Before You Hire a Virtual Assistant: What Every Business Owner Needs to Know with Lauren Glynn

Colie: Hey, y’all. In case you’re not aware, it’s Q4, and Sabrina and I are back with our biz bestie chat for the quarter. Uh, this one’s gonna be real interesting. I feel like I say that shit every single time, Sabrina. Do you feel like I say that every time?

Sabrina: I feel like either you do or I do, and we’re going on almost three years of this. It’ll be three years in January, so like, let’s just… It’s gonna be rogue, but it’s gonna be great.

Colie: Mm-hmm. Uh, and so both of us admitted before we hit record, neither of us looked at our notes from last time, which, I mean, I feel like we’ve been doing that less and less, but usually at least one of us has looked at the notes from the last call, and so neither one of us did. So this recap is gonna be interesting, and I’m gonna let you go first, and if you need direction, I do know what you should talk about, but give us a recap of Q3.

and Let’s start with Root to Rise, because that’s the exciting part

Sabrina: Okay. That’s not where I was gonna start, but I will follow your lead. Um, recapping. Overall, I feel like Q3 I was underwater. I feel like I was really, really struggling, and quite frankly, I, I truly feel like I’m just now coming out of that in the last couple weeks. So let’s say the tail end of Q3, the beginning of Q4.

We moved my daughter to college in August, and leading up to that was a whole bunch of prep work, and then getting adjusted to that on the other side has, has been a really interesting part of motherhood and which has just quite honestly taken me down.

Colie: Mm-hmm

Sabrina: has taken me down. I was prepared for it to take me down.

I was not prepared for the impact it was gonna have trickling over into my business. and so I just really have, was in a funk in Q3, and, wasn’t motivated to do anything, didn’t care about doing anything. Should have, putting air quotes there, “should have” made an effort to launch something or do something financially in my business, and I just couldn’t talk myself into that.

and so I was like, “You know what? We’re just, we’re just not gonna do that. We’re just gonna go with grace, and, know that it’s gonna be fine,” and it is. So, uh, I just needed time, and we’ve gotten time. So now that Q4 has started, we are finally feeling better about things. Things are moving forward, which is great.

Route to Rise started in its new format in July, so we are halfway through the program at this point, and it is going incredibly well. I was nervous. This is my eighth run of this program, and it has been basically the same format the whole time, um, all, all the past runs, and we did some pretty major formatting changes, and I was really nervous that I was going to break it.

, It’s been a really successful program, but some things needed to change, and I am here to report that it is going fantastic. The most important feedback I have gotten is that the alumni that are currently in the program that have done the program before love the changes. That’s the biggest proof in the pudding, that

Colie: I mean, that’s awesome. I personally didn’t know that, and the alumni that I think are in this run are actually both of our clients, and so I haven’t heard that from

Sabrina: Yeah, like they have, they have sent me feedback, multiple times that they are loving, like loving certain pieces of the changes, which makes my heart happy. The people that are new in the program now are thriving, but they wouldn’t know any different, right? They don’t know what they, what they miss or, or potentially missing.

But the alumni are really, really happy, so that tells me that the change we’ve made is here to stay. And it’s been going really, really great. So we’re halfway through the program. This program is longer than it’s ever been now. So we still have three months to go, which is great because, um, the women are making slow and steady changes.

And now that we’re three months in, we’re starting to really see things build and s- like impactful big changes happen. Um, which is great ’cause it’s a little slow in the beginning. I always tell people that. Like this is not, you’re not gonna get ballpark wins right off the bat, right? It’s like the, it’s gonna take a minute.

So it’s been great

Colie: Well, as a co-coach, because I’ve done two of my coaching sessions now, I’m just happy ’cause, you know, guys, everyone knows I can’t, I can’t avoid giving people homework and actually checking in to make sure that they did it. So on both of my calls, I told them exactly what to do. I gave them suggestions, and I think last week was, yeah, last week was my last, um, coaching session with them, and I popped in on Thursday, of course, with, you know, an epic GIF being like, “What the fuck did you do in the last week?”

And everybody was, like, reporting that they actually wrote emails and did a proposal, and I was like, “This is so exciting.” And then some of the people that didn’t post in the group, I poked them through the DMs, which you wouldn’t know. But you know, people are doing what they’re supposed to do. Okay. So that’s your Q3 wrap-up, and I, I didn’t expect you to say anything else.

