Paula: [00:00:00] Well, hello everyone and welcome to yet another episode of Chatting with the Experts where I speak with women from Africa, from the Caribbean, and in the diaspora we speak to a few men, but 99% of the time it’s women. And these women are professionals and successful entrepreneurs, and sometimes they’re both. They share with me my mission, which is to educate, empower, and inspire women globally. Today our topic is Grow Bolder, Profit Faster, Scale Smarter. And my guest who will be joining me in a few minutes says that if we do those three, which is grow bolder, profit faster and scale smarter. We can build businesses, and I say we because I’m a business owner. We can build businesses that thrive without bottlenecks, burnout, or busy work. [00:01:00] I’ll tell you a bit about her. She is the president of InterCultural Voices and the creator of the Profitable CEO Framework, and she equips multicultural business leaders to scale sustainably without burnout, busy work or bottlenecks. She’s had over 40 years as an entrepreneur and she has advised solopreneurs as well as, wait for this, billion dollar brands. And with that, I wanna welcome Dr. Linette Montae to Chatting with the Experts.
Dr Linette: Hello. How are you?
Paula: I am great. I’m great and I say this all the time, but it’s authentic. I’m even doing better because you’re here with me.
Dr Linette: Yay. Well, thank you. I am so excited. I’m always excited when I get to share nuggets with other people’s community, but, [00:02:00] well warn everybody who doesn’t know me. I am direct, straightforward, and I’ve been told I step on toes, but it’s with love and it is so that your time with us can be valuable. You can walk away with tips or strategies or nuggets, something you can do as soon as we’re done. So let’s get it. Let’s get to it.
Paula: Let’s get to it. So you said that you can help us business owners do three things that’s grow bolder, profit faster, and scale smarter. You said, let’s get to it. So let’s start with the grow bolder. How do you help us do that?
Dr Linette: Yeah. Okay, so now Grow Bolder is a two part formula, right?
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: It’s just a formula all in of itself. Probably each one of them is, but Grow Bolder has two sides to it. One is confidence. It’s about who you be. What is your purpose? [00:03:00] Why are you here? What. Are you here to do that only you can do? Because the truth is there’s too much shoulding going on. That means you should. They should. She should. Everybody wants to tell you what you should be doing, and I’m on a mission to shed societal shoulds. I want you to focus on what God, your angels . I’m not here to judge your beliefs. I’m here to set you free. I’m here to let you know that there is something that only you can do, only you can say, only you can be the legacy for. So that’s confidence, right? Permission granted. Do that thing, be that thing. And then the other side of Grow Bolder is about clarity.
Paula: Mmm.
Dr Linette: Now I say this all the time out of [00:04:00] everything that I have seen for the last 40 years. Whether they were solopreneurs, whether they were six figures, seven figures, billion dollar, the number one challenge problem bottleneck that every one of them has is clarity. They need to be clear. You need to be clear. Now, there’s lots of things you need to be clear about. You need to be clear about who you are. You need to be clear about what you offer. You need to be clear about your pricing. You need to be clear about how you’re gonna deliver it. All of those are important, but the number one thing is who are you talking to? Who are you targeting? Who is your ideal client?
That’s what you need to be the most clear about. And when I talk about clarity, I’m not talking about it’s a woman, it’s a mom. [00:05:00] She’s not married. She is an entrepreneur and she is in the cooking industry. That’s some interesting information, but it is nowhere near as much information as you really, really, really need in order to do what’s next, which is profit faster.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: And so what I want you to do right now is think about how much do you really know about your ideal client, not your target market? ’cause that’s a whole lot of people. Your ideal client is that person, that avatar that you love working with. Whenever you see their name on your calendar, whenever you see them walk into your store, whenever you know that you’re going to be working with them or selling to them, whatever that looks like for your industry, you’re excited, right? You’re smiling. You can’t wait because the truth is we all [00:06:00] have encounters with clients and customers, and we are thinking, oh gosh, like, oh gosh, right?
Paula: Yes.
Dr Linette: It’s just the truth.
Paula: We do. That is the truth.
