CASE STUDY
From wildly successful "accident" to intentional creation of a sustainable 6-figure business with Adaptive.
"I can show up better for my members every time I teach in person or serve the community one way or another. I have better energy; I'm in a better mood. Now I'm in my happy place."
Wendy Houseman, Founder at Bruja Power Botanica
A fifth-generation witch from Mexico, Wendy traded the world of cybersecurity to launch her own company creating products and services around spirituality, shamanism and witchcraft in January 2021.
Wendy's business blew up unexpectedly during the pandemic after her Intention Candles went viral on TikTok. However, the massive influx of orders, shipping management and customer expectations took its toll, and Wendy started to feel burned out.
"I wanted to teach people how to trust their own spirituality and gifts; not necessarily give them something tangible. One of my values is freedom and my family loves traveling, so having a shop in my basement shipping thousands of candles didn't allow for that freedom."
"I realized I wanted to serve people in a different way."
"I realized I wanted to serve people in a different way."
Seeing success in a realistic and achievable way.
After spending time in other online membership communities, Wendy felt drawn to Melissa and Paul's Adaptive program when seeking the next step to help her make those intentional, values-driven changes to her business.
"It just felt right. One of the things that really made a difference is Melissa and Paul are regular people; everybody in the community is regular people. There are all these masterminds and services out there that are all bling and glamorous and that is not my style. I am happy running my business in yoga pants on the sofa or at a beach somewhere with my family."
"I really liked the fact that they [Paul and Melissa] were creating something successful being themselves. It's been very motivational to see other normal people being successful. They have the value of freedom, but in a way that 's realistic."
"The business owner's journey is very lonely. I wanted a space to bounce ideas, get advice and learn from other people who are more successful than me, which I absolutely found in Adaptive. I love the community."
"The business owner's journey is very lonely. I wanted a space to bounce ideas, get advice and learn from other people who are more successful than me, which I absolutely found in Adaptive. I love the community."
To reduce her time load while increasing her freedom to travel and spend time with her family, Wendy sought a way to serve more people without the constant pressure of delivering a physical product.
"When I first joined, my business was probably 85% product and only 15% training."
"Our physical product was only mostly shipped to the United States and Canada. So what I did was create a membership. And that membership now has members from all over the world; we have people from New Zealand, the UK, Australia, Angola, Canada, and Mexico. So the impact is bigger."
What elements of Adaptive helped you make that big shift in your business?
Influenced
"One of the trainings from Paul and Melissa that made an impact for me was the Influenced course because it allows me to create copy and know what my customer actually wants. It's a formula that ensures whoever comes into your funnel is the right person or customer."
"To give you an example, at the end of last year, I content batched all my emails for the first quarter of the year based on one of Melissa's trainings, Influenced. So I have all my emails done; my members receive a text message every day with a spiritual tip."
"Before I met Melissa and Paul, I would be freaking out thinking, oh my god, I need to be creating content all the time; how am I going to keep up? Now, with the formulas they have shared, I know how to do it, how you extrapolate things and put them in your email, videos, classes, memberships, and text messages. It became doable."
"I can show up better for my members every time I teach in person or serve the community one way or another. I have better energy; I'm in a better mood. Now I'm in my happy place."
Sales page and funnels training
"I remember my first conversation with Melissa and telling her I don't even know how I have a six-figure business because I don't even have a good sales page."
"I then used Adaptive methodologies for a long sales page, a thank you page, and all the things that go behind the scenes. Now the pages are beautiful, and they are converting into customers. Before Adaptive, I understood some of how funnels work, but now I have several funnels at different price points that bring different people, making my community grow."
"Having access to proven systems gives me a lot of confidence because I know that they work and because they [Melissa and Paul] both built successful businesses before."
"As someone that is process driven and system driven, because of my engineering degree and my career in the corporate world, I trust processes and systems; I believe there has to be a structure for things to flow.
"I didn't know how to create a process or system for an online business, but I could make everything for cybersecurity companies because that's where I was. But I needed to learn how to implement that into an online business, our membership, a sales page, or an email sequence.
"I can now create a sales page, a thank you page, an email sequence, a follow-up sequence and everything else in a day, whereas before, it would take me months. So now I have all these systems that allow me to act faster."
"I can now create a sales page, a thank you page, an email sequence, a follow-up sequence and everything else in a day, whereas before, it would take me months. So now I have all these systems that allow me to act faster."
Marketing Makeovers
"I can submit my email sequences, sales pages, thank you pages or whatever it is that is interacting with my customers for feedback. Every time I do that and implement the feedback on my pages or sequences, I have a broader conversion. Because it's coming from somebody that is an expert in marketing."
