134: How to 10X your Business Success in 2 Years with Cynde McInnis

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I am thrilled to have you here with me this week and I am thrilled to have my client and friend, Cynde Mcinnis. Cynde is CEO, founder, owner, chief everything of The Whalemobile.

The reason I asked Cynde to come on today is because a month or so ago, probably two months now, she left me a Voxer message and she said, “I just have to tell someone I have been going through my numbers, and since we started working together in January of 2021,” which is now two years and five months later, “my business revenue has 10xed and I just can't believe it. I can't believe it and I can't believe it, but I am thrilled and I have to share that with you.”

So I was like, “Okay, we need to have another conversation.” I knew her revenue is growing exponentially but I had never put it into the framework of 10xing revenue. In the past two and a half years-ish, Cynde's business and Cynde as a human have both evolved. She has really looked at all of the facets of her business to create an awesome business.

I am putting this podcast right at the tail end of our Business Audit to Create Business Awesome Series because we're going to today take a peek behind the scenes of Cynde's business and look at how her vision has changed, how her systems and processes have changed, how the way she looks at data and numbers have changed, how the people in her business have changed.

All of those elements combined with her shifting her mindset from how do I just get through the day to how do I create a business that is moving in the direction that I want it to move in for the long term, those things combined have created that 10x. Cynde has done a lot of work, not just on her business but on herself. That, my friends, is the difference.

We're going to have a conversation about that today that I wanted to clue you in on because I think all CEOs—and you are a CEO if you own a business, it could be creating revenue of $10,000 or $100 million, but you're a CEO, so remember that—all CEOs need to listen to this type of shift and learn from it. So sit back, buckle up, and enjoy my conversation with Cynde.

Hey, my friends, welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I am so happy to have back on the podcast Cynde Mcinnis, founder, owner, and CEO of The Whalemobile. This would be one of my most interesting industries I would call it to have clients in and you might think what Cynde does is like a one-off unique thing, which it is in a way, but in the end, it's a business.

No matter what she's doing in her business, it is a business and she I think would admit that she runs into similar problems that other businesses run into. But I'm going to stop talking now and I'm going to let her introduce herself.

Cynde Mcinnis: Thank you for having me back. It's exciting to be here again. I live in Massachusetts. I have been working with whales for three decades. It has been my childhood passion and I love nothing more than getting to teach people about whales. It's every single dream come true. Along with that, I'm a mom and a wife and I have a couple of other little part-time jobs, so it's all good.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. You have to include the Guinness Book of World Records. Tell them about that.

Cynde Mcinnis: So I'm a Guinness World Record holder for having the largest collection of whale-related items, which when I did it in 2019 it was 1,347 items, and I'm sure there's way more than that now. But the reason that I did it was not to have a Guinness World Record, my son was obsessed with it and so it was just a conversation in our life, but really to teach kids that whatever they have, whatever their passion is when they're little, to not let go of it and so I did it to show the kids that you could take this thing that you love as a child and it could be something later on in life.

Along with teaching people about caring about the ocean, that's one of my biggest messages that I tell kids is just find something that you love to do and don't let anybody discourage you from doing it.

Andrea Liebross: I love it and Cynde was recently featured on a New England TV like one of those Dateline things it's called Chronicle though. She was featured on Chronicle for her Guinness World Record. Go Google Chronicle and Whalemobile. We'll put the link in the show notes. You can watch this little spot. It's awesome.

Cynde and I have been working together I think since January of 2021. Is that a true statement?

Cynde Mcinnis: Yes.

Andrea Liebross: It was during COVID. I do remember that. Here we are more than two years later and I guess we could just start out with a really big question, what has changed over those two plus years? I wanted to invite Cynde on because really, I've seen her business evolve.

She left me a Voxer message probably a month and a half or two months ago, very excited because she realized how much her business had grown in those two years. All of a sudden, it was like, “Oh, look at what's happened.” How would you sum up what has happened in those two and a half years? What's different?