Dr Linette: Right. And so I want you to think about the ones that you love and you’re so excited about working with or seeing or talking to. What do you know about them? Do you know their favorite car? Do you know their favorite magazine? Do you know their favorite snack? Do you know where they like to go for vacation? Do you know their favorite airline? Do you know what activity they like to do when they go on vacation? Do you know their charity of choice? You need to be so much more deeper into the life and the psyche of your ideal client, then most people are ever going because it’s not about selling to them. It’s about building the relationship with them. And building the relationship means that you guys need something to [00:07:00] talk about. You can’t just meet them or greet them and talk about your stuff all the time. You need something to talk about. So if you know these things about them, you now have a conversation that can be had.
Paula: Quick question though. So yeah, I love that part that your target market is not your ideal client. And your ideal client is not your target market, but you have multiple ideal clients in order to have a business. How do you separate that without, you know, burnout as a business owner? Because let’s say, I know for example, Dr. Linette likes the color purple, and then I know that person B likes black and person C likes white. I can’t converse with each one of them individually. I can, but how do I go about that that is [00:08:00] sustainable?
Dr Linette: Yeah, so the first thing is if you only have one business, you really only have one ideal client. We are the ones who think that we’re talking to more people than one person. We are the ones who think that. We are the ones who keep trying to do that, and we wonder why we are not attracting people. Everyone’s heard that saying if you try to talk to everyone, no one will hear you.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: But the example that I like to give of that is when you are in a store and you hear somebody say, mom. Well, why is it, you know, your kids aren’t even in the store.
Paula: And you still turn right?
Dr Linette: Your kids are grown. They probably don’t, right? Yeah. And and we all still stop and turn.
Paula: And turn
yes.
Dr Linette: It’s like, be right. So the thing is, all the moms in that store are moms, but you’re not talking to all of them. So when you think about your ideal client, [00:09:00] the truth is that they all have commonalities.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: So, yes, fair enough. Right? You may have an ideal client whose favorite color is purple, and you may have one whose favorite color is black, and you may have one whose favorite color is blue. I can go for that. That is possible, but you’re not looking for the things that are different amongst your ideal clients, you are looking for the things that are the same or the things that are similar. So you may find that her favorite color is purple, hers is blue, hers is white, but they all love gold.
Paula: Mm-hmm. All right. Okay. Oh, that’s easier to wrap my head around. I was like, how we doing this?
Dr Linette: Yep.
Paula: Okay. Okay. Okay. Good.
Dr Linette: And think about it this way. ’cause a snack is the same, right? You are thinking, well, how am I gonna know their favorite? Like, everybody’s not gonna [00:10:00] have the same favorite snack. So my favorite snack is Cheetos puffs, which I rarely get now ’cause I’m vegan. But a girl can dream, right?
Paula: You’re right.
Dr Linette: So my favorite snack is Cheetos Puffs. Well, this person may be your ideal client and their favorite snack is Fritos. This person may be your ideal client and their favorite snack is peanuts. Like me, they are in fact three different snacks. But what’s the same about them? They’re all crunchy and they’re all salt-based. So if you are just talking or if you’re posting something on social media, you can be talking about how you love crunchy snacks.
Paula: Gotcha.
Dr Linette: Or you love crunchy-salty snacks as opposed to crunchy-sweet snacks.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: Okay. So [00:11:00] don’t get so caught up in the differences and focus on the similarities.
Paula: I love it. Especially now you’ve broken it down that way. Okay. It’s easier to see, like talk with them, find out what they like, you know, as you say, make it personal, get to know them, and then you can see the similarities.
Dr Linette: Yep.
Paula: And talk to those similarities.
Dr Linette: Yep. You got it.
Paula: Okey dokey. So we talked about this is all, well, I noticed that there’s a acronym here, GPS, so Grow Bolder. Then the next one is Profit Faster. I know businesses are in business to make a profit.
Dr Linette: Yeah.
Paula: So that’s a good point. I know a lot of people will now be leaning into this part. Grow Bolder. Yes, we love it. Profit faster. Oh my gosh. Come on, Dr. Lynette. Tell us more.
Dr Linette: Okay. So, and you brought up [00:12:00] the acronym, which is perfect timing because in order to really understand the acronym, being at the Profit Faster is the perfect place to introduce it. GPS. When you think of GPS, now, you think about. The GPS in your car.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: Right? We get in the car all the time and if we don’t know how to go someplace, we’ve never been to that place. We enter the address and it takes us there. Turn by turn. Well, that’s what we’re talking about right now. Where are you going? Like, where are you going in your business? Because if you don’t have a destination for your business, you are gonna wind up anywhere, and that may not be where you want to be.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: You’ll wind up at any revenue level. You’ll wind up with clients that you really didn’t wanna work with, but because they had money to pay you. Anybody relate to that?
