Creating Balance as a 7 Figure Introvert with Sabrina Philipp

[00:00:00] Emma-Louise: Yeah. Hi guys, welcome to this week’s episode of the ambitious introvert podcast. I’m Emma Louise, and I have a, another epically successful ambitious introvert here to chat with me today. One of the people that when someone says to me, Bulletproof mindset is the first part. That comes to mind. So I’m going to hand over and allow her to introduce herself.

Hello. 

[00:00:23] Sabrina Philipp: Hi, thank you so much for having me and thank you to the listeners. My name is Sabrina Philipp Philipp and I’m an online business coach for women entrepreneurs. I work with anyone from those who are still in their nine to five. Just getting started all the way up to multiple seven figure entrepreneurs.

And I actually have one client right now, who’s working on scaling to eight figures. So kind of seen it all. I’ve had over 3000 clients in my programs in the last few years in over 64 countries. So I’m a very surprising introvert, I would say definitely I’m for sure an introvert, but I think it’s just amazing how much you can accomplish.

Even if you are someone who is a little bit on the shy side, 

[00:01:02] Emma-Louise: would you define yourself as a shy introvert? 

[00:01:06] Sabrina Philipp: I’ve heard the term extroverted introvert. And I think that makes sense. Like, I can be very like social and I can like talk at parties and things like that. But then I immediately retreat to my shell.

I think also in terms of like warming up to someone, it does take me a little bit, like you’ve seen those memes where it’s like the first time super shy and then I’m like super weird. It’s like, I’m that person where you just need a little bit of time to warm up and then it’s like, okay, now I can be myself.

So yes, I would definitely say I’m on the show. 

[00:01:32] Emma-Louise: Like that little, it’s almost like that little gap of, I’m not sure. And then, oh, I trust you now. You’ve got all of it. I’m open. 

[00:01:38] Sabrina Philipp: Same here. Exactly. 

[00:01:40] Emma-Louise: So when people think of introverts, one of the biggest misconceptions that I see over and over is expecting people to be shy or under-confident, or not ambitious, or, you know, a little bit self-conscious of which of course some people are, but some extroverts are too.

But in terms of building an online business, I see many more. People out there that are, you know, very confident and very self-aware and very self secure, but own the fact that they’re introverts. And you’re one of those people that always Springs to mind for me. How do you find being an introvert in the online space?

Has how’s being an introvert, helped you with your 

[00:02:16] Sabrina Philipp: business? Yeah. So I think for me, one of the things that really helps is I try to separate my personal life and my personal energy from my business. I think that a lot of people online get caught up in like business besties and being best friends with everyone and being on their phone twenty four seven.

And I think that’s just a lot of pressure and it’s not something that I’ve ever felt like I have to keep up with. I know who my friends are. I know who my family is. Like, I I’ve got a good support network and I’m here to show up for my people and. Do my job to do my sole purpose, and then I’m going to go home at night.

And there’s a little bit of, I think, a, not a separation in a bad way, but there’s just a bit of space for me to always remember that I’m a human and I have a personal life and it’s not just what you see on Instagram. And I think for me, that has really been the most helpful thing. Just being able to separate that out.

[00:03:06] Emma-Louise: And that makes complete sense. One of the things that really put me off social media, cause I only joined social media. When I decided to bring the business online, I’ve been coaching in person was, oh, I’ve got to share everything. I’ve got to, you know, my entire life’s got to go on and I’ve got to have my phone in my hand, twenty four seven to share things.

And of course there are people that do that and if it works for them great, but you’ve just, you’re showing that it’s totally, totally possible to build a super successful business and keep that little bit of delineation between the two. 

[00:03:34] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah, definitely. And I think also it’s important is my belief. It’s not just, you know, like some sort of hack that I have, but I think it’s important because so many people get swept up and their identity becomes wrapped up to how much they’re making or how many likes they have or how many followers they have.

And I think that, you know, your mission. For being on this planet can be your business. And also I think you can close the computer and nothing bad is going to happen. I think it just creates a lot of like anxiety and 

[00:04:01] Emma-Louise: fear. So you’re someone as well that talks really openly about having a lower hour work week and taking holidays off and take any extended periods of time away where, yeah, maybe you still share something that you’re doing on Instagram, but you, you are quite comfortable in handing over the business to your team and go in, I I’m out of office for two weeks.

[00:04:23] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah, definitely. And I think that for me, it has been such a journey into leadership and something. I talk about a lot with my clients and in my content is that I spend so much more time. With my team than I do anything else, because I think they are really the magic that makes everything else possible.

And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs are kind of surprised about how much time and effort they need to put into their team members. I think we just assume that, you know, trading time for money as well. How many hours my clients booked me for, but actually there’s this whole other side to your business that if you really master that, I think everything else will open up and it will be possible to take those big 

[00:05:00] Emma-Louise: vacations.