Cynde Mcinnis: So much has changed. When I think about when I started coaching with you, I was just lost, I just knew that my mindset needed to change. I knew that because I was just really not in a good place. I was thinking about it because over the course of that first year, I was trying to figure out how to grow my business but it was really hard because we were in the middle of COVID and my business is going in schools and so I had to pivot and do virtual programs.

I was trying to grow that and then I got really frustrated with doing everything by myself and so I was going to step back and join another group. I realized that wasn't really what I wanted to do and so then a year and a half ago, I was like, “I'm buckling down and I'm going to grow this thing,” and it's been exponential since then.

Getting all the systems in place to make it happen, I wouldn't even categorize emails, it was just like all my emails were just in my email box and definitely not close to a zero inbox, there was no organization, very little marketing, and I guess very little vision in terms of where I wanted to go. It was more just how am I going to get through the next couple of weeks.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. If you've been listening to the podcast over the last couple of months, I've been doing this Business Audit to Create Business Awesome Series and in my brain, I hope it's clicked in your brain, we've talked about vision, systems, people, numbers. Notice how Cynde just said she didn't really have a vision in the beginning. Once her vision got super clear, things started to change. True?

Cynde Mcinnis: True.

Andrea Liebross: Totally true. She had to dial in on the vision. Because when we started working together, you have been doing the Whalemobile, it wasn't like it was brand new.

Cynde Mcinnis: No. I've had it for eight or nine years.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. It was more than five, that's what I thought, yeah. So it wasn't like this was a brand new business but she was still operating on a let's get through the day, let's see what happens, and not in a curious way but in an almost like, “Well, I don't know. Let's just see,” leaving it all up to the universe. We could argue that it is always all up to the universe.

Cynde Mcinnis: No, but that’s very much so because I didn't market, I just waited for people to email me to ask me to come to their schools.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. You had to dial in on the vision. Okay, what do you think's changed in terms of systems, processes?

Cynde Mcinnis: Everything. I think part of coaching and I think also group coaching is hearing what even just the apps, the software, and that sort of thing that people are using to do their businesses, getting introduced to Dubsado. Even a workflow, what does that mean? I just didn't know any of that stuff.

Being able to implement that in a way to manage my leads that were coming in to then see them actually be booked and happened, that has been huge. Also, systems for me to organize myself.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, what's that like?

Cynde Mcinnis: I do a modified Full Focus Planner because I'm not a big planner person but I made my own little sheets that I used every week and fill out and think about the big three. It's different for me because days that I have gigs are usually it, that's my big one for the day is to do the gig. But then the other day is I'm in my office, I'm really like, “Okay, what are the three things that I need to get done and what are all the little tasks?” it really helps me focus and make sure that the things are getting done that need to get done.

Andrea Liebross: Both personal in a sense or systems for you and then systems for the business because you really didn't have many systems, did you?

Cynde Mcinnis: No, not at all.

Andrea Liebross: Were you still just sending individual emails like there were no templated things?

Cynde Mcinnis: They were templated but I was sending individual like copy and pasting.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. What's interesting is even some of the systems that we probably put in place a year ago you have now outgrown which is a good problem to have.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah, we’re looking to upgrade everything.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, this is a great problem. People, what has happened in terms of people or team members in your business and how has your thinking about that changed?

Cynde Mcinnis: I have four part-time employees now, which before I would have people come and help me with programs and they would teach a specific thing and I felt like I was the only person that could do the teaching inside of the inflatable whale and I finally realized that that's not true and we can all do it.

So I have three people that have a lot of experience with whales, which is something that's really important to me in terms of teaching that they know what they're talking about, but are also great teachers. They're all trained to do every aspect of it and so we go to a school and it's just like we flow through each different grade, we can talk to anybody, and it's so much easier, it's so much just mentally less taxing, it's so much physically less taxing. It's amazing that they can go do it. Three of my educators, they've all done programs on their own, which is really exciting too, so I've recently sent them out.

