Chasing Simple Marketing for Entrepreneurs

Tired of coming up with content ideas? Feel like you’re scraping the barrel on what to say or talk about in your content? Just want to finally get ahead once and create a plan?

Today’s episode is for you. I’ll be sharing 7 tools that I use for my own business and for my clients to create their marketing plans. Plus, I’m sharing 10 ChatGPT prompts that you can use to come up with content ideas that your audience will actually want to hear about.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

Tired of coming up with content ideas? Feel like you’re scraping the barrel on what to say or talk about in your content? Or do you just want to finally get ahead once and create a full marketing plan? Today’s episode is for you. I’ll be sharing seven tools that I use for my own business and for my clients to create marketing plans.

Plus, I’m sharing 10 chat GPT prompts that you can use to come up with content ideas that your audience will actually want to hear. To hear about you’re listening to episode 254 of the Chasen Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my course, The Chasen Simple Playbook, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash playbook.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching GameCog sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Here’s the deal, friend. It’s time for your marketing to stop feeling like a constant grind and start feeling like the ball is in your hands. 2025 is the year that you’re going to make more sales with less effort through a simple but impactful marketing strategy. And you’re going to do it with the help of the Chasing Symbol playbook, which includes all of my courses, templates, and workshops in one spot.

It’s everything you need to simplify your marketing and fill more seats in your course. If this sounds like exactly what you need, head on over to amandawarfield. com slash shop to join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist when the playbook launches will be getting a special bonus and discount. So head on over to amandawarfield.

com slash shop and add yourself to this list today.

The first tool that I have for you is SpyFu. S P Y F U dot com. Now, this one, there’s a free version and a paid version. Honestly, the free version is great for just getting started. But what you can do is you can go in and you can type any URL. So I use this for myself and I use this for my clients, right?

And you can see. all of the organic keywords that your site or whoever’s site is ranking for. You can see the estimated monthly SEO clicks. You can see, um, improved ranks, newly ranked, loss ranks. You can see different. Websites that, uh, the website feels like, SpyFu feels like is a competitor and keywords that you share within those.

You can see the top keywords that you rank for and your top pages. There’s also a whole tab on SEO Research where you can see See an SEO overview, ranking history, all of that, backlinks. You can look at pay per click research if that’s something you do. But there’s also a keyword research page. And so you can pop in different keywords and it will tell you the month.

The volume, the estimated clicks, similar keywords, questions, which is great, especially for content that go along with the keywords. You can see what people also rank for similarly to that keyword. It gives you so much information and I actually haven’t paid for the The paid version yet, but I think about it all the time, honestly, and I probably will, so maybe I could do an updated episode at some point about how I use SpyFu and whether or not I feel like the paid version is worth it.

If that’s an episode you’d like me to put out there, if you want to have me dive more into SpyFu, um, let me know. Or any of these really, but especially this one because it was definitely one I’d be happy to put out there and create. But using all of that information you can then take the keywords that you’re currently ranking for or the ones that you’re almost ranking for and you can come up with similar keywords to help give you more ideas and really expand your content plan.

It also can help you see, okay, if I’m ranking for this, is that something I want to be ranking for? Do I maybe need to tweak that or take it off my website? Um, or the ones that you’ve newly ranked for or just lost a ranking for, you can decide, okay, well, I’m going to go in and I’m going to tweak that blog post and create more content around that so that I can backlink to it, etc, etc.

So, that is a great place to do keyword research. You can also put in your competitors and see what they’re ranking for. That doesn’t mean that you necessarily want to do just what they’re doing, but it could give you ideas to spin off. So SpyFu is the first of the seven tools to help with your marketing plan.

The second one is another website. It’s called Answer the Public, and this one’s great because it gives you Questions. So if you type in a keyword or an idea or a phrase, it’ll give you different questions that people ask. So, and they break it up by like who, what, when, where, why questions. And so for example,

if I go in and I type content plan in, it’ll tell me that the search volume is in the good range. It’s in the 2000, it gives me 2, 400, right? You can, See that it gives me 21 different questions There’s how to content plan how to content plan for social media How to plan content for Instagram, etc, etc. And then there’s the what what is a content plan?

What is business content planning? What is a content plan in marketing? Then there’s where questions, where to plan content. So all of these are questions that I could use based on Google searches. They also have, um, prepositions. They’ve got key indicators. So content plan versus content strategy, content plan versus content calendar.

That’s something that I could definitely use. And then there’s also some alphabetical keywords that they just have listed. However, not only. Do they have this for Google? They’ve got, you can do the search for Bing. They’ve got a YouTube section, a TikTok section, an Amazon section, an Instagram section. And so with all of these it can give you ideas of what’s being searched for this keyword on all of these different platforms.

So answerthepublic. com is another great tool that you’re not gonna want to miss out on. When you are planning your content and you just don’t know what to say and you’re tired of trying to figure out what to say. The third tool, we’re going to switch things up a bit and instead of it being a website, we’re going to switch things to your own business.