And is that something. Has always come easily to you to be able to kind of hand over the reigns and step back. 

[00:05:09] Sabrina Philipp: I mean, I think I definitely had some experience in uni and things like that with, you know, leadership and big projects and teamwork. So it definitely was not completely new to me by any means.

But I think that when I was first getting started and I really didn’t have the budget for team members, I was someone who was pretty good. Doing just about everything. Like I can make a mean, you know, graphic design and I can whip up a sales page if I need to, and I can do this and I can do that. And I think it was just about remembering, just because you can do that doesn’t mean you should.

[00:05:42] Emma-Louise: Yeah. And I think that is the thing I have done in the past too. It’s that like? Oh, well I can just do this really quickly. It won’t take any time, but if you add all those, like really quickly, 10, 15 minutes a day, or over the week, it’s like, no, that’s like two hours. Like I shouldn’t be doing something.

[00:05:57] Sabrina Philipp: Right. And if you had taken that time, those 10, 15 minute, little segments to record a loom or a video training your team on how to do it or communicating it to them, you know, maybe right now it feels like you’re just whipping up one small graphic. But if over the course of a year, that was 50 graphics that you made.

If you had just explained it, once you wouldn’t have had to do the other 49. 

[00:06:17] Emma-Louise: And when you talked about granular business, that’s something I’d love to delve into a little bit more for anyone that doesn’t know your backstory is how you started your business and how quickly you scaled it to multiple six figures.

So when did you decide to become a coach? 

[00:06:31] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah, so I, um, moved to Bali when I was 22 years old and I first started. Social media management and being a virtual assistant VA tasks and after maybe six months or so, a lot of my social media clients were asking me for help growing their businesses and to give them guidance.

So my first business coaching clients were my social media clients who would just tack on a few hours of consulting. And then I made the transition. First business program was a social media group program. So I found a way to, I think really smoothly transitioned what I was doing, social media management into what I want it to be doing, which is business coaching.

So I think that transition worked well. And then from the time I started my coaching business to the time I hit seven figures, wasn’t under a year. So I started in February, 2017 and we had our first half a million dollar launch in November, 2019, excuse me, 2017. So just really close, 

[00:07:28] Emma-Louise: really. And as an introvert where you drained by that, or did you feel super pumped and like, love it because I know we feed our energy.

We can really be kind of high or low and most people think like launch. Oh, exhausting. And you’re talking about huge launch. How was it? 

[00:07:46] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah, it was a huge launch, I think for me, Really helped as I was scaling quite quickly is I really prioritized working less, which I think for me, does help as an introvert.

So I started working less. I was hiring more team members. I was going on a lot more vacations. I remember my first six-figure cash month. I was in Hong Kong on vacation for two weeks. And then I was in Singapore. I remember my Bali mass, my launch, the half a million dollar launch. I was staying at the four seasons.

So anytime I did go into. Situation like a launch. I would specifically clear off my calendar and I would go stay somewhere and just really focus on taking care of myself. So in that sense, it wasn’t draining just because I was being really proactive about taking care of myself and taking off anything from my calendar that would drain me.

Um, you know, like having a bunch of calls or things like that. 

[00:08:37] Emma-Louise: So a lot of it’s done to that work smarter, not harder as in work less, but make sure that you’re concentrating on other things that are in your zone of genius. Absolutely. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I do get the feedback a lot from my audience about launching.

And of course there are many different ways to do it. Do you approach it in the same way each time you launch a product now or do you tailor it depending on what it is that you’re bringing into the world? 

[00:09:03] Sabrina Philipp: I have my launch life cycle, which I talk about in my program launch baby launch or in any of my programs of like this idea of excite educate close.

So I’ve definitely developed a lot of, um, frameworks and patterns for launching, but there are certain things that I might tweak slightly. So for example, the kind of like conversion event, which might be like the live stream series or a challenge or a webinar. When it comes to something like a coaching program, I might do a longer live stream series just because I want people to see me live every single day.

If I’m doing something like a course, maybe, you know, a one-time live webinar will convert really well. So it’s just, I think about finding what’s appropriate for what you’re launching, but the kind of general framework for the most part stays the same. And I think the other thing that I’ll say that has really served me is at this point in my business, I’m launching something for the third, fourth or fifth time.

Right. So it’s really helpful because I have the sales page. I have the emails, I have the social posts. I even have the previous webinar live stream series or whatever that I did, and I can bundle that up and package that. And that will be my lead magnet, or I’ll turn it into some sort of low cost offer, but I really.

