96: $30K with Under 1K Followers: Kelly Leardon’s Secret to Scaling with Systems, Not Stress
Have you ever finished a full workday feeling exhausted but unsure what you actually accomplished?
In this episode of Strut It, I sit down with Kelly Leardon, certified Director of Operations and founder of Walk Like Warriors. We talk about why traditional time management systems fail entrepreneurs and what actually works instead.
Kelly breaks down her signature approach to theming your week, building rhythms that support focus, and reducing the mental load that keeps business owners stuck in constant busy mode. We also dive into how she generated over $30,000 from a single launch using Instagram Stories with fewer than 1,000 followers.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
[00:00] Why feeling busy does not mean you are productive
[00:27] Kelly’s approach to theming your week
[02:01] Why entrepreneurs struggle with traditional time management systems
[06:21] Why decision fatigue drains your energy and momentum
[07:15] The real cost of task switching and constant notifications
[13:24] Why theme days work better than task batching
[15:16] Kelly’s play, rest, and work philosophy
[25:54] How Kelly sold over $30,000 with a small Instagram following
[27:17] Why Instagram Stories build trust faster than posts
[29:40] A simple Monday through Friday Instagram Stories selling framework
[33:25] Why you do not need a large following to make sales
[36:05] The importance of clear calls to action
[38:51] Kelly’s final advice on designing a business you actually want
Key Takeaways:
Busy is not the same as productive.
Traditional time management systems were not built for entrepreneurs.
Task switching silently steals hours from your week.
Theme days reduce overwhelm and increase focus.
Rhythms and rituals help you feel done at the end of the day.
You can generate real sales with a small Instagram following.
Consistency and trust matter more than perfect content.
This Week’s Challenge:
Choose one theme day for the upcoming week. Commit to it fully. Notice how your focus, energy, and clarity shift when you stop task switching and work in rhythm. Then share one takeaway from this episode in your Instagram Stories and tag Elizabeth and Kelly.
Links Mentioned:
Learn about the Success Squad with Kelly HERE
Join the VIP Success Squad Waitlist HERE
If you want {FREE!} daily business coaching Monday-Friday in Instagram Stories, click here
If you love {FREE!} tools, trainings, & templates to run your business smarter, click here
Join the Hot Reels waitlist or DM me hot on Instagram
https://elizabethmarberry.com/hot
A Truth You Need to Hear:
“Begin with the end in mind. You get to design a business that supports both money freedom and time freedom.” — Kelly Leardon
Guest Bio
If you’ve got a brilliant brain but 47 tabs open - Kelly’s your girl. She's a business coach and strategist who teaches overwhelmed entrepreneurs how to manage their time and turn their chaos into calm with simple, no-fluff systems that stick. Kelly's superpower? Turning “hot-mess energy” into laser-focused action with simple, proven strategies for the ambitious-but-exhausted business owner.
S3 Ep96 Transcript: $30K with Under 1K Followers: Kelly Leardon’s Secret to Scaling with Systems, Not Stress
00:00
You get to the end of your workday, you've been busy nonstop, but somehow you feel like you got nothing done. If so, you're not alone, and this episode will help you shift out of that constant busy mode and into a rhythm that actually works. Today, I'm sitting down with Kelly Leardon. She's a certified director of operations and small business coach. Kelly shares her signature approach to theming your week.
00:27
and creating simple rhythms and rituals that help you find more time flow and freedom in your life and business. She even breaks down how she generated over $30,000 in sales from a single launch with under a thousand followers on Instagram using her powerful Instagram Stories strategy. So if you're ready for more structure, more peace and more results, you're gonna love this conversation. Are you ready? Let's go.
00:58
Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole led work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place.
01:27
Let's dive in.
01:37
Welcome back to the show. I am so thrilled that you have joined me for another episode of Strut It because today I am introducing you to one of my mentors Her name is Kelly Leardon and she is the owner of walk like warriors I recently completed her success squad, which is her group coaching program and I hired Kelly to help me
02:01
optimize and systematize my business. I don't know if you know, but I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. And while I am a wonderful creative visionary, I've accomplished so much in my life, those back end systems were a struggle for me. And so one of the things that I have learned is that when you have a struggle, find the coach or the mentor who has figured it out. And that was Kelly. And so you are in for a treat because I am bringing her
02:29
on the show today to share her magic and help you to streamline your work week so you can have more time, freedom, and make more money. I hope you're super excited. So, Kelly, welcome to the show. I'm so excited. I cannot wait to chat with you. Yay, I love it. So let's start with, if people don't know who you are,
02:55
Have you always been this operations brain and how did you move into this place of now coaching these high achieving female entrepreneurs with time management and marketing systems and all of that? I love this because I started as a Mary Kay consultant back like 700 years ago and that was my first foray into being an entrepreneur. I was in qualifications for my free.