I mean, you know, sending Emmy off to college. I, I’m watching you like, “Oh my God, this is coming for me in like two to three years.” So believe me, I’m watching you with eyes.

Sabrina: Taking notes

Colie: I am taking all the notes because unlike you, who’s kind of been, you know, struggling because you sent her off to college, I feel like Colie and I have been in a very rocky place in the last 

couple 

Sabrina: is, 16

Colie: 16 is rough, y’all. Like, there are some days when I don’t know if I’m gonna survive this, this academic school year, but today is a good day. Today is a wonderful day, and so we’re just gonna go with that. For me, my Q3 update is that I think I’ve completely changed my business since we recorded the last one of these, and it was 100% unintentional.

So the last time that we recorded one of these, I was really excited about Systems in Session and running the current run of The Experience Edit and, like, doing all these things. And what ended up happening in the last quarter, which people who listen to my podcast already know this, but I’m, I’m saying this for Sabrina’s listeners.

So I took my birthday sabbatical, which is always a two to three-week period at the end of July, beginning of August, where I step back from client work in order to focus on myself and my family, because all three of us have a birthday in the same two weeks. So normally, we take a family vacation for at least one of those three weeks.

We did not this year, because when this airs, I will be on my way to my second Disney cruise this year. But that is what we decided to do this year instead of our annual summer birthday vacation. But so I had, you know, two and a half weeks where I still took off from client work. But in that time, I decided to try vibe coding, which for those of you that might not know what that is, it’s when you, you know, hop on ChatGPT or Claude Code or Lovable or any…

Hello Stencil, any of those, and you end up creating something just by telling AI what you want. And so I hopped in to create an app for my clients to replace a few of the custom GPTs that I’ve been giving them for the last year. My goal was very simple. Take the three custom GPTs that I was giving clients and put it into an app.

And what ended up happening for three straight weeks is that I coded 20 hours a day and got four hours of sleep, but by the end, I had a fully functioning app, which when I came back from sabbatical, I put all of my clients into it. But so now they are in there for communication with me, they submit all of their support tickets in there, and they got the custom tools to map their client journey, write their emails, plan their workflows, and all of them are infinitely better than the custom GPTs that I used to give them.

So you would think that I would stop there, but no, Colie is not that person. So about three weeks later, I sat down and I said, “What else can I create?” And so I wanted to create a retention tool. You guys know I love the three Rs: getting rave reviews, referrals, and repeat clients. I was like, “I wanna create a tool,” which I’d already created for myself inside of Airtable, then inside of Notion.

But I was like, “What would it look like if I vibe coded this thing and I tried to sell it as SaaS?” Right? Okay. But then I built that part and I was like, “Oh, but what if I just combined it with all of the other things?” So I built a fully functioning CRM since we have last spoke. It’s got a name, it’s got branding, it’s got a website.

Sabrina: real cute. I, I just, I wanna make sure, I wanna make sure the listeners hear, you and I had the polar opposite Q3. I did nothing, and you did all the things

Colie: Everything. And the thing is, I told myself over and over again, like, first of all, I said, “I’m not gonna tell people that I made a CRM,” ’cause I had no intention of selling it. Guys, I literally sat down to create this tool just to see if I could. Now, those of you that are listening, don’t get excited. I’m not gonna be putting it up for sale anytime soon.

It is for my clients. So the people who are working with me inside of the Experience Edit Systems in Session, that is who I am using it with now, if they choose. I mean, now Systems in Session has three paths. You can come in and we can do exactly what I’ve been doing. You can bring me all of your systems as they are.

We improve them, and then we build them out in the tool that you’re already using. Dubsado, HoneyBook. I even added a few new ones. 17hats is fully built out inside of Systems in Session now. Sprout Studio and VSCO were on my list to do next, and then I paused to kind of do all this vibe coding of my own.

But so, you know, it’s like this entire thing has morphed. The second thing that I started doing in the la… And actually I am heavy into it. This weekend was my full build mode. I am doing custom builds for people who need something beyond the CRMs, the tools that currently exist. So I’m currently doing a custom build for a fellow systems person, um, at that.