And mindful to use what I already have and just tweak and optimize. There are definitely small strategic changes, but for the most part, it stays the same. I 

[00:10:17] Emma-Louise: remember the first time I ran a challenge and it felt like so much work with the email sequence and with all the graphics and with all of this.

And it was remembering that like, if I do this again, it’s done. I’ve just got to show up and do the actual challenge or the collateral is built and sat there waiting to go. 

[00:10:33] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah, definitely. And I think that’s one tip that I would. You to all of your listeners, just your content really is gold and it’s your currency.

So just organize it, save it, bank it, and then pull from it and just keep reusing it, redeploying it and see what works well. And just, I think there’s such a fear that if I posted something, once I can never post it again, and I don’t think that’s the case at all. 

[00:10:55] Emma-Louise: No. I agree if we’re going to put the energy and effort into creating good content, which most introverts do want something to be, if not perfect, then very, very good.

Before they’ll put it out then. Absolutely be using it again. I’ve just seen your dog or running around in the background. She’s so 

sweet. 

[00:11:10] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah, she’s having a field day. She’s got a little ball. 

[00:11:14] Emma-Louise: Well, I’ve got the cat behind the laptop currently. So I wouldn’t be surprised if she rubs up. It’ll pops her head in a minute, but something that I would love to touch on with you, I very first came across you when you were a guest on another podcast and it was Lacey’s podcast, all about mindsets.

And one of the things that you said, and this really stood out to me is you had something like. 20 K a month. And you went and made a big purchase. I think it was jewelry or something. And you were like, well, yeah, duh, like, I’m not going backwards now. Like, you know, I’m not going to have a 10 K month next month.

And it’s almost that well, I’ve just decided, like that’s not happening. This is what we do. And that’s, that comes across to me as your mindset in a lot of things. There’s I have decided. And so now we just take the action to make sure it happens. 

[00:12:00] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah, definitely. And I think the biggest kind of like what’s the secret or what’s the hack to that I think is just making success, your new normal.

So for me, when I had that big cash month, it was just this decision of, okay, well, this feels right, safe, normal, natural. And this is what I expect. Every single month, because I think we get what we expect. We get what we think is normal. And I think so often we do have big successes and we rationalize it away as a fluke or like a one hit wonder that’s never going to happen again.

And because he believed that that’s the case, but for me, I’ve always been really conscious about as my income grows and as my business expands, I just make that feel normal and safe. So I’ve always been able to hold or expand what I have. I’ve never contracted or shrunk. Which I think is such a pattern.

A lot of times people have one big year and then it goes away. This is my fourth seven-figure year. So I’ve been doing this for a while now. 

[00:12:53] Emma-Louise: And does that feel totally normal to you? 

[00:12:55] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just, I just expect that I’m going to spend, you know, $30,000 a month on team expenses and X amount on ad expenses, and there’s going to be X amount into the business or whatever it is, and this is how big the apartment’s going to be.

It’s just what my life looks like. And I just think that this is normal. I’m okay with that and safe with that. I’m happy with that, which is why it’s easy for the money to keep coming in, because I’ve just decided that this is how life. 

[00:13:23] Emma-Louise: And that is a huge piece in the mindset that I see missing with people sometimes is that decision because sometimes they do all the work and maybe they, you know, they do the EFT and they’re going to have NLP and they do all of these therapies and they do all the journaling and all the different mindset stuff.

And then they, they realize like, oh, the reason that I’ve been holding myself back is. You know, ABC happened 10 years ago and subconsciously I’ve been homeless and they get this awareness, which is fantastic, but then they don’t move on. From without, because now they’ve got the awareness. It’s almost like, oh, this is the reason.

And that becomes the excuse for not taking the action. And they say over and over again, like it’s not sexy advice, but you just got to decide. You’ve got to be like, yeah, this happened. It was crap. But now I’ve decided that that’s not relevant. And I move. 

[00:14:09] Sabrina Philipp: Totally. I think something I tell my clients a lot is that your life changes the moment you decide it well.

Right? Because as long as you’re going to be attached to that story or that blog, it’s going to keep running your life. And it’s not that something magical is going to happen. It’s just one day, you’re going to say, okay, I’m like, I’m done and enough is enough and you’re going to move on. So why not just make that decision now?

[00:14:31] Emma-Louise: Okay. So obviously you’ve got some super successful clients, as you say, you’ve got someone that’s looking at scaling to eight figures, which is incredible. What is the thing. If you could distill it down, what do you see? And the clients that really, really have the huge success, what is something that sets them apart from, you know, those 90% of other people that are messing around in online?

[00:14:52] Sabrina Philipp: I think that one of the kind of big defining lines for me, that I can kind of like see whether or not someone’s going to be successful is whether or not they treat their business as a person. And I think so much of that is about mindset, investment decision-making. But you know, if you are a business owner, you’re going to hire team members, you’re going to invest, you’re going to have costs.