03:20
So I was really in my element and this is really dating me. This was before the age of social media I literally would walk through the mall and hand out samples and if people are like, oh selling comes naturally to her No, I would legitimately go into stores and buy stuff I couldn't afford because I did not want to hand out those samples and then I became a virtual assistant before that was a thing
03:42
did all kinds of things like project management, had lots of different businesses. Hello, ADHD, we tend to dabble in lots of things until we find our main thing. And then I got certified as a director of operations and my eyes were blown wide open. I realized that operations, it's like the backbone of what makes businesses work. But the funny thing is that at the time I was working a corporate job and this CEO, I mean, this was a nine figure CEO. And he said to me, he's like, you have...
04:10
like a split personality and I'm thinking wait what I don't think that's a compliment and he said I think in your personal life you're mass chaos you are like color and glitter but in your work life you're type a I've never seen anything like it so that really is how I am so in my work life after getting certified as a director of ops I'm all about strategy systems optimizing but I think why people love walk like warriors is they see themselves in the system because they're like
04:39
Oh my goodness, I don't have to keep a time diary. Oh, everything is pretty and fun. Oh, this can actually be interesting and exciting. It doesn't have to be boring, SOPs, all these abbreviations. And so really what happened with Walk Like Warriors is I didn't have an online presence. As a director of ops and Elizabeth, I wish I had found you two years ago because I would have bypassed all the bumps along the road. I will just say that.
05:01
but I just started sharing my heart. It was a faith-based page, but people were glomming onto the time management for ADHD. Even if you don't have that squirrel brain, mom or dad brain, heck, just entrepreneur brain, we are holding so many things, that they glommed onto that. And one thing led to another, and I closed the director of ops business because the business coaching completely took off. And Elizabeth, I will say what I love about you is you're a freak flag fly. You just like own your weirdness.
05:31
Again, that's another reason. I wish I had you for the social media growth when I was starting, because it was so slow and you would have helped me bypass that. But I'm only recently coming into my own. I was actually ashamed and embarrassed to share my systems and time management with people because I was like, this is like kindergarten. I'm so afraid people are going to look at this and be like, you're literally running this business out of a Google spreadsheet. But once I started coaching women,
05:55
And some men, it was like the scales fell off their eyes and I realized, oh, it's not just me that's weird. There's a lot of us. And I think entrepreneurship tends to draw in people who don't fit the mold. Yes. I always joke that entrepreneurs have 50 different ideas before breakfast every day and part of becoming a higher level, I would say entrepreneur, meaning like you're making more money, you're serving your dreamboat people.
06:21
you're systematizing things is the ability to make decisions and clear, swift decision-making and understanding like what is the lead domino today because just because I have 50 ideas before breakfast doesn't mean I should go do all 50 of those things, which really is a great transition into that energetic of squirrel brain, right? Of I think no matter whether you have ADHD or not, you can relate to
06:49
we are all juggling so many things and most of us don't have massive teams, right? Where we can just delegate every single thing that we're doing in our business. So we always talk about working harder and not smarter. And I'm curious from your standpoint, cause you see so much of this, why do traditional time management systems not work for entrepreneurs like you and I?
07:15
They were designed at a time that I'm not gonna go into a deep dive history lesson, so nobody just tune away. I promise I'm going somewhere. They'll give me 10 seconds. Life was moving from farms to skyscrapers. That's just what started to happen at the turn of the 20th century. And they realized putting all these people together in one spot, productivity was going down. So they brought in all these scientists and experts and they were measuring efficiency and productivity. And I know sometimes on Instagram, my dog, the time diaries and things like that.
07:45
that works for corporate people because you have a meeting at nine and then you have a Zoom call at 10 and then you are going out to coffee with somebody at 11. When you work for yourself, you don't have those bookends to mark out the hours. And so those systems were not designed for us. They also were designed for people on teams. And so we don't have a CFO, CMO, CRO, COO, CEO plus janitor plus personal shopper.
08:12
plus mom or dad, I mean, it's not just wearing hats in our business, it's the business plus all the hats we wear in our personal life. And those systems actually were not designed to support people like us. And so essentially we're trying to take something where if you're a square peg, that's great, you fit into that square hole, but we aren't that. And so when we try to force ourselves into it, what I've noticed again and again in the last two years is that people beat themselves up.