And so this weekend was when I sat down and actually started to create the pieces that are custom to her. And I’ll probably talk about this more on my podcast. I don’t wanna, like, waste our entire hour talking about this. But thinking about how to create something like the Systems Professor app for someone else who needs something, but that in essence is also totally different because they run their business very different, it is using parts of my brain that I did not know existed.

First of all, in this build For four straight weeks, I did nothing. All we did was have a one-hour call each week where I basically… She told me all the things about her business, I asked some follow-up questions, I gave her some homework, and then we went to the next week. It wasn’t until this week, which was four weeks into her Time and Systems In Session, that I actually sat down and built something specific for her.

So it, it’s like this… It’s, I’ve done a complete 180. Like, and it was nowhere on my “This is what Colie’s gonna do in 2026” map. So I mean, I don’t know how this is gonna go, but one of our mutual clients got on her Colie On Call client with me this week, and she was just like, “But no, like, what are you gonna do?”

And I was like, “What do you mean?” She’s like, “No, everybody is gonna want this. Like, what are you gonna do?” I’m like, “That’s why it’s invite only. Do not push me. It is invite only.” But we’ll see what I say in Q1 after I’ve gotten everybody onboarded, ’cause I’m doing quite a few of them in December, where people, you know, once the busy season is over, they’re gonna be able to sit down and really think about their systems.

So, uh, that’s my update. That’s also, like, my what I’m doing in Q4. Okay, I’m done talking.

Sabrina: Yeah, you have had so much going on, and I feel like for a few weeks there, every time I talked to you, you were like, “Oh, by the way, I did this.” Like, you just kind of would drop this minor bomb, and I’m like, “Oh, that’s lovely. I laid around and couldn’t even get motivated to do anything this week.” It was just, we were on polar ends of the spectrum.

It’s crazy

Colie: You know, we’ve had several conversations about merch, right? Over the years, like, just do what Colie says, like blah, blah. No, I’m legitimately gonna get somebody to design a T-shirt. Are you ready for what it’s gonna say, Sabrina? “Look at the shit I built today.”

Sabrina: I mean, seriously.

Colie: new motto

Sabrina: I, yes. You, there’s a whole merch line that we could have for things that Colie says, and it’s incredible. It would be incredible.

Colie: I mean, uh, Joyce from Hurraya Club, she was like, “Oh my God, are you gonna send me one?” I’m like, “Yes, as soon as I’m done with this custom build, I’m legitimately g-…” I mean, like a hat, a T-shirt, a mug. Uh, ’cause the first thing that happened, I had lunch with one of my clients who happens to be my brand photographer.

Hi, Ashley. I’ve had lunch with her a couple times over the last few weeks, and when I told her and literally showed her what I built at lunch, she was like, “Oh my God, I can’t wait for the brand session.” She immediately ran off and started… ‘Cause you know that the, the branding is super awesome. Yes.

Sabrina: D- have you seen… Are you, do you not like light candles ever? At, like, do you have candles at your house?

Colie: In my bathroom

Sabrina: Okay, well, I ask because the, there’s this new thing where you can, like, go to Etsy or go to places and have c- candles, like, with custom sayings on them, and a lot of them start with smells like something, and yours would be, like, smells like I’m coding today or smells like I’m building something new.

Um, anyway, there’s a lot of… Like, you can make them really funny. So, that just made me think of you because I have a candle in mind merch-wise for one of my upcoming retreats, so

Colie: Okay. Oh, upcoming retreats. Um, so first of all, everybody, I am going to the alumni retreat as an actual, like,

Sabrina: I know. I’m so excited

Colie: usually, guys, I just invite 

Sabrina: just slides in 

Colie: drop in for the day. I mean, like, I don’t really participate the whole time. I just like to come and, like, you know, say hi to everybody. But this time I’m going as, like, a legitimate person, so I’m super excited about that.

Bought my plane ticket and everything

Sabrina: Oh, wow. I haven’t even done that.

Colie: Oh, no, I told you. So I bought– So I have a Venture X card, and my, credit was gonna expire, and so I used it to get that ticket. I mean, it only ended up costing me, like, $71 after I used the credit. It was fabulous. Oh, yeah

Sabrina: Yeah, I just had, speaking of the alumni retreat, I just had, a call with my designer Cassie on Thursday, because she has slowly been redesigning swag to go with all of my retreats after my rebrand at the beginning of this year. Anyway, so she did the alumni swag, and she showed it to me.

