S3, Ep. 121- Inside My First $200K Sales Month

Leah Gervais: Hey everyone, welcome back to Seven Figure Secrets. Leah here, and I hope that you are enjoying the end of summer. Hopefully you’re excited for the fall to start. I always, uh, the fall is, I know that it’s like a cliche Instagram meme at this point, but it’s absolutely my favorite time of year for us New Yorkers. I feel like it is often why we tolerate living here, because the summers and winters can be so brutal. Um, and it’s really the fall and spring that make it feel just so quintessentially magic. 

So I hope you’re getting excited for the fall. Like I am. I, of course, will have a newborn, um, this fall any day now. Really from the time of this recording, uh, which makes it all the more magical. Um, so I hope that you have some exciting things in store for you as well.

In today’s episode, I’m excited and humbled and a little bit in awe that I’m bringing you guys behind the scenes of my first 200K sales month, and I’m excited to do this because obviously it’s a huge deal and I’m really proud of it. And I’m also excited to do this because it’s honestly not as big of a deal. Actually. It is a really big deal. 

But like, I wanna break down some of what actually goes on behind it because I think that it’s really easy to see these big numbers and these big proclamations, and it just feel like, I mean, if I would’ve seen this years ago when I was starting my business, I would’ve had these assumptions of like, this person has it all figured out. This person, uh, has no issues in their life or business, and I’m not here to complain.

That’s obviously not what this is about, but I wanna give some context into how something like this happens and into when something like this is appropriate to happen in your business versus when this is not something you should be driving yourself crazy with, because that is another thing I think I would’ve done was felt like, oh my gosh, well, if she can do it, I should be doing it. Why aren’t I doing it? How can I do that? And, and that’s not really the energy I want out of something like this. 

So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about how it happened, let’s talk about the specifics of it so that there’s as much transparency as possible, because I think that’s another important piece to all of this. And let’s talk about what I think is important about having a really $200k sales month and when this is important in your business. So let’s first define it. Okay. I talk a lot about the difference between having sales numbers be a goal and having income numbers be a goal, or cash simply being a goal for most of this year. 

And if you followed along with some of the other monthly recaps I’ve done via this podcast, I generally talk about my cash numbers. I talk about how much cash my business brings in per month, and up to this

Month or even now, um, all year, it’s really been in the range of the 45 to 65, sometimes even up to $70,000 in cash per month. So that is how much cash, exactly like it sounds that we are seeing come into our business bank account in a 30 or 31 day window in a monthly window. Sales on the other hand, is quite different. Sales are how many contracted sales we close in a monthly window that can have actually little to no indication on how high your cash is. And in fact, this past month has been a great example of that because it’s been on the lower end of my cash range. Um, it’s been in the high forties. 

And I think that that’s very, very important because I think that there’s a lot of different versions of income reporting out there that don’t decipher between the two and can leave you feeling confused or just inherently behind because you might be doing really well on one of them.

But if someone else is sharing a high sales number, without clarifying which one it is, you might just immediately feel like you’re, you’re falling short on the other. And what I really wanna normalize and what I want this episode to be about is just knowing what is more important to you at the time and knowing what, um, knowing what your focus should be. Because I do believe that both of them have their place, and sometimes you might wanna focus on both. But in my situation, it’s really been more about kind of one verse the other and what has been more important. 

So recently, as I kind of mentioned this whole year, I’ve really talked about cash more so, and now I’m more, so this past month was more focused on sales. And the reason that that was more of my focus is because I am about to go on maternity leave.

So the sales that I’m closing now will, I will see the, you know, the income from it while I have a newborn, or while I’m back from an early maternity leave. And I’m not gonna be selling very much when I first return from maternity leave. I’m mostly just gonna be focused on my clients. 

Um, I also focus heavily on sales, typically in the final quarters of each year because that informs a great deal of my monthly recurring revenue for the following six months, even up to 12 months of the following year, which really helps me make decisions for the following year around my own investments, my team, my capacity vacations, I’m going to take different things that I want to save for, et cetera. So you might be in a season where your goal is to get your monthly recurring revenue up to 10K a month.

If you are in business and you are working toward six figures, or even if you have hit six figures, this is a goal I almost always think is super valuable to have and to work toward until it happens. Even if it takes a year, it’s okay if it takes time because it is a long-term sustainability focused goal, which just to repeat is to have repetitive 10 K months in recurring revenue. 