08:41
and the guilt sets in. When I'm fully in work, I'm not a good mom or dad. When I'm really present with my family, the business is suffering, and we have all this unnecessary guilt, not realizing we're literally just using a system that wasn't designed for us. Yes, I resonate with that so much. Before working with you, there were definitely different time management practices I tried, and I did feel like a failure. I felt like, gosh, why am I so bad at this? It's interesting getting the ADHD diagnosis because
09:11
it did transform how I look at myself where I'm like, oh wait, my brain just works differently and I didn't even know that. And so now I can be kinder to myself, more compassionate and I can find solutions to meet my needs versus trying to, you know, that square peg into the round hole. So I love how you described it that way because I think so many people are gonna be able to relate to that feeling. And one thing I wanted to talk about for sure because
09:40
You really highlighted this for me in our work together. It is this cost of task switching and it is the cost of having 50 tabs open and working on one thing and then thinking, wait, I need to check this other thing and I'm going to go check. Oh wait, I need to go post on Instagram. And in my work with my clients, I work with a lot of high achieving, big creative visionaries. I see this issue, right? And part of my job as a coach is to help.
10:08
bring them back down to earth and say, okay, that is a distraction today. This is what I want you to focus on. But how can we do that for ourselves and talk through the cost of task switching? Because you really opened my eyes to what that is actually doing to me, my brain, and my business. We were not designed to operate with multiple screens, all of these tabs, but most importantly, all the notifications.
10:37
and our brain gets overloaded and overwhelmed. There's a lot of different research about context switching, but on average, mean, some will say you lose nine minutes every single time you're in a project and the email dings, you look away, you read the email, you respond, you try to go back to the project and to reach that same flow state, they'll say nine minutes. Other studies indicate it's 32 minutes. A good rule of thumb is it's 17 minutes.
11:01
And so going back to like the program you took with Success Squad and people are saying, how are you really saving people eight hours and 17 minutes a week? I mean, that's like an extra day. That seems like snake oil. I tell them, even if I can just get you to stop context switching, if you're context switching 17 minutes and you're doing that 10 times a day, that's 170 minutes. That's almost three hours a day, but it's a sneaky little sucker because we don't realize that we're losing that time. And so.
11:30
If nothing, I am a very tactical, practical business coach. so everyone listening, if I could just get you to turn off the notifications for Instagram, TikTok and email, I swear I'll give you five extra hours this week. Oh my gosh. Totally. Totally. Because otherwise our phones are running us and we're not in charge of our phones, right? Like we're the little hamster like, oh, there's water. I'm going to go take a drink versus like I have control over my life. That's such a great hack.
11:59
just turn off your notifications. So I know you teach a lot about building in rituals and theme days. If someone's listening to this and they're thinking, okay, this is 100 % me, I'm feeling very overwhelmed, I'm feeling constantly squirrel brain or I'm distracting myself. How do people start to shift from this into like what is a healthy
12:27
productive work week even, what does that even look like? Is that even possible? It's not possible when we are starting an email, we realize we didn't send our newsletter, so we get into the newsletter and then we check in with our virtual assistant because we forgot to give them the password that they needed. And then all of a sudden we realize there's an Instagram DM, so we open Instagram and oh crap, I forgot to send the proposal, then we send the proposal. And I wanna just kinda start at the end and work backward. And if you...
12:56
fall into bed at night or you're at dinner with your husband or wife and they say, what did you do today? And you find yourself saying, it was nonstop. I ran around like my hair was on fire. I can't tell you. I mean, I know I did a lot of things, but I can't even tell you what I got done. That's a symptom of something that's very unhealthy. But yeah, that's how most business owners operate. Truth be told, it's why most business owners are broke and why their businesses aren't growing. And I know we love to throw around
13:24
income producing activity, like it's some magical thing that if you just wrap your arms around it, it'll happen. It will not happen until we get the rhythm and ritual of our week under control. And so the way I do it is I don't teach like batching tasks. I want people to theme their days. And this is gonna look different if you have a brick and mortar store that you've got customers coming in off the street or you're a service-based business provider and you're doing online services or you're a digital course creator, it's gonna look a little bit different.
13:52
No one has to follow my exact system, but it works. And I know it works because when people use it, they start saving nearly nine hours of time every single week. But the clincher is like, difference does it make if I save you time? They're getting more done. Some of them report getting twice as much done. And so when we can theme it at the end of the day, we are able to sit there across the dinner table from our husband or wife and say, oh, today I got done X, Y, Z.
14:20
and actually feel done. Because the other thing I find with business owners is we never feel done. Even if we can get ourselves to close the laptop, we don't feel done. We're thinking about it all the time. And so we're not fully present. A big part of my brand is helping men and women feel fully present when they're with their families. So yes, I'm a business coach, but I care about the personal life. Because if that's not good, let's be honest. Because I've worked with some nine figure earners.
