Debbie Hart will rejuvenate your entrepreneurial spirit in today’s episode which covers LOADS of noteworthy knowledge. Seriously, you CAN’T miss this episode!
When they say, “necessity is the mother of all invention,” I think they’re referring to Debbie. After a divorce, an eviction notice, and 6 children needing homeschooling, Debbie amped things up to stay afloat and be able to afford to raise her children and pay the bills.
After starting a personal development company, mortgaging company, business coaching company for real estate agents, and MORE, it’s safe to say that Debbie Hart knows what she’s talking about.
After hearing this depth and variety of experience and knowledge, I found myself recommitted to reaching my goals and going against the grain. I bet you’ll feel the same once you hear Debbie’s inspiring story; her links are below!
Debbie’s Links:
Instagram
Listen here or watch on YouTube!
TRANSCRIPTS
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Everyone has to face imposter syndrome. Everyone is scared their first time, but the mindset always comes first is realizing
Speaker 2 (00:07):
If you’re a business owner, this is an episode you need to listen to, especially if you’re looking to,
Speaker 1 (00:13):
One of the first actual strategies when I work with a business owner is creating what we call a
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and anti financianal advisor. The show’s for you, those who work so hard for money and you want your money start working harder for you today. So you can become work optional where you work because you want to, not because you have to, and more importantly, it’s not just about getting rich, it’s about living a rich life because as you are blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you. Thank you for tuning in today, guys. I appreciate you have been so much into the show. You’ve been binging some of you for years, been binging this show, tuning in, sharing this with others. Thank you so much for really putting us in the top 1% of all podcasts. So thank you so much again for your loyalty, for really just for you helping to create that ripple effect in others’ lives too.
(01:16)
Hey guys, if you haven’t done so or haven’t realized it, we do have two YouTube channels. There’s the Money Ripples channel, which you may or may not be on right now, but there’s also the Money Ripples podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe to both because we have different content coming on, different videos and things that can take your education to a whole nother level. Be sure to do that today. All right guys, so I brought on a guest that honestly I was super excited to bring on. I know that I’ve started to become friends with her as well as one of our partners as well. And I’ll tell you this, if you’re a business owner, this is an episode you need to listen to, especially if you’re looking to profit, you’re looking to scale, you’re looking to buy your time back. This is the episode for you. And so we’ve got Debbie Hart here today of Ignition Point where they actually have helped many entrepreneurs help them be able to not just grow, but really be able to really start to get to that point where you can really capitalize and profit yourself. That’s one of the big things that she does, helps increase profits in people’s lives. Organization, really make sure that you have this. In fact, she even has a software that helps people get higher profits in their businesses right now. Guys, welcome here, Debbie Hart. Debbie, welcome.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Hey, Chris, thank you so much for having me. That was a fantastic introduction and I also, I love your podcast. Finances is one of the topics that is not taught either at all or very well in our traditional school system. I was just chatting with my 25-year-old daughter about this today actually. It’s a valuable and imperative education actually. So thank you also for providing your podcast to the public and giving those resources out to people as abundantly as you do.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I really appreciate that. I really do. And by the way, I know there’s probably some people saying like, oh yeah, right? You were like, what, eight years old when you had that daughter? Sure, whatever. We get it.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Thanks. That’s the beauty of Zoom, right? It blurs all of those age lines. No,
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That’s what happens to me. No, I was kidding. As I told you as I was messaging like, Hey, I’m running a little behind. I’m just put my makeup on. But the truth is it wouldn’t do anything anyways. Well, so Debbie, tell us more about your backstory. I know you have a fascinating story.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yes. So my backstory a lot of times knowing someone’s why does help you understand why they are so driven and so passionate about their own business, product or service. And so for me, 11 years ago, I was a homeschooling stay at home mom suddenly found myself with both divorce papers and an immediate eviction notice that said, if you’re not off the property immediately you’ll be arrested for trespassing. My husband at the time had paid an attorney to write that on his business and his law firm letterhead. And so I didn’t know that that was illegal. And when I tried to call and get an attorney, I found out that the bank accounts had also been emptied out, so I couldn’t afford an attorney. So like they say, those who have the gold make the rules, and I didn’t have any of that, so I didn’t get to understand what was going on.
