Stefanie Gass is a Christian business and podcast coach, boundary boss, and seven-figure CEO. She helps women grow their online businesses and make consistent income, using podcasting.
She is the host of a top 20 globally ranked business podcast, Online Business for Christian Women.
She believes it’s possible to partner with God to create income and impact without sacrificing your family, faith, or buying into the social media hustle.
Company: Stefanie Gass
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company
Stefanie Gass: I am a Christian business and podcast coach, boundary boss, and seven-figure CEO. I help women grow their online businesses and make consistent income, using podcasting.
I am the host of a top 20 globally ranked business podcast, Online Business for Christian Women.
I have helped thousands of women plan and launch successful podcasts which are now top-of-funnel lead generation for their offers. I have helped dozens of my students grow into six and seven-figure businesses (completely fueled by their podcasts!).
I believe it’s possible to partner with God to create income and impact without sacrificing your family, faith, or buying into the social media hustle.
When I’m not recording my podcast or meeting with students, I can be found mountain biking with my husband and 2 boys, eating New Mexican food, whipping up (another) oatmilk latte, or traveling with my family.
What were the most significant challenges you faced during the scaling process, and how did you overcome them?
Stefanie Gass: The hardest challenges we faced while scaling were understanding how critically important it is to simplify and get critically clear on exactly what the pain point is that your product is solving, so it did take a lot of testing, revising, optimizing, and re-launching. Also, during scaling, a big pain point was expanding beyond our own organic audiences and reach, and stepping into the arena of paid traffic. That is definitely a different beast, and it took us multiple tries to understand how to scale beyond people who already know, like, and trust you. We overcame and continue to overcome these challenges by pressing into market research, to deep dive with our existing client base, and to optimize our product offerings. We also continued to refine the paid traffic testing process until we found a systematic approach that worked for us.
How did you ensure that your company culture remained intact as your business expanded?
Stefanie Gass: This is a phenomenal question, and I think I would say it really came down to A LOT of communication. As you expand, you do experience growing pains. We did experience a small level of turnover, which consistently shakes up your efficiency and your operations. We focused on team meetings, communication, and we also relied heavily on prayer and coming back to our value system and morals – the things we believe in and stand for as a company – that way, we could stay true to why we were doing what we were doing.
What strategies did you employ to maintain quality and customer satisfaction while scaling rapidly?
Stefanie Gass: We made sure that we had an in-depth training process, SOPs, and procedures for how to communicate with our top of funnel leads all the way through our repeat clients and customers. We do employ “the customer’s always right” mentality, but maintain our own boundaries in that process. We also have a thorough management process where the contractors managing the inbox or dealing with students are consistent – they’re consistently communicated with about best practices. Work is checked to make sure that we maintain a level of excellence at all times when communicating with our customers.
Can you share a specific turning point that was crucial for your business’s successful scaling?
Stefanie Gass: As an online business, what became really truly a game changer for us is understanding the climate of urgency in buyer behavior, so as we begin to shift from a more evergreen, “join anytime” model that we were relying on heavily, to more of a live launch, live masterclass model a few times a year, we DID see a significant increase in our revenue. I attribute this to the fact that buyers are looking for a fully immersive, exciting experience that is going to get them to a deep level of trust in a short amount of time. As we turned to the live training models and really going deep with people in a short sprint of time, sprinkled with some urgency and a reason to purchase, we did see a significant increase in conversion.
How did you manage the financial aspects of scaling, particularly in securing funding and maintaining cash flow?
Stefanie Gass: I’m proud to say that as the CEO of this company for the past six years, we are completely self-funded. I really attribute that to focusing on products that have a higher profit margin in the online space, and are scalable in numbers. Also, keeping a very close tab on cash flow – not only on an annual basis, but on a monthly basis – doing a deep dive of every financial, and not trying to manage finances in-house, but getting the proper expertise from accounting to bookkeeping to financial advisement to help us continue to be smart and wise with our cash.