Now, I cannot recommend enough putting out an annual survey. I actually have a full episode where you can steal my, you know, survey strategy. It’s episode 212. You’re going to want to go check that out. But putting out an annual survey is so important for meeting your current people where they’re at. It’s not the only way you want to plan content, but it is a great starting point because so much of your content is meant to nurture the people that you all love.

Ready have in your audience. So put out an annual survey again. Episode 212 is a great resource If you have not done one yet Make sure you’re doing that every year and really gathering that information on What it is that your people want from you. I have one client She’s gonna know who i’m talking about as I say this, but I have one client who puts out an annual survey every year and it’s so funny because She loves a good spreadsheet and she puts all of the results in a spreadsheet and we go over them and we look at What people are asking for and the amount of times that she’ll have a little note beside one where she’s like I’ve talked about this so many times because even if you think you’ve talked about something your people may still want it Right, and so it’s a lot of times.

It’s coming up with new ways to say the same thing Or new titles for an episode that’s essentially the same as a previous one, right? But that’s what your people want. So your own annual survey Listen to what your people want because often it’s not what we think that needs to go out there. Your next tool is your own analytics.

What platforms are you on and what are their analytics saying about your best performing content? Take the best performing content and stick those ideas into things like SpyFu and Answer the Public to get ideas off of those. Because if it’s performing well, that means that they loved it. So what can you give them that’s similar?

You also can do this with the ideas from your annual survey, take those ideas and stick them into these two, but it’s looking at your own analytics and what actually performed well is a great way to go, okay, well, what else can I talk about around this same topic? Now, let’s talk about chat GPT. I have 10 prompts for you to use.

So we’re going to dive into those. And then I have two more tools after this, that I also suggest that you can use, but tool number five, chat GPT, I I love ChatTPT. It is, when prompted correctly, so helpful for so many, so many things in business, but especially with your marketing. So, this first prompt is one that I learned from Dawn.

of Tech Savvy Creative. I’m going to link to her Instagram and I’m going to link to her website in the show notes because this is her prompt. I got it totally from her, but it’s genius and it’s give me 52 questions that my ideal clients would ask. Now, if you haven’t used ChatGPT in the past, you have to tell them who your ideal clients are and you need to tell them or it what you do, how you serve your people.

However, You asked for 52 questions. That’s a year’s worth of content if you’re posting weekly. It kind of, because the reality is that all of them aren’t going to be good questions. But it’ll give you a really good list. Having questions that an ideal client would ask is so helpful. And what you can do is, I’ve actually taken this and I’ve asked it in a few different ways where I’ve said, okay, give me 52 questions my ideal clients would ask about launching.

Give me 52 questions that my ideal clients would ask about messaging. Give me 52 questions that my ideal clients would ask about content batching. And so I’ve taken all of the, like the smaller niche things I talk about within my content and within my business And I’ve asked specifically what they would ask about those things and that gives you so many content ideas.

So if you can actually take it a step further and not just say, what would my ideal clients ask? But what would they ask about XYZ thing? That’ll give you a ton of ideas. The second prompt that you can use is, give me examples of episodes, blog posts, YouTube videos, whatever, that I could create that are super tactical, like, 9 content ideas for when you’re in a slump.

That is one of my top downloaded episodes. Nine content ideas for when you’re in a slump, I believe.

You know, I thought I wrote down what episode that was. Um, I will link to it in the show notes, I don’t know off the top of my head. But, that’s one of my best. most downloaded episodes. So looking at my own analytics, I then take it and I go, okay, people loved this. What else can I do? Give me examples of episode ideas that I could create that are super tactical like XYZ.

The next prompt that would be a great one is give me examples of case studies that I could create. I, admittedly, do not share enough case studies. Um, I am so education focused. That I forget to share case studies. I’ve done an episode or two and they’re really fun to create I I just that’s one of my flaws.

That’s that’s a blind spot for me personally So that is one that I was like, ooh I need to use this as a prompt because what are examples that I could create and that helped me think oh Oh, I did have a client in that situation that I just forgot because a lot of times when we help clients or students we just We just do it.

It’s natural. We don’t think about it again. So if you ask for examples, it may jog your memory about an issue or an instance where that actually happened. Don’t, I probably don’t need to say this, but don’t ask for case study examples and then create false case studies. However, what you can do is use it in your content.

Not saying that it actually happened, but as a story. So let’s say you ask for case study examples, and it tells you about Instance where a mom’s time was so limited and she needed help with something and so she outsourced cleaning her house. I don’t know, I’m making this up on the fly. Um, but you, you could use the details it talks about to create an introduction.

To a piece of content. Have you ever been in a situation where your time was so limited you felt so Rushed and frustrated and you just could never get anything done blah blah blah so you can use the What’s presented in the examples that chat GPT gives you to connect with your audience, but don’t use the case studies and say that they were real if they wasn’t.

