This episode I am interviewing my friend and entrepreneurial superstar, Haley Burkhead! Haley and I are discussing how she built her million dollar business in a year and then left on a sabbatical and now has recently come back and shown that the success wasn’t a one time thing!

We’re talking about live launching vs evergreen, what she’s done differently in round 2, how she battled health challenges while simultaneously experience fabulous growth and so much more. Haley built her business to $36,000 months within just 6 months so there's a lot to learn from her million dollar funnels.

Haley, a dynamic force in the entrepreneurial and investment landscape, started her journey by quitting her job and created a business that made $36,000 months within just six months at the young age of 24. As the former owner of Recurring Profit, Haley has demonstrated an unparalleled knack for creating and scaling businesses with sustainable revenue models. Beyond her success with Recurring Profit, Haley has carved out a significant niche as a business investor, focusing on empowering women to break through the barriers that have historically limited their financial and entrepreneurial aspirations.

Today Haley runs a small private equity firm, is a commercial and residential real estate investor in Texas and co-founded a place online that creates tools and systems to help women in online business grow faster.

Where to find Haley Burkhead

https://www.instagram.com/haleyburkhead/

Tina Tower: Hi friend and welcome to episode 245 of Her Empire Builders Show. Today I have for you my beautiful friend Haley Burkhead. I met Haley just over a year ago, we were traveling on our mutual friend Jill Stanton's retreat millionaire Girls Club. And Haley was there and I had never met her in person before. But obviously, you know, if you're in the online course industry, you've probably heard Haley's name. I know I had many, many times in different circles and different conversations and was so intrigued at how this very young, very gorgeous girl was having all of this success and how she was doing it. And, you know, if you're anything like me, you always would like to see behind the curtain. And there's been different people that I've met that when I see behind the curtain, it's like, oh, okay, I see why you've done it. And sometimes it's something that I go, Ah, yeah, I would like to do that too. And sometimes it's like, oh, you're not being totally truthful about everything that you're doing in the public sphere. There's a lot that's going on behind the scenes. That is why you've become successful, but you're not really sharing that. What I love about Haley is that she is very, very open with what she did both the successes and the failures, and the learnings and everything in between. So I met Haley, and we just hit it off straight away, we just chatted and chatted and chatted. And I can't believe it's actually taken me this long to bring to the podcast. But anyway, so today we're talking about how she built her million dollar business in a year and then left on a sabbatical. And now has recently come back and shown that the success that she has was not a one time thing. So we're talking about a lot of different things in today's episode, as I like to do with people that have experienced great success, because it's always you know, you have your questions or written out. But when someone answers something, it's like, well, this leads me to another question. And another question, we're talking about live launching versus evergreen, what she's done differently now in round two, so that she can kind of have it more sustainable success, then round one, how she battled health challenges, while simultaneously experiencing fabulous growth, how she dealt with Team growth at such a young age and such a fast pace, like there is always this thing in, you know, we always want to be fast, right? A lot of people when they're starting their business, I always say to people, like get from zero to 100,000 as quickly as humanly possible, because it is the hardest part. But then after that, you can kind of come to your farm a little bit and see how you want to manage your growth and what's sustainable. But everyone wants incredibly fast growth. And when you hear Haley's it was bonkers fast. But for a lot of people, that level of growth can actually break a business. And so we're talking a little bit about that and what she's done differently now to avoid that. So a little bit about Haley, a dynamic force and entrepreneurial and investment landscape. She started her journey by quitting her job and created a business that made $36,000 sustainable, consistent months within just six months at the young age of 24. As the former owner of recurring profit, Hayley has demonstrated an unparalleled knack for creating and scaling businesses with sustainable revenue models. Beyond her success with recurring profit, Haley has carved out a significant niche as a business investor, focusing on empowering women to break through the barriers that have historically limited their financial and entrepreneurial aspirations. Today, Haley runs a private equity firm, is a commercial and residential real estate investor in Texas, and co-founded a place online that creates tools and systems to help women in online business grow faster. And all of the links to Haley are in the show notes for you today. So you can follow her. Give her a little shout out if you're listening to this episode, give us some love. And just tell her what a fabulous human and inspiration she is. All right here she is the fabulous Haley Burkhead.