(04:33)
So I turned to my six children and I said, pack your favorite things. We’re never coming home. At that point in time, since I had gotten married right after high school and had a bunch of children relatively quickly, I had this passion for raising my own children, and I always told people I didn’t have six babies to pay someone else to raise them. So I had my little side hustles from time to time. I had a little community theater group and I had a children’s performing group. So I did have that entrepreneurial spirit in me. It wasn’t trained in me. I didn’t know anyone around me doing those things, but little mom side hustles is normal. A lot of moms do that, but it was never more than a couple hundred dollars. So of course at that point in time without having gone to school, I was going to go to school when my youngest was in school, but someday never came because he had just turned three and there I was with six kids to provide for no career, no degree.
(05:35)
I couldn’t even get a job that would cover daycare expenses for six children, let alone our living expenses. So this is how I learned to be an entrepreneur out of desperation and just needing money and not knowing how else couldn’t just, my youngest had just turned three, my oldest was 15. I couldn’t just leave them home all day every day, so I had to figure it out. I had to take what skills I had and figure out how to sell those and then add on and charge more and grow and expand, basically compelled from desperation into greatness, I suppose that’s what they say after all. So I have developed over the years, it took a while. I built originally a personal development company. I had the little certifications and I would see people in the little hypnotherapy or life coaching or I flew to ended applying to Santa Barbara and I took all of the Robin’s Madonna’s strategic intervention training, so it’s very high-end coaching there and consulting, and I really loved that.
(06:44)
I thought I would never do anything else. I developed my own personal development company eventually, but COD hit us hard shut down live events and in-person meetings, I did pivot and turn it all into an online company, but then I had a partner who decided that that should belong to him after a breakup. So I hadn’t learned all of my lessons very properly. So starting over yet again, I got into mortgages. Mortgages were doing well at that time, and I had learned enough of these skills and I learned how to learn. I learned business skills, I learned marketing. I have really good people skills, all good things for mortgage lenders. But within six months I realized there was also a lot of competition because it was a lucrative career at the time. Everyone else was just trying to take people out to lunch for business, and I knew I had skills that were different and valuable in the market.
(07:44)
So I built business coaching company for real estate agents and I would do the mindset and drive and determination knowing your why, all of those things. But in addition to that, I added proven marketing systems and it took off like crazy. I had 48 sign up after the first masterclass that I did, and that’s how I built my mortgage business. I became one of the top producers pretty quickly after that and built a pretty decent pipeline. But as time went on, I liked the coaching more and more and the actual mortgage is less and less. And so I started to have a team that would do more and more of that for me while I did more and more of the actual marketing and coaching and working with other real estate agents and other business owners to increase their profitability and their marketing skills. And that’s really my zone of genius.
(08:35)
So eventually I did pivot and I do that now. I still have a mortgage business. I built the pipeline and smart business owners, you don’t walk away from something you’ve built. You either train someone to run it for you or you build it into a sellable asset before you walk away. And so I did that, and so I still have make a little bit of money off of that on the side without having to do much while I grow and build in my zone of genius, which is this profit acceleration consulting business that I have now that you were mentioning very passionate about helping entrepreneurs succeed because like me, if I had had all of these things, it would’ve been an easier road. It wouldn’t have been quite so painful or take so long if I had had these trainings and these resources. So I have put a lot of these together now.
(09:27)
I offer free events on a regular basis, monthly lunch and learns, quarterly big all day trainings where I fly in top experts from around the country. And then when people work with me, I have several free resources. I have free eBooks and free tools on my website for people who were in the position that I was in. If you can’t afford to work with someone, there are ways to get started, a little piece at a time, just like I did find the podcast like Chris has, find a book at a library and as soon as you can get a mentor, as soon as you can get a coach and start to build. But when you’re ready to really take off, everyone who’s in any sort of business entity or personal development program has found that that coaching, that accountability, that mentoring is the key defining factor that really increases success rates. So get there as fast as you can. I do offer a 90 day money back guarantee because I want to stand behind my word. We find most business owners an increased profitability of about an average a hundred thousand dollars within those first 90 days, within the 12 key areas, and then we move on to 40 more areas. So that is my story in a nutshell.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And I know you even summarized that too. Here’s a big question for you. Was there a business you didn’t do?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
No, no. I’ve tried a lot of things as most do, and that’s something I did also have to learn along the way. Most entrepreneurs get shiny object syndrome and we want to start to get an idea, and once we learn how to market an idea, we want to do all of our ideas. But the more successful business owners that I work with in those, not just seven but eight and nine figure ranges, they all have the same piece of advice. Stick with the one thing at least two to three years until it is profitable, sustainable, and scalable. And then like I said before, then you can train a team to take it over or build an exit strategy before you start building the next thing. Otherwise, everything is watered down and chaotic.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