Anyways, okay, next prompt. What are some common challenges that my audience faces and how can I create content to solve them? We want to create content that is going to help our audiences, but sometimes It’s easy for us to not think about the, the common challenges that they face. So this is twofold. It gives you a list of those common challenges, which could prompt more ideas for you.

But then it also gives you content and connects your content with their challenges and helping them. So, that is a really great one. What are myths or misconceptions that I could debunk in my content? This is especially great when you’re in pre launch mode. When you are trying to move people from problem unaware to problem aware to solution aware.

Because a lot of times you give a solution and people are going to go, But it won’t work because of this thing, it won’t work because of this thing, it won’t. So you have to then take them from solution aware, right, where they are aware of the solution, to offer aware. And not just offer aware, but convince that your offer can actually help.

So you do that by breaking down myths. And sometimes If we haven’t had one on one conversations, market research calls, we may not know what those myths and misconceptions are. So, ChatGPT can help you with that. It’s also really great for helping with sales pages, but that’s not really what we’re talking about right now.

Um, the next prompt is, What is a step by step guide or tutorial that my audience would find valuable? Again, not only would this be helpful for your content marketing plan, this would also be helpful in creating a Bonuses or templates or additions to a course. This would also be helpful for creating freebies.

This would also be helpful, I was going to say for YouTube videos, but that’s content. But, you could actually use this one and the answers in this one in a lot of different ways. So, that’s something to think about too. Prompt number seven is, What’s a problem my audience doesn’t realize I have? Not I have, they have.

What is a problem my audience doesn’t realize they have and how can I bring awareness to it? Remember when I just talked about needing to bring people from off, not offer, problem unaware to problem aware? Well, if they’re not aware, what are they not aware of? How can you bring them? to it. And so that’s going to help you move people through that part of the customer journey as well.

What objections might people have before buying my product or service? And how can I address them through content? So this one’s a little different from the myths and misconceptions because with myths and misconceptions, you’re more so aimed at the problem I mean the solution and not the offer. But for this one it’s more about the offer.

So for example If I’m talking about the problem of you’re not being consistent, well, They’re not consistent because of, they’re overwhelmed, blah, blah, blah. The solution to getting, well, to being overwhelmed and being inconsistent, the solution to that is to batch your content. However, some common myths or misconceptions that batching doesn’t work, or that you’re supposed to batch this one way, or different things like that.

That would be answers to what are myths or misconceptions that I could debunk in my content. But, when I ask, This particular prompt. What objections might people have before buying my product or service and how can I address them? That would be more like, okay, not just content batching, but content matching bootcamp specific.

What are some objections that someone might have? And maybe it’s that they don’t have enough time to batch their content or use my system. They don’t think my system is gonna work for them. They’re not sure it’s ADHD friendly, right? Those are all specific not to batching content, but the content batching bootcamp.

So just an example, a way of visualizing that those are two different, they’re going to give you two different types of content. And so both can be really helpful. The ninth prompt is what content can I create that would help my audience get a quick win or immediate results? Giving your audience a win.

Is going to make them more likely to keep coming back, right? Let, like, this, this episode in particular, right? I’m giving you 10 prompts. That’s a quick win. That’s something that you can literally, as you’re listening to this, pop into ChatGPT and start asking it questions. And you could have hundreds of ideas for your content marketing for this year.

All in one place. Really quickly and easily, right? You’re probably gonna listen to another episode of this podcast at some point, right? Most likely. And that’s also why the nine content ideas for When You’re in a Slump, why that episode works, because it was a, it was a quick win. It was an easy way to go, Oh, yes, that’s amazing.

And so quick wins boost your audience confidence. It gives, it helps them. It’s such an easy way to help. It’s not just, oh, here are some things you should know which are important. But it’s here’s something that you can do right now to make a difference and then the 10th prompt is What’s a controversial or new topic in my industry right now that I could create content around?

That’s a really good one. If you struggle with just feeling like you’re Keeping relevant now. It’s not something that we want to do all the time. We don’t just want to focus Unless, let me pause and rephrase that, unless that is a large part of your business model, but if you’re mostly educational based like I am, it’s not going to always be the thing you want to talk about, but you do still want to take your messaging and give it a twist with whatever new thing is happening in the industry right now.

And that just, it draws people in and it makes it feel extra timely and relevant. Versus just saying the same thing over and over again, so those are the 10 chat GPT prompts that you can use I’ve got two more tools for you tool number six is using a copy bank you’ve got all these ideas now put those in a copy bank because you want next time you sit down to create content and to create your marketing plan and You want to have all of these ideas that you just created and What’s also going to happen is over time You’re just gonna start thinking about ideas randomly and you want a place to store them So if you don’t already have a copy bank create one if you’re inside of the Jason’s able playbook I do have a template for you that you can grab and then a content planner If you want to create a content plan, you need a content planner, and I’ve got one for you.