Haley Burkhead: Hello and welcome to her empire builders

Tina Tower: Show. I'm your business strategist and host Tina tower. And I am so happy you are here. My goal with this show is to bring you inspirational and informative conversations with interesting humans as well as the tools, tips and resources to help you build your online business. Since starting my first business at 20, I have built and sold four times and in 2018 while traveling around the world with my family for a year, I tripped and fell into this wonderful world of online courses and I instantly fell in love. I'm a million dollar course creator, a world traveler, best selling author, a mother of two children and lucky why there's no playing small here. It's your time to grow to run a highly profitable business that makes you wildly wealthy, while you positively impact your clients and the world around you, and have the life you've always dreamed of. Let's get it. Good. Just Haley Birkhead. Welcome to her empire builders show.

Haley Burkhead: Thank you for having me, Tina. So excited to be here.

Tina Tower: I'm just happy to see your face. I mean, it's been. I was thinking before the call and going, it's been a year since we met, which that time has

Haley Burkhead: flown. Since last March. Yeah, yeah,

Main episode

Tina Tower: I don't, I don't know how this has taken us so long. But I'm very glad. I asked you to beat the people, how do you get them on opposite time zones to meet up together? For real? Oh, so I am intrigued. I mean, I was intrigued by you the second that I read about you, which was long before we met, because you're super young, and a super firecracker. And you've had a lot of success at a very young age. But I also want to ask you later about it because a lot of people, when they find wealth early, get really excited, understandably, especially with people with backgrounds that didn't come from wealth and spend it all and get super excited. And you've been so smart. When I was talking to you about investing. I'm like, You're so clever. And so we're gonna get to that too. But I want to start at the beginning. So when you first started, you were 24 when you went into business, and you went from zero to 36k months in six months, which is like, bonkers. So my very simple question is, how did you do that?

Haley Burkhead: Yeah, that's a great question. Okay, well, I didn't have an email list for one. And what I didn't really have a big Instagram following. At the time, I didn't have an email list. But I was very intentional with a small audience and I went really deep. And then, okay, well, there's a few things. So there is the cell, there's a cell system behind it. And then there was the traffic behind it, I feel like when you are under the six figure mark, you have to be so dialed in to sell traffic and having an MVP of a product that you can always improve later, like, that's it, I think most people spend so much time having the perfect product, and then they have no money. And so that was what I did was I said, Okay, I'm gonna get paid over $10,000 to create this product. So I went out. And that was the first thing I did. And then I collected beta members, right? And plus, all that money was recurring. So that was helpful. And then I created an evergreen funnel, that I then just piggybacked off of other people's audience, sent traffic and made sure that my conversion rates were high. Because like, keep in mind when you don't have a big audience or when you don't have big traffic sources. What can you control is the question, right? And so if I can't control the amount of leads that are coming in, I can control how high the conversion rate is for the leads that are coming in. And so I made sure what is the like, medium sized traffic that I can get? What's the traffic strategy for that? So I'm not going up 1000 leads a month, right? I'm going over 300 hot leads a month, and having a 20% conversion rate to those leads. That's what I was reverse engineering. So it's all data and numbers at the end of the day, obviously, mixed with intuition. But that's kind of how I use numbers. That aside. Yeah,

Tina Tower: I mean, I am also a data nerd. And so I have questions about that. Because what you're talking about even to get a 20% conversion rate of a webinar usually takes people a while to figure out how to sell you know, like, we've all seen people that you run your first webinar, you're like crapping your pants, how am I going to do this? There's people on the screen, and then that really clunky segue into sales. But you obviously had that dialed in very, very quickly. How did you learn from someone how to do that? Or was that something that you just naturally had like? The sales, Janice ACWA?

Haley Burkhead: When I say that I've learned how to someone it was because I have very strong opinions. And I look at what people do, and I don't like what they do. And then from that, and I just, I have always been very strongly opinionated about marketing and sells almost a little too much. But it helps me because it fuels my creativity. So yeah, I guess that's, that's what I did is I looked at

Tina Tower: before you launched the business, what role were you in?

Haley Burkhead: Oh, yeah, I was at an agency where I made Web Designs actually graduated with a web design interactive media degree. So I went into web design, and then I ran Google ads and Facebook ads for local businesses.

