Most seven- and eight-figure founders default to the same growth instinct under pressure: spend more, market harder, chase the next new client. It is an intuitive response, and it is frequently the wrong one. Founders who built their businesses through sheer effort tend to solve every new problem the same way — with more effort, more spend, more acquisition. What they miss is the profit already sitting inside the business they've already built.
Stacey Hylen has spent two decades inside that blind spot. As the second coach Chet Holmes ever hired when he began outsourcing his coaching practice, and later as VP of Consulting for Business Mastery, the brand Holmes built with Tony Robbins, Hylen has advised B2B founders across finance, logistics, and professional services on a single recurring failure: they are excellent at their core expertise and undisciplined about converting existing relationships into revenue.
Hylen's clients rarely arrive describing a marketing problem. They describe exhaustion. They are, in her words, caught in a "BS funnel" — a term she credits to her mentor, coach Chris Barrow — where the founder stays visibly busy with operational cleanup, staff friction, and administrative maintenance while the sales and marketing activity that actually grows the business goes untouched.
The pattern is familiar to any operator who has watched someone mend fences instead of getting the harvest to market. It feels productive. It is not the same as being effective. Hylen's diagnostic work often starts by isolating the one specific habit quietly making everything else harder — a detail the founder is usually too close to the business to see on their own.
Underneath the busywork sits a second, more consequential gap: most businesses are structured entirely around acquiring new clients and rarely examine the profit already available inside the relationships they already have.
Hylen's central framework traces to a moment she watched Tony Robbins run live, at the first Business Mastery event in 2008, as the recession was gutting client budgets. A founder stood up and told Robbins he'd "tried everything and nothing worked." Robbins pressed him: what, specifically, had he tried, how many times, and what stopped him. The answer collapsed a vague claim of defeat into a concrete, addressable gap — the founder had run out of budget, not out of options.
Robbins's response became the spine of Hylen's practice: "It's not a lack of resources, it's a lack of resourcefulness." The distinction matters because it changes where a CEO looks for growth. Resource-constrained thinking assumes the next dollar of revenue requires the next dollar of marketing spend. Resourcefulness asks a different question: what is already inside this business — existing customers, an existing product line, an existing sales conversation — that hasn't been fully used?
That reframe is not abstract. It is the operating assumption behind every tactical move Hylen makes with a client, which is why her interventions rarely involve a bigger budget.
The clearest version of this discipline shows up in two decisions Hylen builds with clients, both constrained to work without additional marketing spend.
The first is the upsell audit: identify the single highest-selling product or service, then attach one natural, low-friction add-on to it at the point of sale. A family-owned auto parts store — competing against big-box entrants moving into its market — implemented exactly one upsell question tied to its top product, oil changes, and increased sales 48% in a single month. No new marketing, no new customer acquisition, just one additional question asked of people already in the store.
The second is the reactivation campaign, and it is where the stakes of inaction become clearest. Hylen describes a client who canceled a coaching session to celebrate a $100,000 sale, only to realize on reflection that the sale had surfaced a client who had quietly been buying from a competitor for seven years. Hylen calls it the "$700,000 mistake," an illustrative figure for the compounding cost of never building a structured win-back process. The business had no mechanism for bringing lapsed clients back, so it never knew what it had already lost.
The fix a client builds with Hylen is not complicated: identify who has gone quiet, and give them explicit permission to return. A weight-loss business client launched a reactivation campaign in December — historically the industry's worst month for the category — and posted her best month ever. The permission-to-return language mattered as much as the outreach itself; clients who have tried a competitor, or lapsed for any reason, are often more hesitant to come back than a founder assumes.
At larger scale, the same logic applies to account expansion rather than reactivation. One client Hylen has advised for seventeen years grew individual corporate accounts from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions annually — not by acquiring new logos, but by mining additional divisions inside companies where he already had a foothold. The trust and relationship capital were already built. The unmined revenue was sitting inside the account he already had.
None of this works if the CEO treats it as a pure optimization exercise, divorced from the human constraints already in place. Hylen builds her recommendations around limits clients won't compromise on. The auto parts store owner, for instance, was unwilling to address staffing frustration by letting go of underperforming employees, many of them family members and church community. That constraint wasn't negotiable, so the lever had to be revenue per existing transaction, not headcount.
This is a distinction Hylen treats as load-bearing, not incidental. She is explicit that she screens clients for values fit before revenue potential — bootstrapped founders building around family and lifestyle priorities, not funded companies optimizing purely for growth velocity. Her stated litmus test: a founder with Elon Musk's resources would not be a fit for her practice, because the misalignment in priorities would undercut the coaching relationship itself.
The output of this work is not just a revenue line. Hylen's stated aim is to move founders out of doing everything themselves and into what she calls their "zone of genius" — delegating or cutting the tasks that don't belong there, and treating protected personal time as a metric with the same standing as revenue, not a reward that arrives after the business is "done."