14:46
If that isn't good, you will be miserable. That's just the way that humans were designed. We need our personal life to feel good to us. And so I believe in rhythms of work hard, play hard, rest hard. When we are working, we need to be working. Not thinking about personal life, not dabbling in other things, not playing games on our phone or going through TikToks and Reels. We need to work hard. When we're working, we need to work hard, but we need to play hard. So on Saturday, I call it Saturday Saver. That's my day.
15:16
put my feet up, I wanna sit outside with friends, I wanna go to a concert. Like Saturday is my fun day. Yeah, I have to clean the house in the morning sometimes, but I wanna like suck the marrow out of life. So Saturday is like my day for play. And Sunday, Sabbath, even if you're not religious, it's to rest. Holla to my ladies, that means from house chores too. I do nothing on Sundays. Yeah, must be nice for you, Cal, because if I did that, everything would fall apart.
15:42
See, the funny thing is when we take a full day of rest, come into Monday, it doesn't have to be Sunday, you don't have to follow my theme days, but a full day unplugged, no work, no chores. You are literally resting your mind, body, soul and spirit. You come back like a house on fire on Monday. Like you would be shocked at how much energy you can have. On Monday we do admin day. Even if I have a virtual assistant, she works a lot of hours for me, but I still have admin dates and stuff she can't handle. It's like what I would give an administrative assistant. Tuesday is content creation day or.
16:11
Meeting day, I'm a business coach. That's when I do all my coaching. My podcasters like you Elizabeth, you could do like Tuesdays or a podcast day. Wednesday is growth. 20 % of our week, Wednesday, one out of five days is 20%. Sales and marketing, nothing else. This is a big thing for me Elizabeth. So many business owners get so busy on the tasks, they stop marketing and then the bathtub faucets go off, the water goes out the bottom and all of a sudden business is dried up. So we've got to keep those faucets cranked on full blast.
16:41
Doesn't mean we don't do marketing the other five days. And again, even though I'm saying admin day, this could just be the first hour to start your day, but you will feel so empowered coming into a week like this. Thursday deep work inspired by Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. You know, we all say this, I wanna work on my business, not just in my business. And I'll say to them, when was the last time you unplugged and you worked on one strategic project for two, four hours? I don't know. I try to do it once a year. Dude, I do it every week. That's how I've been able to roll out.
17:10
nine digital courses, a signature program that sells out. I have a deep work day every week and then Friday, CEO day and that's not a fancy label trying to be like corporate we slap on ourselves. It's high strategy, updating our KPI dashboard, looking at our metrics, making a plan for the future. I always say these numbers, they whisper to us but they're trying to scream at us. We're trying to either say danger, danger, this number that you want going up is going down, the business is headed for some trouble or woohoo, let's do more of this, it's going up. So I'm sure.
17:39
people in your membership, Elizabeth, they probably have those social media numbers up, up, up, up. So that's great, let's do more of that. But when we see numbers that we want going up, going down, we need to be tracking that, not just like, oh, I have this many Instagram followers. It doesn't matter what you have today. It matters historically to today, what's actually happening because that's our best predictor of the future. So that's a little bit about the theme days. I know people might be overwhelmed. I coach on it Monday through Friday and Instagram stories, but it doesn't have to be my theme days.
18:07
but let's say a brick and mortar, and they need to count inventory and do ordering, make Friday your inventory and ordering day. You don't have to follow mine, but I don't know. To me, I'm like, does this sound weird? But it's helped hundreds of entrepreneurs grow and scale their business and actually feel done at the end of the day. So hopefully this is resonating and some people are abiding with that. Yes, and I will say too that, you know, I graduated from your program a while ago now, several months ago.
18:35
There are certain theme days that I inherited from you, like from your system, like for example, Admin Day on Mondays that have really, really helped me. And I'm gonna give a specific example. So one of the things that I do on Admin Day is, so I implement an accounting system called Profit First. So if anyone has not read the book Profit First, I really highly recommend it. But essentially how Profit First works is I have this spreadsheet
19:03
and whatever income my business makes, sales, I put it into the spreadsheet and then I have different percentages that allocate the dollars into profit, owner's pay, operating expenses, taxes, and you can create as many different buckets as you want for your business. I have run Profit First in my business for many years now. Like, thank goodness, I'm so grateful I discovered that system. But...