So go check out the Chase and Simple Content Planner. I will link to it in the show notes and that will give you the space to decide what you’re writing and when. What makes the Chase and Simple Content Planner different is that there’s also so much intentionality and strategy built into it versus here’s just a calendar where you’re just gonna tell me all the things that you’re gonna post and where.

this month. So, I will put that in the show notes. Now, I want you, your action step for today is to just choose one of these content prompts and put it in ChatGPT or Cloud or whatever, uh, I don’t remember what the Google one is, but whatever your AI tool of choice is, put it in there and get some ideas for yourself.

And, If you want some bonus points, shoot me a DM on Instagram and tell me which one you used and which one you’re most excited about. Your book recommendation for this week is Retention Point, The Single Biggest Secret to Membership and Subscription Growth by Robert Scrub. I had this recommended to me and I was really skeptical, I’m not gonna lie.

I feel like more often than not, the business books I read, they don’t hit the way I want them to. They’re not as Implementable. They are too basic. There’s not what I want them to be. This one was so good and so helpful. It’s actually on my to buy list instead of just borrowing it from the library because I want to be able to reference it all the time.

So, retention point, Robert Scrob, I will link to that in the show notes as well. And if you If you are looking for some more episodes that you might find useful, episode 114 covers for content planning mistakes, and then episode 217 covers tools that help keep up with marketing demands. So that one might be useful to you too, if you enjoyed this episode.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep 254: 7 Tools That Can Help You Create Your Content Marketing Plan appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

If you’ve found yourself in that constant cycle of creating, posting, and launching without seeing the results you want, you’re in the right place.

You’re frustrated because your efforts aren’t leading to results. You’re working hard and not feeling like it’s worth it. The problem is likely that you aren’t leveraging a full marketing plan. So today I’m going to share how you can leverage the 5 marketing ecosystems and especially how you can improve and simplify those through the Chasing Simple Playbook.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

If you found yourself in that constant cycle of creating, posting, and launching without seeing the results you want, you’re in the right place. You’re likely frustrated because your efforts aren’t leading to results. You’re working hard and not feeling like it’s worth it. The problem is likely that you aren’t leveraging a full marketing plan.

So today, I’m going to share how you can leverage the five marketing ecosystems, and especially how you can improve and simplify those through the Chasing Simple Playbook. You’re listening to episode 253 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my latest course, the Chasing Simple Playbook, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash playbook.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching GameCog sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Here’s the deal, friend. It’s time for your marketing to stop feeling like a constant grind and start feeling like the ball is in your hands. 2025 is the year that you’re going to make more sales with less effort through a simple but impactful marketing strategy. And you’re going to do it with the help of the Chasing Symbol playbook, which includes all of my courses, templates, and workshops in one spot.

It’s everything you need to simplify your marketing and fill more seats in your course. If this sounds like exactly what you need, head on over to amandawarfield. com slash shop to join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist when the playbook launches will be getting a special bonus and discount. So head on over to amandawarfield.

com slash shop and add yourself to this list today.

So, you’re doing all the things, but you aren’t seeing the needle move. What gives? Well, just because you’re doing things doesn’t mean that you have a firm game plan. And without a plan, you’re going to struggle to see the results that you’re looking for. Because without a plan, you’ve got a lack of direction.

You are likely to fail. Seeing and being inconsistent, you’re likely missing opportunities, you’re probably experiencing burnout because you’re creating content with no clear strategy for how it’s going to lead to sales. You may be doing one and done launches, which really can make you feel burnt out, and you may be struggling to reach your ideal audience because your messaging is all over the place, right?

Those are all things that you may be struggling with without clarity. having a firm plan in place for your marketing. But if you have a plan, you would be seeing clarity, you would feel confident, you would be seeing results. Because a marketing game plan acts like a roadmap. It gives you direction and purpose for your efforts.

It allows for more space for experimentation, and it allows you to make data driven decisions. You might be thinking, sure, great, Amanda, I need a plan, but I’ve tried creating plans in the past and something always feels missing. I create plans, I start working them, and then I realize that I need to do this other marketing thing that I don’t have in place yet and everything becomes derailed.

And that’s because marketing is more than just posting to Instagram or sending out email newsletters. It’s a living, breathing beast inside of your business. One that I’ve broken down into five ecosystems to help keep it simple for you. In episode 251, I broke down the five marketing ecosystems within a strong game plan.

The content creation ecosystem, the content strategy ecosystem, the launch ecosystem, the evergreen ecosystem, and the growth marketing. That episode goes into detail about what those ecosystems are, what they consist of, how you run them in your business. So if you haven’t listened to that episode, I would go check that out.

But, because today the doors opened for the Chasing Symbol Playbook, I wanted to give you an inside look on What those ecosystems look like inside of the playbook. How all of this comes together inside of the playbook. So first we have the content creation ecosystem where your goal is to get consistent, to show up with your own marketing, nurturing your own own people in a way that is consistent, that makes the messaging feel clearer, that gives you more space to be creative and to work on these other ecosystems.