Tina Tower: So you kind of had a little bit of knowledge there that you could put into it.

Haley Burkhead: But what I found when people were building their webinars and their cell systems, whatever it was, was that it was so heavily focused on pain driven marketing, which is said to be the quickest conversion right out of all the different things. And yes, that's true, like pain leads to conversion because pain is clear. And so anything that's clear is going to lead to a sale. And that's not that this is the importance of what you're asking yourself because the question was not will this sell the question I was asking Will Will this convert over 20% of cold leads in 24 hours? Now you have a whole different question. Right? So now your strategy has to change. So then I was like, Okay, well, if, if, if everyone is doing pain driven marketing, you're basically getting low hanging fruit at that point, right? How do you get the medium level fruit like the fruit that you have to maybe like, get a little bit up on your tippy toes? How can I get all that fruit because then that triples the amount of people that are coming in, and I don't have to move trees. And this is where I added how to put value based education in the cell system. So you're, you're not giving anything fluffy, it is very tangible and very concrete. And I am a huge nerd. Okay, I'm a huge nerd. What I do in the past, like my free time, is I will go outside, read a book, and I will rewrite the book in visual diagrams. I love that, like I eat it up. And so what I love to do is I like to take concepts and then break it down in short, simple sentences and in diagrams. And so that's how I sell. And it was very unique at the time, and I just blew up pretty quickly. Yeah.

Tina Tower: And so you had the one product you mentioned before, and I want to just reiterate that of why you had one thing because I see so many people, you know, yes, be delayed because they're looking for perfection. But also try too many things at the start and go, let's have this whole ascension model with all of these different products. And one of the things I always say to people is until you reach 100,000, with that one product, don't touch anything else, like keep going and increasing the conversion on that one thing. Did you do that on purpose? And were you tempted to go alright, like, let's add something on at the end? And let's keep that ascension model going? Or did you just have that one product?

Haley Burkhead: No, I just had that one product until it hit over 2 million, and then I switched. Yeah.

Tina Tower: And you weren't meant to go? Like, let's tack on other things?

Haley Burkhead: No, because then I knew I would lose revenue. Yeah, you know, I think that people believe that one plus one equals two. But in that sense, one plus one equals point five, and I am not playing the game. To add more to have point five, I'm playing the game to go one plus one equals three, or five or seven or 10. That's the game I want to play. And so I find that it's easier when you have one offer, and you go all in on the cells and the traffic. And because whenever you start taking on additional things, you put on your Bob the Builder hat, and like your body builder hat, it's not making any money until whatever you build sells. And what I am, I just strongly believed that it's not the best way to do business, like you want to have more than one product, go for it, right? It's not a bad thing. It's not, you're not going to destroy your revenue or anything. I don't want to say that. But I do think that it can be more of a distraction for most people. And so I have the rule of one and it is where I have one offer that is for one person that creates one result with one price point and a payment plan. And, and that's it. And so until I hit six figures, that's kind of what I say. But for me, it's a million typically, with my first offer, then I go but I say six figures for people because people don't want to wait to a million and you know, some people want even 1 million so yeah, yeah,

Tina Tower: yeah. And so you started off on doing it with a live webinar and then converted to Evergreen webinars. How long were you doing the live webinar for?

Haley Burkhead: I only did live for traffic injections. I was always evergreen. I always had evergreen in the background. Yeah, right. Because I have double funnels. So I have the top funnel, which is where I inject the traffic. And so there were two injections, there was a live injection or an evergreen injection. But then there was the back of the funnel. So for all those leads that don't convert, I had a system called profit stacking. And it turns out, it doubled or tripled my cells and 30 to 120 days with an automated loop. So I had to have an evergreen not just live. So it's really just how can you maximize? Again? Yes, I think most people's KPI and KPI is just a super important number that tells you how your business is doing and how you measure success. And so some people measure or is revenue or conversion rate or CPA or CPL, right, whatever that is. I measure revenue per 100 leads. And that's the only thing I really care about. And when you choose that one number things get a lot easier.

