→ Master our proprietary strategy and instantly reach 1,000s of ideal clients, radically reduce ad spend, and amplify the content you’re already making – in just 3 days or less! Join the FREE Ultimate Facebook Ads Challenge here: http://get.embodiedmarketing.com/challenge

I’m seeing some major shifts happening in business right now, and honestly? Most entrepreneurs are completely missing them.

In this episode, I’m talking about the two resources every entrepreneur has (and how to choose which one to invest), why the identity you carry as a CEO is literally creating your results, and my predictions about what’s happening to digital products in the next year.

Real talk—these three things will make or break your business.

Key Takeaways:

• The framework that changes everything—why you have exactly two resources as an entrepreneur and how to strategically choose which one to invest at any given moment
• The CEO identity crisis keeping you stuck—how the language you use about yourself creates limiting decisions and the one question that will shift everything
• Why your digital products won’t survive 2025—the AI revolution that’s transforming courses into platforms and what you need to do right now to stay ahead

________________________

More ways Embodied Marketing can support you:

If you’re ready to hand off your entire marketing strategy (from funnels to ads to copy) and finally get the expert team you can trust, apply here and let’s talk: helpmystrategy.com

LAUNCH is my custom AI platform that creates your irresistible offer and high-converting sales page for you, trained with my proven strategies and designed to sound completely human. Get lifetime access now: https://get.embodiedmarketing.com/launch

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW THE PODCAST!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the Embodied Podcast! If this podcast has added value and helped you in your business journey, please head over to Apple Podcast, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review.

Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more amazing entrepreneurs just like you.

♥ LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

Marketing is so easy when you have an offer that you can put in front of your ideal customer, and when they see it, they go, I have to buy that. You really have two main resources, time or money ads are just gonna speed it up. They are not a magic bullet to success. Stop saying, you’re broke af. Stop saying that about yourself because that’s causing you to show up as a CEO who’s going to continue to stay broke?

The most powerful thing you can shift as a CEO is the identity you carry. Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Move by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I think I might start something here, which is I’ll be a podcaster who does it in her gym clothes.

I’m going to share this on here. I’m in my gym clothes before my workout. If I was gross afterwards, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t know. But I love this new podcast format. Loving it. Love the interviews. Love, love having my studio, love the variety and the content. But I’m gonna tell you something, your girl is not the girl who gets ready like I do not.

Like having to be ready, be put together, and I just will never be the, I guess don’t say never, but the video podcaster who has the professional makeup and the great hair. I just, I can’t do it. I, I live in the gym and it’s hot here, so I’m constantly like having to wash my hair Anyways, I’m. For various reasons in my gym clothes.

’cause I’m gonna head to the gym and have a different change of clothes to record this episode. And I’m like, what if I just start, what if that just becomes my brand, the embodied CEO podcast in my gym clothes? Just kidding. I won’t do that every interview, but I’m just, that is part of my brand. Like I, that is me.

It’s not part of my brand, but it is me. And I think, I actually think that is a good reminder because sometimes I do feel, not intimidated, but. Like, man, there’s people that I, friends and people that I follow that are just like, so put together for their video. It’s not me. I, I just, I can’t put my time into that.

And there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a choice. I just, if I had to do that, I’d never record. The video podcast. So, all right, everybody. I have three things I wanna talk about in this episode. One inspired from a DM conversation and the other about ai. I just wanted to talk a little further about that after launching our product that is incorporating AI and the, the massive positive feedback we’ve gotten from that product.

So first I received a DM recently that was. From somebody who is struggling in their business, doesn’t have a lot to invest right now, but really needs to make sales. And she asked me a specific question and she said something that kind of triggered this topic that I wanna talk through. I wanna talk about using the resources of time versus money in your marketing, and I think that there’s oftentimes a, I guess, confusion slash misunderstanding.

From entrepreneurs on how to invest in ads and when to invest in ads, and kind of the way I would break down the journey of an entrepreneur, you really have two main resources, time or money to invest in your business, and I. You have to constantly weigh like, which one do I feel like I have more of?

Which one makes more sense for me to invest in? Whether it’s this project, my marketing as a whole, my business as a whole, and as you evolve in your business and you grow your business, the resource that’s going to become more scarce as time in the beginning when you are making your first 5,000, maybe even your first $10,000 ever, you probably don’t have a lot of money to invest, like especially.

People who are solo entrepreneurs kind of bootstrapping their business, starting it from the ground up. You don’t have investors, you don’t have capital. You know, we’re not, we don’t play that game. And so it’s, it’s a different game. And so in that beginning when you don’t have a lot of money to invest, meaning you don’t have money to invest in hiring, support and or ads, you’ve gotta invest the resource of time and.