Because in reality, if you’re not showing up consistently with your content, and if you’re stuck on that content creation hamster wheel, working on any ecosystems is going to feel impossible. So. Within the content creation ecosystem, you’ll learn how to create a month’s worth of content in less time. But you’ll also be given my year of content prompts to use to help you get started, as well as different templates that I have, like a copy bank template and a content workflow template, so that you have everything you need in one place inside this one content creation ecosystem.

Actually get consistent with your content to get ahead with your content and to have more space mentally and on your calendar for marketing. And then we’ve got the content strategy ecosystem inside of the content strategy ecosystem. You’ll have everything you need to help lead your audience towards a sale instead of just throwing out random content ideas as they come to you.

So first you’ve got my A Year in Preview course and that teaches you how to create your yearly marketing plan that is connected to your revenue goal. So if you haven’t yet figured out how do I set a revenue goal and then actually connect my marketing to that revenue goal? A Year in Preview is going to teach you that.

And then you can take my KPI and marketing workshop and use the tracker template that I have and that’s going to help you continue to find the Pulse on your strategy and see how it’s working. So you create your yearly strategy in a year in preview and then you learn how to set KPIs for your marketing that makes sense for your business and also how to understand what your KPIs are telling you and then use those to tweak and improve your marketing strategy and continue allowing it to be a living breathing thing.

Inside of the launch strategy ecosystem. Well, That’s going to give you everything that you need to run a successful launch from my launch strategy course to my launch content prompts, my launch waitlist email templates. You will be able to smoothly run a launch that will give you an income boost and prime your audience for your next launch or promotion.

And so. If you know that your launches need a little bit of extra something, if you’re just not sure how to run a launch, right, you’re not sure of all the moving pieces, the Launch Strategy Ecosystem is going to help you out with that so that you can put out a successful launch in less time, in a simpler way, with the prompts and the templates and my full strategy.

all in one place. Of course, launches are important, but no strong marketing game is complete without an evergreen ecosystem. So you’ll also receive access to a year inside of the VIP tier of the Chasing Simple community, which that VIP tier allows you to submit your own content and copy every single week for feedback and review.

And it also gives you quarterly one on one calls with me for that individual guidance. For creating and setting up an evergreen ecosystem that makes sense for your business. Plus, you’ll also receive my welcome sequence email templates to help you kick off your evergreen ecosystem. And all of the different information inside of the Chasing Simple community.

We have everything from creating a lead magnet that is going to strategically lead into your offers. We have Some growth marketing. We’ve got creating a sales sequence at this point. That one is always growing. There’s a private podcast there’s all kinds of information and Bonus templates and things like that inside of the community to really help with that evergreen ecosystem And then the final ecosystem is the growth marketing ecosystem where you’ll get everything you need to grow your audience your email list and and start seeing more sales of your course and digital products.

Inside of this ecosystem, you’ll find things like a podcast pitch template, ad templates if you want to run ads on someone else’s podcast, a quiz to help you determine the best growth strategies for your phase of business and more. So your action step for this week is to join us inside of the playbook.

Like I said, the doors open today and right now you can get inside for 200 off. It is just. 7. 97 instead of the normal 9. 97. Now, if you purchased everything in my shop separately, you would spend 2, 918 on all of these. And this is just the beginning for what is to come inside of the playbook. I will be continually adding to it as I create new offers, new templates, and I also even have a little mini course in mind about, um, Setting up and using a waitlist strategy for your courses, but that’s all in the future.

That’s all to come. But you can get inside now, get the absolute best deal possible, and you will have lifetime access as long as this course exists, and you will get those quarterly one on one calls for the next year. The Chasen’s Little Playbook gives you everything you need for your game plan. All in one place.

It cuts through the noise of the online business space. It saves you time and it saves you effort by providing done for you templates, step by step guides, and clear and simple strategies. So, I hope you’ll join us inside. I hope that you’ll go check it out if you go to amandawarfield.

com slash playbook. You will be able to learn more and get on inside with us. Now, your book recommendation for this week is Well Met by Jin DeLuca. This series, actually, I really loved, and it’s all about, um, Ren Faires, which I did not think was going to be something that would interest me, but it really, really did.

Actually, I thought it was phenomenal. I thought it was phenomenal and, uh, very interesting to learn about as someone who’s never been to one before and, um, it’s well written and the characters are really likable and you just cheer for them and it’s a lot of fun. So well met by Jindaluka. That will also be linked in the show notes for you.

And until next time, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business. 

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 253: 5 Parts of a Marketing Game Plan (The Playbook) appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Today, we’re diving into a topic that every course creator has struggled with at some point—reaching their ideal clients. You’ve poured your heart and soul into your business, but somehow, the right people aren’t finding you. You aren’t seeing the course sales you want, the engagement you’re hoping for, or the email list growth you’re craving. It’s frustrating, right?