Tina Tower: Yeah, I have never tracked revenue per 100 leads. I'm going to add that in. Yeah. Okay. I've taken two questions from what you just said. One was how much did you spend on traffic? To get that conversion at the beginning when you had no email list and when you had no real money

Haley Burkhead: on ads to get to 36,000, a month in six months, yeah. Yeah, no, I didn't spend any money on ads until the traffic, I just piggybacked off of other people's audiences that benefited from the offer.

Tina Tower: So presented in their groups.

Haley Burkhead: Yeah, I just, I did what performs the best on law, or sorry, what performed the best on evergreen. So I split tests. And then whatever performed the best, I would put that in front of their live audience, and then pay them really well. And then what's great is all those people that didn't buy, but were injected into my original funnel. Well, now they're in the double funnel. So they're, they're profit stacking. So like, I'm getting paid two times. For one thing.

Tina Tower: Yeah. Are you still using affiliate marketing to build or you don't use that anymore?

Haley Burkhead: You mean, like with this new offer that Katie and I are building? Yeah, yeah, we are actually, I don't know if it's going to be the exact same way just because the market is so different now. But yes, we definitely are. We're just wanting to be more creative about it, and have and really focus on the experience of the affiliate themselves. Instead of just, yeah,

Tina Tower: yeah. Nice. Okay. I'm gonna ask you more about that later. But I won't digress because I started my second question from that. So when you have that 90 day loop that you were putting people through, what does that loop look like? Do you like hammering them with emails? Or you're inviting them back to another webinar? Like, what does that look like for you?

Haley Burkhead: Yeah, so it is a series of emails that spans over 120 plus days, and it's an automated loop. Yeah. And so it sounds intense. But right now, Katie actually built a I bought, and basically writes all the emails for you. And we want to make it easier for people. Now back in the day, you had to write everything from scratch. But thankfully, we have tools now where she created custom code to where it can spit out all these emails, but there's two different types of emails, and you have to kind of trade them out. So they're designed to do a few things. Number one, increase your revenue per 100. Leads, obviously, that's the main driver, but then that's done in multiple different ways. It's done in the audience. It's done, like audience growth. So for instance, like my Instagram following, it's not that I have a crazy Instagram following. It's like 28-29,000 followers or something. So it's not crazy up there. But guys, I don't post on Instagram. Yeah, I'm not posting. I mean, I actually am now. This is the first time in probably seven or eight years. I like actually posting on Instagram, because we do live videos, and I just post the replays. But I'm terrible at posting. The reason why is because my funnel built my audience. And so I am so big on just building this one machine in your business that builds your audience for you grows, your revenue per 100 leads for you can convert like crazy for you to cold traffic, like it is your best employee in your business and you fine tune the hell out of it. You're good to go, you know,

Tina Tower: so much. Okay, so you had all of the beautiful success, which was great. And we always know that things come at a cost, especially if we haven't done it before. When I like heard you talking about this, when we met I was like, like, I actually don't know, any entrepreneurial woman who has been like more than five years or reached a certain level of success and hasn't like, crashed and burned at some point in going What am i I've created this beast. How did I do that? So that is the downside of fast growth if we're not prepared for it. Did it go faster than what you expected? And when did you realize you created the beast and had to win some things back?

Haley Burkhead: Great questions. Okay, so I think it went slower than expected. For me. Really? I got to Yes, yeah. But I am also really aggressive. So I think I'm really weird when I set goals, I five to 15x what I think I can do, and then I put all my strategy work behind that insane, unrealistic number. That's where all of my strategy comes from. And then I don't actually care what happens. That's the secret. Yeah, you're like, oh, we'll just try this out. And it's gonna be fun. And we'll just kind of see what happens. Yeah. But the strategy work is the most important work. And that's the part I think some people think that if they just set the goal, right, it's going to happen like the product goal setting process is what's going to make the goal that's so not true. It's ridiculous. I think what actually defines if you're going to only one goal, I think the reason for goals is not so that you hit them the reason for goals is so that you know what to reverse engineer like what, how to strategize how to ask yourself bigger and better questions. How are you really thinking differently in your business? Don't use goals as a safety net, use goals as something to challenge your thinking, not what you're creating, but how you're thinking about what you want to create. It's one of

Tina Tower: my favorite things like we always go the completion backwards. And we do a $2 million a year business, but at the start of the arrows like, what would it look like if it was 10? And then did the whole strategy and business plan for that? And then was like, yeah, no, no, thanks. I don't want that in my life, which is so invaluable to be able to do because when you're looking at completely different business pitches exactly as you say, it makes you think differently and go, is that the set of problems that I want to deal with yes or no? And then you can consciously choose?