An overview of how I teach this is this, the beginning business owners making your first five to $10,000. You can do that without ads if you want, right? Ads are just gonna speed it up. They are not a magic bullet to success. They’re gonna speed up your success because they’re going to amplify something that you’ve already created, not requiring you to pour time into it.

When you’re in those beginning phases, if you don’t have money for ads, or let’s say you don’t have a lot of money for ads, maybe you have like a couple hundred dollars a month that you could spend on visibility ads, well, that’s not gonna get you a lot of sales because you need the lead generation, you need the sales.

So in that beginning phase, what I teach is three main steps. First year messaging. Hands down, you’ll hear me say it a hundred times on here and in my webinars everywhere, because your messaging is key. Emotional connection to your ideal customer. The problem you’re gonna solve, how you’re gonna solve it, the way you’re gonna explain it, the most important part of your marketing, whether you’re running ads or not, then we have your offer.

It’s gotta be an irresistible offer. I am telling you, marketing is so easy when you have an offer that you can put in front of your ideal customer, and when they see it, they go. I have to buy that, like that will solve my problem. That will get me to where I wanna go. That’s a no brainer when you have those two things.

Everything else you do becomes easy. And now once you have those two things, your options are, you use ads to send people through a funnel to get leads to bring them to your offer. And that doesn’t require your time because your ads run all day while you are not having to manage, you know, you manage them, but you’re not actively running them.

Or you have to start conversations. So in my new product that I created Launch it is stemmed from a previous program I used to have called Emerge, which is where I teach this strategy. Your messaging, your offer, and your offer positioning. Have at least 50 strategic conversations with your ideal customer.

I’m not saying cold DM people. There’s a way that I go about it that creates connection. It creates the ability to start a conversation and then hopefully lead people to your offer. That also becomes a numbers game, right? You have 50 conversations. Let’s say 15 people respond. Out of those 15 people, five are interested in your offering, you sell two.

Okay? That is also not me saying just post on organic social media and hope that it works, but it is you having to invest a significant amount of time in having conversations. You, there’s a whole strategy. I teach how, where to find people, how to start the connections. There’s like scripts that I give, so this is my whole launch.

Process that I teach. Okay. That is using the resource of time. You’re not running ads, you’re not investing money, you’re investing the time. If you look at that and you say, I don’t have the time, right? Like, you’ve got another business, whatever, you don’t have the time for whatever reason, okay? Then you have.

Have to invest the resource of money. Now we get to skip the conversation piece. Or maybe you’ve already done that in your business, and now you can start ads and you can run ads to a lead generation and it’s doing the same exact thing. When you get someone to sign up for a lead gen download, or you get someone to sign up for a webinar, you’re creating a connection, not having a one-on-one conversation, but you’re creating that connection.

You’re creating that opportunity for someone to connect with you, understand how you can solve their problem. Then potentially buy your offer. It’s just in a more automated way. Both options become a numbers game, right? We have 50 conversations, 15 reply, five are interested to buy. We have a lead generation.

We get a hundred leads, 20 people watch our webinar. From there, three people buy. It becomes a numbers game. What does that mean? It’s got predictability behind it. Okay? You are in the driver’s seat. You are saying, here is my strategy and my goal becomes I have X amount of conversations, or I need to get this many leads in my funnel.

You are not saying. Let me just start creating endless amounts of content on social media. Let me just post and I’ll just hope that the right person sees it and I’ll just hope that it grows my business. And there is so many people that think that should be their business strategy. That’s not you in the driver’s seat.

That is not you taking control of your marketing. So those are your two options. You can either go and kind of hustle and have conversations, and both could be temporary strategies. The the second one of the funnel should be a longer term strategy like. You’re gonna have that forever. The beginning. I teach this in launch, it’s like this is not your forever strategy.

This is for right now. So you can get your initial sales so you can invest back in your business so you can start running ads. So anyways, I got this DM this last weekend, and it was from someone who said. I have taken your challenge multiple times, my free challenge, taking your challenge multiple times, and I never launched my visibility ad, which that’s my challenge.

It’s to launch your visibility ad, which is a content ad to reach at least a thousand of your ideal customers in three days. It’s a free challenge. We’re actually running one. When this episode comes out, there will be a challenge happening very soon, so you can go to embodied marketing.com/challenge. It is my most IPO popular free experience that I run because we actually get your ad live and then we attract your ideal customer with that ad.

And it’s a super small ad spend because it’s visibility ad, so you’re spending $5 a day super small. Actually, this challenge too, we’re doing something really cool, which is pairing some interactive components. With ai, with it to help you write your script for your content, write your ad copy, so it’s gonna be awesome.