Andrea Liebross: This is a big step, out on their own. I think the first step was you had people coming with you and you were letting them do little parts of the program. Then you had people come with you and you got to the place where they would do their own program that you'd trade off. Because I remember you saying to me, “This is exhausting all day long doing 10 programs.”

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah, 12 different groups inside the whale.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. We had to solve that problem. Then Cynde went to “Alright, someone comes and we trade. I do six, you do six,” or whatever. Now we have gotten to the place where she just sends people out on their own. Imagine that.

Cynde Mcinnis: It’s craziness.

Andrea Liebross: Craziness. Because what do you want to be doing? You still love teaching but where do you envision yourself going?

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah. I think I would love to pick and choose the programs I do because I do love being with the kids. But if I was in schools two days a week, now I keep thinking about where are we going now and being able to sit down, I would love to develop a homeschooling whole program, and doing it virtually I can talk to kids all over the country.

I would love to develop virtual classroom programs because the oceans matter to everybody. The kids in Nebraska and Kansas need to understand that the ocean is important, and what better way? Through whales, and because of COVID, I figured out how to do virtual programs and so it's just such an amazing opportunity.

I want to be able to spend some time developing that whole piece of it while other people are doing stuff in person and then all of it's growable. It's just all we need are more people that know about whales because there are a lot of kids that need to learn about the ocean.

Andrea Liebross: They do. This is part of lifestyle design in a sense. A lot of times I have my clients think about the categories of how they use their time. What are the categories of time? You've got your personal time. You've got business time. You might have traveling time. You might have family time.

But if you go deeper into the business time, as a business owner, as CEO, we've got to think about, “Okay, we need time to do back-end administrative things. We need time to do front-end client-facing or customer-facing things, but we also need time to create.” So when Cynde says, “I want to develop curriculums for homeschooling,” that's creative time and she's got to figure out how to create that time for herself.

In order to do that, you think about you've got to have better systems and you've got to have probably more people in your business to take over some of both the front-end client facing and the back-end. I love that you're totally carving that out.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah. I've recently gotten in touch with it because as I launched this summer program, I'm going to be in Indiana and Illinois and Vermont, New York, New Jersey, all over, and so really trying to get kids to think about what I want them to do and so it's meant creating more signs and creating a pledge card that they do something with after. I love that piece of it like how do we engage the kids and then what can I create to help this happen.

Even that creative part of the business, I love. I feel like for even just in the last six months, I haven't been able to carve that time out and so it has been cool because I'm able to let go of the everyday teaching to then give myself that space to be more creative.

Andrea Liebross: In the last six months, Cynde's brought on a virtual assistant and she's brought on these three other educators. This has really opened up a lot of space for her.

Cynde Mcinnis: The virtual assistant is huge because she helps do all my bookings. She's managing the emails and managing the leads. We're trying to get a new system up and running. There's so many emails coming in right now. It's great.

Andrea Liebross: I was with Cynde, we were at our retreat when she was trying to find this so-called virtual assistant. It was really cool because we were on Upwork and it was really important to her that she found someone that understood the ocean marine biology. In Upwork, we put that in as a keyword. I forget what the word we used.

Cynde Mcinnis: I think we just used marine biology.

Andrea Liebross: Marine biology, and up popped someone who has a bachelor's in marine biology in it. It's interesting. You can find these people, my friends, who fit all sorts of roles. That's just a side note there. But that happened on a couch in Georgia on our retreat, so that was really fun and to see that actually happening to be a great person to have on her team who lives across the country too. Vision, systems, people. Talk to me about numbers.

Cynde Mcinnis: Numbers, I'm getting better about, about planning. It's funny because when you said that, I was like, “This is my next thing I really need to focus on.” My business has grown which is great.

Andrea Liebross: Wait a second, but it's really grown, it's not just little grown.

Cynde Mcinnis: It's 10xed.

Andrea Liebross: It's 10xed. Her business has 10xed.

Cynde Mcinnis: I even was looking at the amount of kids that I've seen. I saw, I do it based on the number of groups I have in the whale, but like 13,000 kids last year. When I added up what I've done even so far this year, I'm at like 14,000 people that I've seen in the whale.