19:32
one of the things I was guilty of, and I'm not making myself feel bad, but it was the sense of sales and marketing is more my zone of genius. And so we tend to lean too much on those places of comfort, right? When we are a leader or CEO, we all have our zone of genius. We all have our spots that we excel. And then it's easy for us to just kind of lean in on those pieces. And what was happening with me is,
20:00
I would do my profit first allocations. When you do this, you go into your bank account and you transfer money around, right? So essentially you can just think of this as managing my cash flow, right? Managing my cash flow. And then usually on those days I would also go into my QuickBooks. It was a money day. Did I have a cadence, a rhythm for my money day? I did not. So what would happen is it would be like a couple of weeks would go by and be like, oh my gosh, shoot, I have to go.
20:28
and check my profit first and I gotta go look at my bank accounts, okay, great. And so it was always this feeling of like, I'm behind the eight ball and it's something that I have to hold in my brain, right? Like I have to remember. And thanks to Kelly System, now that is something that is plugged into my Monday admin day. And so because of that, it's a miracle. I have this money date with myself every single Monday where I'm paying my credit cards and I'm doing my allocations and I'm doing my QuickBooks and I'm looking at my P &L.
20:57
And so now it's a ritual and I actually really look forward to it and it makes me feel so much better because I'm no longer neglecting that part of my business. So I wanted to share that example because what you just described is just such a game changer and it really does help to give us that space and that freedom that we're seeking. I love that. And you hit the nail on the head. We tend to do too many activities in our zone of genius while the other parts of the business atrophy.
21:27
a picture that I show in the success squad, the guy who skipped leg day. We usually have one or two parts of our business that are super strong and then other parts that are really weak. And so the system is designed leaning on my director of op skills. What makes a business holistically healthy? Not super healthy with sales and marketing, but then the whole back end of the business is falling apart. That's where the business owner might have a lot of money in the bank, but not sleeping very well because they're up at two in the morning remembering all the stuff they didn't do.
21:56
And so I love that you said that, and I think it's such an important call out that when you can theme your days like this, you're not holding so much stuff in your head all the time. Oh, totally. It's a relief. It's like we don't even realize how many thoughts are going through our heads and the cost of that, right? And then that doesn't even include all the thoughts I have about my kids or, you know, volunteering at their school or did I sign that permission slip or all those additional things. One of my other previous business coaches, she said, Elizabeth,
22:25
systems are sexy. And I was just like, okay, okay, teach me your ways because I don't get it. But I really am starting to get it. And I did want to highlight too, and I said, I took your program several months ago. I'm still learning how to implement it because all the habits are hard to break. What are the crumbs that lead to long-term success with this type of work? Like the people that you see who
22:50
take this information and run with it and they have more time and they have more profit and they have more peace. Who are they and what's their secret sauce or what are they doing? I think like anything in life, they're this tipping point where the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change. So we have to want it, whether it's weight loss or saving up for a retirement or getting out of credit card debt. It's just like anything else. There is going to be some friction to changing.
23:19
The ones who implement and go all in the first two weeks by far have the most success because it's like a pressure valve and they can feel this pressure getting released. And they'll tell me, I mean, you took the squad, you heard the girl sing, I stopped clenching my teeth. I stopped biting my nails. Somebody had had insomnia for the last, ever since she started her business essentially and she started to be able to sleep eight hours. I do like to compare it a lot to health and wellness.
23:43
because when you can have those wins right away, also you can zip up your jeans, you're that much more motivated to keep going. The over-educators, the hyper-educators tend to not be able to adopt the system long-term because they're always dabbling in lots of different learning versus saying, my biggest pain point is my time and my ability to focus to move the business forward.
24:07
And so I'll have it every round, someone will take the squad. I'm also gonna get my certification. I'm also gonna learn how to do this. Oh, and I signed up for this other program and they can't just go all in with one thing. And it's just like anything in life. If you want it and you're willing to put in the effort, especially the first two weeks, I know it takes however many days to develop a habit. That's actually not required for this system. But what is required is some focus to get it to work for your business. Actually, since you took it Elizabeth, we've built in more.
24:34
So that for each individual business type, I can say, oh, let's switch this around. Let's move these things. I know I've shared this with you before, but people have messaged me and said it saved their marriage. That's pretty powerful for a time management system. But hey, I get it. As business owners, we're working way more than we think we are. We're on our phones in front of our families way more than we think we are. And if I can help give people that beautiful balance of a
25:03
personal life you really love too, but a business that's strong and growing stronger and faster, that to me is like the sweetest spot of my life. Yes, yes, I love that. So I want to transition into your Instagram, my darling, because it's so funny. I originally found Kelly because she was interviewed by Brock Johnson. And I'm sure most of our listeners know who Brock Johnson is. He's a
25:31
very well known Instagram growth coach. He has over 700,000 followers on Instagram. He's a leader in this space. And I found Kelly because she was on one of his podcast episodes. And that episode, believe was that you had a 30K launch with less than thousand followers at that time. Is that correct? Something like that. Yep. Something like that. Yes.
