The Hayley Lloyd Show

61. The EXACT Strategy I Used To Hit 7 Figures + Insights From A $26B Company

• Hayley Lloyd • Season 3 • Episode 61

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Imagine scaling your business to seven figures in under three years without a single sales call?! 

That's I achieved using the Integrated Authority Method, and today, I go into what laid way for the basis of this method. 

From starting a boutique design agency in the UK to becoming a design lead at a unicorn tech company, there's a lot that goes into building credible Authority. 

We look at what 4 aspects created the meteoric rise of a Unicorn tech company that revolutionised the design industry (despite facing rejection over a hundred times.), & 26x their valuation in just 4 years. 

Resources Mentioned:

✨ In Demand Authority FREE 3 part training: https://programs.femthority.com/in-demand-authority-free-training-2024/

🎙 Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@hayleyjunelloyd/videos

To learn about The House Of Authority 6 Month Mastermind, send me a DM on Instagram with the word "INFO", & i'll send across all the information + a virtual walk-around

Content To Cash Academy: https://femthority.com/content-to-cash

Speaker 1:

There is a lot that goes into building an online brand and there is even more that goes into understanding how to monetize that, how to actually make it conversion focused and allow you to have it as your full-time source of income. The reason that I was able to scale my business to seven figures in less than three years was because I have had 12 years of experience in organic marketing and specifically building products and helping them to go to market, to monetize them and build organically, and I want to teach you guys some of the lessons that have helped me build this seven-figure business in a relatively short amount of time and how it helps my clients as well. But before we go into any of that, hey, my name is Hayley and I teach on the integrated authority method, and that is basically to teach my clients to build integrated authority that helps to attract high-ticket clients and then help them to scale to 60k or more months without a sales calls. But a little bit more about me. I have actually been university trained in brand and organic marketing and I've spent the past 12 years working to grow companies. First of all, I actually owned my own boutique design agency in the UK when I used to live there and I helped brands actually go to market. Then from there, I worked with some of the largest corporations around for banks, for leading tech giants in the space and specifically in the organic marketing teams and finally then I have built this seven figure company within three years and it has been my experience prior to building this business that allowed me to grow really quickly and it specifically allowed me to specialize in building authority in corporate, outside of corporate and really having a first-hand look at what makes companies blow up or have unprecedented results and growth. But one of the best case studies that really demonstrates the importance of the methods that I teach inside of my containers is a recent position that I had as a leading unicorn tech company, although I'm going to keep the specifics of the company private. I was at this company for four years during the period that it was quote-unquote blowing up, and over those four years I learned a lot, which has really led me to teach product marketing and brand in the way that I do today, and it's really the reason that it's so effective and why it's worked so well for my brands and my clients brand. So let's rewind six years. Call it luck or divine guidance or just hard work.

Speaker 1:

In the process of moving over from the UK to Australia, I saw that there was this dynamic and really creative company that had opened up one full-time job in the organic marketing digital design base of their company, and I had always been like, if I ever go back to full-time, it's going to have to be a company like that. So I ended up applying, I interviewed and was eventually offered the position within a month, and I was actually one of the first 100 employees at this tech company. So when I started there in 2018, the company already had a valuation of a billion dollars, and that was after six years only six years of being in existence, which is really pretty impressive, let's be honest. But what's more impressive is that over the four years that I was there, the company grew by a factor of 26 times and had a staggering valuation of over 26 billions and climbing. By the time that I left, it was officially a unicorn tech company, and a large portion of that company's growth was a well-crafted organic SEO strategy, which now drives 100 million monthly organic traffic views.

Speaker 1:

It's not secret that what this company does to generate these huge results from their organic marketing is essentially create these targeted and really specific landing pages. There's a load of articles about this, but one article quotes about the company. Their landing pages are high conversion masterpieces, clearly articulating the problems that they solve. Now, the reason that this is cool is because in the last year in that company, I was the design lead and creative producer for the SEO landing pages team. So during the four years that I was there, I learned a huge amount about why the top 1% of companies in the world managed to achieve such staggering growth in a relatively short period of time, and I wanna talk to you guys about that today, because it comes down to four main things, and those four main things are actually the principles and focuses that I use to build my own business and my own authority and scale to seven figures in less than three years. So since then and since leaving and having worked on this stuff for a while, I've adapted these ways of approaching business to suit specifically service-based businesses, specifically for creating reputable authority, signing high ticket clients, and it's now what I teach my own students inside of the house of authority.