That framing is not incidental to her methodology; it is the reason for it. Hylen has been explicit that her practice is shaped by her father's death six weeks after a cancer diagnosis, and by his regret at never taking the time off he'd intended to. The commercial logic of resourcefulness and the personal logic of protected time are, in her framework, the same discipline applied at different scales: stop spending scarce capacity — money or hours — chasing what's already available closer to home.
The throughline for any CEO evaluating this framework isn't "find more customers." It's a harder discipline: before authorizing new spend, audit what the business already has and hasn't converted. That means running the top-product upsell question before greenlighting a new campaign. It means building a reactivation sequence before assuming a lost client is unrecoverable. It means mining existing accounts before prospecting new ones.
The tradeoff is real. This approach requires slowing down to look inward at a moment when instinct says to move faster and spend more outward. But for founders operating inside real constraints — capital, staff, time, or simply the limits of their own attention — resourcefulness is often the only lever still available. The question worth asking before the next marketing dollar goes out the door: what has this business already earned that it hasn't yet collected?
Stacey Hylen is a business growth strategist who spent years as VP of Consulting for Chet Holmes and Tony Robbins's Business Mastery program before building her own coaching and consulting practice. She works with seven- and eight-figure B2B entrepreneurs on marketing, sales, and revenue strategy, and is the author of the forthcoming book on hidden profits. Learn more at StaceyHylen.com.
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Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
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The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
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Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY:
00:00 Resourcefulness Unlocks Hidden Profits
01:24 Learning From Chet and Tony
04:13 When Successful CEOs Need Coaching
06:12 Coaching Should Remove Work
09:20 Scaling Sales Beyond the Founder
11:13 The Cost of Endless Hustle
15:20 Creating Boundaries for Family
18:20 Finding Hidden Profits
21:32 One Upsell Grows Sales 48%
25:06 The $700,000 Reactivation Mistake
30:40 Mining Your Existing Clients
33:14 Working in Your Genius Zone
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Stacey Hylen (00:00)
So it's not a lack of resources, it's a lack of resourcefulness. So so that became what I call the seven hundred thousand dollar mistake that most businesses are making. I would say ninety percent of people are not doing it. This client implemented one upsell in his business. I have a client who took their kids on their first vacation.
Jeff Holman (00:18)
Welcome back everybody to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman, and I am here today with Stacey Highland. Stacy, welcome to the show.
Stacey Hylen (00:25)
Thank you, I'm excited to be here, Jeff.
Jeff Holman (00:27)
Yeah, I'm excited too. it's always good to good to connect, even briefly before the before we hit the record button. it sounds like you just were talking with a a client out in Australia. I mentioned I've got my daughter leaving. If anybody's followed the show, I might have mentioned before she's headed to Australia for a little bit. and we've had a lot of Australian guests on the show recently from you know, east to west, across Australia for some reason. I don't know if those episodes have launched yet or not, but
What is it about Australia? How how did you connect with people in Australia?
Stacey Hylen (00:58)
They were actually referred to me. I've worked with Chet Holmes. I don't know if you
Jeff Holman (01:05)
I've heard the name, but I don't
Stacey Hylen (01:07)
know who Chet Holmes is. So
Jeff Holman (01:10)
Got it. Got it.
Stacey Hylen (01:11)
he had passed away, but his daughter had referred me to this client in Australia to help them with their marketings and their sales team.
Jeff Holman (01:18)
very cool. Well so d did you know Chet 'cause you also worked with with Tony Robbins at one point too and
Stacey Hylen (01:24)
So Chet and I were connected. He I I was the second person he hired when he started outsourcing coaching because he was charging $50,000 a month. And he said obviously there's a gap here for you know coaching that's not $50,000 a month. Yeah. so I was the second person he brought on. And I was able to mentor with Chet all throughout his whole career from then on until he passed away. And he actually
used his Dream One Hundred strategy to land Tony Robbins as his partner and they became partners for business mastery. He was trying to land Tony as a client. Yeah. And he went on to become a partner with him. So it was really kinda cool to see behind the scenes how that happened.
Jeff Holman (02:04)
and so and well that's that's awesome. I'm glad you said that. I especially even that phrase behind the scenes, 'cause that's what this that's what this show is all about, right? It's kind of getting a b behind the scenes look at some of those breakout moments. I mean, I don't I we didn't plan on talking about Chet Holmes breakout moment partnering with Tony Robbins, but you know, it's the example of things that come up in the just in kind of the we'll call it normal course of business, right? Things just happen and it's awesome.
Stacey Hylen (02:28)
Chet's known for a concept called the Dream 100. And I'm actually featured in the newest edition of his book with a client that had gone from six to eight figures using the Dream 100. And so the Dream 100 concept is instead of going after all of the clients out there to go after the top ones, the whales that will really shift their business. So for Chet, he was constantly going after the top people in the business. He worked with Jay Abraham, Har Vecker, you know, all the big ones. And
So Tony, he was trying to get him as a client and he was using that Dream One Hundred strategy to keep marketing to him. And and when Chet and Tony got together and Tony saw how brilliant he was, they were like, Well, we should do something together and that's how business mastery was born.