25:54
So it's funny in prepping for this interview, I know Kelly was like, well, you're the Instagram gal. And I'm like, girl, you got your stuff going there too. You have so much wisdom over there. So I love how you show up specifically in your stories. And I know you do a lot of selling in your stories. And you and I actually are very similar in teaching people about like, you have to show up consistently. But I'm curious, what are...
26:19
some tips you have about selling in your Instagram stories for people who have heard that that's a thing, but they're not really sure how to do it because from my view of seeing what you do, I think you're very effective in how you leverage Instagram stories. appreciate you saying that. Coming from you, that's a big compliment. I will say I definitely need you. I need your membership because I'm very good at middle and bottom of funnel, but that attraction piece and like you said,
26:47
That's my weakest area is getting the new followers in. Once they're in, they're usually pretty engaged. And I think it's because I don't gatekeep. That's a big thing for me. There is a caveat, because I don't like to just lay down, this is how it is, and this is my way is the best way. There are some accounts that do really well with high volume, low ticket, and I'm not really talking to them. Who I'm talking to is brands that are personal brands that I don't mean like affiliates and things like that. mean, brands where
27:17
I said affiliate, I meant influencer. But where you're the face behind it and people do want to see you, to them, and I think that's actually the vast majority of people growing on social media right now, it's built on trust. And if you never show your face, if you never talk, it's very hard to feel affectionate toward a brand that just feels cold and impersonal. And I did a 30 day challenge where I had to show my face and use my voice every day for 30 days. And Elizabeth,
27:46
It was so bad. Like if people could see it right now, they would probably melt out of their clothes from cringing so hard. But I kept at it. I would love to say, and on day 30, I made $10,000, but that was not the case. It was very slow, but it did get me comfortable. And one of my really close friends to this day, she's a fellow business owner. She had taken a break. She's taken an Instagram hiatus, I think for 90 days. She got back. I'll never forget it. She sent me a DM.
28:15
She's very blunt and she said, what happened to you with stories? You must've hired a coach or taken a course or something. That's how bad I was. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, you were really bad before. I love her. She's in my membership and I really do love straight shooters. And I just told her nothing. I just kept showing up. Trust is a really important thing and we can't manufacture it. We can't like get people there. They have to get there themselves, but some ways to build trust is showing up every day.
28:44
I don't re-record unless I've accidentally showed my kids, my under 18 kids, or my address is on a piece of mail in the background. Other than that, I have recorded with spaghetti sauce on the corners of my mouth, mascara under my eyes. I have said, oh my gosh, I can't believe it's Friday and it's actually Wednesday, I just leave it. I don't say anything, people think it's hilarious. But that didn't happen overnight. So to anyone who's a little bit nervous about that, I would say do a challenge with a buddy.
29:14
and hold each other accountable and just show up. You don't even have to try to sell it for the first 30 days. But once you start to get comfortable, I believe people buy from people who they think can help them. Wild idea, right? And when we only do personal content and stories, it actually hurts us because they have to believe that we can help them with whatever we sell. And so I think where I'm very bad at social media growth.
29:40
I am very good at being able to use a following to build my business. And so that is happening in Instagram stories and it started with showing up every day. It started from not gatekeeping and sharing and I coach for free. There's a lot of free business coaching Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I don't open Instagram usually on the weekends. And over time, I think people just little hacks, whether it's my analog physical timer that like that actually physically disappears as the time kicks down.
30:10
If it's that I use bubble yum when I need to focus my ADHD music playlist, I try every day to say, what is a five minute when I can give them today? And over time, people, when they try it and it works for them, it's like this little green check mark in their brain. Kelly can help me. Walk Like Warriors helped me with this. And it's very interesting because on our intake form for the success quad, we ask why Kelly and why now? And.
30:38
Well over 80 % say it's your consistency in Instagram stories and how you showed up and you poured into me for a year, 18 months without asking for anything in return. I'm not afraid to sell, but I do believe especially for more educational brands, even service-based providers, you need to serve so you can sell. And I don't do it in a manipulative way. mean, Elizabeth, know this, I genuinely love small business owners. I genuinely cry over them.
31:07
Every time there's a law passed that I think is gonna hurt them, I will literally cry. I feel like we're handcuffed in so many ways. I feel like we put ourselves through the wringer, we beat the crap out of ourselves. I'm so for them that showing up is now so much easier because I can just say they need people to help them. And even if they never buy from me, I'm gonna help them. So consistency, building trust, helping them, pouring into them. Those are all like real specific tactical ways. I would also say this, there can be a strategy to selling.