Speaker 1:

The one thing that I know is defined authority is the reason that a company will take off and become the market leader and in demand and be able to create a lot of money. Essentially, everything that I'm about to go into is essentially your million dollar authority identity, which, by the way, you can uncover using the 4F process that I teach inside of my programs. In fact, if you wanna learn more about it, you can access a free three-part training on building your 4F authority archetype by clicking the link in the description below, so make sure that you check that out. But essentially, this process really allows you to create your in-demand factor, and having an in-demand factor allows you to, first of all, sign a higher amount of clients at a higher price point, because you know exactly why people see you as an expert. Number two, it allows you to sign clients in the DMs alone, without having sales calls, because your content consistently demonstrates your authority. And number three, you are able to create a level of conviction in what you do and how you teach that starts to build movements around. You get invited to speak on pod, on stages, and people are prepared to travel miles to get into your containers and get into rooms with you, travel miles to get into your containers and get into rooms with you.

Speaker 1:

So now that I have your attention, I'm going to go into what each of those four aspects are and why each of those aspects are so important for massive growth, and how these four aspects helped this tech company 26 times their valuation in just four short years and how they can help you, too. The first thing that this company had was a very strong market difference and a specific focus area and a mission that people rallied behind. So I call this your intellectual property and your point of difference. These things are really the crux of your authority and are the first vital aspect of having a really successful company. From the get-go, the company that I was working at had very defined authority. From the get-go, the company that I was working at had very defined authority. They knew their subject matter very well and the problems that their users were experiencing as well, and it allowed them to create something new and unique. The mission for them was to empower everyone to design and be creative.

Speaker 1:

Before they came along with this mission, design had always come with a costly price tag, as you'd always need to hire a designer to bring your creative vision to life, but not at this company. But it was a really, really big mission and such a radical change to what the norm currently was doesn't come without its pushback. Initially, this company was actually turned down over a hundred times for funding by almost every single investor that they pitched to. No one could see the vision the same way that the founders could, because it was so different to what everyone else was doing at the time. It was outside of the box and it disrupted what was already known. With giants in the design space that were leading the creative space. They were just so far ahead that no one thought it was possible and as the years went on, the pushback didn't then stop there.

Speaker 1:

As a design company, it actually created a lot of pushback amongst designers who were consistently preaching this company is going to kill the role of a designer and I actually remember specifically when I was about to get on a plane to come over to Australia to start my career at this company. I remember one designer friend saying to me you're a traitor to come over to Australia to start my career at this company. I remember one designer friend saying to me you're a traitor to our industry. That company is going to take all of our jobs, and I just remember being like whoa. Is that true? I have no idea, but I want to be in this company doing something different. But all of that to say creating something different that disrupts the market and that is actually different may well come with some backlash, and despite those rocky moments where there was backlash and there was pushback and people didn't get it, these founders kept on plowing forward with their mission because they believed in it. And despite the pushback and the lack of belief that people had and the controversy, the company today is the unicorn company to beat. They are the ones that are now setting the trends and others are now following what it is that they are doing, trying to follow in their footsteps and trying to keep up.

Speaker 1:

The reason that I'm telling you guys this is the first principle of massive growth is unique ideas, unique intellectual property and an idea that pushes what is already known. If you don't have unique trailblazing authority, like this company did, and if you aren't prepared to veer away from the pack and be different and potentially get pushback which you know kind of comes with the territory you'll have a really difficult time standing out or getting enough buy-in from people. You won't have great enough of a mission for people to get behind. What this 26 billion dollar company did have are two key things. They had number one a starving crowd, so there were people that were hungry for a better way to create beautiful designs. And they had number two a company vision, which was helping everyone to create beautiful designs without friction. So the first aspect that you need to focus on to create a highly scalable business is developing strong standout authority that positions you as different from the rest.