Paula: Mm-hmm. [00:13:00]
Dr Linette: I’ve had clients that weren’t really my favorite clients to work with, but they had the money to pay. We’ve all been there at some point in our business, usually in the beginning.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: ’cause we have bills to pay, right?
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: So we take the clients. And so when you do that in your business, you are operating your business forward without the guidance. So when you think about a GPS, first, think about where do you want to go. What is your end game? And then you work backwards. That’s what a GPS does. You put the address in, it goes in its mind to that address, and it gives you the steps to get there. But in order for it to do that, it went backwards. It went from where you wanna go to where you are then told you how to get there, right?
Paula: Yeah.
Dr Linette: Same thing in your business. Start at the destination. If you say that you want a seven-figure [00:14:00] business, okay, that’s the revenue. Then what am I gonna need to do in order to get there? Like what’s the step right before that? Then what’s the step right before that? Then what’s the step right before that? Right? Same exact thing. So now when you think about your business, we started with Grow Bolder, but that actually is the first step, right? So again, think about this. Grow Bolder, Profit Faster, Scale Smarter. Scale smarter is the last step in you getting to the seven figures that you want. And so we work backwards and then you do the work forwards.
So Grow Bolder is about you. It is all about you. You have to make sure that in the Grow Bolder phase, that you are taking care of your mindset, that you’re taking care of your body, that you’re taking care [00:15:00] of your spiritual health, because that is what is going to allow you to have the confidence and the clarity. That’s the first step. Without those, you won’t be able to profit faster. So when we get to the Profit Faster step of GPS, now we are talking about visibility. I’m gonna use that word because it’s the easiest way to explain this. Visibility. Who knows what you have to offer? Where are you showing up? What are you saying when you show up in those places? Lemme tell you guys a formula. ’cause I’m I’m inserting an extra formula in here that I wasn’t planning on teaching, but I think it’s really important for you to have.
Paula: Great.
Dr Linette: So follow me for a second. We talked about GPS.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: Gotta write this down because it’s gonna make sense when I tell you the rest of the the GPS part.[00:16:00]
So the formula for profitability, I call it the profitable CEO formula. It’s clarity * visibility + strategy =profitability.
Paula: Okay. I’m writing it down as you can see. So I’m gonna repeat what you said as a good student. The CEO formula…
Dr Linette: Profitable CEO formula.
Paula: Profitable CEO formula is clarity * visibility + strategy. We give you or equals profitability.
Dr Linette: Uhhuh. Okay, so now you guys have that written down. So now follow me. Grow Bolder was clarity.
Paula: Grow bolder with clarity. Okay.
Dr Linette: That was [00:17:00] clarity, right? We talked all about clarity when we talked about grow bolder. Now we’re on profit faster. We’re talking about visibility.
Paula: Oh, alright. This is making sense.
Dr Linette: Got it. Okay, good.
Paula: Faster equals visibility. Okay.
Dr Linette: Right. So if you want to profit faster, you need to be more visible. If no one knows who you are and they don’t know what you have to offer and they don’t know how you can help them, then how are you going to sell? How are you gonna make money? How are you going to convert them to being a customer or a client?
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: So if you, podcasting, great example, right? If I’m on a podcast and someone sees me on a podcast and they’re like, oh, well she’s pretty cool. I like people who are down to earth and gives juicy nuggets, I like her.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: Okay, great. That’s one podcast, which means maybe one person will call me and wanna talk to me. But what about if I was [00:18:00] on 10 podcasts? Now, more people see me. Now, more people decide that they may like me and wanna talk to me. Right? And so visibility, where are you visible? Are you doing a newsletter? Do you have a YouTube channel? Are you guest podcasting? Have you written a book? Are you a speaker? What are you doing? Are you doing lives? Are you dancing on TikTok? Like whatever is your thing. Whatever is your thing. Here’s the nugget I want you to take away from this section. So many people want to say that the fastest path to cash is video or the fastest path to cash is ads, or everybody has a belief and it’s usually based on what they sell.