It’s free. Anyway, she messaged me. I’ve taken your challenge multiple times. I got scared and didn’t launch my visibility ad and spend money on it, but I really need to make sales and she said this because this is gonna matter. I’m gonna come back to this. She said, I am broke af. And I really need to make sales.

So should I launch visibility ads? And here’s my answer to her. Actually, no. If you are in a state where you really need to make sales right now, and you don’t have money to invest, you need to go through the process that I teach and launch, which is. Your messaging, your irresistible offer, and then have the conversations.

Visibility ads are not gonna get you sales overnight. That’s a longer game. That’s building your audience so we can nurture your audience so that they can become leads so that you can have conversations with them down the future. It’s, that’s not a this week, next week sales strategy. It’s a very important part of your strategy.

It can absolutely lead to sales, and every business should have visibility ads. They’re something I run every day of the year. But if you’re in this position as an entrepreneur going, I really need to make sales ASAP, this idea of starting ads is going to be my magical solution is not reality. Ads are an amplifier.

So as a business owner, this individual needs to sit there and go, well, I clearly don’t have the resource of money. So I’ve gotta invest the resource of time and a strategy. And I am telling you the three places that you invest that is first year messaging, then your offer and your offer positioning, and then you go have as many conversations as you possibly can with ideal customers and you will make sales.

And here’s the crazy thing I’m telling you, there’s not a lot of people willing to do this. There are people that I tell this strategy to and they’re like, well, I don’t have time to go have all those conversations. And I’m like, okay, but you also don’t have money to invest, so do you wanna grow your business?

So you’ve gotta weigh that, the resource of time, the resource of money, and where you’re at in your business. The ladder of creating the, the funnel, the lead gen funnel and the visibility ads and that leading to your offer, that’s a critical part to your marketing. The having conversations that’s only gonna work for so long, right?

That that isn’t scalable. We can’t have hundreds of conversations a week and run a business and deliver a product and be a visionary and all those things. This is to get you to that next milestone. Because you are saying, I do not have the resource of money and I need to validate my offer. So that’s the first thing and and this is something that I think you can use in your business a lot.

Like I will do this of, okay, we’ve got this new product we’re gonna launch, or we’ve got this project we’re working on. Do we have, whether it’s not even just me, but as a team, do we have more of the resource of time or money? And I will weigh that all the time. Okay. If we don’t have time, if our team is at capacity, if I am at capacity, we need to hire more help, or we need to invest more in X, Y, Z.

If we have team members with capacity, we need to fill that capacity. We have the resource of time. So it’s a very important question to ask yourself and then be realistic with the expectations, because I also feel like entrepreneurs get into this place where they’re like, well, I don’t have the time or the money.

Well, you gotta create space in one of ’em. If you’re gonna create something new, something has to give. So if you’re telling me I have absolutely no money to invest in ads, but you have absolutely no time to go have conversations, what’s your expectation of how this is gonna work? And having that real conversation with yourself.

Okay. The second piece of this message that I think is very important, very important in this message, she said, I am broke af. Okay. I know that’s real for her. I know that she probably feels that way. What is happening is she is showing up as an entrepreneur who’s broke. So what does that mean if you are telling yourself, I am a broke person?

I don’t have money there. There is not enough things are scarce and this, you could be doing this in a way, I’ve done this to myself, not when I’m broke, but when maybe payroll’s tight or you know, the cashflow that month is tight. I’ll tell myself I. We don’t have enough cash. And for the longest time I would, I would be like, but that’s a fact.

Like people would push me on that. And I’m like, no, that’s a fact. I don’t have enough cash to cover the payroll because we have three payrolls this month instead of two. And while yes, that is true, do I not have enough cash to cover it? Could I create more cash? Is there a reality where I have a surplus of cash even on a three payroll month?

Is there a reality where she has the amount of money she has, whatever that is, it doesn’t sound like it’s a lot and creates more money and makes sales very quickly. Here’s the, here’s the struggle, here’s the problem she’s gonna run into. If you are operating and saying, I’m broke. I don’t have enough. I’m not successful yet.

Things are scarce. Then what? Then what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna make decisions. You’re gonna show up. You are going to be the entrepreneur who’s broke and I’m calling this person out ’cause this is gonna help so much. But so her message said, every time my visibility ad challenge, she went through the whole process.

She invested the time to go through the entire process, and then she didn’t launch her ads because she got scared. Because she is showing up as the business owner and as the CEO who’s broke. So of course she got scared ’cause she’s telling herself, we don’t have enough money for this. We can’t do this.