Speaker 1:

When I came into the online space, I didn't try to be a generalist. I specified hard and I became an expert in one area over a period of time. I didn't try to become a master of everything, because I knew it wasn't going to be the thing that would get me paid. So instead, I developed methods and mechanisms, diagrams, models and frameworks to demonstrate my point of difference and my way of thinking and to help people to get a result faster, and that really helped me to stand out quickly. So it meant that when people listen to me, they're like oh my god, I've never heard that before. Oh my god, that's so interesting, I want to learn more. You sound like an expert and it's because I was. I developed the time to become a master in a specific area. When I first came online, it was in self-doubt, specifically, not just mindset as a, and as I navigated further down my journey, it's now specializing in authority. So I'm not just helping people with business and scale to 60K months. I'm doing it in a very specific way.

Speaker 1:

From my own experience, if you wanna become the person that's in demand, that's setting the trends and being paid incredibly well for your services, you need to nail this mastery aspect. You need to become a master Because, in all honesty, when someone is focused on becoming the master and the expert in their craft, the in-demand factor will come as a by-product. However, trying to become in-demand without being an expert and developing this authority, this unique point of difference, and really understanding your market, it, will lead to unconscious authority, which doesn't last. The second aspect that hugely successful companies tend to have is very clear articulation of the problems that they solve and knowing every single user segment in every single locale incredibly well, and this is what this company did incredibly well, and what I pull this back to is having an authority-driven content ecosystem. So this basically means being able to create content that is so specific for who it is that people can't help but feel like you're in their mind and weaving that authority in there. That is something that this company that I worked for did incredibly well in their organic marketing strategy.

Speaker 1:

This is ultimately about how you get eyeballs onto the authority that you're creating and how do you get people to care. This, honestly, all comes down to marketing and positioning and speaking directly to the problems that people have, the company that I worked at didn't have just one target audience. Oh no, that would be too easy. They were so big. This company had multiple user segments and within those user segments they also had different locales, which are basically just locations and countries that we basically needed to tailor and cater the strategy to to ensure that organic landing pages that people were coming to from the organic search engines would speak directly to the right pain points for that particular part of the world. So, for example, someone who is using the product as a teacher from Germany may have a very different need or desire or pain to a non-profit that is using it from Australia. They may have different pain points and different needs, which needed to be captured on those landing pages to essentially make them rank in all of those areas. And everything is considered in this process, not only the copy that is on the page, but also down to the type of templates that we showed in mock-ups, to ensure that they were ranking and generating a sufficient click-through rate to the actual product that we were working for. So the thing that we had to do for every single page and there were hundreds of pages was ensure that they were all targeted and specific enough. Remember what that article said that I referenced before. Their landing pages are high conversion masterpieces, clearly articulating the problems that they solve To create high conversion, which is essentially the basis of high ticket selling.

Speaker 1:

If you want to do any type of selling, you need to create such a level of precision and specificity around who it is that you're talking to that they feel like you are in their mind and as you're doing that, you also want to insert demonstration of authority into all of that content, to demonstrate that the company, the product or the service is the solution to the problem that people have. Why am I telling you this? Because if you want to charge a premium for your services and sign high ticket clients through your content, your marketing has to be on point. You have to know how to make your message so specific and pointed that people feel like you're in their minds. If you don't have this, people may read your message, but they'll never take the next step. They may be inspired, but they'll never want to work with you. This knowledge is what went on to actually form the basis of Content to Cash Academy, which is a signature program that I have, which is all about creating conversion-based content. This program is designed to help you specifically dial up the specificity, the tangibility and the authority in your content to attract and convert high ticket clients and take your business to multiple six figures. This, combined with your standout authority factor. This is where the real money starts to be made. This is where movements start to be birthed.

Speaker 1:

The next part of massive growth is arguably one of the most important aspects, especially for this company that I worked at. So number three is you need to have an incredible product and a customer first approach to building the company, the product or the service which then, as a by-product, makes it really easy to sell. So that then really comes down to the model that you are using to build your company and the services that you are actually providing, so the products that you were using or how you are actually communicating with the clients or potential clients in your company. So at the company that I was working with, a huge factor and I mean massive factor of their success was they had just such a customer first approach to building the company and the product, which then made it so easy to sell that people were selling it for them.

Speaker 1:

One of the owners and the founders once said in an article that they wrote building a good product or service is not a one and done effort. You need to constantly be listening to your community and coming up with new and imaginative ways of evolving your product or your service to meet the needs and defy their expectations. If you just have great marketing, even with a strong message, if you aren't delivering an incredible service and a product that actually gets people results and that leaves people talking and blown away, you'll never become the authority and the industry leader. You'll become one of many. You'll become a drag and dropper of what has been done before, and what that can lead to is potentially disappointed customers over a period of time.