Well, I’m here to help you figure out why. In today’s episode, I’m sharing six reasons why you’re not reaching your ideal clients and, more importantly, how to fix it. We’ll break down each roadblock, talk about how it might be holding you back, and walk through the steps you can take to get in front of the right audience. So, if you’re ready to finally start connecting with your dream clients and making the impact you’re meant to, let’s jump right in!

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

Today we’re diving into a topic that every course creator has struggled with at some point, reaching their ideal clients. You’ve poured your heart and soul into your business, but somehow the right people aren’t finding you. You aren’t seeing the course sales you want, the engagement you’re hoping for, or the email list growth that you’re craving.

It’s frustrating, right? I’m here to help you figure out why. In today’s episode, I’m sharing six reasons why you’re not reaching your ideal clients and, more importantly, how to fix it. We’ll break down each roadblock, talk about how it might be holding you back, and walk through the steps you can take to get in front of the right audience.

So, if you’re ready to finally start connecting with your dream clients and making the impact you’re meant to. Let’s jump in. You’re listening to episode 252 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Symbol Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com book. 

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching GameCog sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Here’s the deal, friend. It’s time for your marketing to stop feeling like a constant grind and start feeling like the ball is in your hands. 2025 is the year that you’re going to make more sales with less effort through a simple but impactful marketing strategy. And you’re going to do it with the help of the Chasing Symbol playbook, which includes all of my courses, templates, and workshops in one spot.

It’s everything you need to simplify your marketing and fill more seats in your course. If this sounds like exactly what you need, head on over to amandawarfield. com slash shop to join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist when the playbook launches will be getting a special bonus and discount. So head on over to amandawarfield.

com slash shop and add yourself to this list today.

The first reason you may not be getting in front of your ideal clients is because you are inconsistent with your content. The reason that this is going to hold you back is A, when you’re not consistent, you’re not showing up often enough and what ends up happening is for places like social media with that type of content, you’re not getting out in front of enough people because only a small portion of your audience actually sees your content.

And so you’re not even getting fully in front of your own audience, let alone getting out in front of new audiences. And when you’re consistent with things like social media, you’re more likely to get engagement from your people, which is going to help you show up in front of new audience members and those ideal clients and consistency can make such a big difference for that.

On the other hand, when you are consistent with content like your blog, or your podcast, or your YouTube channel, you’re also going to be pushed in front of more audiences through SEO, through the platform itself. When you’re showing up consistently, you’re just going to get in front of more people. And that’s just the reality of it.

So showing up inconsistently is going to hold you back from getting in front of your ideal clients just because you’re not going to get seen. Now, when it comes to showing up consistently, there is a byproduct of showing up consistently, which is messaging, which we will talk about in a little bit, but showing up consistently, a byproduct of that is getting really clear on your messaging, which again, we’ll talk about in a moment, but consistency will help with that problem too.

And so that’s another thing to think about because when you’re consistent, you’re creating consistent content. You are more intentional with that content. Really thinking through what you’re saying. You’re frankly putting up more content, even if you scale back how often you’re showing up and It just helps it helps with your messaging, but also just with getting in front of new people So if you’re wanting to get consistent I would recommend going back and listening to episode 14 creating consistent content and that episode is going to Help you with this Particular problem.

So if you know you’re inconsistent, episode 14 is a great one to go listen to, go check out and help to overcome that. Now, let’s go ahead and move into unclear messaging. That actually was farther down my list, but let’s just do it now. Since it’s, it really aligns well with the consistency aspect. So, your messaging being unclear means that people probably won’t engage with what you’re putting out there because they don’t get it.

They’re not Getting that pull of, Oh my gosh, you get me, you really understand. And so you really want to make sure that you have messaging that is clear and that is refined. And that you’re able to connect well with your people because your messaging is clear. Because you really know their pain points, you really know what they need.

And you really know where they are now and where they want to be. Again, showing up consistently. A byproduct of showing up consistently is that your messaging will feel a lot clearer to you. You’ll see more of what connects and what doesn’t. You’ll get that feedback and it really does help with that.

However, episode 165, if you also feel like your messaging, If you feel like your messaging is just not as clear as you would like it to be, Episode 165 is also a great resource for you. It is titled Refine Your Marketing Messaging Framework and showcase your expertise with these four questions.

And so that episode goes through four questions that will help you really get a good feel for what your messaging is with your marketing and make it feel more clear for you. And then. When you show up consistently and you continue working on your messaging and you get that feedback with your people, you’re going to get in front of your ideal audience a whole lot more because when your messaging is clear, people are more likely to engage.

They’re more likely to share. When they feel connected, that’s when they’re going to go, oh my gosh, yes, this is for me, or oh my gosh, my friend needs this, right? So, clear messaging and showing up consistently are two ways that you can really help get in front of your ideal clients. The third reason you’re not getting in front of your ideal clients is that your audience is too broad.