Oh, it’s

Colie: I haven’t seen

Sabrina: It’s so good. I literally… She was going through things one by one, and she was like, “How does this look?” And I was just literally grinning from ear to ear. I’m like, “No notes. No notes. It’s amazing.”

Colie: Okay, I just realized since I’m an actual participant, I think this means you’re not gonna share shit with me. Oh 

my God, 

Sabrina: you’re gonna have to be surprised. You’re gonna have to be surprised, and you’re gonna love it all, and it’s iconic. So yeah, shout-out, if anybody needs a designer for things, I have literally the best one. So I’m very, very excited for it. So yeah. Um, and I’m excited that you’re gonna be there as an actual participant because then not only are you gonna be there the whole weekend, so you’re gonna, you know, more fun, more experience, but you’ll get to be, you know, spoiled like everybody else.

Which you, you always are, but I don’t know, it’ll feel a little bit different.

Colie: It is gonna be different. I mean, ’cause I’m trying to think. The only one that I was actually there for the entire time was the one where I taught. I mean, ’cause I popped into DC, um, you know, in and out because I was staying at a Marriott in Georgetown working the whole weekend, and I did a session, too. Um,

Sabrina: You were with us a fair amount though.

Colie: I was, I was.

Not on shoot days, but yes. I mean, and then I even participated when we were giving everybody portfolio website reviews, all that good stuff. Yeah, and then, you know, Savannah was there the whole time, and then this will be my second time at an alumni retreat. But last time, I only was there for the first dinner, and then I went home the next day because I had been with Natasha and Kelly.

Well, actually, I had been with Natasha for days, but then, Kelly showed up, right before the alumni retreat

Sabrina: Yeah, yeah. I just love our girl gang. It’s gonna be so fun. I can’t wait. So yeah, the alumni retreat is the next retreat on deck. I guess that’s another update is the current run that I’m having right now, I was TBD on whether I was gonna have a retreat this fall. And I, I, for the first time ever, I launched the program with no retreat attached to it, and I said, “We’re gonna decide after we get started if there’s going to be a retreat or not.”

That was a personal choice. I love retreats. They’re, like, my, totally my jam, but I just didn’t know if I was gonna be in a place to give up a whole weekend, with my daughter in college. Didn’t know if she was gonna… You know, I just, I wanted to be available. And so I kind of penciled in what weekend it would be if it was going, if we were gonna do one, and I had my retreat coordinator block that same weekend off.

I told the girls the very first week of the program, “If you don’t have sessions, block this weekend off, and then we’ll vote on it in a few weeks.” , And then would you believe,

Colie: then

Sabrina: ugh, and then would you believe that my elementary school school district, my kids are all in different schools this year, so we have different school calendars for everybody.

The elementary school school district changed the calendar after the school year started and shifted fall break. And his fall break was the weekend that I had aligned for the retreat, and I was like, “Well, my husband would kill me if I went out of town and hosted a retreat when my child wasn’t in school.

So I guess we’re not, yeah, I guess we’re not having one this year.” So it, it made the decision easy. Like, I had a, I very, I was like, “Well, that’s off the table.” So it does feel a little weird that we’re hosting a run right now and there’s no retreat at all. Um, but it’s also been very freeing because a retreat takes up a lot of energy and a lot of planning.

And I’m where I need to be this fall. So but I’m very excited about next year.

Colie: I mean, so like can we say that we’re gonna have a retreat in the spring? I mean, is

Sabrina: Yes, there will be a retreat in the spring for sure in Root to Rise 2027. Yes, that is happening and I’m

Colie: but I mean, we’re keeping the same format, we’re just adding the retreat. So I’m gonna be interested to see if there’s any kind of difference between Fall is for… You know me, you know I love a good, you know, like, let’s tweak one little thing and see. So the one, the one difference is gonna be the retreat, so I’m

Sabrina: And I cannot wait to tell everybody about it, and I guess we won’t do that until…

Colie: the next one

Sabrina: Which is far away, because then we’ll already be in it

Colie: Mm. Oh, that’s true. You know what? How about we just 

Sabrina: We may have to do a… Yeah, we may have to record. We’ll have to, we’ll have, we’ll figure out what that conversat- We’ll talk about something else outside of our quarterly talks so that we can announce it sooner, because I don’t wanna wait until January to

Colie: No, I think that we should do it and we should air it the week before sales for the retreat goes public. So not when we do it to alumni and people in first class lounge, but the week before we make it public, let’s make sure that it’s on both of our schedulers. And yes, we’re not taking this off. So hey, Hailey, that’s what we need.