31:37
So just to get super tactical, if somebody was just like, just literally tell me what to do, Cal, I need more. You can write this down. Monday, post a client story, a piece of social proof, a before and after, just do that with a link. It kills me. People will do this and not include the link. And I'm like, you do understand no one's going to your bio. If they're scrolling stories, they're not going to your bio. So either a mini chat or a link or something.
32:03
Tuesday, overcome an objection. You probably know the 10 reasons people don't buy from you. Just tackle one every Tuesday. This could go with your theme days for all I care. Wednesday, nothing sells like loving what you do. So why not on Wednesday just show up and say what you love, what you're thankful for that you poured into whatever it is that you sell. Thursday, future pacing. Hold out that carrot. What's gonna be their life? Whether it may be you sell lemonade, home squeezed lemonade, fresh squeezed lemonade.
32:31
What's their life gonna be like after they take that first step? Set the future for them. Elizabeth, you do a fantastic job of this, like with your membership, helping people see when you invest in the right coach, this can be the results. Everybody wants to grow on social. It's noisy out there. Friday, I always say dealer's choice. Repeat something you already did, do a different client testimonial. Or my favorite is take us inside, show us under the hood. We assume people know what is in there and most people have no clue.
32:59
I've got news for everybody. No one goes to websites anymore. I mean, when we fill the success squad and I'll ask people if they saw the sales page and I spent thousands of dollars with a copywriter or website team, all that, the vast majority, oh no, you just talked about it in stories. ah So I think stories matter. I mean, I've had six multi-five figure launches with an audience of under 2,000.
33:25
It was based in Instagram stories and my newsletter and my newsletter, my subscriber list is very small. I believe that we can have a ton of impact. So if anyone out there is discouraged by growth or a very tiny following, Elizabeth can help you skyrocket that following. But I also want to encourage you that you can have a lot of impact and you really can build the business of your dreams even with a small following.
33:48
100%. And I see that with my clients inside Hot Reels, the 12 month Instagram content lab, which is what you've been referring to with my membership, is I had a Pilates studio owner who had under 500 followers and she closed two high ticket sales. So she closed $3,000 in one day. And it was from people who had just been watching her Instagram.
34:14
And I love that you also brought up the whole buying cycle because I find that for whatever reason, sometimes when we are growing and marketing a business on social media, we get so impatient. It's like, well, Elizabeth, I've been doing what you said for a month and it's not working. And I'm like, a month? Give it six months, girl. Let's go. We need more data points, is always what I say. We have to be careful of what we're going to infer from a very small set of data. So if you've posted like 10 times,
34:43
It's not enough data for you to be like, oh, I don't think my people are really into that offer. And so that's part of why the consistency is so important is that every business, depending on what you're selling, has a different buying cycle. And I will tell you that people are watching you. Like they are watching you. That's why I always try to discourage people from, yes, followers matter, but.
35:07
I care about leads and sales for your business, right? Like you're not just here to be an entertainment clown and not get paid for it, right? Like you wanna drive leads and sales. So I love your story because I hope if you are listening to this and you feel you've kind of bought that lie that you have to have 10,000 followers to make money on Instagram, it's not true. And Kelly just shared her story and so many of my clients.
35:36
same exact thing. They're sales, high ticket sales even, just through consistently inviting people into their offers, building that trust. And one thing that Kelly, you said that I want to make sure I highlight for everybody with that story strategy is she's pouring into her people, she's serving. So we talk a lot about that on the podcast is like, show up with that heart of service. Like you can help one person today and that's enough, right?
36:05
and you're building that know like in trust factor. But Kelly, you do something that is very important that a lot of people miss, which is she has solid calls to action all the time. And when people say a call to action, they're often thinking about a promotion, right? Like buy this offer or join this wait list. And yes, I mean that, but I also mean that Kelly has calls to action like.
36:28
Like if you can relate or ask a question, an engagement question to invoke conversations. One thing I've noticed, Kelly, with your stories is that it feels like you're in conversation with your people. When I watch your stories, I don't feel like I'm watching you on a stage giving a monologue. I feel the dialogue and I feel invited into the conversation. And I always say that clients come from conversations, right?