There is always pushback, especially from early phase entrepreneurs, about not wanting to niche down. And, um, You know, it’s always, oh, I’m a multi passionate entrepreneur. I love so many things. I want to help so many people. This thing that I do isn’t necessarily specific to one type of person. And I get it.

I really do get it. However When you’re, when you’re talking to everybody, you’re talking to nobody, right? Uh, I don’t know where that quote originally came from, but it one, it’s one that floats around all over the online business space. When you are talking to a broader audience, it’s a lot harder to Make it really connect with someone.

So, for example, let’s say you’re talking to all moms, right? And you help moms create systems in their life. And one of the systems that moms need is they need some way to deal with the school paperwork, right? So, moms need systems for school paperwork for backpacks, things like that. All moms with school age kids need that kind, need that kind of system.

However, you notice I’ve already, right within that, saying, I’ve niched it down even farther. It’s not just moms, it’s moms with school age kids. So it’s, it’s really hard even then to, to be really broad with that. Um, but when you say, okay, I help all moms with school age kids. Well, let’s think about this. If you’re talking to all moms with school age kids, and you’re talking about your backpack system, You have to simply say things like the backpacks are never where you want them to be you Never feel like you know where the paperwork is You don’t even know what paperwork you’re supposed to be looking for.

Things don’t get turned in on time. Things get lost and they They might connect with that, right? They’ll go, oh, that’s relatable. However, if you can niche down even further, and maybe you really want to focus on moms that have elementary school kids, that might look like you’ve picked the kids up from school, you finished car line, you get home, they drop their backpacks in the front entryway, and you go through their backpacks to see what the teacher put inside, and then you do XYZ with it, right?

Or, Let’s say that you want to talk to moms of teenagers and instead it’s Your kid comes home, they step off the bus, or they’ve driven themself, and they take their backpack up to their room, you never even see their backpack, maybe it gets left in their car. You see how these are two very different situations and two very different systems that would be needed?

That right there is the difference of talking to an audience that is niched and an audience is broad. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t help outside of moms that have teenage kids, and you can’t help moms outside of school age kids, right? When you’re able to niche down and to get really specific.

about who your audience is, it’s a lot easier to go, Oh my gosh, yes, my teen always leaves their backpack in their car. Right? That, that feels even more relatable than just, I lose papers and I never know where they are. Right? Both are relatable. But one is that, like, oh my gosh, yes. And one is, oh yeah, definitely.

And so when you’re, oh my gosh, yes, you’re more likely, again, to get that engagement, to get that share and to get in front of your ideal clients that way. So if you want to really tap into your audience and learn more about who your audience is, I would recommend episode 199, Increase Sales by Getting to Know Your Audience with Nadine Nethery.

The next way, or the next reason, that you’re not reaching your ideal clients is that you’re not pre launching your launches. Okay, this is such a big one. I still, to this day, see women in this online business space who say, I’m working on something secret, and I can’t, can’t wait to let you know. Or they pop out with an offer in the, just totally random, out of the blue, they haven’t done Any talking about it, they didn’t do a waitlist, they did nothing, and they just put a launch out there.

And the first time anyone hears about it is when the doors are already open. Please, please, please don’t do this. If you’re not pre launching your launch, you are not getting that launch in front of your ideal clients. You’re not. They’re not going to know about the launch ahead of time. They’re not to think about it.

You’re not gonna see the sales you want. It’s just not gonna get the momentum that you’re looking for, okay? Now, it’s one thing if you have like a brand deal or you truly can’t share, like there’s a reason. There’s an embargo on the information and you cannot share information about your launches. Most of the time that’s not the case, though.

People are trying to build hype by saying they have something secretive coming and it just doesn’t work. No one cares, is the reality, right? Uh, you have to give them a reason to care. And you working on something secret that you’re excited about isn’t enough of a reason for someone else to care. But, when you take the time to pre launch your launch, when you create some kind of momentum builder activity, when you, whether it’s a challenge or a workshop or A podcast tour where you’re just talking about your upcoming launch or whatever it may be.

Just doing something like that makes such a difference in getting in front of your people because you’re able to really, again, niche down with your audience, niche down with your messaging, give them one specific thing you can help with that leads directly into your launch. When you pre launch, when you create a pre launch plan, That naturally helps your people flow from one part of the customer journey to another.

You’re going to get in front of your ideal clients simply because of the way that you’ve niched down with your marketing and your messaging and your audience. And by the way that you’re showing up consistently as you’re leading into that launch. So if you’re not sure what a pre launch should look like, go listen to episode 125, a look at launch timelines.

Now, also along the lines of launching. A big reason why your offer is not getting in front of your ideal client is because you only launch it once. , it makes me so sad when this happens with clients or just friends in the industry where they get so excited about something, they launch it, it doesn’t sell as well as they hope it does, and they decide to scrap it because they think it’s a bad offer because they didn’t, they didn’t sell as many as they wanted.