Speaker 1:

One of the company owners of the company that I worked at would always say we are only 1% of the way there, even when we were already highly established, but it always insinuated that there was always going to be something more, that was going to evolve and improve over time. It was this idea that we were never finished, that it was never done and that the mission wasn't either, and what this gave us was a huge amount of momentum and excitement, to not only the employees in the company, but also to their client base, who could also get excited about new features that were being released. The dedication to the service will ultimately dictate the success of your long-term business growth. So what you need to consistently be coming back to is am I creating something that is so easy to use and a product or a service that actually gets results? As Alex Hormozy says, a grand slam offer, if done right, is the cheat code to growth, and nothing could be truer. So you can do that by number one, creating your own unique methodologies through your authority to guide people through. So that's your intellectual property. So that's your intellectual property. Number two, creating well-crafted lessons that prioritize user experience and different learning styles, so that people can understand and implement what it is that you're teaching really easily. And number three, always having an avenue for feedback so that your community can provide you with much needed reflections on how you can actually improve your services and, as a bonus one, not waiting for perfect and being open to improving on the go.

Speaker 1:

I really really love this one, and a lot of companies that I've worked at in the past would always launch their MVP solutions first, and that means minimal, viable product. What it really created doing that was a pushing of our brains to never wait for perfect or done and this is obviously very difficult for a designer that is often trained to find perfection, but it really helped us to actually find better solutions because we weren't waiting to try to figure out the whole solution in our mind. We were getting feedback 10 times faster by doing this process, so what we would do is we would brainstorm what we wanted the final solution to be and then we would work backwards from there to find the easiest go-to-market solution without it having to be the final vision. What that really does is allow, then, the audience to give their feedback without us making assumptions, because we love to make assumptions and it may not create the best product by doing that. It allows you to continuously improve the product, and when you lead with a customer first approach to your business, this is where it makes the product very easy to sell and word of mouth starts to travel. So a huge portion of the company that I worked at Organic's growth strategy actually came from. People were so impressed with the product and the consistent evolution that they actually were referring people without the company actually needing to do anything. They wanted their friends to get on the product. So the word of mouth aspect of organic marketing is huge and that only comes down to if you have an incredible product or service that sells itself.

Speaker 1:

So if you want long-term success where the program or the product sells itself, you need to create a program that people love, that gets results, and be open to feedback. Now I have a lot of experience with taking often complex topics and distilling them down into something very simple, because this was a lot of the work that I did, when we would come up with solutions to complex problems and then need to distill them down into a presentation to get buy-in from stakeholders. Not only that, but working with a user experience background meant that when we were creating the landing pages, we were always trying to find simplicity and think about the user first, to create a journey that worked. Now the basis of understanding how to take something complex and turn it into something simple and create a program that people love is the basis of creating great programs, and that is what led me to create Programs that Sells, which is another signature program that is designed to help you create a program that sells. So, if you have a service, an expertise or something that you would like to package, this program helps you do exactly that. Without incredible programs that are digestible, word of mouth just won't happen, so the program itself won't sell itself. What makes programs 10 times easier to sell is testimonials, which only come when the program is really great.

Speaker 1:

The last part of the four aspects of massive growth in this unicorn company that I used to work at is the importance of a North Star long-term vision that keep people or yourself committed, even when it feels like it's not working. What I translate this to is building seven-figure inner authority, because there are going to be periods when you are building this business when it feels like it's not working, so having the inner resilience to be able to keep on going, even when you're faced with rejection and judgment, is paramount. I always find it funny that in the online space, there can be a real misconception that massive growth is overnight and will happen really fast. But I really want to give you guys a shift in mindset and give you an insight into what it takes for real sustainable growth to happen. So here's the thing the company that I worked at didn't become a billion dollar hit until 2018. And, as I've said previously, they actually got rejected a lot, and one of the founders is quoted saying we pitched to hundreds of investors, getting rejected time and time again and I was quite literally living on my brother's floor. The founders were dismissed over 100 times, to which they said rejection hurts a lot, but failure was never an option. Being rejected a lot in our initial stages just meant that I had to try harder and refine my strategy.