Please and thank you

Sabrina: Yeah. Um, okay. That’s gonna be great. We’ll do- we need to record that bonus episode stat then, ’cause that’ll be, that’ll need to launch end of October, yeah.

Colie: Hmm.

Sabrina: Okay. That’ll be a whole conversation in and of itself. Can’t wait

Colie: So, I mean, do we have anything to talk about for, like, what we’re doing in Q4? ‘Cause I just literally said what I… You know what? I’m gonna give one more piece. ‘Cause, I mean, I said what I’m focusing on, but the weird thing is that even with as much success as I had with Systems in Session, I did make one more decision.

And I made this decision because I’ve been playing around with Email Like You Mean It, which turned into the Experience Edit. And most of you guys know, I did a pretty big rebrand of that offer at the beginning of summer. I ended up changing the name because every time I say email, you guys think email marketing, and I’m like, “No, I don’t teach you that shit.”

And so I landed on the Experience Edit, and the funny thing is, I did that rebrand after I decided to stop selling that offer publicly. It was still nagging me. Even if I wasn’t gonna sell it, I was like, “It needs a name that really encompasses what we do.” And so I was really proud of myself when I came up with the Experience Edit.

I redid the sales page, and then I launched it, and while I didn’t sell a lot of seats for it in July, I got the people that I really needed. These are, these are people, and I mean full disclosure, none of them were using Dubsado or HoneyBook, which was brand new for me. Some of them were using… Well, actually, I guess all of them were using what I would call a subpar photography CRM.

Like, in other words, like, I’ll just name it. One of them was using Pixieset. I don’t consider Pixieset to be an actual CRM. Like, it’s a online gallery software that has some CRM features, but it’s not a CRM. So, seeing the fact that immediately after I rebranded and I started focusing on nothing but the client journey instead of client communication workflows, it was really eye-opening to see that the people who actually joined in July were all people who really didn’t have a solid CRM coming in.

And so I think that that offer is where it needs to be, and so now I’m, like, slamming on the gas. And so for Q4, all I’m doing is selling the Experience Edit. Like, that’s what I want to sell. You can still buy Systems in Session after you do an Experience Edit, because Experience Edit is how we map your client journey.

We make sure that you have a five-star client experience that you are going to implement inside of a tool, and then we’re gonna talk about what tools would do it best. That is the approach that I’m taking for Q4, and we’ll see what it’s like in Q1.

Sabrina: Yeah, I think that pacing makes so much sense, and I also think price point wise it, it’s gonna be easier. It, it’s the whole like people get to come in, they get to work on what they think they need, valuable stuff, lower price point, fall in love with you and your teaching, and then they’re like, “Oh yeah, let’s keep going.”

Right. It makes

sense. 

Colie: that’s the hope, that’s the dream. But you know I struggle to sell 

things that other people consider are low-ticket.

Sabrina: know, samesies.

Colie: I already said it, like, I think it’s gonna be really weird for me, like, if someone’s like, “Oh no, but I just want systems and session.” Like, yeah, I know. I don’t, I don’t want your thousands of dollars.

Just come pay me $750 first. Like, you know it’s gonna take practice. I have literally been practicing saying that out loud. I had my first sales call. They have not booked yet. They are thinking about doing it in November, which is still a few weeks away, but at least I got, like, my first let me get on a sales call and like, “No, this is what I’m trying to sell you.

This and only

Sabrina: Question. What if somebody was like, “Cool, cool, cool, but I already know that I’m gonna wanna go to step two”? Would you take their money for both?

Colie: I think I would make 

them 

Sabrina: but force them to go through the one first

Colie: Yes. And ’cause the, one of the things that I didn’t really mention that I think is interesting, when I did the same kind of concept in the February run of The Experience Edit, what it used to be called, and then the one in April, those both had people that were only doing the sprint, and it had people that had already paid me for Systems in Session.