36:56
calls to action, links, invitations so people know exactly how they want to work with you. And then I love that Kelly highlighted too that she's so passionate about what she does. another coach I heard from recently, she said, Elizabeth, you can't teach passion. That's not something I can teach you. Like I can't want more for you than you want for yourself. Right? So if you love what you do or you find a piece of what you do that you love, share it because that is so
37:27
So Kelly, just want to thank you for highlighting that. And this is why I love Kelly and why I was so excited to bring her on the podcast is did you guys hear she gave you a play by play script of what you can do Monday through Friday on your Instagram stories. So here's what we want you to do. We want you to go post a story today after listening to this podcast. I want you to tag Kelly. She's going to tell you her handle in a minute. I want you to tag me.
37:53
Elizabeth Marberry, M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y, and tell us one takeaway that you learned from this podcast. And you're gonna be brave, you're gonna show your face, or maybe not, maybe it's a picture, that's okay. But we want to hear from you because success goes to the implementers. Okay, Kelly, what is your Instagram handle so everyone can tag you and follow you? Kelly means warrior woman. So the name walk like warriors is a play on that. But somebody had that handle. So there's underscores between each word. So walk underscore like.
38:23
underscore warriors and you'll know it's me if you see a bright yellow background behind me because yellow is my favorite color. I love it. Amazing. To close our episode, what is one last thought? But you know, you're going to be able to invite everyone in and tell them where they can work with you if they want to join the success squad, which of course they do after hearing this interview. But what is one final thought that we want to leave the listeners with today as they walk away from today's episode?
38:51
My favorite business axiom is Stephen Covey, begin with the end in mind. It's great for when you're making a project or anything else, but I would love for the one listening to just hear this. No matter what you've done with your business, no matter what's happened to it is if you were just to...
39:10
wave a magic wand and tomorrow you wake up and it's the business of your dreams. What would that look like? I think sometimes we head down all of these lanes and we look up one day and we're like, how did this happen? I'm selling to people I don't want to sell to a product that I don't want to sell. How did this happen? And it's never too late. You're the boss of your business. So you can make those changes. And I think it's so important to sometimes just do like a gut check once a year.
39:36
Where am I right now and is this where I want to be? So beginning with the end in mind. So for me, in my right hand, I'm holding on to money freedom. I want a very financially successful business, but in the other hand, I'm holding time freedom. And so I'm always swaying back and forth between those because that's what's important to me. Somebody else might not want that life, but I have purposely designed Walk Like Warriors to give me.
40:00
the best of both worlds. And so wherever someone is, would just strongly encourage them to sort of step up and out. Really think strategically about, am I rowing this boat in the direction I want it to go? Because you can always wake up tomorrow and make a change. um It's never too late. It's never too late to make a change and allow this episode to give you space. Maybe you pause after this episode.
40:26
You take out your earbuds, you turn off your car radio or wherever you are, and you just gift yourself two minutes, five minutes of just space to think and breathe, connect to your heart, connect to your soul. I know I'm getting really woo-woo, but you guys know I like to do that. I love that, Kelly. Thank you so much. That is such a beautiful way to close. So if people want to work with you and they want to follow you, they want to learn more, where can we send them?
40:53
Walk Like Warriors on Instagram is the best since I'm there Monday through Friday coaching or my website is walklikewarriors.com. So I run my group program twice a year in January and in the fall. And then there is a whole slew of made easy courses. We're just giving people those micro wins so they can get unstuck really fast. And I personally cannot recommend the success squad enough. It was so powerful, so juicy, so much good stuff in there.
41:21
and Kelly really over delivers. She is so obsessed with her customers and clients, just ensuring that everyone has the best experience. So, highly recommend that you check out her success squad. We will be sure to link that in the show notes as well as her website, her Instagram and everything. So, go give her a follow, go give her some love and don't forget to tag us in your story with one takeaway. I really wanna see it. I wanna see some implementation.
41:50
Kelly, thank you so much for your time today. was such a pleasure having you on the show. I appreciate you, Elizabeth. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to today's interview with Kelly. I hope you got one solid takeaway from this episode. I hope that you will take that space that Kelly was mentioning at the end to just have that gut check. It's never too late to pivot.
42:17
You can do this. Kelly and I are rooting for you and I'm so excited to see how you can add some rituals or theme days into your week so that way you can show up in that zone of genius, really give all those different aspects of your business attention and create more time and space in your week for what really matters like your family, your friends, your hobbies and
42:46
As always, I'm sending you so much love and encouragement. And if you love today's episode, don't forget to share it with a business colleague or friend who is also juggling all the things as an entrepreneur. I would so appreciate you sharing it with them. That really helps us reach more brilliant people like yourselves. And I cannot wait to strut it with you next week. Thank you for listening to Strutt It.
43:14
If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free Monetize Your IG Guide, where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at elizabethmarberry.com slash freebies. That's elizabethmarberry.com slash freebies to get my Monetize Your IG Guide.
43:42
If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.