Speaker 1:

So what can we take from this? One of the things that you need when you're growing a company of any size is resilience, because it's not going to happen overnight and it's really smooth sailing. I'm actually going to bring up a. It's really smooth sailing. I'm actually going to bring up a graph of this company's growth. Now, what you can see from this graph is the growth over the first couple of years is very, very minimal, and things only started ramping up around the third and fourth year, but still, the growth is very minimal. It's really not that big. So you can see that there is a six year period where the growth is. It's okay, but what's really happening here is the foundations are being built. They're creating such strong foundations in their marketing strategy, in their mission, in their brand, in their authority that then allows from 2018, look at that massive increase and spike in their growth.

Speaker 1:

That happens from this place place which is essentially where I started at this company. This happened because of the foundational work that they did over here. Now, over this period, is where they're being rejected a lot, but this is where the big foundational stuff starts to happen. This is where they're building their organic strategy. This is where they're implementing a lot of things. It's like when you see a house that's going up, you often for the first like few months, you don't see any movement. It's because they're building the foundations below the house. Then suddenly it all starts to go up at once, and that's because the foundations take a long period of time, but they're actually happening underground and they need to happen to support the massive growth that's going to happen. The same is happening for this company and this is very standard growth for a lot of company where, for the first few years you don't see that much happening, and that's really important because a lot of people coming into the online space they believe that in order for them to have huge success, it needs to happen here and it should be happening here. But that isn't realistic and it's not real life, and so what we need to do is develop our resilience to be able to hold this period when it feels like it's not working.

Speaker 1:

The real secret to this company's success that I worked at is that they didn't expect to blow up immediately. They didn't let rejection or pushback or judgment stop them from continuing to plow forward to turn their vision into a reality. The founders had a huge amount of inner resilience that allowed them to not take judgment and criticism or feedback or pushback personally. They just took it as a reason to continually evolve their strategy. The most successful CEOs in the world aren't just successful for their strategy. They are successful for who they are and how much stress and pressure they can hold. I was speaking the other day with a multi-million dollar tech company owner in the recyclable space and he told me we are consistently on the edge of either massive growth and making it or complete bankruptcy. Now this is obviously at scale right, but it really demonstrates just how much inner resilience that they have to keep on moving to hold that level of.

Speaker 1:

Is this going to work? The reason that I'm telling you this is because, in order for you to have big success, you need to be doing two things to make sure that your business grows and makes it. Number one, you need to Make sure that you are in this for the long run and ensure that you have a North Star vision that keeps you plowing forward, even when it feels like no one gets it. And number two, you need to develop your inner resilience to be able to withstand large amounts of pressure so that you can hold the void periods when it feels like something isn't working and when no one is listening, which happens when no one is listening, which happens At many parts of your journey, whether it's right at the beginning or creating your first seven or eight figures. There will be periods as you experiment where it feels like things aren't working or not in the way that you wanted anyway, or it feels like no one's interested, or it feels like people have stopped listening and it feels like everything's changing, and your job in those moments is to not give up and to get up and try again, to try a different strategy and to keep moving.

Speaker 1:

The founders of this company that I worked at, their perseverance and ability to take feedback in the company is now what makes it a 26 billion dollar company, making this company one of the world's most valuable unicorns and the fastest growing software business of all time. Now, the reason that I'm telling you all of this stuff is that in order for you to take off organically, or paid, whatever it is, and to see the kind of growth curve that this company has seen over the years, you need to focus on these four elements Number one, your seven figure inner authority. Number two, your intellectual property and point of difference, your authority archetypes. Number three is authority driven content ecosystem. And number four is a really great, simple offer model or services that actually get results, and all of this essentially makes up the integrated authority model, which is what I base all of my teachings on.

Speaker 1:

These four elements are the premise of what the House of Authority, the six month mastermind that I run, is built on. The four key programs that guide. The entire syllabus is based on this four step process and, for those that are ready to take the next step and to really create authority that gets them seen. This is the mastermind to do it, and this is where I have used the 12 years of marketing and brand and product and user experience to really help you craft something that people need, that people want and are prepared to pay for. And this isn't experience that I have just gathered with just this business alone. This is the experience that I have from a nine-year corporate career working at this particular $26 billion tech company, but also a load of other corporations like banks, some of the leading corporations in the world, and also having my own brand and marketing agency in the UK. This isn't me just saying that I know how to build authority. This is about experience that I have gathered over many, many years.