Jeff Holman (03:12)
wow, I didn't know that history. Yeah. And so and so from there you did you you worked with Chet and Tony going forward?
Stacey Hylen (03:20)
Yeah. So they they did the first business mastery together and then I shifted in from coaching into consulting and went on to become vice president of consulting for the business mastery brand. so that was a lot of fun to get to mentor with both of them and, you know, learn, you know, everything that they were talking about. It was a lot of fun.
Jeff Holman (03:40)
Wow, wow. you're you're working with giants right there. how do I I'll I'm gonna I'm gonna admit to being a Tony Robbins ignorant person. Only I've seen him around, I've heard of him. I have not been to one of his trainings, right? And so I I know less than somebody who's been to a training or done some of that stuff. And and let me ask a question that maybe some people in our audience are asking when they when they hear about Tony Robbins, like or about Chet Holmes or some of these people and these organizations that seem
larger than life. help help me connect. for a CEO who's running a business, they're they're seeing success, at what point should they stop being timid or intimidated by making that leap to get into, you know, to finding a coach, to to joining the big leagues? I don't I don't even know what to call it. Like I'm I'm I'm showing my ignorance as we as I speak more and more here. But how do the how does somebody who's not
Well, you're
Stacey Hylen (04:43)
Think getting a coach at any point in your business is always a good idea because you're gonna see things that you don't see yourself. for example, I had a client yesterday in another country that they they were we were doing an assessment and there was one thing that they said to me yesterday, and I said, that one little thing is stopping this and making this process, you know, 10 times harder, if not a hundred times harder. And it was just because you're in the questioning and you start to open yourself up to see things that you can't see in your own business. And that's where
I think the gift is for it for the entrepreneur and to not have an ego of everything in your business. So I'm dealing with clients that are in finance. I'm dealing with clients in logistics. I have people in all different niches. And it's not that I'm a logistics expert, but I've helped a client in logistics go from six to eight figures because I'm helping him look at his business differently. We've implemented the Dream 100 marketing, we've done his strategic positioning and all of that, that even though he's
Amazing. He's a thought leader in the logistics space and an expert at that. He couldn't see the other stuff for his business that I was able to see from outside.
Jeff Holman (05:50)
Interesting. And is that because he's just busy or because he's, there's this concept that we we sometimes close our eyes to the potential that we have because we're a little afraid of the the success that might come with it or the obligations that that attend to the success that come comes with hard work. Like what what is it that why why is it that people don't don't make that transition themselves?
Stacey Hylen (06:12)
Think
there's two I think you you hit the nail on the head because I think there's part of it that they're so busy that they can't imagine doing something else or adding something else to their plate. But a lot of times what I'm doing is actually taking things off the plate, right? And becoming very clear. So for example, in my mastermind this week, one of the CEOs, she was, you know, talking about all these different things. And I I said, you know, all of these different things are not leading you towards the goal. Like we need to pull back on these things and put your focus here.
And so I think that that's a really good moment to be able she wasn't thinking, we have to do more. She was thinking, I have to do all this. Stacy's gonna add something else. But instead we pulled back on the things that were not important. So I think that's sometimes a barrier to coaching as people think, they're gonna make me do more. And then on the other side of the you know, people not wanting to invest, I mean, that's a fear mentality of the upper limit that that they're
they think that they're at the top of their potential. But most of the people that I deal with are already very successful and people think they're successful looking in. But the person that I coach thinks, my gosh, I'm capable of so much more. And I'm just using like a little tiny pinky finger of my potential as what I'm doing right now.
Jeff Holman (07:30)
Yeah, I love that. I I don't know, I had this this image come into my mind of a of a farmer or rancher or somebody. And I don't have a farmer or ranch, I don't even know where this came from. But I'm but I'm picturing, you know, somebody a farmer who's, you know, wants to grow and sell crops, but maybe they're spending their time building fences and sorting rocks and, you know, using the equipment, but they never quite get around to planting or they never quite get around to
making, to taking the harvest off the farm and out to the market and y you know, it's this idea that that you're bringing up that there are some of there are lots of activities and I'm certain I've heard farmers are some of the most hardworking, busiest people around. I'm certain they have no end to the amount of work they can be doing. But if they're not doing the core functions that, you know, grow the crops and sell the crops, the rest of it, you know, what does it matter?
Stacey Hylen (08:26)
Yeah. And one of my coach about twenty years ago, Chris Barrow, he's out of England, he said there's that BS funnel that that business owners and CEOs get into. And that I mean it's over 20 years ago. I remember him saying this to me. And that BS funnel, it feels like you're doing stuff, right? Because you're mending the fences, you're you're out there sweating and doing the work. But it's the BS funnel because you really need to be in your marketing and sales funnel to grow the business. Because if you don't do that, then
you're not gonna have a business if you just make everything pretty on the on the back end.
Jeff Holman (08:59)
Well, I appreciate you entertaining my little image story there for for a minute. well tell me about the type of coaching that you do. Like what's w what do you focus on? Who do you work with? And I wanna love to hear a little bit more about some of the tools or resources that that you rely on and that your clients end up relying on to kind of have these breakthrough moments.
