Dr. Lindsay Byron, aka LuxATL, is the founder and CEO of Lux ATL. As a former university instructor and exotic dancer, Lux has created a business to help empower women through sensual awakening.
In this role, she’s worked as a writer, speaker, cheerleader, and catalyzer of communities for women for four years.
In 2015, Lux began the journey of moving towards becoming a bonafide business owner. She explains, “I wanted to take what felt like an amorphous artistic journey that was amazingly making money and turn it into a real business with an organized strategy. I’d just been an academic and/or a stripper my whole life — not really living in the real world. Running a business was something I’d never done, so I knew I needed some major help.”
With this in mind, Lux began working with a business coach to try and start putting together the structure for her business. As Lux began to work more on setting up her business, there were some things that quickly came to light.
“I’m an artist and a visionary. I’m super charismatic, and I can get people to love me. What I’m not good at is the more ‘adult’ stuff. The brass tacks of running a business — interfacing with clients, handling the money, figuring out which gigs to take, and all the other day-to-day management tasks are really not in my wheelhouse.”
A Make or Break Decision
Lux was contemplating her next move and whether or not she should continue on her current path or try a different approach. Having met and worked together on some previous projects, she was already familiar with my work style and our ability to act as partners when approaching a task.
This gave Lux an idea.
Explains Lux, “I had a choice to make about how I wanted to spend my money. I decided I didn’t want to run my business without Tressa. She had been such a tremendous help previously, and that made my decision easy. I wasn’t going to launch my business without her.”
Knowing that I had started my own business using my online business management skills, Lux decided to approach me about working together.
Says Lux, “What attracted me to working with Tressa is that we really compliment each other’s strengths. She’s incredibly levelheaded, and she’s always thinking clearly. She has a strategic plan for the business and is so supportive; when times were tough, I knew I could lean on her. That’s exactly the kind of help my business needed, so I was all in.”
Time to Step in and Step Up
In order to provide the strategy and long-term planning that Lux was looking for, my immediate focus was to create structure and deal with critical items — cash flow, systems, and client communication. These were the things that Lux was feeling overwhelmed and bogged down by on an ongoing basis.
“With Tressa dealing with the day-to-day operations, I was able to clearly focus on LuxATL. I no longer had to worry about whether or not things were getting done. Having Tressa with me, reassuring me that things were going to turn out well was such a relief. She’s an immensely trustworthy person, and when she says something is done, it’s done.”
With the nuts and bolts of the business now being handled, Lux quickly realized that working with Tressa was going to benefit her in other ways she hadn’t envisioned.
“I used to think that I needed another me because only I understood my clients and what they wanted. Once Tressa and I began working together, it became very apparent that what I really needed was a fresh perspective — a viewpoint that was totally different than mine. Tressa and I were nothing alike, and realizing that, seeing how it was making a positive impact in my business, was huge.”
Little Changes, Big Results
After two years into our working relationship, the business was now running smoothly. Lux had been able to finally create a sustainable, profitable business that she’d dreamed of.
Says Lux, “My entire business had reached a new level with a pro website and how we engaged with my clients. Plus, all of my offerings were cohesive and well organized. Best of all, my retreats improved exponentially in the professionalism of delivery and were completely different than they were before Tressa. We just continue to level up.”
One bigger challenge we encountered along the way was the amount of travel Lux had been doing for the first two years of the business. With a child at home and a booming business, it was time to start looking at options for how to scale that back without impacting revenue.
In 2018, we decided it was time to revamp the business.
“I’d been traveling for so long and so extensively that I’d reached a point where it was too much. I wanted to get off the road and do fewer retreats, but that’s a pretty tall order when that one thing is a big moneymaker. I’d gotten into a mindset where I felt I had no choice but to keep doing what I was doing, but I had a few ideas. I went to Tressa with some thoughts on services people might be interested in. To be honest, it was really just some nebulous vision.”
Redesigning the Business for Continued Success
With this new goal in mind as we moved into year three, we got to work. We started by figuring out if these ideas were a viable replacement for existing offers and then got to strategizing how we could actually make it work. As a team, we devised a plan and put it into action.
And that plan worked exactly as we had hoped.
“Because of our redesign and the way we structured things this year, I’ve been able to generate significant profits that replace the retreats. I went from thinking it was impossible, and I was just going to have to work myself to death forever to creating and launching entirely new offerings. I wouldn’t have had the courage or faith in myself to do that were it not for knowing that Tressa was there to make these ideas happen. It’s been amazing.”
Now, with business booming, Lux can see in hindsight that having someone to execute the daily tasks so she can embrace her role as CEO is exactly what her business needed.
“Tressa knows my business backwards and forwards — even better than I do. She probably even knows the amount of money that I have in my bank account. That’s the degree to which I trust her. That level of trust means there’s someone I can go to and ask, ‘Can I do this?’ Every business owner needs a go-to person that’s levelheaded and brings objectivity and logic to the discussion. Tressa is that person.”
When I asked Lux what she would say to anyone considering working with me, she had this to say:
“If I were to tell anyone what is the single most valuable investment that I have ever made and that I continue to make in my business, it’s Tressa and her team. I’m the face of this business, the draw, and the moneymaker. She’s the one behind-the-scenes making it all happen. Before Tressa, I was running a small, scattered, one-woman show, but now, it’s a profitable, respectable business with a whole team making it happen. That wouldn’t have been possible without her. I could lose everything else before I would lose Tressa.”