Now, this doesn’t mean that you make 10 K every month and you know, you kind of check it off the box. It really means that you’re coming into every month on the first of the month, knowing where 10 K is already coming from that month. Even if you didn’t sell one more thing, then that gives you the opportunity to decide who you want on your team, which coach you wanna hire, or which coaches.

Um, if you can take time off that, you know, month, how much you need to work, if you want to be selling more things, you have a lot more mobility to test because you have that in your back pocket. So if that is something you’re working toward, then sales is often a bigger goal than cash itself because you’re not really looking for a cash injection, you’re not really looking for a high month off the cuff. You want more of that sustainability and that predictability over time. Um, and so sales might be really important to you.

 So what that would look like is a heavy focus on contracts, a heavy focus on recurring revenue, uh, containers, and knowing that you might have lower cash months in the meantime because you are stacking your income until you get to that goal versus having, like I said, you know, the, the rush of pay in fulls just for the sake of saying that you made $15,000 in a month or something like that.

Conversely, you may get to a point where you feel like your expenses are already met for the month, or maybe you just don’t have that high of expenses and you are more excited about the cash that you can prove to yourself that you can make in a span of time. I understand that as well. And in those situations, you would maybe have cash be your goal. So why does this matter? I mean, I, I guess I kind of covered already why it mattered, but why did I care more about sales in this particular month than in the past several months where I’ve cared more about cash? 

As I mentioned, it’s ’cause I’m about to have a baby and I am cognizant of how I can set my business up for recurring revenue while I am having this baby and on maternity leave and having a gentle return from maternity leave versus feeling like every single month the income that we need to continue running my business, my business doesn’t stop running just because I have a baby, um, is is on me to come up with or to do a launch around or to sell around, you know, things like that.

And so we managed to make $200,000. I think actually now it is up quite a bit more. I think now we’re at, um, probably closer to 230 within today would be exactly a 30 day window. Now, technically speaking, this was not in July or August. So July was not a 200k sales month and nor was August . But within a 30 day window from, I think it was like July 15th through August 15th, we closed to over $200,000 in sales. 

So this is certainly something worth celebrating because years ago this was something that would have been unbelievable to me. I mean, absolutely out of this world never could happen to a girl like me was for other people, but not me. And seeing that I did it, but not only did it, but did it relatively effortlessly, honestly, with a lot of ease, nine months pregnant literally, and without a nanny or childcare for my son, um, is really, that’s what I really wanna sit with, is all the kind of things that this has broken down over the years that I believed or that other people have told me, or that I think other people believe you need to have in order to do things like this.

On the other hand, I wanna regulate, like I said, this wasn’t the highest cash month in the world because when focusing on sales, a lot of times I’m really only collecting things like one time fees or deposits, um, instead of, you know, massive pay in full. So the cash can be a bit lower and that’s okay because that wasn’t what the main focus was right now. So I don’t have an extra $200,000 in my bank account that I didn’t have 30 days ago, but I do know where 200 plus thousand dollars is coming from over the next, in this case it’s around 12 months, um, that I, that will come in no matter what happens if I sell more or not. 

So this primarily happened because over the past month we have had my mastermind fast action window open. If you’ve been following along, well, first of all, you probably know that my mastermind has been the, you know, kind of crown jewel of my business for quite some time now.

It is in the new year, it will really only be, and still actually, right now, it’s really the only way people can work with me directly. Um, my one-on-one has been closed for the year, and I don’t know when that’s going to open again. 

And so this is, that’s the main way people can do it. And, um, because of that I’ve worked really hard on it. I worked really hard on our retreats. I’ve worked really hard on, uh, supporting my clients within it. It’s a wonderful, wonderful community and, um, I think that that is why the Fast Action Window worked so well and why it sold out so much. We are over 70% full on this whole mastermind, and I haven’t even really officially launched it or opened it to, you know, the general public. I’ve, I’ve really only launched it a bit to my audience, but mostly to people who signed up for the wait list, um, over, over the months that preceded this, uh, window.

And so that’s exciting, but also I think it has a lot of lessons in it. So let’s kind of go through the lessons that I think are important about this income milestone as well as about the fact that my mastermind is, uh, over halfway full before even having really opened it or promoted it. The first thing that this continues to teach me is that client satisfaction is so important. You guys, okay, I I don’t bring this up to put anyone else down because I genuinely think most entrepreneurs are doing their honest best, but I have definitely had my share of feeling jaded in this coaching and online business industry feeling like it should be more regulated, feeling like it’s kind of a free for all. Um, not knowing how to decipher if something is worth the money or not having investments that certainly did not pay off, not knowing who actually had my best interest at heart.