Andrea Liebross: We're recording this on June 1st. In five months of time, she's seen more kids this year than she did last year. When she's talking 10x, she's talking revenue, 10x, amazing. You have gotten in touch with your numbers.

Cynde Mcinnis: I have. I have gotten in touch with my numbers but I also need to do a little bit more in that. Because there's money in the bank now, now I need to look more at the forecasting and planning. I want to get another whale.

Andrea Liebross: Putting money aside for, I don't like to call it savings.

Cynde Mcinnis: For growing the business, that's the piece is that I need to now be strategic.

Andrea Liebross: Assigning money or allotting money towards things that she wants to buy for her business really is what's happening, right?

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah. How do I supplement it.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, how do you supplement that. What other numbers do you look at besides revenue, number of students, children seen?

Cynde Mcinnis: I guess I look at numbers of days, there are 180 school days but I guess there's more than that considering we get out a month after you guys get out. What I mean when you guys go back, there's really July is the only month that there's no school. That's actually 11 months of the year, I look at those numbers.

I want to look at numbers of what happens after a visit. That's something that I'm just really trying to sink my teeth into. How can I get some number for the impact that this has on kids. The principal at the school that we were at yesterday came up and she said, “So many kids were like, ‘This was the best day.’ This was the coolest thing they've ever seen,” and I love that.

But then I want it to go like that one little step forward of like, “Oh, then they picked up that water bottle or they didn't use that water bottle the rest of the school year,” that sort of thing. That's something else. The numbers of impact I think is something that I'm interested in.

Andrea Liebross: Also the number of leads that you've had coming in. That's a number that you track.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah. That's something that looking at this summer, I want to launch a homeschooling program in the fall and so as I see all these libraries this summer, I've really been thinking about how can I get people's emails that might be interested in that so that once I have it together, I can email them and say, “This is what I'm doing, please share this with your friends and family.”

Andrea Liebross: That also requires time to think about things, that strategy piece. As business owners, it's so important for us to carve out that time to think strategically. Sometimes I call it “give yourself a CEO day.” A CEO day doesn't mean catching up on all the little teeny things that are piling up on your to-do list necessarily, it could mean that but really what it could mean is, “Okay, this is something that I've been wanting to do for a while and I just haven't tackled. Now I'm going to start to figure out how to do this, putting some time and energy into it.” You've gotten a lot better at doing that too.

Cynde Mcinnis: I have, yeah. But also I would like to be more like I feel like the deadlines are like I'm leaving a week from Saturday to start my summer programming, these posters need to be in by the end of day tomorrow to get printed. Then it's like, “Okay, it’s Memorial Day and I'm going to sit at my desk and do all these things because I have nothing on my calendar today.”

But it's cool to think about then even when you talk about lifestyle design, I've been on the catch-up because we've had so many inquiries but now I feel like moving forward, I want to be like, “This is how my calendar is going to look,” so we need to pencil in gigs into these days instead of any day is open.

Andrea Liebross: Which is really how you were.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah, and how the summer is because I look at my summer and I'm like, “Holy mololi, that was silly.”

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. Cynde has been in the mode like her old mode which now she's having to live out this summer because these were booked a while. It was like, “What day do you want me to come?” versus “I'm available on these days at these times,” so now you're flipping the script a little bit on that.

What's changed for you personally or how have you evolved as a human, we'll call it, over the last two years? Cynde's got two teenagers so we'll just leave it, we’ll start there.

Cynde Mcinnis: Every day is an adventure. I think one of the biggest ways that I've evolved is noticing in myself and in other people things like when we're buffering, when I go to the bathroom and I walk back through the kitchen, I'm like, “I'm going to get a snack,” I'm like, “You are totally buffering because you don't want to go back and do whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing.”

Noticing those things and then being able to stop buffering and go do what I need to do, like indulging, when I get in that space that's like the “poor me, all this stuff is going on,” just being like, “It's not. It's all how you're thinking about it and so choose another thought, get up, and do what you need to do.”

