Solo entrepreneurship offers many benefits, including the freedom to build a business from scratch and autonomy over all decisions. However, with most one-person companies, there comes a point where one pair of hands no longer holds the capabilities for growth and development they once did. Whether this becomes evident through the inability to break through an income barrier or a hindrance on mental health, it is at this point that many turn to outsourcing to ensure further success. At Flow Business Support, we recognise the importance of trust and relationship building during this ever-important stage. A solid, long-term relationship is always the foundation that allows us to support incredible business owners – including Hannah Cluley. 

Even Hannah’s initial introduction to Flow is a testament to the importance of solid relationships. She was recommended our services by an existing client who, similarly to Hannah, worked within the wellness industry and had seen significant benefits from project outsourcing. With an already-established and highly successful mentoring business, Hannah has built a truly remarkable online community of professionals looking to reduce stress, create engaging content, and take the next steps in their personal and professional lives. 

“So I decided to start working with Michelle after a few friends recommended her and could not speak more highly of her. So it just made sense. In my business, I felt like I was doing everything myself, and I was always sort of chasing my tail, and that was very energetically draining.”

  • Hannah Cluley, EFT Mentor

Where Hannah was currently struggling was with her time management – a common hurdle facing many solo business owners. While she understood her business goals and values, turning her vision into a reality often meant forgoing her mental health. Instead of having space to appreciate the success of her efforts, Hannah often felt like she was chasing her tail while trying to do everything herself. This didn’t mean that she couldn’t build a successful business – Hannah had already shown repeatedly that her friendly, approachable and aspirational content could draw in her target audience. What it did mean, however, was that the business had become more of an energetically draining feature in her life. Outsourcing looked to be the most effective way to give Hannah back time to focus on her creative projects. 

The first goal was to gain a clear understanding of Hannah’s requirements. The team at Flow has been fortunate enough to build a solid reputation within the wellness industry, which allowed us to truly delve into those areas that tend to bring up challenges. The operational corner of business development is often the part that gets overlooked and while Hannah had been successful in creating courses and building a community, there were many processes that had not been streamlined effectively due to a lack of time. While Hannah’s main goal remained to scale her business to the next level financially, she needed more hands on deck to turn this into a reality. 

We began by reviewing the processes that Hannah currently had in place. We focused in on the experience she was able to offer her customers with the current structure and honed in on the technology at her disposal. A full audit of her existing processes allowed us to identify areas for development – mainly her customer journey. Ironing out any issues here would allow Hannah to create an experience that made her customers feel appreciated and more likely to return or recommend her to other friends. Our goal was to bring Hannah’s vision to life, creating an automated and manual onboarding process that provided support and value from the get-go. When working in the wellness industry, you also have to consider the offboarding process. Many customers within this space seek out techniques and advice to solve specific issues. Once they feel this has been solved, it isn’t uncommon for them to step away from a service – whether permanently or for a period of time. This is why it was also important for us to create an effective offboarding process. 

We created a process that focused on capturing client testimonials in various formats, including video, audio and text. This allowed Hannah to consistently gather content for social proof, helping to promote her services to a new audience and ensuring past clients felt that their opinion was supported. An off-boarding process that provides adequate support leads to word-of-mouth recommendations and long-term trust in a business – even as it develops and scales. 

I feel like working with Michelle just elevated everything behind the scenes so that it reflected how things looked on the front end. She’s so responsive, so kind, so lovely, and funny. So it was a pleasure to work with her. And if you’re thinking about working with her, you absolutely should. She is an admin, organizational, Kajabi queen, I would say. She’s a systems queen, all of those things, and she always did it with a smile.”

  • Hannah Cluley

Another area of focus for Flow was identifying and utilising technology effectively. Kajabi was established as the most effective platform for Hannah’s content – both due to a degree of experience from both parties and its flexibility to scale with businesses of this type. The goal was to ensure all features available on Kajabi were being utilised to their full advantage – a project that was unachievable without additional support. Our in-house Kajabi expert, Michelle, spent time with Hannah to establish the business’s current set-up and where gaps existed. Together, the duo worked closely together to optimise every feature, ensuring the customer was considered through every stage of their journey and as many touch points were perfected as possible. The aim was to ensure that every digital product that Hannah launched would have the solid foundations needed to help it grow and develop over time. 

We established that one of the most effective, existing forms of marketing used by Hannah was email marketing. Therefore, it made sense to direct our focus towards growing her existing database and nurturing the existing audience. Hannah already saw good open rates, click-throughs and lead generation from her emails, so the goal wasn’t to necessarily change what she had done but rather to improve on it. Together, we created a strategic email marketing plan that included automation, audience targeting and segmentation. This allowed us to personalise the email experience, providing the right information to the right people at the right time. And the fruits of our labour paid off with a significant increase in open and click-through rates as well as higher conversion rates which contributed to significant revenue growth for Hannah too. 

Further supporting Hannah in developing her business, Flow also worked on the integration of additional technology – including ThriveCart. This shopping cart and checkout platform offers a user-friendly platform for managing everything from sales to customer payments and product management. After extensive research, it was decided that this was the best platform on the market for Hannah’s needs and Flow worked to ensure the integration process was as seamless as possible. We also brought in Zapier, a workflow automation tool, to create a reliable, secure and effective way to store Hannah’s client details centrally. Bringing together Zapier, ThriveCart and Kajabi, the team at Flow were able to create a seamless flow of information for Hannah that made it easier to understand client activity and plan for growth opportunities too. 

One area where Hannah wanted to focus was on creating an upsell process that allowed her to easily promote additional products and services to existing customers. As her online community had been built on the basis of trust, Hannah was keen to keep any upsell opportunities as non-intrusive as possible. She wanted to create an easy way to offer additional services without bombarding her clients – rather the goal was to find ways to improve their lives in as many ways as possible. Once running, the end result proved to be a big success and saw Hannah successfully increase her average order value – proof that, when done in the right way, upselling can be incredibly valuable. 

The collaboration between Flow and Hannah proved to be an incredible success overall. An analysis of our work over a 5 month period showed that Hannah’s investment of £5,510 generated £125k in revenue and allowed Hannah to benefit from regular £40k months. In comparison to her previous 10 – 15k months, this increase was significant however, the financial benefits weren’t the only place where we saw amazing results. By building a solid relationship built on trust, Flow was able to free up much of Hannah’s working week. This created a better work/life balance for her, relieving stress and allowing her to go back to enjoying her business more. It provided the mental space for her to focus on creative projects instead with the knowledge that someone who truly cared was running her back-of-house. Not only did Hannah see a significant increase in business revenue but she also created a life where being a solo entrepreneur didn’t feel lonely or overwhelming on a regular basis. 

Since then, my business, I’m pretty sure in the months that I was working with Michelle, I went from maybe £10,000-£15,000 of sales towards £30,000-£40,000 of sales. Like the jump was massive. And it’s definitely thanks to having those things sorted behind the scenes—looking at where different clients were going, the connections, all of those things. I had such an amazing experience with her. I would definitely recommend her.”

  • Hannah Cluley

If you’re looking to gain more clarity and time in your business while elevating your customer experience, email us at info@flowbusinesssupport.co.uk and let’s chat.