It is kind of the wild west out there, and in a lot of ways I love that it’s unregulated because I think that that really does allow you to, you know, practice and exercise your creativity to the fullest. But there’s definitely challenges that come with that, not knowing how to handle certain things, not knowing how to handle it as a consumer nor as the business owner. 

And it has, um, bothered me so much sometimes over the years that I’ve wanted to stop doing it. Honestly, I think a lot of people have had that experience where they’ve felt so turned off by it that it makes them feel like they don’t know if it’s worth it. And one of my friends, uh, and a mentor of mine has always just said, just be the person you wish that you could see in it. 

And that has really led me, especially over the past few years as I’ve, as I’ve kind of shifted how I’ve approached my business, which has been less so about how I can do as much with it as possible and more about how I don’t need to focus on the number of followers or the number of incomes so much as just the impact that it’s making on its own.

Um, and that was really helpful to me. And now I feel like because I’ve been able to do that, my client retention is at an all time high for my mastermind as well as just for my clients in general. You know, a huge reason that this mastermind Fast Action Window promotion was so successful was because the majority of people who joined my mastermind for 2025 were already clients, whether they were in my mastermind or they were in different containers, they already were working with us. They know how good of a coach I am, they know what good of an experience they receive and they want to continue to sign up for more.

 So client retention, client support is critical. Having clients that feel supported is the best thing you can do, not just for your clients, but also for yourself. And I used to torture myself around taking on the success of my clients and feeling like I would never have client success if they weren’t all reaching a million dollars and quitting their jobs and retiring their husbands and traveling to Tahiti.

Like I thought that unless all of their vision board dreams were achieved, I was failing. And over the past few years I’ve really shifted to recognizing that one, I can’t control any of that, right? That’s not my job. And two, how can I focus more on supporting them versus getting them results? It’s really up to them to get results. 

And I think that that shift is why our retention rate is so high now, because particularly the season of life I’m in, and therefore the clients I attract are in a lot of these results are unpredictable. Sometimes people will sign on with me because they wanna have, I don’t know, $250,000 a year and then they get pregnant and they don’t end up making as much as they thought they would, but they feel supported as they sustain their business and set it up for having a baby, right?

So recognizing that it’s not your job to get all the shiny wins, uh, for, for your clients, it’s really not your job to get any of them, frankly, when you take that away from your clients and say, Hey, it’s up to me to get you your win, you’re taking the win away from them. But just shifting into how can I support them no matter where they’re at and what’s going on with them, um, I think is really helpful for you as the service provider as well as, of course, four year clients. 

So I’ve worked really hard on client retention and satisfaction over the past few years, and I believe that that played a huge role into this ease filled, almost inevitable 200 K sales month. The next tip is something I kind of talked about at length at the beginning, so I’m not gonna go too deeply into it now, but it’s just a reminder to know what your current goal is.

I definitely was guilty of, and I see people still do this, um, wanting a number for the sake of the number. And my tip is to really have your North star or your goal be the why behind a number versus the number itself. So I didn’t set out to have a 200 K sales month. That wasn’t even on my radar, frankly, what was on my radar was how can I get the word out about my wonderful mastermind and attract the highest quality of people into this community before I have a baby. 

That was my goal, that was what I cared about, and that’s what I really wanted to have a chance to do so that I could plan as much of this mastermind as I can, particularly our retreat in Paris next year before I go on maternity leave. And as a result, because I focus in that way, this $200,000 sales month happened back in the day back.

But when I was really booming my business and, you know, having it grow, I had so much emphasis on the number goals themselves. This is something that I would have meditated about and changed my passwords to and had intentions during yoga classes around and sought out people to help me reach and all of that, you know, written in a journal every day, all these like manifestation garbage tools that I thought I needed to do for a really long time. 

And I think just releasing so much of that, recognizing that a number is just a number, it’s just a symbol of something. And if you don’t know what it’s a symbol of, it’s going to be very hard to feel tethered to it. And if you have a number you’ve been chasing for a while, maybe your goal has been $50,000 a month for a while, and you’re realizing that the goal has just been the number and the the the functionality behind it is a little bit vague or isn’t specific to that number, this could be a helpful reframe is to just shift instead into what really am I wanting out of my business right now?

