EP 435 | How I recovered from my worst sales month in 3 years
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Ever had a month in business so rough it made you question everything? Yeah… this is one of those episodes.
In this vulnerable solo chat, I share the honest truth about the worst sales month in three years—what really caused it, how I managed my mindset, and the simple but powerful steps I took to recover. No sugarcoating. No “bounce back” fluff. Just real talk and real strategies.
If you’ve ever felt like throwing in the towel after a tough month, this episode will help you to get back on track with confidence.
TAKEAWAYS:
When sales slump, your first job is to manage your mind, not your offers.
Don’t shrink your business to match a slow season. Stay visible, stay strategic, and stay the course.
If something feels stale, a small creative tweak, like refreshing an email funnel, can reignite your spark and your conversions.
A low month doesn’t mean your business is broken, it’s just pointing you toward something that needs attention.
Resources:
If it’s time to mix up your email marketing, try out The $80,000 Email Template in your next email sequence
CONNECT WITH ALLISON:
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Takeaways:
Hey, hey. Welcome to episode number 435 of the Six Figure Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Alison Hardy, and this week on the podcast we're going there. I am talking about the month that knocked the wind out of me. The kind of month where if I were you were in business, I probably would've taken it as a sign to quit.
Last one, last month. I had my worst sales month in three years. And I wanna be super clear here. It wasn't that it was slower than usual. It wasn't, oh, I had a few failed payments and cancellations. This was, I had a $16,000 goal and I made 3000. Oof. That's rough. Right now I'm sharing this not for the drama, but because I know you've had or you will have a month like this.
It's reality. It's part of doing business and it totally sucks. So I also wanna share that there's been so much fear in me sharing this episode. I was afraid that you, my amazing podcast listeners, my audience would perceive me as less than an expert, or that you would think that I'm a fraud. You know, all those.
Crappy mean girl things that hop pop in our heads, right? But after sitting with it for a while, I realized this is totally normal, that low months happen. And it doesn't mean though, that this is how it's gonna go from here on out because we determine how things go from here and how we act from here. So I wanna pull back the curtain and talk about how I actually navigated it.
Without totally freaking out, without shame, spiraling or without throwing everything away, and quitting everything altogether, and more importantly, how I recovered. All right, so let's talk about what didn't work, what actually was going on, and the four things I did that pulled me outta the hole, that helped me to come back more aligned, more grounded, and more clear on my next move.
All right, let's start by stating the obvious. When things aren't selling, your brain gets loud. The mean girl in your head starts to get really, really, really, really mean. I looked at that $3,000 report from my bookkeeper, and I immediately started spiraling into the. What did I do wrong? Narrative, and my first instinct was to blame.
Someone else more. More specifically the economy, right? Oh, it's been crazy here in the US, and let's call it like this, the economy is a concern. It's wobbly right now. There's a lot going on globally. Interest rates, inflation, international trade drama, it's a lot. And if you're in the US, you're probably really feeling it.
I can't speak for experience for people outside of the US, so I'm sure you're feeling it too. But here in the US it's. Hard. There's no, there's no other way to say it, but here's where I had to check myself. Okay. My offer emails that sell isn't a luxury. It's not a like someday investment, right? It's a system that helps entrepreneurs and coaches and experts make money consistently on repeat without launching all the time or living on Instagram.
It's important, right? Every single person who has a business that they run online needs to send emails, and they need those emails to be profitable. So my offer is still 100% valid no matter what the economy's doing, right? So while yes, the economy might be part of the landscape. It wasn't the reason why sales stalled, and if you're blaming the economy right now, I hear you.
I understand it's an easy target, but you gotta sit with it right then. What I sat with was things felt stale in my business. Now, usually I'm a fan of a boring business, but a stale business is different from a boring business. I want a boring business in that. I don't want to create frameworks and new strategies every week.
I want things to be predictable. I want them to be boring in the best way, and I want it to be repeatable. But when I was experiencing this was different, this was stale. I was going through the motions, not the mission, and that's what created that feeling of staleness. I wasn't excited, I wasn't innovating.
I wasn't emotionally connected to what I was doing, and let's call it like it is. My audience probably felt that, and to make it worse. I didn't actually plan I was going to hit that $16,000 goal, like at all. I was just like, I want $16,000 this month. I wanna sell $16,000 worth of digital products and services and memberships.
But I didn't actually say how I was gonna do that. It's like getting in an Uber and saying, take me wherever you wanna go. Like how, what? I didn't map out. I was promoting, I didn't align my content. I didn't consider capacity. I just picked a number and hoped that I would get there. Cross my fingers and i's and toes and hope that something would've sticked.
That combo of boredom, of emotionally disconnecting, of lack of strategy, of lack of planning was the real reason behind the numbers, not my offer, not the economy, not my audience. It was me. I needed to own that. And if you're listening and you're thinking, oh, that's me too. I'm saying this with so much love, and I want you to know that this is a normal part of growth.
So now you're probably like, all right, Allison, what, what did you do? How, what, what did you do moving forward? Did you change your offer? Did you launch a new funnel? Did you panic and sell something? No, I didn't do any of that. I did four things that might sound boring on the surface, but they were everything.