I was thinking one of the other big things, and I had told somebody about this recently, when we first started, you had this contract that you had us fill out and it was like a couple of different things that we were going to do. But one of the things in there was to allow ourselves to be unapologetically ambitious. That really resonated with me because I was like, “This is what I want to do.”

It does take time away from my family and maybe that's not the best thing but this is what I love. If my kids see me doing something that I love, hopefully, that goes into their brains as well and is a model for them to pursue something that they want to do. I know finding that balance, I don't think I have it but I also am unapologetically ambitious right now and that's just where I am in my life. I give myself grace on that and I do what I can, and that's okay.

Andrea Liebross: That's okay. I want to pull two things out of there. When Cynde said indulging, I think a lot of times when we think about indulging, it's like we think about indulging in a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, which is one way that we can indulge but a similar way but yet shifted a little is indulging in thinking that isn't really serving us.

Even though the Ben and Jerry's ice cream tastes great, after you eat all that, you're like, “Was that really helping me? Was that serving me? Was that really useful? Is my body liking that?” It's the same thing with your thinking, “Is thinking like woe is me, my life is chaos, I'll never be able to figure this out, or why am I trying so hard, or even I'm not spending enough time with my kids,” because you can indulge in that, that kind of thinking, you have to grow awareness of it because we all do it, it's not like it's going to stop, I do it too, we're all going to do it, but growing awareness in it allows you to really take leaps versus baby steps.

It shifts you from thinking small to thinking big. You've got to recognize though first when you're doing that in order to get out of it. It's not just going to go away on its own. I love that you brought that up because that's so true.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah. I see it. I see it in my kids too. I see their thinking in ways that I felt like I was in two years ago. I see it in other people. I think recognizing it both in other people and yourself, that's when you know that that thinking and that mindset has really become more a part of who you are.

Andrea Liebross: I love that, become more a part of who you are. So good. Okay, we're going to wrap up but I want to ask you what are some of your go-to thoughts that keep you on track?

Cynde Mcinnis: Have I ever shown you this? I've made my peanut butter jar.

Andrea Liebross: We're on Zoom so I hope you see the recording of this, maybe I will post the recording. I usually don't post the recordings of podcasts.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah, but I made a peanut butter jar and I put different sayings on a piece of paper and then taped it to the peanut butter jar.

Andrea Liebross: You did show me this once.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah. What would future Cynde do, that's definitely one of them. I'm committed to the thought that knowledge and caring are the key to saving our planet. I remember talking about that years ago. I'm committed to that and so if something that I create totally flops, it's not a big deal, I'll just figure out something else, the next thing to try. It doesn't matter if it fails because this is what I'm on a mission to do. That's definitely something.

My children have their own journey and I have mine. That is definitely one that I remind myself of often. Done is better than perfect, that's definitely one that I've incorporated into life and giving myself like I have an hour to get this done and it's going to be done in that hour because it needs to get to the printer. I did that this week a couple of times. I know the next best thing to do to try to get just one step.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. All you need to know is the next best thing. To wrap up, any advice you have for the CEOs that are listening? Let me back up, let me say one thing about the CEO thing. I recently had someone inquire about coaching and she reached out to me to say do I know any coaches that I think would be good for her and she has a business.

I said, “Well, what are you looking for?” so she gave me all these words describing. I was like, “Well, I can help you with that,” and she said, “Well, I thought you coached small business owners, entrepreneurs, CEOs?” I said, “I do. You're a CEO,” and she said, “What do you mean? I'm not a CEO.” I said, “Do you own your business? Are you running your business? You're the CEO of your business.” That really made her stop and think she is the CEO of her business.

I don't want to coach the CEO of General Motors or IBM, I want to work with women like Cynde, like the woman I'm thinking about now who I actually am working with now, but you are all CEOs. What do you think the audience needs to know, Cynde, about being a CEO? What do you think?