And almost everyone that was in Systems in Session that did The Experience Edit first had at least a one to two-week gap between us finishing the sprint and when they had already, like, decided their start date would be. And I felt like the people who had that gap really got to sit with what they had mapped to make sure that it was good to build and implement.

What I started to realize is that when we were mapping in week one of Systems in Session, and then we were basically immediately going into building, some people still had some indecision. Some people were still weighing whether or not, you know, they needed to add some additional things to their map, or whether or not the journey that we had laid out was exactly what they wanted.

And so one of the reasons that I am trying to split them apart is so that after we map, like you have a week or two to just sit with it. And then when we start Systems in Session, then you really are ready to just jump in and immediately start building assets. I, I wanna see how it plays out when it’s required rather than just happening, you know, by chance, depending on when you had scheduled

Sabrina: Yeah, and I totally think that’s why as I was talking with a, another coach friend last week about how there is so much value in having to pause before moving forward. I know that in the coaching world, we love like a one-on-one call and making decisions quickly and da, da, but there is … And that’s great, but there’s really value in being able to stop and be like, “Is this actually the way that makes sense?

Are there any other things that I can foresee happening?” And then being able to circle back around and be like, “Okay, yes, I love that,” or, “Actually, I’ve rethought about it,” you know? Because then you’re not having to undo and backtrack and all of that. So I think that makes perfect sense.

Colie: I think that the way that I was doing it really worked for what I was doing in Done For You. ‘Cause in Done For You, like if I know that we’re putting your systems into Dubsado, there are decisions that we make, but it was like very straightforward. Like, this is what works best in Dubsado. Let’s make your business ideas kind of fit here.

But now that I’m expanding to custom tools, it’s like, no, we are not restricted by what you can, you know, get in a tool. And so that’s one of the reasons that I’m like, okay, maybe this mandatory pause of at least one to two weeks is enough time for them to sit. It’s also why that custom build that I’m doing right now, like literally for four weeks, I know she was starting to think to herself, “Are we ever gonna build anything?”

Sabrina: Right. Right,

Colie: ‘Cause she’s my first person and, you know, she, she agreed to be my guinea pig, and the thing that I love about her, hello Lindsay, is that she didn’t agree to this upfront. Like, she joined Systems in Session and we were building all of her things in Dubsado.

But on the very first call, I was like, “Hi, Lindsay. I would like to build you a custom tool. Can you take a week and think about it?” And so that’s how I ended up with her as my first custom build

Sabrina: I love that. I do still think there could be room for you to at least let them give you, like, a deposit.

Colie: And maybe it’s a refundable deposit.

Sabrina: yeah, I had a coach once, and it, this has stuck with me, who was like, “Why would you ever turn

Colie: Turn down money? 

Sabrina: to give you money?”

Colie: oh, you know I say the same thing, which is why I’m gonna struggle

Sabrina: Because for, my whole thing, in case your listeners haven’t heard me say it before, my whole thing that she had taught me that was, people were wanting to join a program before it was open, and I was like, “But cart’s not open yet.

Circle back around.” And she’s like, “Hello. If they wanna join, give them the link.” And I was like, “Oh, right. Right. Why would I do that?”

Right. Right. Yeah, I think you should take a deposit. Be- also, not only let them pay you while they’re confident in you, but let them hold their spot

Colie: For a particular date. Okay. I, I will do that, ’cause you know I was feeling very… I’m like, “No.” Like, if I

Sabrina: And if they end up hating you or you got, whatever happens and they want their money back, it’s refundable. But I think I would let them give it to you and hold the spot and assume that it’s all gonna go forward as planned.

Colie: Okay.

Sabrina: That’s what I would

Colie: Sabrina has convinced me, y’all. I mean, it, it didn’t take much convincing ’cause again,

Sabrina: Yeah

Colie: like, “What do you mean I’m gonna tell them no to paying me American dollars?”

Sabrina: Yeah, I think that’s a better fit, and again, you can always cha- you know, you can always change it if the format doesn’t work.

Colie: Okay, so we’re working on Root to Rise. What else are you doing in Q4?

Sabrina: That’s really it. I’m working on Root to Rise launching. So I’m gonna f- finish coaching the, the women in the program now, uh, through the holidays, which I’ve never done before.

