my law practice like I was getting results but not the exponential results I was looking for because I was sort of like there was just sort of this wet blanket over everything that I was doing versus when you’re hyped about it. That excitement, that energy can carry you and also brings the best ideas when you’re thinking about it, you read more about it, you listen to podcasts about it. Like, when you become obsessive about an idea, you’re excited and hyped, I think that’s just naturally going to make it better than when you’re doing something that you really don’t enjoy and that you’d rather not do but you’re doing it because money or whatever, other reason.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I know that we’re coming up on time here. I’ve got a million other questions but let’s talk about the structure of your team because through the chaos, the 2 to 5, 5 to 10, do you have an outside of how you feel about it? Do you have any sense of systemically when to hire new people? Like, what was the thought like, how did you grow and how did you stabilize through that process?

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. So, of course, we started hiring people and you just have to look at where are the bottlenecks, where are the bottlenecks in the business, right? What are the things that I need to get off my plate because I’m often the bottleneck with that thing? And so, first, it’s execution kind of things like copywriters. We need a team of copywriters more than one because I don’t have time to write anymore anything. Barely have time to review and edit. So, let’s get these copywriters in and get them trained. So, that was crucial. My systems team, right, because I am not a tech person, never have been. So, I have a great systems director, and I had a previous systems director before him who, like, held it all together, made sure everything was talking to each other and working how it needed to work and all of that. So, the systems team was always crucial as well.

And a lot of times, my strategy was like I’d have amazing contractors that have been with me for a long time, and this is where I use my negotiation skills to convince them to come work for me. Because a lot of times they were freelancers are entrepreneurs on their own with a couple of clients, and I’m like, “How much do you make from those clients? Like, add it up.” And then I would just offer them a salary where I’m giving them their full salary. They can still take clients on the side if that’s something they want to do outside of working hours, of course, but also benefits and all of that. And then also I’m growing this thing exponentially. So, if you’re here, if we ever sell or whatever, who knows? I might give out equity at some point in the future. So, like, you get to be a part of this thing that we’re building together and grow with me.

So, that’s how I got the president of my company, the systems director, and then his predecessor who came after him. Who else? It was like somebody to run the marketing department because I couldn’t stay on top of all of that, somebody to run programs because I couldn’t stay on top of all of that. Those are probably the first things that I needed a department head for, then an operations director to make sure, like, we’re building process this whole way, managing team and all of that. So, those are sort of the areas where I sort of start with a vision of like, where am I going? What is the dream team that I eventually want that I can’t afford today? And how can I start building that out now? What’s the basic pitch cheaper version of that, that those folks can then grow into some of those roles?

And thinking in terms of departments has helped as well, which also sometimes can be a detriment, to be honest. But I think that’s kind of how I organize it but I always have a wish list of like who are my next hires because if you’re looking to grow, this is how you grow. You grow a team, right? And building a team and putting people on projects that they can just run with that you cannot. That’s a side project for you but if you hand it to them, they can be full-time focused on it, and really execute. So, that’s been the process. And of course, we also have some agencies that we work with like things that we outsource that I think when you scale and grow, you wind up outgrowing all of these agencies that you’ve hired and been with for five years.

You got to fire everybody and get new ones because they no longer can handle. Like, you’re their biggest client now and they can’t see the future with you. They don’t have a vision for their piece of it. So, we’ve done a lot of that along the way as well. So, I think that’s the journey.

Brad Weimert: That’s a great note. One of the things that I’ve heard you say is start speaking to yourself like a millionaire. And that’s through the lens of Hello Seven, right? That’s through the lens of getting the entrepreneur up to seven figures. Where you are now, how do you talk to yourself? What does speaking to yourself now sound like?

Rachel Rodgers: Yes. Oh, this is such a good question. It’s funny, a friend of mine who also should be on the podcast. I’ll make a list for you.

Brad Weimert: Please.

Rachel Rodgers: She also has an eight-figure business and she said to me, she was like, “You have to start acting like a billionaire.” That’s what she said to me. She’s like, “You have to start acting like that now.” And once she said it, it was like ringing in my ears repeatedly. And I’m like, well, first of all, I don’t even know what billionaires act like. Truth be told, right? But you can get clues, right? And you can ask yourself, is this something that I think Beyonce is doing or Jay-Z or Jeff Bezos or whoever, like, is this something they would do, right, or put their attention on or whatever? So, it does sort of train you to start elevating your thinking in that way. So, that’s something that I think about a lot.

And I think about like I feel like Hello Seven is one of many businesses. And I’m starting to think about that like mergers and acquisitions to grow instead of just hiring team or doing everything homegrown because that’s the long way, right? That took a lot of time to build that up in this way. So, I’m like, “Okay. How can I acquire other businesses that can accomplish the goal?” So, instead of hiring one person, I basically buy a department through an acquisition instead. So, that’s where my brain is going now. And in terms of how I think of myself, I think I try to keep the end goal in mind and I have to keep revisiting it. What is my vision now? Because it changes, right? Like you feel like you’re on a certain pathway or you accomplish it and then you’re like the Roadrunner. Now what? You know, what’s next? But my goal is to build this into a $100 million business. That’s the next goal. And then once I get there, we’ll find out what’s next after that.

So, that’s what I think about, like, okay, is this version of me in the future, this nine-figure business owner or this billionaire version of me, what would she be prioritizing, right? What decisions would she make? Would she talk to herself like this? Would she allow herself to sit and feel defeated for a whole day? Or does she get 20 minutes and then she got to pick her ass up and go get back to it? So, I think that’s how I do it. But the other thing that I do, so it’s not just my own thoughts, is I’m always listening to podcasts, audiobooks. I always got something in my ears so that I have something positive, something propelling me forward, hearing stories from other people who’ve done what I’m trying to do already. For them, it’s easy. They could do it again. Nine-figure business, I do that for lunch. Whereas I want to hear that so that it doesn’t feel insurmountable. I think that’s a very important piece of it.

Brad Weimert: Love that. Rachel Rodgers, I appreciate you carving out time today. Like I said, I’ve got a million other questions, and I’d love to get more time in general. But, in the meantime, where should people go to find out more about you?

Rachel Rodgers: Well, you can find Hello Seven at HelloSeven.co or follow me on Instagram, rachrodgersesq. And check out my new book. It’s called Million Dollar Action. Share it with your clients.

Brad Weimert: I love it. We will link to it in the show notes. And until next time. Thank you so much.

Rachel Rodgers: Thank you.