It’s not gonna work. We, we are broke. And therefore the decisions, the thoughts, the beliefs, the actions, all of that is in alignment with that identity. So. The most important thing you can do is choose a different identity, choose a different future, and I asked her this question. I said, if you already had the money you needed, I’m not talking like you had a million dollars overnight.

Okay, A realistic amount. Let’s say it’s $5,000. Have you had that? If I gave you $5,000 right now, this person, if I gave you that overnight and you had that money, then what decisions would you make? How would you show up? Like literally energetically? How would you show up as a CEO? I guarantee you it’d be completely different than how you’re showing up right now.

And so why do you think that you can show up the way you’re showing up now, saying, I’m broke and things are scarce, and I’m scared to do this and not take action because of a place of scarcity. Why do you think you can do that, but then have this other reality where that is no longer your reality? And I’m telling you guys, like this is the most powerful thing you can shift as a CEO, is the identity you carry.

And I realized this when I had a mentor and I was sitting there, it was at a retreat like, I don’t know, maybe three years ago at an event, a business event. I was sitting there with a mentor and there’s two months outta the year that have three payrolls. My payroll is quite a large amount of cash and for the longest time, like since I grew my team, I would dread those months.

Like I would be like resentful, like must be nice, you know, to my team. They get, they get paid and I don’t, which is just like such a silly thing for me to say because I. I’m so grateful to my team. Right? And that’s just the way it falls. We pay out every two weeks, two months outta the years, got three payrolls.

It’s a big extra amount of cash every month. And so I would operate from this place where I would expect that we are not gonna have, we’re gonna be in the red. And I would talk like that. I’d be like, yep. You know, July, whatever. That’s the month. It’s not actually this month, but July is the month that we have three payrolls.

And so therefore. We’re gonna be in the red. We can’t invest in this, we can’t do a big launch, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I finally had a mentor who was like, but Emily, is that a fact that because there’s three payrolls, you won’t have extra cash? And I argued and I was like, yeah, because it’s an extra, you know.

Tens of thousands of dollars. I think my payroll at the time was like, 50 grand a payroll. I’m like, yeah, because it’s extra 50 grand. Like, how am I gonna create that? And she’s like, so are you telling me that if you, if I told you you had to create 50 grand extra this month, you couldn’t do it? And I was like, no.

I could, like if, if I was on a mission and you told me I had to do that, I could do it. Okay. So then is it a fact. On the three payroll months, you are gonna be in a negative cash place. No, you’re choosing that reality right. That was, that’s just one example of where we get ourselves into this state, where we think it’s reality.

And this person who messaged me, I know it’s real for her. I know that she believes she’s so broke and desperate and needs to create sales and has that just like urgency. I get it. I’ve been there. We all have as entrepreneurs, but only you can choose and say, okay, if I waved a magic wand and I no longer had this situation, I wasn’t desperate, I wasn’t broke, I had sales coming in.

I trusted that sales were gonna come in. I saw that I could do that. What would I do differently? You’ve gotta make that decision today and don’t sit there and tell me, well, she doesn’t have money, so she can’t do it. She can figure it out. We all can, right? Maybe it’s a thousand dollars loan. Maybe it is.

Going and having the conversations. Maybe it’s thinking about a different strategy and saying, if I make three sales, then I’m gonna take that and I’m gonna invest in this. But I guarantee you she would show up differently. So I sent her back a message. I gave her her answer on her marketing strategy, and then I said, and I’m gonna give you this unsolicited advice.

Stop saying you’re broke af. Stop saying that about yourself because that’s causing you to show up as a CEO who’s going to continue to stay broke. And no wonder, I didn’t actually say this, but no wonder you didn’t launch the visibility ads in my challenge because you’re operating outta fear because you’re telling yourself every day that you’re broke.

So the identity that you carry as a CEO is so important because that identity dictates everything. Your feelings, your emotions, your beliefs, your thoughts, your actions, your decisions, your leadership, your energy, all of it. And guess what? We get to choose that identity. We do only us, so. That’s the second piece I wanted to talk about and something you guys can go do is like really think about what is the identity that I hold?

I’m gonna do this at my event with the attendees soon, is how do I show up as a CEO? Like what are the beliefs that I hold about time, about money, about my business, about growth, about team, and like what is that identity that I’m choosing to carry each day? Last piece of this podcast that I just wanna talk about and touch on is ai, because I’ve been wanting to talk about this.

I think I’ll do a separate just podcast on this. But I just wanna share a couple of things to get your wheels turning my thoughts on ai. Shared, I’ve shared about our software product that I created in six days. That’s crushing it by the way. Like I get so happy when I hear people who come to me and are like, I bought Launch.