We’ve never coached that long, um, so that’ll be interesting. I am really excited to have them that long. We don’t have like learning calls all the way through the end of the year. It does start to slow down. But, um, just to get to have them in the circle a little bit longer and see their progress continue, I’m really excited about that.

But I am ramping up for launching 2027 right now, so it’s kind of all hands on deck, getting the website updated, the launch emails ready, the, all the little backend stuff that even though this is gonna be the ninth run of the program, there’s still just a laundry list of things that have to be touched and tweaked and updated.

So we’re moving into that. This week actually, the week that we’re recording, by the time this goes live this will be in the past, but we’re trying something new that I’ve never done before, and launched this idea based on the trust recession that we’ve all heard about. And the last time I launched Root to Rise, it was harder than normal, we’ll say.

Colie: for everyone

Sabrina: It worked out fine in the end, but it was really, really hard to get over the finish line, and things didn’t go as planned, and it just felt weird. And so-

Colie: Just in case you forgot, Sabrina, that is the conversation that we had last quarter. So we were talk- you were actually in the middle of your launch, and you did say that you extended the cart one week. So this is her update. It went really well.

Sabrina: it worked out fine. I’m glad I extended it by one week because my enrollment doubled during that week, hallelujah. But it was hard. It was really, really hard. And so to proactively work t- work against that trust recession, we changed, we’re changing a couple things about this launch this time, one of which is I am currently, week of recording, in what’s call- what we’re calling Root to Rise Trial Week, which we gave people the chance to join Root to Rise for 11 days for $111, and they would get to come peek behind the curtain, so to speak.

They would get to experience the community and circle. They would get to attend one of the live coaching calls, see the vibe, feel what I’m teaching, ask their own questions, and then also attend an office hours call, with the current group. Those calls are happening this week. So TBD on how it’s gonna go.

I did have only one person join, which is great. One is better than zero. And it is a woman, hi, Chelsea, that has been interested in the program in the past, so she’s exactly who I wanted to come in is that kind of person who has been on the fence and is a little nervous. I want those people to get to see what it’s like so that they know this is a hell yes or a hell no, right?

So I’m really excited for her. She’s getting a VIP experience because it is only her, which is awesome for her. So we’ll see how that works. I am considering doing one more of these before cart closes. We will see. That’s gonna be an on-the-fly decision if we do it or not.

Colie: So the thing that, the thing that I think might work if you do it again is, you know, I said it during the summer, I felt like everything was harder. Yes, there is a trust recession. Yes, it is the current state of the economy and the world and, like, all of the things. But also, I’ve always found it very hard to talk to my people in particular during summer, because most of my ideal clients or the people who work with me are parents, and they have children, and their children are home.

And I feel the same way right now. I feel like in the beginning of October, this is the busiest season for all family photographers. Even wedding photographers are wrapping things up. Even other kinds of business owners are ramping themselves up for Black Friday. And so I do wonder if it will be different if you do this a little later in this run so that people are not hesitant to do even a trial week because they’re like, “Yeah, it’s only 11 days, but, like, right now I’m underwater, and so how can I possibly add not one more thing to my calendar?”

Sabrina: Yeah, so we’re gonna see. It’s, like I said, it’ll be a game time decision. I do have a week that falls in the middle of cart open that could work. ‘Cause the thing about it is, you want it to be a week where I’m teaching, it’s not a guest, right? They wouldn’t get the full experience if it’s, if it’s not me.

And so it has to be, there’s only certain weeks it could work. Anyways, we’ll see. The other thing I’m doing to try and combat this trust recession, so to speak, is we are going to be pushing a lot of the launch emails. Instead of going directly to the purchase page, it’s going to push them to a get on a call with me page.

So they’re gonna have the option to either book a 15-minute call or ping me on Voxer. 

Colie: So Sabrina, are we not gonna do VideoAsk, or you could use Colie’s Knock Knock

Sabrina: Yes, I could do either of, either of those for sure. I, and maybe that’ll be a third option. The, I’m, the, what I’m doing, and I haven’t built yet, it’s on the list for this week, is building a landing page that’s like, “Here’s how you can reach out to me specifically to talk about Root to Rise,” and pushing people to that.