So true. I want to kind of go into a side. I wouldn’t say a side note. I was going to say a side hustle, but that’s not the right word. Kind of a side tangent to this because I can already hear some people listening right now saying, okay, that sounds great. I want to market that one thing that genius, but really like you mentioned finding your own zone of genius, that’s not always easy for people to do. What advice would you give somebody who’s maybe trying to figure out what it is that thing they should really focus on so then they can market it better?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, that’s tricky because when you’re brand new, when you’re a brand new startup, if you’re bootstrapping especially, you’re going to be a solopreneur and you’re going to need to learn to wear all of the hats until unless you get a partner or an investor, someone going to fund your venture that you have to learn all of the things. And then you get to the point where the best book that describes that system is buy Back your Time by Dan Martel. But really you want to just remember the phrase, work your strengths, but hire your weaknesses. And so I don’t like tracking my KPIs and my metrics. I know how it’s not a big deal, but I don’t enjoy it getting through my 300 text messages a day on top of dms, on top of a thousand emails. So time consuming, that’s something a VA can go through and delete, delegate, prioritize for me, and they’re like eight to $12 an hour as soon as you can hire someone. So it depends on where you’re at and what you’re doing before you can really answer that question. It’s not a generic, Hey, here’s when because we’re all growing and pacing at a different rate.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Well, I go along with that question as well as a follow-up to that. I know that you worked in the personal development space even with the hypnotherapy you had mentioned, right? I believe. And so for some people, I know, of course you say, work your strengths, hire your weaknesses, and already you can hear the excuses coming out, someone saying, yeah, yeah, but I am working by myself. I’m just launching this. I don’t have the money to pay somebody else. What would be a good way to break that pattern in their mind?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
It’s just knowing that also it’s not about what’s comfortable, it’s about what’s necessary. And so people have all kinds of excuses. If you want to fight for excuses, good for you. You get to keep them. We will let you have those excuses. But if you want something different, there is a way. This is where the free stuff, if you have nothing, this is why I started with hypnotherapy. It was the fastest. My first love was psychology. My plan was to go get a degree in psychology, so that was faster and easier than the Tony Robbins life coaching seminar that I eventually did go to hypnotherapy was done in four weekends for less than a thousand dollars, and then I could charge $85 an hour to help people quit smoking and lose weight. Well, then I saved up and built on to add to the next thing.
(14:44)
And if someone’s in a nine to five and they’re like, how do I break away with time and money to get my side hustle? You started into a business. Well, then you get up an hour earlier and you go to bed an hour later, you find the time for the things that are priorities to you, and it’s about tracking and measuring everything. So I have a planner that I’ve created for myself and then for some of my clients where you track morning and evening your to-do list and by priorities, and then by energy management and mind management as well. If you’re in the solopreneur phase and you can’t delegate some of those things you hate, you do them first when you have the most amount of energy and then you’re not worrying. You actually spend energy and mental capacity worrying about it all day long. So you get those done first. But if you’re in the phase where you’ve hired people and then that’s a different experience, and then you must track weekly as well, what went well, why do I improve this or do I pivot? And then monthly and then yearly or quarterly and yearly, as you know, because what doesn’t get measured and tracked can’t get improved.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
That’s right. Yeah, no, that’s a big, big thing that people get stuck in, especially when they’re solopreneurs. They really got to track that. And I’ll even say from my experience, even with a team, I still have to do that whole activity log to see what do I need to offload and get off of my plate?
Speaker 1 (16:16):
It’s important. It’s something we’ll forget about. If we don’t set aside the time in our schedule to go over and track and measure all of those different aspects, it is easy to just stay stuck with that cog in the wheel and just going through the motions like you’re saying and not realizing that there’s some things you can delete or delegate.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah. What was it that got you the confidence to build? Because you start off, like you said, a homeschooling mom, shout out to the homeschoolers because I know there are a lot of you that are homeschoolers watching this right now. What is it that got you from there to where you are today? Because to go from there to now consulting people that are making seven, eight plus figures in their businesses, that’s no easy feat for anybody. Even for people that have been doing this for years, that’s still not an easy thing. What helped you build a confidence or really the skills to get there?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
It’s funny, two events ago that was the topic of my presentation that they asked me to present on was cultivating courage that everyone has to face imposter syndrome. Everyone is scared their first time, but the mindset always comes first is realizing that you will not be good your first time and being okay with that, not just internally, but externally. If you tell your clients, if you’re okay with saying, you know what, that’s a great question. I don’t know the answer, but I know how to find it. Developing resourcefulness, for instance, I still homeschool. How do you ask? How do I run a couple of different businesses and homeschool my kids? I developed systems, I developed teams. I’m no longer homeschooling as a solopreneur. I do it in a co-op and with paid teachers so that I know things are dependable and sustainable. And same thing with the business as building confidence.