It’s amazing. I’ve rewritten my entire website. I’ve made sales pages with it because I built it in six days and I, you know, I was working. But like to actually see people come in and use it and multiple successful case studies of it is incredible. But I am currently transforming all my offers, including our done for you, building something out for that, and even thinking about lead generation in this way.

So I just want to get your wheels turning. I think with ai, I. Every digital product, every service is going to have to change because it’s not about, it’s not about let’s use AI to become more efficient for just us and our team. I think some people look at AI that way, like, how do I make my team more efficient?

How do I make myself more efficient? Yes, it’s true. I mean, it is an efficiency tool in many ways, but it’s also about speed and ease for the consumer. So if we think about like a service business, right? You need to make it even easier for the consumer to experience your service. If we think about a digital product business, when you’re delivering now a course in a material and trainings in a workbook, like that’s not gonna be a thing soon because that’s.

Not easy and fast for the person consuming it. So my prediction is that all these digital products are going to become platforms and systems and your. Proprietary system that you teach, whether that’s in your service that your team delivers, whether that’s a digital product you know, physical products will be a little bit different, I think.

I think AI will be more integrated in your internal systems and, you know, with the delivery of the products. But when you think about a digital product and the, you know. Experience that you create now you ask yourself the question of how can I make getting to the outcome I’m promising in this product or with this service easier and faster by taking my systems and my content and pairing that with AI technology.

And then that becomes your system, your platform. And I think it’s actually less about, I. I’m discovering with, with my launch product as my first test with this, that it’s actually less about the fact that the user is utilizing AI and more about how I created my content to be paired with AI to create an outcome for them.

So it’s about the fact that my platform that I created can write a sales page for you, can come up with content ideas for you. The user doesn’t care about ai, which this is. This is in alignment with what I teach, which is they don’t care about the features. Your buyer doesn’t care about the features.

They care about the end result, so they care about the fact that now you can, with a click of a button, have a sales page written for you. Using my entire template, using my entire strategy. Using my messaging questions, using my proprietary system and process that I teach in messaging, offer positioning and sales page development, and with a click of the button, have a sales page created for you.

The user doesn’t care that it’s ai. I just used it to do that. So I think, I honestly think almost every digital product is going to change in the next year drastically. And the faster you get on board with creating this, like I even think that there’s a direction we may go where we do this for some of our clients that need to kind of reevaluate their products.

I’m also gonna be testing this with lead generation because think about, you know, having someone read A PDF anymore. It, there’s no need. You could get a tool that does something for them. It’s about the speed and ease. I think that’s something we really need to, we really need to hone in on with ai, right?

The value, so to speak. And the, the reason why so many people are gonna be forced to use it is because if you don’t, you’re gonna fall behind of all the other people that are using it because of the speed. At which you can now produce. So when you look at your product or your service, how can you create using AI blended with your proprietary methods and your systems?

How can you blend all of that with AI and create an experience that produces the outcome somebody wants? ’cause they’re still gonna want that outcome. Even with ai, they’re still gonna want that outcome. How can you produce that faster and easier? So I predict even that our service business is gonna go from a service and people buying in on a service to people buying a system.

I’m building that system right now, and it’s gonna evolve a lot, but that transformation is gonna be huge. It’s exciting. It’s, I think, the, the beginning of a lot of this, but I would really challenge you to start questioning how you can, adopt this in the delivery of what you’re offering and not just in the form of custom GPTs or you know, your team using AI and creating efficiency, but how do you create that efficiency for your buyer?

And there’s a lot of opportunity for creativity right now. So you’re gonna see me try some really cool things, like I said, for our upcoming free challenge. If I can pull this off and it all works how I want it to. We are going to create this into an interactive experience versus how we have before, which is just a page with the recordings, which is awesome, but there’s workbooks and I wanna take the workbooks out and I wanna make each day more interactive because what will that do?

What’s the benefit of that faster and easier outcome? Same outcome that I promise, which is get your visibility ads live. Attract a thousand or more ideal customers in four days, same outcome. Easier and with less effort because that is the result of ai. So you as a creator and as a visionary of your business and of a creator of that outcome that you create for people, you have to come up with what that experience is.

So I’m gonna be talking about this at my live event, workshopping on it, and then we’re playing with a bunch of things so we can also help our clients with it, because I do think. Most digital products, most offers are going to be massively changing in the next year. It’s happening so much faster than I think a lot of us really thought it would happen.

Yeah. So, all right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast episode. I feel like it got a little spicy. I hope you have some things you can take away and think about. Thank you so much for tuning in and I’ll talk to you guys next time.