Stacey Hylen (09:20)
Yeah, I work with seven and eight figure entrepreneurs. Most of them are in the B2B niches. and they're people that are really good at what they do, but they're not necessarily really good at marketing and selling what they do. Or if they are the person that's selling what they do, they haven't been able to expand that to somebody else selling for them in their business because they're not able to take that knowledge and, you know, figure out, okay, what's the strategic positioning that I'm really good at.
saying when I'm in the moment with the client, but I don't have it for somebody else to go and duplicate that. So most of the people that
Jeff Holman (09:53)
Pretty
much every business, right, Stacy? every small like legitimately every small business there's a founder and and and you you know, you just separated it into two categories that I think is pretty comprehensive, right? You like how many how many small businesses out there don't have one of those two problems? Very few, I would imagine.
Stacey Hylen (10:13)
Absolutely. The difference I think that like the people that I work with, the founders are all bootstrapping, right? They're not looking for VCs or things, but they're also my mission is to give entrepreneurs back to their family. So I am very specific of who I want to work with, that it has to be a value fit for me as well. And there are people that aren't in that hustle culture of just building and building, building and sacrificing their family life. We actually incorporate lifestyle design.
into the business coaching, even though it's like a nice to have. I have people that hit eight figures and they're still going to, you know, see their kids at their soccer game. They're, you know, you know, during COVID, you know, their kids were having trouble. They were able to take some time off and go spend some extra time with their kids, do you know, taking them away. you know, I have a client who took their kids on their first vacation when we started working together and they were in the Inc. 5000 two times, but they had never taken a vacation. So
there's that as well is that, the hustle is great, but my dad died when he was fifty six. So for me, I know that if you do all of that success stuff, but there's not success of the family at home, that it's really an empty success at the end.
Jeff Holman (11:27)
I was gonna ask, i is that is that where that comes from? Is it from your own experience with your father? Or is there 'cause 'cause that's a very unique coaching mentality. Most I would think most coaches and a lot that I've talked to, it's like maximize a business, optimize, you know, sales and revenue and maxim but but to say you have a very unique goal to give help founders or help operators get back time with their family.
Stacey Hylen (11:52)
Yeah, because my dad he died very quickly of cancer in a month and a half,
Jeff Holman (11:56)
Sorry to hear that.
Stacey Hylen (11:57)
day before American Thanksgiving. And, you know, he had a lot of regrets. Like he hadn't done the things that he wanted to do. he hadn't been able to take the vacations that he wanted with us or do the things that were on his bucket list. And so at that point in my life, I said, you know what, I'd been in sales for a long time. I've
I was able to make money very easily. I was able to go into companies and help them see the path to money, like my hidden profits. I'm able to see where the money is that they're missing. But at the same time, I it it didn't feel good to me to just help people do more of the same and and have that, you know, lifetime regrets at the end. So that's why I bumped it into everything I'm doing, whether it's the coaching or the mastermind of like, well, what do you want? You know, how do you want to, you know, if you're sitting at your rocking chair at eight years old, what do you want to have?
had happened, 'cause as your daughter just left for Australia. Right. Right. So time with our kids is very short, right? So it goes by like that.
Jeff Holman (12:57)
It it does. and I want to get into your hidden profits framework and and information here in a minute. But if I can, like I I just, you know, I think of my father. He he's worked hard his whole life. He's still working, he's he'll he'll never quit, I don't think. I think he loves what he does or he or maybe he doesn't have anything better to do. I'm not sure which one it is, but or maybe it's both. You know, it makes me wonder, do you was your father the type of person that you would be coaching today? Is is that part of what you're doing?
Stacey Hylen (13:27)
That's such a good you're the first person that's asked me that. yeah. I think you know, I my dad was somebody that was always learning. He, you know, learned from Tony Robbins. He was a protege with Jay Abraham back in the 80s. but yeah, I think he might have been a hard one because I think he had to learn his lesson the hard way. unfortunately, just like you know, obviously, smoking and cancer, that was a hard lesson.
So I don't I don't know if until the end he would have been open to that. So it's it's hard to say.
Jeff Holman (14:02)
And that's a fair answer, right? And I hope I'm not digging too deep here, but No, I
Stacey Hylen (14:06)
I'm happy to share if it helps people out there that are thinking about this too.
Jeff Holman (14:10)
Well, and I think not to not to get overly s psychological about it, but I think a lot of us are driven by the things that, you know, were impactful in our i in our own journeys and and so I think there are connections there sometimes to be to be seen and maybe, you know, maybe even leveraged or or at least recognized. do you feel like do you feel like the things if your dad had been open to to the type of coaching you're doing that it like would have made a difference in the
family dynamics the way they played out in your family? I think so. And I'm asking and I'm sorry to I'm sorry to interrupt. I always do this. But but but I want to ask this question, not not simply to dive into like, you know, analyze your family. But I I wonder if some of our audience members who are out there, maybe they're the same type of people or maybe they're they're in business settings. They're they're, you know, Inc. five thousand or or successful people in their own right and they're just saying to themselves, I
this is who I am and I'm gonna keep going and there's there's no that there's no end that I can see I don't know, maybe some people hearing this will say, Wait a second, I haven't really thought about it this way.
