We are very proud to feature our Wonderful Web Radio Rising Star interview. In this segment, we speak with Ruth Thirtle. Ruth from Business Results Catalyst is a business development specialist who loves helping business owners to design and implement key business, marketing and sales strategies. She has taught thousands of people around the world the tactics and benefits of effective business and networking strategy. Ruth has individual business clients both in Australia and the UK. She is involved with the Professional Coaches Network, was a facilitator for marketing expert Kerwin Rae, has been a mentor for the Women Moving Forwards program and has received certification in Customer Value Optimisation (a fancy way of saying Funnel). She is also a contributing author in a number of books and blogs including The Law of Attraction in Action, The Power of 100 and Winning in Life and Work, the Business Blogging Network and Women’s Network Australia.

Transcript of the Interview

Announcement: Welcome to Rising Stars Radio, where we share the stories of ordinary people taking action to create extraordinary changes in their businesses. They are the true rising stars to watch, so get ready to take notes for our no-fluff, cutting to the chase, twenty-minute interview.

Janet:               Hello and welcome everybody. It’s so great to welcome you here to Rising Stars Radio. I have a lovely woman with us today, Ruth Thirtle, who has been a member of the wonderful web community. Right from the very, very beginning, when we started off doing interviews of successful women online, that’s how Wonderful Web Women started, and my gold membership, which was sharing all of those different stories, and Ruth was right there from the very, very beginning and has stayed as part of the Wonderful Web community all that time since then, so she’s definitely always there. Definitely haven’t lost contact with Ruth. Ruth has got a really, really interesting story to share with you today. Ruth Thirtle from businessresultscatalyst.com, wonderful to welcome you here, Ruth. How are you?

Ruth:                I’m very well, Janet. Thank you so much for that introduction. You say it has been a while. I don’t know about you, that makes me feel a bit old.

Janet:               It’s funny, because I think I started Wonderful Web Women about seven years ago, and we’ve had a few, I wouldn’t call them reincarnations or incarnations, it’s been adapting and growth to what people have been wanting, so it started off as a search for role models and interviewing other people, and so people said, “Look, it’s great you’ve got all these people that want to learn from you, Janet, your technique,” and then that has evolved as I’ve got clearer on it. The nice thing is people like you, Ruth, who started there wanting to learn from case studies from inspirations has stayed all that way through, and it seems longer than it is. Seven years, it doesn’t make us that old, does it?

Ruth:                No, no.

Janet:               Our intention today is to be able to give as much value to everybody who’s joined us in about twenty minutes, so we’re going to get stuck straight into it. Our intention is to be able to give you some inspiration and also some actionable steps, everyone, that you can go ahead this week and start making some changes in your business, and start making decisions that feel right for you. Get your pen and paper out and keep in mind that you’re looking for a couple of gold nuggets that you can implement this week. To get started, Ruth, would you mind sharing with everybody who it is that you serve, and how do you do that?

Ruth:                Absolutely. In a nutshell, I help small business owners to design out their effective sales and marketing funnel, if you like, their system and processes. Then I get involved with a few key clients and help them to actually to implement those things into their own business. Business owning people are really, really great at the skills that they have and what they do and sometimes just miss some of that, the systems and the processes, to allow them to move people to being a customer. That’s where I step in and help.

Janet:               Your model is working very closely as a supporter, almost as a partnership, with a few select people, not actually implementing.

Ruth:                Yeah, that’s correct. That’s where we’re at now. Now I’m going to talk a little bit about the journey. I probably tried a number of different models in terms of leverage and products and things that, for me, it is that very close relationship with a couple of key businesses that allows me to help them to grow and be that support for that business. Having said that, one of the partnerships is with a firm of accountants, and within that role I’m working with their clients, so I’m working a little bit more amassing and a bit more of a coaching, consulting capacity there, but from within an organization.

Janet:               That’s interesting. We’re going to go into a lot more detail very soon in this call here about the changes that Ruth has made into her business and her business model, and the reasons that she’s done it. I think you’re going to find it really insightful. Before we do that, we should let people know how we know each other. Would you mind sharing what programs of mine that you’ve done and what you’ve been involved in?

Ruth:                I think we mentioned that I was a gold member of Wonderful Web Women all those years ago, and that’s been regular, monthly input from yourself and from your partners. One of the earliest things that I got involved with that probably had the biggest impact on me and the business is to get involved in the collaborative book that you did when we did The Power of a Hundred. That was my first foray into being an author. Then I was looking around my office as I was preparing for out time together today and realized that I’ve got quite a few of the information sheets. Your video marketing sheets and your profitable advertised sheets are all pinned up around my office, so I think I’ve done quite a bit with you, Janet.

Janet:               Oh, really? Isn’t that interesting, because actually the gold membership, we were saying at the beginning that it evolved, that initially it was interviews with other people, and my focus was very, very much on shining the light on people who had created success. Then, over time, it evolved into being monthly classes, so things like the video sheets and the avatar, all of those sorts of things. I was doing those monthly, which as an insight into the reasons why I did that was I wanted to create a comprehensive program, which became my Shine Online program. Through the process of actually creating that program, people paid me to create all those different modules by being members of that membership. As soon as everything was created, then that membership closed and people could get it all through the Shine Online. Just a bit of an insight there on how do you create something so comprehensive that can take a long time to create and still make it profitable for you as you go, …

Ruth:                Absolutely.

Janet:               … and give good value, because as you’re saying, it’s great to know that I’m stuck upon your wall. The Power of One Hundred book, you said that was your first experience as an author.

Ruth:                It was.

Janet:               Does that mean that you’ve since become an author again?

Ruth:                I have. I’m now a multiple best-selling author, New York Times, and Amazon, and various other places. They’ve actually all been contributions to collaborative books, because through that Power of One Hundred and looking at things that was definitely for me opened my eyes to those kind of opportunities, if you like, and taken a number of those opportunities to be involved in other collaborations, one called Ready, Aim, Captivate, which was all about putting magic in your message and a fortune in your future. We got to go to the book launch, which was an author’s extravaganza at the very exclusive magic castle in Hollywood, which was an incredible experience. There’s been a number of collaborations coming out of that formula. I said five when I thought the question, but I’ve actually realized that I actually missed a couple which I’ve done online that were Amazon best sellers anything else, so there’s actuall