(18:05)
First of all, being okay, making it full of yourself because you can’t learn tennis by reading a book. You have to get on the court and you will fall down and scrape your nose and your knees and you look silly. You have to be okay with that. But when you recognize, this is the cool thing that people who are scared of the public speaking or their first pitch or whatever it is, what they don’t realize is that when I’m pitching you, Chris, even my first time you’ve done that, you’ve been there, you’ve done that, and you’re actually the first one to cheer me on for going for it, right? The ones who would make fun of you or tell you can’t do that, or they’re the Mexican craps that are pulling you down only because they don’t believe that they can rise out of the bucket, out of the gutter, and so they have to tear you down because every single person that rises is only proof to them that they’re not living up to their own potential.
(18:58)
But the people you want to be working with, the people in the networking groups, the other business owners that you want to pitch your products or services to or build joint ventures with, they’re the first ones to cheer you on because they climbed that same ladder. They also had to face imposter syndrome and feeling not good enough and learning how you have to develop credibility. You do need to get your license or your certification. You can’t just read a book and go say, I’m a money expert now, because you can do a lot of damage when people are calling you for advice. You need to know what you’re talking about, but then not be afraid to get yourself out there. Own your mistakes, fix them, be okay saying, you know what? I don’t actually know that yet, but I know where to find the answer and develop the resources and tools and people around you that have all of those answers when you don’t know where to tap into them. Be resourceful, be resilient. I
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Love that. That’s great advice. This is one section you guys, you probably should rewind and watch a couple more times just to get all that. There was a lot right there as you’re talking, probably nobody knows this yet, but you’re a pretty talented person. I mean, beyond just business, you’re definitely a talented performer. You’ve done everything from theater. You even have a group that you’ve got that’s kind of does, I don’t want to call it, but more like classic hits, right? Do you find any correlation between what you’ve learned there performing versus what you’ve done in business?
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah. Actually, one of the things my side hustles was I built a community theater when I was a mom still, and I built one for both adults and for youth and the youth. It blew my mind when they would go through that program and perform being on stage in front of people, public speaking would develop their competence and confidence, unlike any sports or any other activity. And that was just theater. That’s when I first started learning about that and just seeing the results in the children. I would have moms come up to me in tears at the end of the semester with what that had done for their child. One of them in particular, this beautiful memory of a mom saying she hadn’t told me that the girl’s dad had died a year prior and that she hadn’t smiled or even spoken since. She didn’t even tell me that she just put her in my class, so I treated her like everybody else. And by the end, she was doing her line. She was laughing, she was joking, she had friends, she had a life again, and her mom was sobbing telling me this, and I had no idea. So yeah, putting yourself out there is the thing that builds the confidence. Courageousness and confidence doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you’re scared and you do it anyway.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
So true. I remember when I first started speaking on my own, when I kind of stepped out of somebody else’s shadow and launched Money Ripples. I remember for two months I had a coughing fit before and after I spoke because I was so nervous, and look into it however you want. I know there’s going to be some people who are into energy where they’re like, oh, he was rejecting himself, and you’re right. That’s what was happening. The imposter syndrome was happening. I felt like I had to overperform to get people to like me versus just being me, which is kind of what I’m more like now. I just do what I do. But back then I thought I had to put on a whole literal song and dance. Okay? I didn’t sing that much, but I did dance when I would go and teach and stuff, and that was hard. That was really hard to do. And now seeing that in hindsight, although that was great that I got cheers or whatever, but I’ll tell you, I’m way happier now just being able to be confident who I am, and I think that’s a big challenge for business owners. Wouldn’t you say
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I have the same experience? Originally when I joined that rock band and I was doing mortgages, I thought I had to hide that because it didn’t look professional. And of course, whatever you want to call it, God, universe higher power immediately said, it’s going to teach me just what you just said. That lesson within weeks of joining the band, a real estate brokerage hired the band to play at their event. And so as a mortgage lender, my target market was real estate agents, and I had to come out of the closet and they were like, Hey, aren’t you a lender? And quickly I realized everyone thought that was super fun and very cool, and they resonated with me over that. And then it came to the point where so many of my business partners now, that’s how they introduced me. They’re like, she sings in a rock band.