Haley Burkhead: Absolutely. And so when you said, When did I know that the beast got out of control? It wasn't the business itself, actually, like the business was very automated. I think I made a huge mistake in over hiring. And so when we got to, okay, so we had our membership product got to over 2 million, right? Then I switched to what I'm known for, like, typically, when people hear my name, they associate me with a program called recurring profit. Now, maybe not by the time I haven't sold it in two years. So maybe not now. But back in the day, that's what I was kind of known for. It was my, of course, it was my only program because I didn't have one on one program

Tina Tower: at the time. Right. Yeah. Which is a great way to be known for something. Yeah.

Haley Burkhead: And so I got to 6 million pretty quickly with that offer. And at that point, I would not have listened to me. I should have really closed my ears down. But people were saying like your T margin needs to be at 20%. And ours was way below 20%. And they're like you need to hire otherwise you won't be able to sustain the growth. But here is the problem with this thinking: if you have to rely on a team member to sustain revenue growth, you're not thinking about your systems, you're not thinking about the other pillars, the team is not the only pillar in your business that's keeping that thing up. Right. Team is important, team is valuable. They're amazing. They're they're great at what they contribute. But are they the only thing that's necessary to sustain revenue? Absolutely not. And so if you have a software that can replace an employee, oh, my gosh, I would prefer software because then you can focus on the I like lean teams. And so what I did, though, was that I hired 13 employees and two weeks 13 full time employees, two weeks, health care benefits, all the things. Yes, I know. I know. Very stupid, very stupid. But man, did

Tina Tower: We hit that 20 Morning of that? Like, yeah,

Haley Burkhead: Well, I mean, I didn't do it. But yeah. And during that time, I don't know if I need to put a little flash alert here or trigger alert. But I had a miscarriage to write after we hired everyone, like, literally two days later. And so I was like, I can't, I can't onboard these people. Like, I can't be involved. And so my COO at the time, she's like, just go away, get away, go to a resort. And I did for two days. And I just wrote a letter to the baby. And, you know, my thing came back and felt fine. Like I was like, Okay, I needed to have a little grief session on good ready to go back. It was early, so it didn't hit me too hard. But I knew if I suppressed it, it was not going to be good. So it was just a crazy time with all hormones and then on hiring. That was when I realized that I had built a beast. And also let me tell you that 6 million our business that next year, it went down to 3.2 million. hiring more teams didn't just sustain revenue, it hurt our revenue. Our culture took a massive hit that I don't believe actually ever fully recovered, honestly.

Tina Tower: And why do you think that happened? Why do you think the business haft after you put all those people on? Was it? Did you take a step back from a lot of things and just think they've got it? Or how did that happen?

Haley Burkhead: Or KPI shifted our KPIs were appeasing people, our KPIs were managing people's emotions. Our priorities were out of whack. It's like, You're freaking crying about your debt. Like Stop. What are you doing? Or like, why are you napping on the couch? You're supposed to be working or like, why are you watching TV in your office and not working? When your report or your you know, marketing report was due two weeks ago to your manager. And there were so many we hired terribly, terribly. I learned I have any like

Tina Tower: team is always like, I've been going 20 years and I would say like team is the hardest part of running a business. Yeah, hands down.

Haley Burkhead: Yeah, I mean, it's so rewarding when you find those team members that Yeah, man. You just know like,

Tina Tower: Yeah, I'm gonna get codependent then. I'm like, I know what a rare specimen you are. Please don't leave me.