Like that’s just how it is. So if you treat your business like a business, I think for me that step number one, in terms of fast accelerated growth, I think just the mindset. Is for sure. The number one thing that I see, and I don’t think you have to be super extroverted for that to be true. I would say the vast majority of my clients are introverted.

I think it’s just a belief in themselves. Um, and that they’re willing to do what it takes. 

[00:15:39] Emma-Louise: That is such an important switch. Because when I bought the business online a couple of years ago, I just thought I’m a coach and I’m going to be a coach online. And in my head. Maybe I’d have a VA or someone to do a few things.

But when I really decided and realized, no I’m building a business, like within six months, I got a team of four and I was like, whoa, this is just not what I expected. But they were business decisions. They were not the decisions of a coach. They were decisions of a business owner. Right. 

[00:16:06] Sabrina Philipp: Totally. And I think that’s such a distinction, right?

Because if you’re making the best decisions for the business, that’s not always going to be the decision that your mindset blocks loved them. Right. So I think it’s just really about making those kind of high level of neutral decisions on what’s going to get me more of what I want versus what’s going to serve my ego the most.

[00:16:27] Emma-Louise: I have, um, almost like an investment list. Like I know the next things that I’m going to invest in to grow my business. So quite often it’s like right when I signed the next client, I’m going to invest. In this. And I think a lot of people are like, oh, I’m signing more plants. So I, I have more money and I have more profit.

And of course there’s something in that, but also I’m thinking, well, that’s given me more income in which I can hire someone that can grow this aspect of my business, which is going to come to fruition in three to six months. 

[00:16:56] Sabrina Philipp: Yeah, definitely. And I think that’s so wise just to be able to kind of see like how the investments are going to give you more of what you want.

So for me, I always am thinking about, you know, how is this investment going to, you know, give me a 10 X return. So if I’m hiring a social media manager, it’s not just to check that box, but how many more pieces of content are we going to put out? How many more relationships are we going to create? How many more sales is this going to lead to?

And if you’re thinking about that, Wow. Here’s all the things I’m going to get on the other side of this person on my team. I think it also becomes a lot easier to invest because so many people see the price tag and they just stop and they think of it as an expense instead 

[00:17:34] Emma-Louise: of an investment. I think that’s definitely where my mindset switched from.

Oh, am a coach working online too. I own a business because as a coach, it was very difficult. You know, spend X amount per month on team members as a business owner. It is an absolute, no brainer. Yeah, 

[00:17:50] Sabrina Philipp: totally. 

[00:17:51] Emma-Louise: So body squeaking a toy. I love it. Making a guest appearance. Is Bonnie an introvert or an extrovert?

[00:18:00] Sabrina Philipp: He’s such an extrovert. I will tell you that for sure. She is one sassy little lady that is for sure. She definitely just needs other people around all the time. 

[00:18:12] Emma-Louise: Lover. I love it when animals make an appearance. Yeah. So what does introverting when the laptop’s closed look like. 

[00:18:22] Sabrina Philipp: Hmm. Um, I have really spent a lot of effort, I think on just making my home really nice.

I spent three years living in Bali, which I had a great house and things like that, but it’s so different compared to like Western comforts. And then I was on the road for a year traveling throughout Europe. So now. Over Christmas. I had six Christmas trees. I had a hot cocoa bar. I had all these things. So I think just really nesting in my house and watching lots of Harry Potter and star wars is what introverting looks like to me.

[00:18:55] Emma-Louise: That sounds like heaven. Yeah. Especially when it’s, we’re recording this in may and it hailed in both I’m on the south coast Springs in Edinburgh hail just before we got on. So definitely need creature comforts and snuggling up for that. Yeah. So Sabrina Philipp, thank you so much for joining me to chat today.

I’m going to drop all of your links in the show notes. Everyone can find out about you and your various programs, but before I let you go, I’d love to know which book would you recommend to my audience of ambitious introverts that are looking to grow and scale that online. 

[00:19:28] Sabrina Philipp: I would recommend the book clockwork by Mike

He is a phenomenal entrepreneur and he’s written so many books for entrepreneurs. That’s all he does. He says his mission is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And he’s just a rock star in this book. I think we’ll teach you how to put in place a lot of systems into your business. And the goal is to help you take a four week vacation.

And I think that’s something your entire audience could get behind. 

[00:19:52] Emma-Louise: I think everyone would get behind that. I’d never read that one. I’ve read profit. No, I’ve read pumpkin patch, but not this one. So I’m definitely going to add that to my list, Sabrina Philipp, thank you so much for chatting with us today and happy introvert in for the rest of the day.

Thank 

[00:20:06] Sabrina Philipp: you so much for having me.