Speaker 1:

I have taken all of the strategy that I know works to give you something that, if applied, will help you to build a business that you really want, and you need all four of these aspects to see the kind of growth that I know that you're craving. This is the process of really distilling down what you do into unique and different ways to create intellectual property and authority that people can't replicate. This is the process of then learning to communicate the value of your authority into a way that lands for people and has them reaching for their wallets and ready to pay you. And all of these aspects combined if you apply all of them and you learn them and you apply them to your business will lead you to number one. A strategy that doesn't require you to take sales calls if you don't want to, as your content does the selling for you. It will also allow you to number one. A strategy that doesn't require you to take sales calls if you don't want to, as your content does the selling for you. It will also allow you to charge a premium price, as you are developing unique intellectual property that goes further than just promising a result. This is about actually creating something that people really can use and find value in, and a way for you to get people a result that hasn't been done before.

Speaker 1:

The reason that I can sign 30k clients in the DMs is because of this established authority, and this is exactly why I have so many clients that have experienced the same level of growth. Here are three of my clients that came in to develop their inner and outer authority. We have Addison, who, in my container, went on to have her first $60,000 launch while she was healing the sisterhood wound inside a really expansive and connected place. We have Kimberly, who sold out her first ever program launch and had a $59,000 launch by developing her authority and really honing in her message. Kaylee had her first 60k month her highest month in business. Yet we have Inez, who had her first $36,000 launch and continues to actually scale her business in the House of Authority today. We have Sophie, who had her highest five-figure cash month, tripling her monthly income after the mastermind. And we have Tracy, who also is still in the House of Authority, who continues to have 100k launches, every single launch from her one-to-many programs, all by dialing in her authority and creating content that converts.

Speaker 1:

But they aren't the only ones. I have so many testimonials from people that I've even created from the content to cash, specifically an entire page just of testimonials because there were so many of them. We'll leave it in the description below if you want to go and check it out. So, if you are interested in potentially scaling your business to 10 to 60k months and you want to follow the integrated authority method and really build something that you can be proud of, where you have credible authority and you aren't just replicating what someone else has done. That's exactly what the house does.

Speaker 1:

So if you want to learn more about the kind of strategy that we use and you want a virtual walk around of what the mastermind is, dm me the word info and I'll send over information about the container, including a virtual walk around of everything that's included. All the programs that I mentioned in this video are included in the mastermind, which you get access to over the six months that you're in in the container, and, of course, you get coaching directly with me to get feedback on your authority and your content and any other aspect that you want answers on. If you want, of course, you can purchase any of these programs separately and get lifetime access, and all of them will serve you incredibly well. If, however, you're not keen to come into a space yet, that is amazing too. I'm celebrating you for making that decision and I'm excited to continue supporting you through my free content. You can see here that you're already on my YouTube channel, so just subscribe and we put out new videos all the time. To help you build inner and outer authority. I have a host of free trainings that you can go and binge for free. We will put some of them in the description below, and I also have the Hayley Lloyd Show, which is a podcast where all of the stuff, if you prefer to listen via audio instead of video, is uploaded into Apple and Spotify as well.

Speaker 1:

To summarize all of this, here's the thing. Anyone can say that they're an authority, and a lot of people do, but very few people actually back it up, and in the market today, you need to have defined authority if you want to get paid the big bucks. Whatever you decide to do whether you decide to come into a container, come into a program, come into a program or continue to support the free content that I put out, whatever it is, I'm eternally rooting for you and I really hope that you create something incredibly awesome that you are proud of that gets you paid the big bucks. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure that you subscribe to this channel and give this video a thumbs up. It means the world and really, really does make make a difference.

Speaker 1:

If you know someone that you think this episode could help, make sure that you share it with them and if you really enjoyed it, share me on your story on instagram and tag me at hayley, june lloyd, and let people know that you're tuning in. It means the world and I always appreciate your feedback and thoughts. I want to hear from you guys. What do you want to learn about? What do you want to have trainings on? Send me a dm on instagram. Let's connect. I love you guys.