Haley Burkhead: Yes, yes. And that's why it's so good to have those automation systems. Yeah. So Oh, you always know at the end of the day, your business is the machine you're doing is not the machine. Yes. And that is what's so important, but I do so after that. It was like we fought home. Oh my gosh, it took us about a year to fire everyone. We because I wanted to do it ethically right and not just like, wipe everyone out and freak out our current employees. Yeah. And it worked out in the end. Yeah, because I no longer have the business. But yeah,

Tina Tower: well then that led kind of to like the sabbatical, right where you had a baby and disappeared. So talk to us about that. Yeah,

Haley Burkhead: yeah, I didn't actually mean to disappear. My body was in the hospital, my hospital took me hostage. And so I couldn't escape from my bed. But yeah, I got really sick, I got very, very sick, I had gotten to the point where I couldn't live life, I couldn't drive, it was hard to walk, it was hard to hold down any food or ice chips for almost the entire pregnancy. And that was rough, very isolating all my business friends at the time. I still don't talk to them. I just felt very abandoned. And I realized for the first time, I was injured, like sitting alone. And you're also realizing I am alone, like everyone I was in my life was surface level. And I actually have no deep friendships. It was all a show. Because all my friends were industry friends, and we're all just talking business. If I can't talk that they don't care about me, and that's fine. It's not a big deal. It was, Oh, I didn't have standards for my inner circle. And, and that's on me, but I realized that so Anyways, that was a very, it was an intense time. I mean, whenever I was four months, they told me to prepare for a stillborn and so you know, you're in this horrific pregnancy? Where if I mean, it's literally taking away everything for me it felt like and then I'm like, I'm doing all of this for a dead baby. Are you kidding me and I just live in the world? You know, like, I don't want to go through with this. But I mean, then you just like, well, I have no choice. Here we go. Yeah, we're gonna do it. And He's great. He's almost three years old now. Like, it's great. But, um, when he was born, they chopped a nerve in my leg. And so when I thought I was done with the nodule, they told me, they're like, he stops as soon as the baby comes out. I was so excited for that kid to come out. And I was back in the hospital with just nerve pain I had, I would fall to the ground, my knees to be bleeding. I couldn't, I couldn't shower, couldn't do anything myself. And I was still stuck depending on people to move me around, and just drive me around. Like, I couldn't go anywhere. And I'm a very independent person. And so my independence being taken away, was very hard mentally. For me. It has given me a lot of empathy for people that have chronic illnesses, because what I experienced was not chronic, it was a seasonal thing, because it was based on a seasonal thing. I mean, I'm still healing from my nerve pain Three years later, but it feels like I'm not getting electrocuted anymore. It really just feels like a white, like a white taser, which is great. Um, yeah, I think that really got to me. Yeah. And, and so I'm doing better.

Tina Tower: Yeah. And then, how long? How long did you take off before you were like, I want to get back into the world again. I want to go wrong.

Haley Burkhead: Well, that wasn't even my sabbatical. I still want to work. And when I had Kane, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna get back to work. And, and I did,

Tina Tower: I didn't realize that. That was it. No,

Haley Burkhead: It took me a year, a year and a half. Yeah, it was a year and a half. He was a year and a half old. When did you not

Tina Tower: at any point think? Like, don't you don't need to push yourself like you have enough and you can just take a chill or you were just so like, on the wheel of bushing that you couldn't get off?

Haley Burkhead: Yeah, this work has always felt like the safest place to me. And so it is the place where when I go on instant I have the best community ever in the entire world. Like our community is amazing there and it feels like I feel so supported and appreciated and heard and seen. And sometimes in other areas of my life, that's not the case. And so it honestly it just the person I am when I'm working is a person I love being and so I just I needed that part of me back I needed to know that she wasn't Last, but she was and, and it wasn't because of work it was because my nervous system was just, I mean, there was also a ton of other stuff that happened in with my family and marriage and everything. I mean, it was just traumatic for everyone all around. But that has nothing to get into. But like, my nervous system was just constantly shocked over and over and over and over again, to where I work. I was, I wasn't functioning, I was shutting down. And like my entire body went into a freeze mode to the point where I was like, I have to sell this business. And so I sold the IP in separate ways accredited private equity firms have licensing deals, I was like, Cool. I'm turning into an investor. I bought a commercial building, you know, the lease that out profit, like we have a 6.2 ratio profit, like it's great. And that's been awesome. Because I needed money that didn't depend on my face, because I couldn't even depend on my face. I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror. Like how am I supposed to look at my community and be the bright little bubbly bunny on camera? I think I can't. And so then I took a sabbatical, which I hired Gabby, I don't know if you know, Gabby, I think you do. She went to one of the Arizona where she was oh, you weren't at the Arizona tree. so badly. Gabby. Yeah, I got Gabby. Yeah, I hired her. I worked with her for all last year and completely changed my entire life. I mean,