Uh, I, again, I don’t know whether people will do that or not. That is asking them to put time on their calendar, which is hard. What has worked for me in the past, we talk about this last launch that was really hard, that launch and last fall, the fall of ’25’s launch, both of those relied heavily on DM Take it or leave it, That’s an easy place to have a conversation for people. They can do it at any time of day, they can leave a voice note, they can ask a question, I can respond. It’s easy. And I don’t mind that at all. I don’t m- I love talking to women, but I also wanna give them a chance to do face-to-face if they want, or take it over to Voxer where we can go back and forth a little longer, you know?

And it’s a little bit more personal than just being on Instagram. So we’ll see. I don’t know if people are gonna take me up on that, but we are changing kind of the approach a little bit. And, so working a lot on launch stuff in Q4. Also, need to make a decision about summer camp 2027. I have had so many people ask me, so many people ask me, “Are you doing summer camp next year?”

And I’m like, “Ladies, I have to pla- plan Palm Springs in January and then the March retreat. I cannot go farther than that yet.” Like, well, that’s too far. But I do know that it needs to get planned by the end of the year if it’s gonna get planned, so I need to make a decision about, like, are we doing it again?

What’s it gonna look like? Where’s it gonna be? Or are we not? I don’t know. Yeah. And then I guess I need to be making some pretty big decisions about 2027 in general. I just … This year was such a, let’s call it a gap year for me. I literally did the bare minimum. And I ha- I have thought I’ve done the bare minimum before, my friends, but truly this year was like, no, this is the bare minimum.

Like, my business is staying afloat, okay?

Colie: that was me in 2024

Sabrina: afloat. We are paying the bills, but we are not ahead, okay? We are staying afloat. Happy to report I’m still taking a paycheck, so that’s, that’s good. We’re winning in that department. But, I literally have just sold Root to Rise this year. That, that’s it.

I’ve sold nothing else. I’ve pushed nothing else. I’ve built nothing else. I’ve attempted nothing else. I, I have the fewest amount of one-to-one clients I’ve ever had by design. Um, so it’s literally serving my one-to-ones, which I didn’t onboard anybody new this year, they all booked last year and I’m coaching them, and then my Root to Rise women, and that’s it.

And those are great, and I love that, and it has given me the free time and the bandwidth to get through this year, which is great. But, like, this can’t, this can’t be what my business looks like year over year ’cause … Uh, without me making some pretty big changes at least. So I need to make some decisions about am I going to restructure things?

Am I gonna build something new next year? Or am I intentionally gonna just do these two things and then make some cuts in my business to increase profit? I don’t know. So we’ve got some decisions to make.

Colie: Okay.

Sabrina: Yeah

Colie: I mean, so I feel like that was good Q3 update and what’s happening in Q4 for each of us. Is there anything else that we need to add to this conversation before we wrap it up?

Sabrina: Mm, anything else? No, I’m just really excited to talk about Roots Rise 27.

Colie: Yeah. Okay, so Sabrina and I are gonna put our heads together. We’re gonna record an episode probably next week, because it will go out shortly after this one. So if you are listening to this live, I mean, it’s probably gonna be on our podcast the following week or the week after. Stay tuned. We are excited, or she is excited to say all the…

I mean, I know what they, what it is, so I’m excited, too. But as always, I mean, these are our favorite conversations to record. And actually, this was literally supposed to be Sabrina and I’s weekly call slot. We were supposed to record this on Friday, and we had to reschedule, and I was like, “Hey, Monday’s our normal biweekly call anyways.

Do you wanna just record then?” She was like, “Yeah.” So I mean, technically Sabrina and I would’ve talked about these exact same things, just without hitting the record button. So you’re welcome. We’re so happy that you could join us.

Sabrina: I love these. They’re so fun. They really are. They’re just so easy. They’re just so easy. It’s the best, and I will continue to say it every single time. I get more feedback about people who are like, “I just love to listen to you and Colie talk back and forth.”

Colie: Well, we are happy to have you hear us. So I’m gonna cut us off for this one. Um, Shoot It Straight listeners, Business First Creative listeners, thank you for listening to us once again. We will see you for a special episode all about Root to Rise here shortly. But otherwise, we hope to see or let you guys hear us in Q1.

That’s it for this episode. See you next time

Sabrina: Bye, friends