So let's dig into what those are. So first and most importantly, I managed my mind. I didn't make my. Bad sales month mean anything. It didn't mean that I was bad at what I did. It didn't mean that my business was crumbling. It didn't mean that I needed to burn it all down. It didn't mean that I had somehow like invalidated my business.
I gave myself a reality check. Yeah, it was a bad month and it sucked. It's no fun. I hated it so much, but it was just one month. So instead of spiraling, I reminded myself. This is temporary. You've recovered before and you will again, and then acted like it was true. Because mindset work isn't just journaling.
Yes, that's helpful. Of course, it's showing up as if your comeback is already in motion, and I would argue it's that choice that the comeback is already in motion, that creates that momentum, that opens you up to new ideas and can really facilitate massive change in your business. So that's the first thing I did.
The second thing I did was I didn't pull back, so this part's important. I didn't shrink my business to match the slump. I realized this could be hard and I just wanna acknowledge that, but I didn't cut my expenses. I didn't stop showing up. I didn't pull back on the things that actually moved the needle.
Yes, I looked at the work that I was doing. I looked at where I was spending my money, and I asked myself, does this move the needle? Because here's the deal, if you pull back every time sales slow, you're gonna create a cycle of inconsistency that's way harder to recover from. So I stayed visible. I kept sending emails.
I stayed plugged into my clients and into my offers. Even when my confidence was low. That decision was a big turning point for me. So then the third thing I did was that I focused on what was actually working. So when things felt like they were falling apart, I know for me, for probably you who are listening, it's tempting to like try something new.
Like, I'm gonna try this and I'm gonna launch this and I'm gonna do this, and then this, this, this, this, this. No, I went back to basics. I looked at the data. And I said to myself like, what emails had the highest click rates in the past? What sales sequence worked last time? I pitched this offer? And so I leaned into what I already had.
I leaned into the evergreen systems. I leaned into selling every day. I leaned into the templates, the content that worked in the past. Your business has breadcrumbs, so there's been things in the past that have worked for you, right? There have been moments where you're like, wow. I hit that outta the park.
What is that? And then there have been moments where you're like, holy guacamole, that totally tanked. So in moments when you're trying to recover from a bad month, you don't need to like refine the thing that tanks. You need to do more of the thing that actually works. And so follow those bread crumbs. If something worked well in the past, odds are it'll work in a similar fashion right now.
So how can you do more of that? Okay. And then the fourth thing I did was I did do something new, but I did this with intention, so I gave myself permission to shake things up. So my email funnel was over a year old. It had the old program name in it, emails that Sally used to be called Funnel of the Month Club, and I had been meaning to update it for months, months and months and months and months.
We changed the name of the program back in February. I'm recording this in May, so like. Like, it's been like three, four months, right? And I just kept putting it on the back burner because, you know, more important things would always come up and it more important is in air quotes here. So it was like, okay, it's time to like dig into that.
I'm not gonna change the offer, I'm not gonna change anything about the program that I'm offering. I'm gonna change everything that happens after the lead magnet and before the pitch sequence. I call that the nurture sequence. So I created a new nurture sequence based on just a couple of things I was seeing in my space on some guest expert trainings that I had been doing where I was speaking in other people's groups.
What was like a good response? Like what were the, what was the content that people were like, Ooh, yeah, that's super helpful. The other thing I was looking at was how can. I cre attract the person to me who has less of a gap from where they're now to needing emails that sell. How can I shorten that and what can I tell them?
How can I do that in a way that makes sense for the program? So how can I qualify them for the program through the content that's inside of that nurture sequence? So I redid that portion of that email funnel and y'all, I sent it out to the world. And it's doing good, and that's exciting. But I gave myself permission to go deeper on the thing that I already had established that I already knew worked, right?
That funnel works. I know that for a fact, but could I get it to work better? And I'd had this idea in the back of my head for a little while, and so I was like, let's. Execute it. And so I gave myself permission to think, to shake things up. Not from panic, not from like, oh my gosh, I need money. Fast sort of energy.
But from alignment, it had been something that had been in my head for a while, and so I did it and it gave me energy back. It was fun to create. With that intention, brought back the spark and it reminded me of why it is that I do the thing that I do. And sometimes your best move isn't. To make it flashy.
It's not to make a lot of noise, it's simply giving yourself a jolt of creativity again. And that's what that did. And I'm so grateful that I was able to do it. So if you're in the middle of a low month, here's, here's really what I want you to hear. You're,
this is not a referendum on your work. It is not proof that your business is broken. It can be if you want it to be, but it's. Not, it's just a signal that something needs your attention. Maybe it's your energy, maybe it's your systems, maybe it's your mindset, maybe it's your strategy, but this isn't the end.
Your comeback might be simply deciding to believe in what you've already built and committing to taking aligned action again within that thing that you've already built. So if your sales feel fat.
So if your sales feel flat and you don't know where to focus on next, I wanna invite you, download the $80,000 email template. This is my word for word email that brought in $80,000 in sales. In 2024, you're gonna get the actual email. You're gonna get a template, so you can just plug and play and you'll get an explanation of why this strategy works.
And again, if something feels stale, maybe it's time to do something different. So this email might be part of that for you. So all you have to do is head to alison hardy.com for it slash 8 0 0 0 0 email and download it. It'll get delivered right to your inbox in a couple of minutes. And also. It's hanging out in the show notes for you.
So thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Six Figure Secrets podcast. I'll see you next time.