"Marketing Makeovers are especially helpful because it allows you to see things from a different perspective; you detach from something that you create is something that is your baby and your art. And then you get honest feedback, like, hey, this is great, but this will be better."
Technical support coaches
"What has also made a difference for me is the coaches that they have available. I changed from one system to another on the portal of my membership. And Adaptive has a coach who is an expert on that platform. So every time I need something, I enter the calls, and the coach tells me the steps I have to follow and how I will do it. That is saving me a ton of time. Instead of me trying to figure out how our system works."
Community of Champions
"One of the aspects that I needed at the time I joined was to have a community to just talk to, bounce ideas off and poke holes in my strategies."
"And the fact that I have that space brought me back to my center in a way. That wasn't an aspect that I could give myself."
"I think community is very important for business owners. The people around you may not understand you, not because they don't love you, but because they're not business owners."
"They may have a different job, or their income may come from different ways. So you need to find a pocket of people that understand your stresses, your fears and the ways that you think and are also successful in that space so that you can support each other."
"My emotional state became better. I also love the emotional safety within the community because there have been coaching calls that I've come freaking out, and the community's always very supportive. They're supportive when I'm doing great, and they're supportive when I am falling apart.
Mastermind Retreats
"I love them. I've been part of two or three, and they provide the community aspect too. Also, they are good strategy sessions. "
"We can talk strategy, and we can poke holes in our business just to see how we can improve it and also the ability to support each other."
"I really liked the December one that we had last year. Again, it was strategy but also a session of gratitude and recognizing what we had done. As business owners, we sometimes forget to take a step back and think about the changes we have implemented, tangible and intangible financial, emotional, and spiritual. And I appreciated that aspect was part of the retreat."
Increased prices, 20% growth in profit and 3x bigger launches
"After one year in Adaptive, my business profits grew 20%, and it shifted to about 80% training and retreats and 20% product. I think that this second year in Adaptive will probably shift to 90/10. My end goal is to perhaps have a 95/5 split."
"One of my membership launches was over $20,000, three times previous launches."
"Another game changer was I never thought about creating a post-launch sequence. And I did it based on suggestions from Melissa. That sequence kept selling after I closed my cart. I was done with my launch, but the sequence kept selling."
"Also, I changed my prices based on suggestions from Paul and Melissa. I was very doubtful about how much I should charge. Will people pay for my services? With their and the community's support, I believed in my prices. Now I'm actually about to raise them again. I'm going to double my prices by the end of the year; I see how people are transforming their lives, so I feel comfortable about it."
Stretching yourself as a business owner
"The strategic suggestions I receive from Paul have stretched me. He takes me out of my comfort zone. But if there's one thing I've learned in life is that you have to listen to the experts. It doesn't mean that you deny your intuition or you deny why your gut is telling you, but you have to listen to the experts."
"An example is a product I created to originally sell for $27. I am selling it now for $497, which made about $30000 last year. When Paul asked very kindly why I was selling it for $27, it went to $197, then $297, and finally $497. And it was a stretch. It was a stretch for me thinking who was going to buy it at $27? Then I have someone telling me, no, you're wrong; you're going to open up. That was absolutely a stretch."
"The financial investment was also a stretch, and I was scared because it was a commitment. But I see the results of that commitment. If I could travel back in time to 2019, when I started thinking about having my business, I cannot even imagine the result if I had started a year earlier."
"The financial commitment is there, but it's also worth it. I can see the results; my business grew 20%, and I moved the way I wanted in not being a product-based business but an online business. So the investment is worth it."
"For me, the numbers are proving I made the right decision, that this was the right space for me because the numbers are showing me."
What does the future look like now for you and your business?
"I am freer than I was, but I think it is probably going to take four or six more months to be where I want to be. That's because I am creating all the backend automation. But when they're ready, I'll be somewhere in Europe working with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese and my family next to me."
"Yes, I don't have the freedom that I dream of yet. But that's because I am working behind the scenes, creating robust structures and systems. We just started working in our evergreen funnels, which is going to free even more time from my plate."
"Anything that is good isn't just like switching a light off and on. It takes time."
"The Adaptive way is realistic. I really love the fact they don't say you're going to be successful in five minutes. You've got to do the work, the research, and the systems and the processes. But it's really nice when you have it all running well behind the scenes."
"The Adaptive way is realistic. I really love the fact they don't say you're going to be successful in five minutes. You've got to do the work, the research, and the systems and the processes. But it's really nice when you have it all running well behind the scenes."
"I really like the humanity and the ethical system Melissa and Paul have; I really appreciate that they show up as they are. And I also appreciate the fact that they have found a way of finding the right people for the community because everybody's very supportive of each other."
"The way of doing business Paul and Melissa have shared with me has allowed me to serve in a less time-consuming and more energizing way."