(23:37)
I’m like, and also I’m a business consultant. I have real skills, but it took me a minute to get over that. Now I own who it’s so freeing for one, but for two, it’s empowering. People love seeing that they resonate with that joy and that authenticity. And the sooner I realized to fully be myself in 100% of my life, the rapid success, the success just went through the roof. I don’t chase leads ever. I don’t have to make cold people just come to me to work with me in droves. I literally have to turn clients away now because they resonate with that. They want that. They want to learn how to have the confidence get over imposter syndrome, how to be free to totally be successful being themselves. One of the first actual strategies when I work with a business owner is creating what we call a market dominating position.
(24:37)
And it really is that I’m telling them, don’t try to be better than your competitors. Be different be you. We’ve got to come up with a strategy that’s completely different, be so good that they can’t forget you. So Domino’s, for instance, are they the best pizza on the planet? No. Do they have the best dining experience ever? No. But they do have top of mind awareness because they came up with a market dominating position that was so unique, we will have it to you hot and ready in 30 minutes or less, or it’s free. And then they built their franchises around hungry college kids so that they could follow through on that promise. They don’t even have that ad campaign anymore, but it was such a profound market dominating position that they still have top of mind awareness. So that’s just what you’re talking about on a personal level, it comes and holds true on a business level. That’s the first strategy we go over is creating your unique market dominating position that is completely different from everybody else.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
I love that. Holy cow, Debbie. Again, everybody rewind that part too. If you’re in business, because that’s a big shift. So many people do try to say, well, where am I the best? And that’s good, but like you said, where am I different? How can I really step aside and just your own personal life? And that’s where social media can really be useful. Where people are like, oh, yeah, well, you’re this too. They identify that you have different elements of your life, let’s say everybody in the human race, we all have different roles we play and different elements of our lives, and I think people really connect with that. They
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Do. And when you realize that and you switch your mindset from collaboration to collaboration from competition, so one of my events, the big quarterly events usually have about a hundred to 150 business owners there. And I had two other business coaches help fill the seats for me and with me because none of us were worried about competition because we coach differently. Some other business coaches focus on like EOS or leadership or mindset or systems that I don’t deal with like hiring a va. And I do very different processes. So we’re not in competition, we’re in collaboration. And if you are here to provide the best possible service for your clients, then they feel that and they resonate that and there’s enough business for everyone. This is one of the first things I had to cover when I would work with real estate agents in the masterclass, because they have such a scarcity mindset with the market being the way that it is. And so the first thing we would go over is, okay, you got on Utah realestate.com, what are the statistics this month? How many homes sold 2,500? How many do you need to be successful? And it’s typically, it’s anywhere from two to five. Okay? So then there’s more than enough business for you to be wildly successful and abundant. All you need to do is find those three.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
So true. Debbie, I really appreciate your time today. This has been awesome. Conversation time’s been flying for sure. I know I bett you. Everybody was like, oh, we’re going to talk about some boring profit software. Nope, nope. That’s never how it goes in our conversations. So I love the direction. Debbie, if people want to follow you, what’s the best way they can do that?
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I’m on all the platforms as either Debbie Hart for my personal branding or Ignition point entrepreneurs for the podcast, the live events. If you want access to this software and a free mode roadmap with three customized strategies you can get on my website, that’s ignition point academy.com.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Awesome. We’ll be sure to put that in the show notes for sure. Alright, well thank you so much again. Thanks so much, Chris.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, yeah, I had a wonderful time. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Absolutely. And everybody be sure to go check that out. You could follow Ignition Point or you follow Debbie. She’s on Instagram, Facebook, I know I follow her there too. Be sure to go check that out as well as her podcast. But guys, I love what she says. It’s not about trying to beat somebody, it’s trying to be different, which is really to be more of who you are. Using that to really, truly help yourself elevate and become really be ultra successful. And remember, you don’t have to do it alone. You can have others around you supporting you and doing that. So everybody, this only works as much as you do. This only works if you’re not just a hero of the word, but a doer as well. Go and make it wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Thank you. Yes. Hey,
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Visit us online@moneyripples.com for more resources to help you fix money leaks and get your money working harder for you. Now.