As a quietly ambitious business owner, I don’t always pause to celebrate the things that matter.
For a long time, I thought success required big, high-ticket offers. But when I began creating smaller, softer, more accessible offers, something shifted and I’ve now supported over 8,000 students!
At the start, a number like this felt impossible. And yet here we are – not by pushing harder, but because I embraced work that feels true for me, and learning what actually creates sustainable reach and resonance.
So yes… I’m celebrating this. Quietly. Proudly. And in this episode, I’m sharing the real story of how I got here – the shifts, the choices, the lessons, and the parts we don’t always talk about.
Prefer to read the transcript? Click here
Ruth Poundwhite [00:00:00]:
A few years ago, the idea of serving thousands of students felt completely impossible for me. I was exhausted, often feeling overwhelmed and stuck in the feast or famine cycle. I didn’t know how I would have the energy to reach even more people. But everything changed when I rebuilt my business around rhythms that actually supported me with steadier systems in the background and sales strategies that honored my energy, which is what today’s episode is all about. Welcome to the Soulful Sales show where we talk about believing in the value of your offers, getting them in front of your right people and selling more of what you do in your unique way. Hi and welcome back to another episode of the Soulful Sales Show. So I noticed something when I logged into my ThriveCart account recently that I have now supported over 8,000 students in my business and I wanted to come and talk about the journey to getting there because I’m actually really proud of it. I did not used to run just a couple of years ago, I did not used to run a volume based business.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:01:07]:
I used to do higher ticket offers with fewer people. And I’m really proud of taking a scary, brave decision to move towards more of a lower ticket, one to many model and do it without the constant hustling, without being everywhere. Like I quit most of social media in the process and getting out of that big launch, feast and famine, crash out and repeat it all kind of cycle that I did find myself in sometimes before I made this decision. Now don’t get me wrong, it has not all been easy. There are still times when it feels hard. But overall I have figured out a way to sell and to serve way more people in my business in a way that honors my energy, that honors my sensitivity, that honors my physical capacity and all of the responsibilities that I have in my life. So I wanted to talk about all of the actions I took that added up to this. The systems I’ve created, the rhythms that I’ve leaned into and kind of breaking out of that feast or famine.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:02:17]:
So let’s get straight into it. Let’s talk about that feast or famine cycle because I know that so many of us feel this right? It’s when you start a new month in your business, you’re like, oh my goodness, I’m starting from scratch again. It’s exhausting. How am I going to make this work? It’s when you’re relying on a couple of big launches a year and they don’t go the way you plan and you’re like, what on earth am I supposed to do now? Or they do go the way you plan and it feels great until it doesn’t and that money runs out. Right? It’s that kind of stuff. Stopping star energy, those bursts of being on, of making big things happen and then realizing you’ve pushed yourself way too hard and you actually need to disappear. So you stop putting stuff out there and you stop that momentum that had been building up. It’s the overthinking, the spiraling, the second guessing, then toll on your body and your nervous system.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:03:12]:
And ultimately it can lead to losing faith in what you do, losing faith in your capacity, losing faith in your ability to sustain, sustain it. Even if it is kind of working and feeling like you should be better than this. Can you resonate with any of that feeling? Because it’s certainly been my reality and I still, I, I need to make this crystal clear. I don’t think it would be normal to never feel these things. I think it is normal to feel this stuff. It’s when you are feeling it consistently month to month that you know something has to change in your business. And I really felt this a couple of years ago when I realized that my body and my mind could not take the way that I was launching and you know, doing the high ticket offers. So my high ticket offers were great.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:04:03]:
And I actually think, I still believe, actually I’m not against high ticket. I mean, okay, I’m not going to get into it all here. I am against some forms of high ticket and especially the way that they are marketed. I’m not going to get into all of that now. But high ticket as a whole, no, I’m not against it. And I do believe we need charge more for our, you know, one to one or you know, more direct attention when we work with people in very close settings. And I do think it served my business really well because it meant that when I had a smaller audience I could still make a more sustainable income. However, I was being directed by coaches I was working with at the time to do that big launch cycle and you know, those really, really energetic launches.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:04:46]:
And the coach I was working with a very energetic person, not like me. And I found that they worked to an extent. And I’m not against doing an energetic launch either. I’m adding a lot of caveats here because basically I’m not dead against anything that I’m talking about here, but I am talking about reshaping it in a way that worked better for me. I would do these bigger launches, they would really help me to grow my audience, connect with my audience, sell my high ticket offers, but the energy of them took a huge toll. And if they didn’t go the way that I planned, that was scary. And this was the problem with it, the cycle of it. After a few cycles of it not going how I wanted it to go, it was hitting me harder and harder.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:05:36]:
Meanwhile, at the same time I was doing like bunch of one to one calls a week, my calendar was really busy, I was getting on lives, I was doing all of these things when really what I have come to learn about myself is that having a full calendar and doing a lot of live stuff where I have to show my face is very, very exhausting to me and my body. I have since this time realized that I am almost certainly neurodivergent. I always knew I was highly sensitive and introverted and I had chronic fatigue. So all of these things combined mean that having a busy calendar, having a high pressure launch cycle and, and being on face to face calls or lives isn’t the best model for me. And I reached this turning point where I realized something really had to change. And the good news is that as well as running these bigger launches for my high ticket programs, I was actually creating self study courses as I went at the same time. So I am grateful for the fact that I did have something to work with. I did have some assets that I could ask myself how can I sell more of this without being on more calls, without exerting more energy? And this actually had been a goal of mine for a long time.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:06:51]:
But I never was able to prioritize it the way that I wanted because you know, my time and energy was being taken up with the, the calls and the, and the launches and all of that stuff. But I realized it came to a point where it was no longer so sustainable for me to continue the way that I was going. So I made a decision a couple of years ago to really prioritize more one to many offers to prioritize offers that could be self study that I didn’t have to deliver live. So even when I was doing for example a course with four modules, I was doing it like every week. I was showing up live. That was not sustainable for me either. And I really made an effort to launch in a much more low key way. And I perfected what I call the art of laid back launching.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:07:38]:
Now don’t get me wrong, not everything I do in my business is laid back. You have probably seen me doing very non laid back things like my summits, but I’m really, really intentional about them. And my whole Business does not ride on them. And that is the key that has allowed me to work with over 8,000 students, some of which have come from free bundles, but many of which are paying customers because of the systems that I’ve set up behind the scenes and to break free of this feast or famine. And actually, I’m going to share with you a few key elements of how I did this along the way. So the first one actually is not to do with the sales strategies at all, but actually I really needed to share this with you. And in fact, I have recorded a, a podcast episode about this behind the scenes, but I’ve felt too nervous to release it because the truth is I really messed up in terms of managing the money in my business. And this is something that so many of us do not talk about and you won’t see from the outside, but from the inside and from my perspective, it has been so, so important as a foundation for everything else that I’m going to share with you in this episode.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:08:46]:
So I basically had to transform and rebuild my relationship with money after really messing up and taking too much money out of my limited company, which then meant I had to take way less money out of my company and pay myself a lot less and felt very tight in, in my finances for a while. I had to rebuild this relationship with money. I had to forgive myself for the mistakes that I had made, which, by the way, I think actually so much more common than we think. And when I had spoken to my accountant about it, she told me, no, it does happen. And I spoke to someone else in business about it for my massive success summit. And she did the exact same thing as me. And it was just so great to know that we’re not alone. So I had to forgive myself for that.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:09:27]:
I had to get really honest about the numbers. I went through absolutely everything I was spending, everything I was bringing in. I got rid of anything unessential. I got very, very clear on what my baseline was. If I was going to pay myself a certain salary and take a certain amount of dividends and pay for all of my business expenses, what was the minimum amount that I need to earn monthly to do that? And then I built up savings behind the scenes in my business. So I use Starling bank for my business account. They have, like, money pots. I have different pots for different expenses in the business.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:09:59]:
And tax, by the way, which I had also not been as on top of as I should have been. And I have pots for all of this stuff. And I basically set a goal and it Took me a while to get here to save multiple months of my salary and expenses, to take me from a place of month to month, thinking how can I make enough? How can I sell enough to pay my salary, to pay my expenses, to eventually getting to this point of knowing I’m already covered, like whether I make enough this specific month or not, I’m already covered. And actually that was such a helpful shift because the truth is in business there are months where we don’t make that much. And even this year, I think it was in July. I’ve had one of my lowest months in business for years in July. And it’s really easy to look at a month like that and totally panic and make it a story when the truth is actually this year my numbers are up. But that month, oh, it was not nice to see.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:10:52]:
But we, we don’t like our business. It’s not built like on individual months, it’s built over time. So building up my salary, building up those savings pots, knowing that it doesn’t rest on any individual month has been very, very important for my nervous system and feeling safe basically. So I really wanted to give a shout out for the money practices before I dive into the practical sales stuff. Okay, so there are also, There are, there are basically a few key pillars I would say that really allowed me to make this shift to go from the feast or famine high ticket to a more predictable. I won’t say it’s predictable though, and definitely 2025. Sometimes I am baffled at how some things do and how other things don’t do well. But it is more predictable in the sense that I’ve layered on a number of strategies that if one thing does not do well, there’s always something else going on there.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:11:48]:
So much better for my nervous system and so much better for that, you know, safety with money and everything. So I would say that the kind of pillars of what I built up to make this possible have been number one, laid back launching. This was really the first thing that I had to master in order to create some momentum and bring some money in because it was very scary closing down my higher ticket group coaching program. It was, it was very scary knowing that I didn’t want to work with so many one to one clients and not know what I was replacing it with. So I really quickly needed to build up that momentum with self study offers, one to many offers in a way that wasn’t exhausting, in a way that wasn’t exhausting by perfecting what I call laid back launching. So basically creating a Plan repurposing past launch content, scheduling the emails in advance and, and doing a launch based on pre scheduled emails that is so much less energy intensive. So that was the, that was the first thing I really had to get in the habit of. And when I had, I think I did the first one and I brought in like 7k and I, my mind was blown because I was like this was the easiest launch ever.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:13:01]:
Like I just reused old emails and scheduled them in advance. I kind of forgot I was launching. So that kind of blew my mind and was a really early win. Not all of them do so well and you know, that’s okay as well if you’re layering in, you know, the other strategies as well. So laid back launching was really, really key to make it more of a kind of predictable, repeatable rhythm. Then I would say what I call holistic launching is, you know, being aware of my own real life cycles and when it feels right to stretch my energy and be more visible and do something more intense versus seasons where I absolutely don’t want to be doing that. And I, and I plan in usually a couple of times in a year, something bigger. Lately it has been my summit.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:13:49]:
So in 2025 I’ve done two summits. I’m planning the next summit in a few months time in Q1 of 2026. That is definitely my big thing for you. It might be something different but yeah, that’s my big energy intensive visible thing. Then I also have a couple of kind of bigger sales like my birthday sale and the Black Friday sale that I’m not doing loads of live stuff for but is a bit more intense in terms of the setup behind the scenes. And then in between that I’m really, I have those kind of big rocks that are kind of fixed in that I am preparing for a bit further in advance. And then in between that it’s really based on how is my energy feeling? Do I feel like doing a special offer here, do I feel like doing a new course or new workshop there? And, and really watching my energy. And when I say holistic launching, that is holistic because it takes into account my business goals, of course, which is the most common way to talk about why we would launch, the way we launch.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:14:45]:
But it also takes into account my body, my capacity and my feelings and my mindset. So that has been really, really key for me as well. And then the third thing I would say is the soft selling, the behind the scenes invitations, the systems that are set up to keep, keep me in conversation with my audience Even when I’m not there. So, for example, my evergreen email sequences the way that I sell one offer off the back of another, or I have, you know, a funnel behind the scenes that someone signs up for a freebie and then gets promoted to sign up to something else for me as well. It’s been a big goal of me this year and I’m just ramping it up at the end of this year and I’m going, really going for it in 2026. And I actually am going to have a behind the scenes product if you want to kind of get my insider behind the scenes diary on doing this. But. But more Facebook ads and funnels in that sense as well.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:15:40]:
And also, I guess, you know, a really important point to share in addition to all of this is that I have been very intentional about growing my audience. Very, very intentional about growing my audience. Now, it does help that I run my own summits. So I know that once or twice a year I’m gonna have, you know, like a thousand or more people joining my list from my own summits. But I also put myself forward for podcasts, I put myself forward for bundles. I put myself forward for other people’s summits because they are so much easier to take part of other people’s than it is to run my own. So that really underpins everything. And always prioritizing my email list behind the scenes as well, I set up systems to support me to do a lot of the things that I’ve talked about with a lot more ease.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:16:22]:
So I have created a whole AI team that is trained on my business. And I actually have a course on this called the AI Support Team. I am so proud of that course. It has been so much fun to put it together and share it with you to. To help you write emails that are in your voice to help you plan strategy. Because that’s a real sticking point for me sometimes, the overthinking, the spinning my wheels because I’m not sure what to do next, brainstorming offers and all of that stuff. I also really worked on my ability to send emails more quickly. And this did take practice.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:16:55]:
And this is something I talked about in an earlier episode, but I challenged myself in Q4 of 2024 to send an email every single day for a month. And that challenge was transformative because it forced me to set up evergreen email systems to make that easier. I also got really serious about training AI in my voice to help me write the content. And just the nature of practicing every single day made me so much better. And quicker at writing emails. So you can kind of see there’s the sales strategies piece and then there’s the behind the scenes systems that support it, the emails, the audience growth, the AI and systems and the money and as well. And where I am at this point is I can see the huge difference that implementing this has made. Like, with hindsight, it is so clear to me that firstly, it all started from a very difficult decision to let go of my higher ticket offers.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:17:47]:
And I am now able to make sales even when my capacity is low. I am able to have a really terrible month like the months I had in July, because I always have other things going on and it kind of evens out and makes up for it in other months. I feel so much safer and less stressed in my business. I have set up the money behind the scenes that I am not literally trying to earn the money month to month to pay for what I need to pay for that month, which is such a stressful place to be in. And if you are there now, like, just know that it can get better. It can. It does take time, but it can get better. And I remember feeling really, really crappy about it when I first messed up with the money, that I had taken too much out of my business.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:18:28]:
But now I’m actually really grateful for that experience because it made me so much better at managing my money. But it did take time. And yeah, my business is so much more sustainable. It’s also allowed me to get much more creative with the offers that I put out there and explore different aspects to my work. Like, for example, the AI support team offers something quite different to what I’ve done before and I really, really loved doing it. And it’s because I have these other offers that I’ve layered up over time. And I will say, by the way, you don’t just start with a bunch of offers like I. You do have to layer them up one by one.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:19:01]:
And it can feel hard and slow at first, but at some point you will look back and think, I have this body of work and I have this stuff that I can sell without me needing to be there. And it makes such a huge difference. Such a huge difference. And what I want to share with you before we wrap up is that next week we are coming up for Black Friday and I have something very special. In fact, I have a series of offers designed to help you build all of this for yourself as well, to build your own more predictable and safe sales rhythm for the rest of 2025 and into 2026. And beyond. So we have practical support like the AI support team. We have sales support, we have tools to help you do it.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:19:47]:
I’m going to share with you more info soon. But if you want to get the list of everything that’s included in this Black Friday sale, you’re going to get the list in advance so that you can make an informed decision. So basically I’m going to have one offer every day from the 24th of November up to actual Black Friday. So 24th is the Monday before Black Friday. I’m going to have an offer every day until actual Black Friday. There’s a really exciting new thing coming on that fifth day on Black Friday. They’re only available available for 24 hours each. But if you sign up to the wait list, firstly you are going to get a list of what all the offers are in advance so you don’t have to make the decision within 24 hours.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:20:29]:
You can actually make your decision earlier and know what’s coming. And secondly, there’s going to be an extra special bonus for anyone who has signed up for the wait list and then goes on to buy anything from the Black Friday sale. So it yeah, the the overarching theme of what I’m doing for Black Friday this year is to help you break out of the feast or famine and build a more predictable sales rhythm for yourself going forward. This is something I want for all of us because I know the toll it takes when you are in that feast or famine. High energy and then crashing out. It’s really, really hard. So I hope that this episode has been inspiring for you to, you know, see a way out or just to feel less alone. But make sure you sign up to the Black Friday wait list to get that list of what’s coming and the link to sign up to that is going to be in the show notes.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:21:18]:
It’s also going to be in every email that I’m sending out at the moment. Or you can go to ruthpoundwhite.com/bf2025 ruthpoundwhite.com/bf2025 to sign up to the wait list. And I think the next episode is coming out on Black Friday so I will see you then. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Soulful Sales. If you have a moment to rate and review, know that it really does make a difference and if you would like to carry on the conversation then you can connect with me in the free Soulful Sales community at ruthpoundwhite.com community or my personal favorite. Join me inside the Soulful Sales society membership at ruthpoundwhite.com/membership and keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.
“…I’m really proud of taking a scary, brave decision to move towards more of a lower ticket, one-to-many model and do it without the constant hustling, without being everywhere.”
Show Notes
A few years ago, serving thousands of students felt completely out of reach. I was exhausted, caught in feast-or-famine, and couldn’t imagine having the energy to grow. Everything shifted when I rebuilt my business around rhythms and systems that actually supported me, not the other way around.
In this episode, I’m sharing the turning point that changed everything: the real behind-the-scenes of walking away from high-pressure launches and into a business that feels spacious, sustainable, and steady.
I’ll take you through the systems, money practices, and energetic rhythms that helped me serve over 8,000 students without burning out, so you can see what’s possible for your own version of ease, expansion, and self-trust.
What I talk about in this episode:
- Breaking free from the feast-or-famine cycle
- Shifting from high-ticket fatigue to one-to-many offers
- The money practices that rebuilt my foundation
- Laid-back + holistic launching rhythms
- Systems that support sales even on low-capacity days
[08:27] “The truth is, I really messed up in terms of managing the money in my business. And this is something that so many of us do not talk about and you won’t see from the outside, but from the inside and from my perspective, it has been so, so important as a foundation for everything else that I’m going to share with you in this episode.”
[17:48] “I am now able to make sales even when my capacity is low. I am able to have a really terrible month, like the month I had in July, because I always have other things going on, and it kind of evens out and makes up for it in other months. I feel so much safer and less stressed in my business.”
Links from this episode:
- Join the Black Friday Waitlist (for a Bonus & To Get the List of Offers In Advance)
- Soulful Sales Society Membership
- The AI Support Team course
Thanks for listening!