Stacey Hylen (15:20)
And I think I think that's that's why I share it because I think as entrepreneurs, there like I my husband, I always say to him, there's never an off switch that I can turn at the end of the week to say that I've completed everything I wanted to complete at the end of week. Right. Even for myself. And so I I've put this container for myself. Like, so for example, this weekend, we have a lake house in in New Hampshire.
And we built that as a family spot. And my kids are all coming and their partners, everybody's coming. And that is like a a hard stop right for me. But there's there's always like 20, 30, 50, 100 other things I could be doing. So really you want to create like we get one life to to be with our family. Like what how do you want to experience that?
one of my clients, like I said, the one that was on the Inc. 5000, he he started taking taekwondo with his son in the afternoons during the week. Right. And so he was able to grow, but he was also able to have that experience. He was able to go to Disney with his family for the first time. If we're doing this for the money, what what does the money do for you? Right? Is the money there to just make your feed your ego because you grew your company so much? Or is it to give you the lifestyle you wanted to be able to give back to the people that you want to?
I believe there needs to be more amazing rich people that are wealthy people that are giving back and making change on this planet as well. we need money in the hands of good people. So I think you know, wealth is not the be all end all. And like, you if Elon Musk came to me, he would not be a good client. Yes, he has all the money in the world, but he definitely would not be a good client.
Jeff Holman (17:00)
Priorities are different, right? Yeah, it is. You've adopted what I I I'm gonna call this the d a double bottom line type of a coaching approach, right? like which which at the surface level seems like is that is that more complicated? 'Cause now you're saying we gotta help the business and we gotta help the the you know, interpersonal dynamics of this person. But I wonder do you do you think that makes it harder to do the coaching or do you think that makes it easier to do the coaching?
Stacey Hylen (17:25)
I think it makes it easier on one hand because once the person is awakened to the fact of what their why is, then it becomes easier to focus on the most important things. And I think there's a lot of extraneous stuff. Like you were saying, the farmers out there doing all of these things that might not be getting the product to market. And the same thing with an entrepreneur, half this, you know, if we look at the 20% of your business, your your actions that are getting you 80% of your results, that's what we focus in on versus
Everybody's doing all this 80% stuff that only gets you twenty percent of the results. That if you flip that, you're gonna have a much better week and much better results.
Jeff Holman (18:03)
Maybe maybe working less even. Maybe you cut out most of that eighty percent BS. Is that what that what was the what was the phrase he told you? The BS funnel. That's right. That's right. Cut out the BS funnel. well with that, let's talk let's talk about your hidden prof hidden profits mentality here.
Stacey Hylen (18:20)
I love that. So the hidden profits actually came from my very first business mastery with Tony Robbins. So I was there as a coach, sitting in the back of the room. It was a very small room because Tony Robbins, you know, he fills stadiums. It was a small, it was the first event. I want to say it was less than 500 people. but it was when the recession hit. And so people had paid $10,000 to be there and they were scared because things were drying up very, very fast.
Jeff Holman (18:46)
The recession being two thousand seven, two thousand eight time period.
Stacey Hylen (18:50)
And so people were scared. And so I remember this gentleman getting up and asking for coaching. And anybody listening that's seen Tony coach in person, it's very intense and he's he really wants you to get that breakthrough moment. And this guy stood up and he said, Well, Tony, I've tried everything and nothing works. Right. And a lot of entrepreneurs come to me saying the same thing. And Tony said, Well, what have you tried? And the guy said, Well, I've tried this, this, and this. And Tony said, Well, hmm.
You said you've tried everything and it looks like you've tried three things. So you must have tried a lot of times. Like how many times you know, what did you how many times did you try this? And the guy said, Well, I tried, you know, a few times, but then I had to stop. And Tony said, Well, you said you've tried everything and nothing worked. Like, what happened? He said, Well, I ran out of resources. I didn't have the team. I didn't have the money to to keep going on these things. And so Tony asked him, I said, Have you ever looked around the room and seen people?
That had less than you that were able to achieve more. And the guy said, Yeah, you see all these entrepreneurs on the covers of magazines, they're from another country, they come here with $200, no fancy Harvard degree, no network, no credit card half the time. And they make it. And he said, Well, what was the difference? And the difference was, and this is where the hidden profits was born, is that it's not a lack of resources, it's a lack of resourcefulness.
Right. So it's not a lack of resources, it's a lack of resourcefulness. So I started to look at my because I was going back to my clients who are, they were losing funding from their banks, deals had dried up, Yeah.
Jeff Holman (20:27)
Resources are going away, yeah.