Tina Tower: the wisdom of God Gabby a healer? Is that what she calls

Haley Burkhead: herself an intuitive channeler. But I think I mean, healer? Oh my gosh, to the degree. Yeah. She really opened my eyes to so many things, and that I have been operating in an unhealthy energetic state for a long time, because I was avoiding a lot of things in my body. And I mean, sometimes you just kind of have to face it. And what I learned too, because growing up, you know, I was always told you do the right thing. There's a right thing, and there's a wrong thing. And you have to do the right thing to be a good person. If you're not a good person, then you're a bad person. And no one likes a bad person. So then you gotta be rejected socially. And so in my head, I was like, Well, I can't do this wrong, or I can't do this. Like I can't be bad. Like, I can't be bad at my job. I can't like

Tina Tower: there's so much gray in the middle there.

Haley Burkhead: I felt like I was abandoning my business, my community. And I hated that feeling. Because they mean so much to me, like so much. To me, it's more than just a job or a career or personal brand. It's like it really does mean a lot to me. But I knew I had to figure things out. And I did a lot of ego work, a lot of deep ego work. And I realized that ego is not just thinking you're awesome. Like ego oh my gosh, there's so much that goes into it. There's so many layers. Of course y'all know I got a visual diagram that breaks down the entire set of ego with a black notebook that outlines all Hello, but I started getting a lot of Eckhart Tolle and his books just completely changed my life and how I saw myself. And it was amazing. I really needed it. I'm still working on it. I also realized that I had a lot of mineral deficiencies from the trauma and that trauma and stress and cortisol levels can bring mineral deficiencies into your life. And I mean, depression, anxiety, there's so many different things. And I think also at the end, I learned that because I mean, I had major depression, I had major exact crippling anxiety, I could not function, my anxiety was so bad. Like even getting out in public, I just hit the panic attacks. And what I learned was that I think, I think what I've been told my entire life is that depression and anxiety is a personality thing. You know, like, you kind of have been told that and even if it's not said exactly that way, it's like, oh, I'm anxious. It's like you attach a state of being to who you are as if it's your personality, but no anxiety and depression. To me, this is just my personal opinion. And you do not have to like anyone listening, don't feel like you have to take this on as your own. But I, I believe that anxiety and depression is just your body's way of loving you into looking into something in yourself that's going on. And that's what I realized is I had to sit down with my depression on the couch in my heart and go, Why are you here? You're really annoying me. You're really bringing me down man. There's a lot of rain clouds over here. I can't get out of bed like what's going on? But it needs attention and not the attention of I'm a victim of depression. I'm like what like, because I have gone down the victim route. Let me tell you when I was pregnant and the nerve pain I played victim?

Tina Tower: I think yeah, I think anyone worked. Yeah.

Haley Burkhead: Yeah. I hopped on that victim train. So

Tina Tower: quick. Have you read the book? By Richard Schwartz? No bad parts?

Haley Burkhead: No, I have no. Exactly

Tina Tower: as you were just talking, like sitting down with the part of yourself and going like, why are you here? I see you I love you like, what are you here to tell me? Like it's all about all the different parts of yourself and identifying all of those. And it's very prevalent in people that have dealt with trauma before. It's been a game changing book for me. Oh, I love that. After and I'll link it in the show notes for everyone listening in on our conversation also.

Haley Burkhead: Definitely, I'm excited to hear that. Yeah. Oh,

Tina Tower: And so what cause like, when did you feel ready to come back and do it again? And what have you done differently in like Haley 2.0 to make sure that you're looking after yourself? Yeah,

Haley Burkhead: Yeah, work looks a lot different. Now. Katie has been Katie's business partner. So I had recurring profits sold off the IP, no longer business to employees. And I just thought this is it. I'm going to retire. I have a great wealth manager. So I was like, I'm just gonna pull my retirement check, let it grow and whatever. But it's not fulfilling. You know, that's the thing.