So I want you to know, ’cause we’re shedding those shoulds, right? It doesn’t matter. The fastest path to cash is the thing that you will do consistently and do in [00:19:00] excellence. Period. It does not matter what that is because absolutely, I can tell you that the fastest path to cash is going to be doing video or doing lives because people who can see you and experience you where they can like literally see you and can interact with you in real time. It’s going to be the easiest way to convert them to know, like and trust. That’s true. But guess what? If you’re never going to do the video, then it doesn’t matter how many times I tell you that that’s the fastest path to cash. So what I want you guys to do is I want you to identify what is the thing that you love, that you get excited about.
What will you do consistently? But now here’s the big zinger. What will you do consistently well for 12 months? [00:20:00] Not for 12 weeks. Not for 12 days. Not for 12 minutes. Because that’s the other piece to profit faster. We get bored and we change something before people even know that we offer the thing or before they know who we are or before they know our message. We say, well, I’ve been saying that all day. I’ve been saying that all month. I’ve been posting about that, and no one’s doing anything. Mm-hmm. And then we change it ’cause we don’t think it’s working.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: We have to make a decision. That’s all this is. It’s a decision that we are going to pick something and we’re going to stick with it for at least 12 months before we decide that it works, doesn’t work, or we go changing it. So what is that thing? What is that thing for you? Put it in the comments. What is the thing you are willing to commit [00:21:00] to? If you don’t wanna do YouTube, that’s no problem. If you don’t wanna do live streams, that’s no problem. The key is consistency. It’s consistency. That’s all. That’s it. It’s consistency. So what is that thing gonna be for you?
Paula: And that is so important because a lot of people are creatures of habit. And so if they see you doing this, let’s say for me, I do a live stream every Wednesday at [1:00] PM, people are tuning in at [1:00] PM on Wednesday, and if the few times I haven’t been there is, where are you? So yes, you are hitting the nail on the head.
Dr Linette: Yeah.
Paula: Consistency with what you are passionate about and do well.
Dr Linette: Mm-hmm.
Paula: And then that’s the secret formula I’m hearing from you.
Dr Linette: Yeah. Yeah.
Paula: I did it for 12 months, at least. Be consistent for 12 months. Not for 12 hours or 12 weeks, or [00:22:00] 12, or what’s it, three months? Well, three months is what, 12 weeks? Yeah.
Dr Linette: Yeah.
Paula: For 12 months.
Dr Linette: Yeah. And it’s hard. I’m not gonna sugar coat it. It is. We wanna change it. A new trend comes along. Someone comes up with a new idea, oh, this works. Oh, do this. And we are like, oh, maybe that’s gonna work faster. Let me jump over here. But every time that you do that, you’re just starting back at zero. So now you still have to catch up to where you already were.
Paula: Yes.
Dr Linette: Before you can go forward some more. So don’t do it. Resist the urge to do it. Do your thing. The thing that you love, the thing that excites you. When people see that excitement, when they feel that excitement, it’s contagious. Don’t worry about what everybody else is doing.
Paula: I love that. I love that. You know, we could talk forever about that, but we got time wise, we got like. 10 more minutes.
Dr Linette: Okay, well let’s get to the last one then.
Paula: Yes.
Dr Linette: Okay, so [00:23:00] you already have the new formula that I gave you.
Paula: Love it.
Dr Linette: So that means that you can probably guess what we’re gonna talk about in Scale Smarter. We are going to talk about strategy.
Paula: I got it! Yep. Strategy.
Dr Linette: The thing about strategy is that’s the systems and processes. It is automation. It’s building a team. It’s building partnerships with people.
Paula: Yeah.
Dr Linette: What is it that you are doing so that you are not the bottleneck? Because that’s the reality. The strategy is all about how you can focus on what you do best. And something else, whether it’s a tool, whether it’s a person is taking care of the rest. So what systems and processes do you have in place? What do you need to put in place? What things are you [00:24:00] doing in your business that you actually don’t need to be doing?
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: Maybe they are things that needed to be done in the past. But they don’t need to be done anymore. Maybe it’s because there’s AI now and AI can do that. You don’t need to do it yourself. You don’t need a team member to do that anymore. Maybe it’s obsolete. It’s an obsolete step in the process. We just keep doing it because we’ve always done it that way, but it doesn’t mean that it needs to still be done.
Paula: That’s way.
Dr Linette: And what I find most often with strategy. If I have to choose one thing, if I have to choose just one system or process that I want to invite you to challenge yourself to create, it’s the one thing that every business isn’t doing, including mine. Don’t call myself out too. And that is [00:25:00] follow up.