Stacey Hylen (20:30)
And so I said, I have to get more creative. And so we started looking at what could we do with the resources they have in their business without doing any more marketing that would increase their bottom line profit. And so that's where the hidden profits came from was asking that question.
So for example, one of my clients was a auto parts store down south. He was a family-owned business and all the big box stores were car starting to come into his town. And when he filled out the questionnaire, it said, this my my employees don't do anything I say. I'm not happy with them. Like it was a lot of whining about the staff. And so I was thinking, we're gonna have to get rid of all this the staff. And when I asked him that, he said, I can't let go of any of the staff.
And I was like, but you told me you weren't happy with them. And he said, because a lot of them are members of my family. There was unc uncles there that were in their 80s, nephews, people from his church. And he said, I couldn't hold my head up in church if I let go of these people with the way the economy is going. So again, we had to get resourceful. So what we did is one of the one of the hidden profits is an upsell, right? Now, every person that's ever read a business, you know, gone to business school has learned about an upsell.
But the problem is, like you were saying, what are the shifts is that people aren't doing them. Right. So I would say the majority of the time when I bring up an upsell as a hidden profit, they're not they've heard of it, but they're not doing it. So this client inspired one upsell in his business and increased his sales forty eight percent in one month. Wow.
Jeff Holman (22:05)
In an in an auto parts store.
Stacey Hylen (22:08)
Yes.
Jeff Holman (22:09)
I can't even imagine you go in I I guess you go in for I don't know wipers and they're like, By the way, have you checked your air filter or you know
Stacey Hylen (22:18)
It
was the air filter. It was the air filter. You said that. But it was so what we do, like when we were doing the Hidden Profits, we look at what is your top product that you're selling. And in his case, it was oil for oil changes. And so that was partnered with I didn't know anything about the auto parts. And he said, you know, well, the next thing I would ask them is, Well, when did you change your air filter? So that was
Jeff Holman (22:41)
And it makes sense, right? Every time I go get my oil changed, they're like, your air filter's looking pretty dirty. Whether I've changed it recently or not, like it's it's that's always the the go to upsell. Maybe I'm going to the wrong oil change places, but
Stacey Hylen (22:52)
And so for people that are listening, there's a easy way just from listening or watching today's podcast is saying, What is our top product that we're selling? And what's the upsell for that? Easy way to add revenue without doing any more marketing. You've already done all the work to get the customer or the client in the door.
Jeff Holman (23:09)
This this is this rings so true for me. in my in my in my law firm, we do we do a a whole suite of services for people because we're essentially an in-house legal team for startups scaling companies. But but I've been known as the patent guy. I have friends who still that you know, I haven't I haven't written a patent myself in years and years and years. And they're still like, let me introduce you to my friend. He's a patent attorney. And I'm like, well, I I am, but I'm not just a patent attorney. But but I have gone for so long in my own business.
people call and they want to know about patents and and it took me a long time before I was like, Hey, by the way, let me tell you a little bit about the other stuff our firm does because I know you called me for patents, but you might not know that we do XYZ and and so I don't know why I went for years never bringing up the other stuff, even after we were already doing it, very confidently. So I i I I can
I c I don't know if this is I don't know if this is me attesting to what you're saying is true or or just admitting to my faults, but I totally understand where you're going.
Stacey Hylen (24:11)
Something that a lot of people are in the same shoes, Jeff. it's not just you, I would say 90% of people are not doing it, even though it's a known business principle. If you look at McDonald's with you want fries with that, you know, that became such a popular one that now when I was a kid, you would get a cheeseburger and a drink, and now everybody gets a trio. I haven't been to McDonald's in 15 years, but and now then they turned it into you want to supersize that.
Right. So they've they've gone up because they've actually shifted the model to people, going from the two thing in a meal to having three things in a meal to then saying, Okay, do you want a pie with that? Yeah. You know, so very simple to do, but can go right down to your bottom line profit.
Jeff Holman (24:58)
That that makes sense. what are the other easy ways that people are looking around for for hidden profits in their business, once they've talked with you?
Stacey Hylen (25:06)
The one of my crazy favorite ones is I had a client who is supposed to have our coaching session. He canceled on me last minute. And I was like, you know, kind of taken aback. And so when I talked to him, I said, he's like, I had a hundred thousand dollar sale. So I had to cancel our call. And I said, Well, that the math works, right? that he could afford to miss the call. And I said, Wow, this is so exciting. And he said, Stacey, it is not a happy dance moment.
And I said, Well, how can a hundred thousand dollar sale not be a happy dance moment? share that with me. And he said, Well, Stacey, he said, I realized that this client has been going to our competitor for seven years. So that became what I call the $700,000 mistake that most businesses are making. Now you could be making it at the level of $700 or $70,000, but he realized that and he said,
He had no come on back reactivation strategy for anybody that ever left his business. And so this is one of the really important things to do within the business is look at, you know, when you're losing clients, when is that point that you will bring them back into your company? So like if you look at companies that do this well, like dentists, right? Nobody wants to go to the dentist. So they're like, we're gonna send you a postcard, we're gonna call you, we're gonna text you, we're gonna do everything to bring you back.