Tina Tower: Yeah. Yeah. Especially at 29.

Haley Burkhead: Especially Tony, not exactly. I was like, wow, this is, this is depressing. We have to sit on the couch with depression again. I don't want to keep saying that this should not be my life. No, but Katie came to me. And we created a marketing lab together. And we started exploring, experimenting with funnel solutions because I mean, 2023 funnels flopped and flailed and veld epically failed funnels that used to make millions and 2021 2020 funnels that used to perform really, really well. They just did it, and what changed. And so Katie brought the innovation back, I think I had taught recurring profits, the same thing for four or five years straight, and there was no innovation. And that's why I got to 6 million, that's why I had an automated $3 million, with over 50% profit margin. It's like, you can't complain, you know, but also at the same time, there needs to be creativity, there needs to be some fulfillment. And we're having

Tina Tower: a conversation with the girlfriend the other day going, remember when we were first starting out, and we were like, so scrappy, and we'd have an idea and go, let's try this, and maybe it's gonna work, maybe it's gonna flop like we don't. But then we get our business to a stage where it's just like this machine, and we don't want to break it. And we know a boring business is a profitable business. So we like to keep it going until it doesn't work anymore. And I'm like, I'm seeing a lot in our industry, like talking to other women that are doing what we're doing going, like I want to, I want to lean the team down, I want to get back into the weeds myself, and I want to get scrappy, and I want to connect with people and I want to do the thing. And I like it. I love it. I love where it's headed.

Haley Burkhead: Same is where it's headed, smooth. It's great, though, like everyone's kind of starting over, which is awesome. But then this marketing lab, it was awesome, because we got to experiment with all these different funnel structures and put leaves through it and see which one converted and which one didn't, and, and why. And so we just did a lot of polling, a lot of market research calls, just looking over so many spreadsheets from last year from past clients of mine. And it has been amazing. It has been amazing to see the results. And so after that I Katie flew to my house, and we just had a conversation. And I was like, I meant like let's do this, let's, let's get this funnel solution out. And I feel so fulfilled and so happy. I am personally doing the coaching calls, which I haven't done in three or four years. And it feels good. I mean, they're giving me editable access to their slides. And I'm like changing up their slides myself. It just, it feels great. I feel alive. Yeah,

Tina Tower: I love that for you love that. And I do think that that is like a big place, you know, us through COVID 2020 2021. Like everyone was selling their $2,000 courses on evergreen funnels, and they just sold and sold. But people are wanting more than that now, which I'm seeing a lot. So you've got the perfect solution to that which is so good. Who are you like who can work with you through? It's called the disrupter. What's it called?

Haley Burkhead: Well, we still don't do well. We have had over 100 clients so far in maybe two months and we don't know exactly what the name of this offer is. But we're called Women in online business like if you go to women and online business.com we'll have something up there.

Tina Tower: Yeah. I will find Halley's link and I will link it for any

Haley Burkhead: if you want this is for people that have like a course a membership or a group coaching program that wants to scale with a new funnel structure built and designed specifically for modern consumers in 2020 for that, okay, Having a funnel that actually sells like crazy and this time, so that's who it's for. If I go check the links, and I will give Tina the exact link that way, I'm not saying the wrong link here.

Tina Tower: Amazing. Haley, thank you so much. You're so insightful and so clever and so incredibly ambitious. You said like, aggressive about it, but I love it. But I'm so happy that you've found a way to be. I mean, I think it's coming out of our 20s. Right, like, nearly every early, high achieving woman I know, has said the same thing that they they found more success but greatest success amongst all areas of life after the 20s in going like this is how we can sustain the growth and do it but growth in all areas of our life, which I'm so happy for you that you're going into that now. Yeah,

Haley Burkhead: thank you so much. This

Tina Tower: The episode was brought to you by my signature group coaching program, Her Empire Builder, the best online education for female course creators in the world. Check it out at Tina tower.com along with so many free resources to help you get building your empire and seeing those results that you deserve. If you loved this episode, please don't keep it a secret, share it with a friend on social media and tag me at Tina underscore tower and give it a review. It really does help us to be able to bring you bigger and better content as we grow. Have the most beautiful day. I'm Tina Tower, and I'm cheering you on all the way.