Cynde Mcinnis: I would think that if you are even at all considering, if you're struggling with anything, finding help is 100% what you should do. When I started coaching, money was a huge issue and I was like, “I don't know how I'm going to do this,” but I figured out a way to do it because I saw the value in it and I knew that if I could invest in it now, it would pay off in the long run because I am in such a different place now than I was two years ago. I know I could have gotten there on my own.

Andrea Liebross: 10x, so crazy.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah, that if you feel like you need help, and it's funny because I think about my son in high school and I'm like, “Why are they not learning the model? Why are they not teaching this to high school kids? All the stuff that we've done, it's all life stuff but you're not taught it necessarily. It's not intuitive for a lot of people.” It's so important to be exposed to that. If you're at all on the fence, just figure out how to make it happen because it's going to be worth it.

Andrea Liebross: It is. I have my own coaches, it's totally worth it. Do you have that sounding board to have that support system to be in a group of people? I don't know if I want to be part of a group. Yeah, you do, you totally do.

Cynde Mcinnis: Right. My biggest thing recently was when I was at school and I had a break. I had Kristin do the last group so that I could jump on the coaching call and you were like, “Why don't you have them go do the programs?” and I was like, “Oh, yeah.” That was just a thought that I had not come up with by myself for the time that I've been doing it.

I was like, “Oh, my God, yeah.” Just that one comment in a group coaching call, I had Michaela do two programs by herself the next week, and I went whale watching one of those days.

Andrea Liebross: So fun. Alright, if someone wants to learn more about The Whalemobile, what is the best way to do that?

Cynde Mcinnis: The best way is to go to my website, which is thewhalemobile.com. If you're interested, whether it's a school program, library program, homeschooling, or virtual, you can fill out the contact us form and we will get you information about when we'll be in your area or when we could set something up.

Andrea Liebross: Perfect. I'm going to put the link to the Chronicle piece as well, the Guinness World Record holder piece in the show notes. That's very fun to watch. Follow Cynde on Instagram, @thewhalemobile. She has lots of fun things there.

Cynde Mcinnis: Yeah, and Facebook, I do both, yeah.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. People, one of Cynde's favorite things to think is what would future Cynde do, so I'm going to ask you, listeners, what would future you do? What does future you need in order to not just 10x your business, which hey, I'm not going to complain about that but to just 10x your life in the way you think about things and get through the day? Thank you for being here.

Cynde Mcinnis: Thank you for having me.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, my friends, remember now is always the time that you can level up. You can shift from that small thinking to big thinking. It doesn't take much. All it takes is just a decision to create change in your own world. It is a little scary. Any change is scary, I admit, but usually, everything you ever wanted is on the other side of fear. Until next time, I'll see you next week.

My friends, what would future you do? Cynde asks herself sometimes, “What would future Cynde do?” I want you to know, ask yourself, what would future you do and what is your next best step? That's all you really need to know. That's one of the sayings on her peanut butter jar. I think I need to get a picture of that peanut butter jar. That's one of the sayings on it: what's the next best step? What would future Cynde do?

Not the Cynde of today because the Cynde of today probably would just decide spur-of-the-moment what to do or do what she's done in the past, but what would future you do, the one who wants to create this business and life that feels good, that flows, that is easy, that serves all of your needs, and allows you to be that unapologetically ambitious woman that you are? Do you need support in creating that?

Please take the next step if you need support and set up a call with me. That's all you need to do. You just need to set up a call. Those calls in and of themselves, I say each of those calls is worth $10,000, just the call, because in that call, I'm going to help you uncover what you really do need and determine whether or not I can help you. If I can't, I'll find someone that can help you.

But together on that call, we're going to unpack some things and figure out what you need, what you want, and what would be best for you at this time. We'll figure out if I can help you or who can. Head over to andreaslinks.com. When you get there, there's going to be an option to book a call. Book a call with me. Let's chat. I think that in and of itself is something that future you would say to do. Alright, my friends, until next time. Have a great week. Remember now is the best time to level up.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.