Jeff Holman (26:32)
Stay top of mind 'cause we don't know we don't know when your when your tooth is gonna start hurting. We don't know when your back is gonna start hurting, but when it does, we wanna be
Stacey Hylen (26:40)
But if you look at it from when they should come back, right? that that's where you start to see, like, this person should it depends on your business. Should they be coming back yearly? Should they be coming back quarterly? Yeah. but having that reactivation campaign in place, I have a client who was in weight loss, and she had taken my class, the Hidden Profits class, and it was over December. And
I said, I don't know that this is gonna work for you in December. I'm just gonna be frank with you. And she said, Well, I really want to try it. But being in weight loss, nobody wants to lose weight in December. they white want to lose weight, but they don't want to do what they have to do to lose weight in December because they want to eat cookies and stuff and go to Christmas parties. And she said, I'm gonna do it anyway. So we put together the reactivation campaign for her and she had her best month ever and what is historically her worst month of the year.
a five figure in sales. And one of the key distinctions for this for people listening is that you want to give your clients permission to come back. Right. Because maybe they've gone to a different lawyer, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you're like, Jeff, I'm shy to come back because you know, I went and saw this lawyer. I kind of cheated on you with Bob over here and asked him to look at my will or something, right? And you need to give them permission to say, Hey, it's okay that you went and, you know, tried.
keto or whatever the person did as a different weight loss thing, but it's okay to come back. And so a lot of my clients are shy to reactivate because they don't want to bug people. But in reality, it's the clients that are shy to come back because they've chosen another provider or they've tried something else. So you want to give them permission to say, hey, it's okay if you tried another coach. It's okay if you tried another CRM pro program. we'd love to have you back. And give them that permission to come back in your business.
Jeff Holman (28:30)
Well and that's and that's a parallel to the whole concept of of nurturing your of lead nurturing, right? You're like you have your leads that come in, you have initial contacts, and then they disappear for some reason, whatever reason, right? Maybe they're maybe they're exploring other providers or if you're not nurturing, if you're not if you're not staying in touch, then you're not necessarily giving those leads permission to come back to you sometime in the future when the time is right. So whether it's
churned clients or or maybe inactive leads, i does the same concept apply at different levels?
Stacey Hylen (29:02)
A bit, but I think the difference with the churned clients is there's more no like and trust factor there because they've already worked with you. Okay. Yeah. They've already paid you and buyers buy. So it's important, like if people have already bought from you, they're way more likely to come back than somebody that's never bought from you and never made that buying decision before. So I would say start with your your list of expired clients and start reactivating those right away.
Jeff Holman (29:29)
Okay. Okay. so what are some what are some success stories you've seen with with these where you've stepped in and you know, and not so much like what it it's always interesting. Did the did the business you know have a big explosion in revenue? That that's awesome, but what are some of the success stories you've seen with maybe the the spark in a CEO that you've worked with who's who who didn't know or didn't believe before and then tried it and said,
I need to start behaving differently. I need to lead differently than I did before.
Stacey Hylen (30:03)
Yeah, I think it's you know, I don't know if you remember the commercial of like I could have had a V eight.
Jeff Holman (30:09)
V vaguely, yes, I do.
Stacey Hylen (30:10)
Right. And people were I for those of you listening, I just whacked myself in the head because it was the whole premise of the commercial is like, I could have had a V8, had this vegetable drink, right? And I think that's where most C most CEOs find this, is like, that's so obvious. Why am I so dumb? And it's like, no, you're not dumb. You're dealing with this whole company and you're looking at growth and you're looking at acquiring new clients and marketing and all of these things. But most people are not looking at resources that are right in their
in their thing. Now, one of the clients that I've had for I've had a client now for 17 years, one of the things that we got really clear on with that is yes, reactivating, but also really mining the clients that he already had. So for example, if he got an account with a with a corporation, and in his case he's selling things to hundred million dollar, billion dollar companies. So he has one segment of that company as his client.
But there might be 20 other divisions. So that that was another from doing the reactivation of some of those clients that maybe they did they had a bad day and they lost their the client to welcome them back. We started looking at, all right, here's the client we already have. Let's mine this client to get into all of these other divisions and really go deeper with these clients that we have that we can serve in a better way. And and we've gone from clients that are worth hundreds of thousands to clients that are worth millions of dollars a year by doing that.
Jeff Holman (31:39)
Because again you've got no like and trust and warm referrals and all of that are that flywheel is already spinning to some degree.
Stacey Hylen (31:46)
Yeah, absolutely. And and you think about the time it takes to get a new hundred million dollar, a billion dollar client versus mining what you already have, it's it's really much faster.
Jeff Holman (31:56)
Yeah, why why why go find and kill another whale when you can cut some more meat off the same whale that you've already got, right? Yeah. So I want to get back into the j just maybe here to wrap things up. Cause we talked earlier about not only is it showing people the path of where to go to find the hidden profits, but you mentioned it also is cutting things out. It's giving permission to say, Hey, you don't need to do all these things because you know, if you just keep adding stuff.