Paula: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: It’s follow up. We go to events, we meet people, we get these business cards, and they go home in the drawer. We go to events like that. We may reach out to people when we first leave the event one time. And then we don’t reach out to them anymore.
Paula: You know, the thing is, I mean, I agree with you 100%. The thing is we forget that just as our lives are busy and we get distracted, other people’s lives are just as busy and they sometimes get distracted. So…
Dr Linette: yes.
Paula: Thank you for that. ’cause I’m learning to do that. Go back into my inbox and say, Hey, we talked, or we met. Let’s reconnect. Let’s connect. You know, or life happens. Can we put a date? Here’s my scheduling calendar. You know, let’s put something down. But you are right.
Dr Linette: Yes.
Paula: You are right.
Dr Linette: Yes. So everyone’s heard of building the know, like, and trust. Everyone has probably heard of it takes 7 to [00:26:00] 21 touches.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: Before I get that one. But what a lot of people aren’t talking about is the follow up. Studies have shown that it is somewhere around the eighth or ninth follow up, before someone connects with you, builds a partnership, whatever it is that you’re trying to get them to do, and most of us stop after the first or second follow up.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: If we’re doing follow up at all.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: We rarely ever take it all the way to eight or nine because then we say, oh my gosh, I think I’m bothering them.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: Oh, well, they haven’t responded, so they’re not interested. We forget what you just said. As busy as we are, I’ve had things that I actually wanted to do that I wanted to buy, and I kept forgetting, like I was like, okay, I’m, I’ll do it later.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: If the person hadn’t been persistent and followed up, I would have never made the purchase. Not because I didn’t want to, but just because something else came up, something interrupted me, I put it on my to-do [00:27:00] list, whatever the case is, right?
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: So when we talk about this formula. I’ve given you two of them. Two in one, right? We have Grow Profit Scale, which is the GPS.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: And what goes with that is the Profitable CEO Formula. So you have clarity. In order to grow bolder, you need to be clear on your ideal client. We have times visibility.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: In order for you to profit faster, more people need to know who you are and what you do, and do that in the way that feels good to you.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Dr Linette: And then we have scale smarter, which is strategy, and the entire strategy is for you to get off of your plate, all the things that you can, right? Your goal [00:28:00] is to shake hands and kiss babies. That’s your job.
Paula: Love that.
Dr Linette: That’s your job. Everything else can be done by a tool or can be done by someone on your team. When you put all of that together, you wind up with the level of profitability that you desire.
Paula: I love the formula because I’m a mathematician. Anything that you know, feels like can be formulated, that’s me. So this I cannot forget. And of course the GPS, there’s a structure there. G-P-S, Grow-Profit-Scale.
Dr Linette: Yes.
Paula: Love it. Oh my gosh. You know, as I said, we could talk forever and we only give our audience who have joined us an opportunity to ask you questions. But for those who haven’t joined us, how can they get in touch with you online?
Dr Linette: Well, you know what? The easiest thing to do is to just connect with [00:29:00] me on LinkedIn. Make sure that you tell me where you saw me so that we will accept your connection requests. That’s the easiest thing to do. It’s, you know, there’s, or you could just Google me. That too. I have a Google panel that’ll give you everything that you need to know. Your favorite social media platform. Wherever you like, you’ll be able to find me. I’d love to meet you. I’d love for us to connect, hang out, and see how we can grow, profit and scale together.
Paula: I love it. I love, and that’s why I’m connecting with you and talking about that it took us a while to follow up and we followed up and that’s why we are here.
Dr Linette: Yeah.
Paula: So for those of you who would like to be a guest on the show, just like Dr. Linette Montae has been, please follow up with me on my website, which is chattingwiththeexperts.com. I am on LinkedIn as Paula Okonneh. I’m also on Instagram. My handle there is at chat_experts_podcast, and I am also [00:30:00] on Facebook. I’m more on Facebook now than I’ve ever been. Just look for Paula Okonneh. Last but not least, we now have a YouTube channel Chatting with the Experts. Reach out to us there and subscribe because there’s so much amazing information that you can learn from the 99.9% of the women who come on the show, they’re experts and whatever they offer or their professionals, or they’re both. And we love, we love, we love, we love to educate, empower, and inspire women globally. Thank you, Dr. Linette, for all you have shared. Of course, I love the formula, Profitability CEO formula. And now we’ll open up the room so that people who have joined, can have a conversation with you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Dr Linette: Thank you.