What does my business really need right now? And allowing the number to come to fruition from there and detaching the ego, detaching the, uh, need for proof that comes with whatever number you have in mind, I think is so freeing. I’ve told this story before, but when I had my first 100 K sales month, which was in 2020, um, it was my third try of it, and it was the first time that I approached it exactly through what I’m talking about now through the lens of here’s a goal I have for my business. 

And all of the sudden, the next thing I knew I had made a hundred thousand dollars in the span of a month. But the first two times I had tried doing it, it was very opposite. I started the month thinking, okay, this is gonna be my hundred K month.

How can I break it down? How can I do it? I was obsessed with it. I would think about it every day. I would, you know, do all these kinds of woo woo practices for it. Um, and I would just get very enthralled with it. And the first time that I did it, it was because it was a, an afterthought of what my actual goal was or what it meant.

 So this has worked for me time and time again. Um, and I really think that it matters if you’re trying to make a big goal happen where your focus is and your focus needs to be on the goal itself versus what a number could symbolize for the goal. Okay, the final thing I wanna take away is how I’m celebrating this. I put this on Instagram and I got a ton of responses and it was fun to see because it brought me back to those early days where I did celebrate every single month so much.

I mean, I used to go out, I bought all my Louboutins from doing this. My whole handbag collection is from different monthly, you know, records being set. Um, I used to, we used to do staycations like at bougie hotels and everything, and I just don’t really do that stuff as much anymore. And it kind of made me think. And uh, on the one hand it’s because I, well, I think the main reason, which is a celebration in itself is because this stuff just doesn’t feel as out of the ordinary for me anymore, which is a very privileged thing to say. 

But I think I just, my mind was so blown for so long because this was so opposite of my life. Um, you know, I started my business making $45,000 a year after taxes. I was bringing home like under $30,000 a year living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

And I just had such a longing in my heart during those years. You know, I was dating my now husband and we had these dreams for our life in New York and they just, they almost had an undertone of sadness to them because I couldn’t see how I could ever actually contribute to that. It’s almost like I had to leave it up to him to do that because if we wanted kids here, if we wanted to send them to a private school here, if we wanted to be able to afford to live in a nice apartment here, if we wanted to afford to travel, you know, as, as we had dreamed of, then this was just gonna take a ton of money. 

And neither of us are from New York. So we had never really seen it been modeled to us. We were fortunate enough to grow up, um, you know, not in poverty or anything like that.

We both had, um, stable upbringings and, and amazing parents, but it was just a very, very different lifestyle and, and very different childhood than what we wanted for our future kids and that we wanted for our marriage. And I loved daydreaming about it with him, but there was almost this hollowness under it because it felt like, I don’t know where my role is in that because I can’t see how I can have anything to do with that.

So when I started actually making money and growing a business from scratch and paying off my debt and paying off my student loans early and turning that, you know, $30,000 after tax into my monthly income and then turning that $45,000 pre-tax into my monthly income, it was about so much more than the numbers. It was what was underneath them, which was me actually seeing myself being not only the contributor to this joint dream we had, but the, you know, uh, main reason it was happening because my income was just taking off. 

And I do think that that was really worth celebrating and I’m so glad that I did for so long. And part of the reason that I don’t feel the need to as much now is because I expect it almost. This is my normal, I, we have a kid here, we have another on the way.

We are sending our son to private school. We do live in a nice apartment. We do live in a nice neighborhood. Our dreams have come true. I mean, that is my celebration. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am gonna do something to celebrate and commemorate this because I think it’s important to celebrate things along the way and to remember to do that for yourself.

 But I also think there’s a lot of power in just shifting into expectancy and seeing yourself as not only able to fulfill the dreams you have for your family, but almost as it being inevitable and having that confidence and having that sureness about it. I think that’s what people are missing more so than any strategy or, um, you know, any, any drive. It’s just that inner certainty that this is gonna happen because I always come through for myself and I always make what I want happen, happen. 

So I hope that this was helpful to you. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. If you are looking for more on my business model, you can go to my website,  at leahgervais.com. We have a few fun things you can do there. We have a webinar you can join, um, or reach out to me on Instagram and let me know you listen to this. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I hope you have a great day.

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