You're you're gonna have the CEOs are gonna have a hard time getting that reaching that objective of of being more deliberate we'll call it, doing less better so that they have that family time back. Where where do you cut and how do you navigate that conversation with CEOs?
Stacey Hylen (32:43)
Yeah, so that that's that's a hard situation. I had a client that had gone from six to eight figures and he was still doing his graphic design. He's the CEO. And he and let's just say he wasn't doing the best job at it. This was pre AI. No, he went on to sell No, it was not his forte. And he went on to sell this company for a very nice, you know, eight multiple eight figure exit. But the thing is is that a lot of times people like drag these things that they've started when they start out scrappy.
And so one of the things that we need to look at is like if you are in your zone of genius, what are you doing? Right. Yeah. And to really start to get the CEO into working in their zone of genius and delegating the things that aren't in their zone of genius or cutting off the things that are, you know, not working at all or getting them the results that they want. But it does take a lot of new habits, right? To to get people to give up some of the things that they're doing.
Jeff Holman (33:41)
What's that trigger for them though? Because I I imagine different people have different different that like some people are doing it because they want to feel busy. Some people are doing it because maybe that's their procrastination technique. If I'm doing a bunch of stuff over here, I don't have to think about the things I'm not doing and the you know, I get by. But what's the trigger for somebody or or or triggers that you've found that are effective to to go into that conversation with the CEO?
Stacey Hylen (34:03)
When they get really clear on their goals and what their numbers look like, that helps a lot. It really clarifies things when you're like, okay, this is the number, this is how many clients, how many deals, this is the path. It helps put some of those extraneous things to the side. another thing that I've seen is a really big motivator is when people start to think about exits, especially if they have a friend who had an exit.
All of a sudden they're like, my gosh. Right. And so when they see other people that have had exits or they have something happens in their life that they're like, my kid's gonna graduate, or my wife wants me to retire at this time, or my husband, then then they start to get more serious about, okay, if I want to exit, what do I need to do to make this look attractive? Right. So just this week I had a hard conversation with a CEO that he said, I don't think it's worth doing this.
To bring in this new guy that he had hired to for this meeting. And when we looked at what his goal is, it was very clear that that person needed to be in the meeting. Right. Because his goal is to get that person moving up in that role so he can take on more. Right. But it was not the answer he necessarily wanted to have. but it was, you know, leading towards what he wants, which is the exit.
Jeff Holman (35:17)
Yeah. Well it's interesting. we started out with with this again, the the dual bottom line or the the the family and and the business both, you know, growing in success at the same time. And it feels like we're coming back to that. The the family or the sometimes these external factors might be the motivators for the for the business to do better. It reminds me of a I'm gonna call it a game that my my wife plays when she's on so social media. She's like, looks like so and so is about to get divorced.
Because you see some of these external factors, you're like, they're they're getting back in shape and they're, taking more photos with themselves and not commentary on divorce at all, but it seems like, among our among our social circle at least, you see you see some of the same signs of people starting to starting to put other things higher on their priority list that are probably very directly related to some of the core things in their life. In it
Yeah. Maybe a similar way to people saying, Hey, family.
Stacey Hylen (36:18)
Sometimes it's a health challenge too that precipitates them making a change in their business. Is that they've had a health scare or somebody close to them has had a health scare and then they're like, Okay, I need to really, scale more quickly and focus on the more important things in the business.
Jeff Holman (36:33)
And that's probably why you said earlier that it might be easier to coach people once they w if they've got these dual tracks because y you know that they're at least committed to the we'll call it the non business track, the non business goal, and that's gonna be a motivator for the business goal. So very fascinating. Well well Stacey, I I appreciate you coming on the show. if people want to get a hold of you, they want to hear more about hidden profits or the other things that you do, what's the best way to to get in touch?
Stacey Hylen (37:01)
Yeah, you can find me Stacy Hyland, H Y L E N, which is help you leverage everything now. I had to come up with an acronym for my strange spelling of my last name. And so you can find me at Stacyhyland.com. All the socials I'm at Stacy Hyland, or I do have a free gift. You can go to more clients and cash dot com. And it's actually an AI tool that will walk you through implementing some of the hidden profits. I have a book coming out late fall on hidden profits. So
it the AI is built on that and it actually will help you walk through implementing these. So it's a great action step after listening today to go to more clients and cash and plug in your your business and it'll help you write the emails. It'll help you move forward with that very quickly.
Jeff Holman (37:45)
I love it. Help you take a few things off your plate, maybe. And and and it was a help you leverage everything now, Stacey Highland. I I haven't heard that before. That's a that's a great great mnemonic to trick to to for for names. So well Stacy, thanks again for for joining us. It's been a pleasure and really glad that you could share some insights with our audience.
Stacey Hylen (38:06)
for having me, Jeff. It was a lot of fun.
Jeff Holman (38:09)
And thanks again to our audience for joining us on another episode of the Breakout CEO. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence.
Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman, and I'll see you next time.