That is almost never the case. It honestly simply means that. The pre launch just didn’t hit for some reason. And honestly, sometimes it literally is just timing. You could have a great idea, incredible messaging, all the things are right and the timing is just wrong. And sometimes that’s the reality.

Usually there are things we can tweak, right? Usually it’s, okay, well, I got a lot of signups for my hype event, but they didn’t translate. So I need a different hype event, or I need to look at the way that I led people from the hype event into the actual offer. Um, I didn’t get signups for the hype event.

Okay, well, there’s a clear issue. Maybe it’s the messaging about the hype event and the way I shared about it that didn’t connect. There are so many different reasons that a launch may not go the way you want it to. And to only launch something once means that you’re not giving it the chance to really get out there.

The other thing is, is that every launch is simply marketing for your next launch. And so what I mean by that is that when you launch something one time, A lot of the time, people will not be ready to purchase the first time they hear about something. 99 percent of the time. I’m making that number up, but it’s super high.

Most of the time, the first time we hear about something, we’re not gonna immediately go, I need that right this second, right? But, we learn about it, we think about it, and then eventually, we’ll be ready. But if you only launch something once, there is no eventually. If you never talk about it again, we never remember, oh yeah, I was interested in that, let me think on it some more.

Right? So, when you launch something, Obviously, the hope is that we prelaunch well and that the launch itself goes well and we’re able to see those sales, but even if your launch goes incredibly well, there are still people watching your launch, those ideal clients that you’re getting in front of that just aren’t ready yet.

And so then the second time you launch it. They may be ready or the third time or the fourth time, right? And so if you only launch something once, you’re not getting in front of your ideal clients enough in order to really see those sales come through. So if this is something, you know, you struggle with where you’ve only tried launching things once or twice.

Or you’re just not sure what’s normal and what’s not, I would recommend going back and listening to episode 101, Are Your Launch Numbers Normal? I do a whole episode about what you should be looking for with your launch numbers and figuring out where you can make improvements for the next launch. Now the final reason why you are not reaching your ideal clients is that you are not focusing on growth Marketing.

Here’s the deal. You have to get in front of new people if you are only sharing content on your platforms You’re only getting in front of the audience you already have and that is important Alright, if we, you know, all the way back to the first part of this episode, being consistent with your content, it’s so important.

But you have to have both nurture marketing where you’re showing up for your people now and growth marketing where you’re getting in front of new people and bringing them into your sphere so you can nurture them and launch them, launch them and all of the things, right? You have to focus on growth marketing too.

So often I get people Who come to me and they say, well, it’s just not working. I’m not seeing sales. And when I ask what they’re doing for marketing, they’re showing up on Instagram. They’re putting out YouTube videos. Now, some platforms inevitably have some of that built in, right? Some growth marketing.

YouTube is a great example of that, actually, where it is a great way to nurture and work on growth at the same time. Bye. You’re going to see even more growth if you have growth specific activities. So, if you’re not sure what that looks like, go listen to episode 171, Growth Marketing Strategies for Your Phase of Business.

So your action step for this week is to listen to the episode that I recommended for your first problem. So you may have listened to this episode and thought, a lot of these, actually. are issues that I have. Maybe I’m inconsistent, and my audience is too broad, and my messaging isn’t clear, and I’m not pre launching, and I’m only launching once, and I’m not doing growth marketing.

Okay, well, take a step back, and whichever one of those that I talked about first, that you said, yes, I have that problem, go listen to that episode first, and then work on that one thing. So, if it was inconsistent with, see, with your content, and that was the very first thing I said, and it’s the very first thing that you know you need to work on, go listen to episode 14.

But if you thought, okay, well, I’m feeling consistent. I think my message needs some help. Then go listen to episode 165. So, whichever one of those things that you first thought, mmm, yes, I know that that’s a problem. Go listen to that episode and then follow the action step for that episode so that you can make progress on where you are in your business and start getting in front of those ideal clients.

Your book recommendation for this week is One Second After by William R. I don’t know how to say this. For shtion? F O R S T C H E N. Now, I will preface this by saying,

this one might be a hard read in current times. Um. It’s very dystopian feeling, but also not dystopian. It’s, um, it’s not, I don’t know if I would say dystopian. Um, I’ll just give you the premise because I don’t know helps to explain it really, but the book, it’s actually based in one of my favorite places in the world, Montreat, North Carolina, which is very close to Asheville, if you haven’t heard of it, but which is why I picked it up because I was like, oh, it’s based in Montreat.

And it really has nothing to do with Montreat at all, but that’s okay. Um, based in this tiny town in North Carolina, and essentially there’s some terrorist activity that has to do with electromagnetic technology and, um, you know. They lose the phone lines and power and all, there’s all this fallout from it.

So, it could, it could feel like a little much in today’s climate. Just fair warning, trigger warning for that, but I enjoyed it. I think there might be a second one. I did not go read the second one because it does, it’s a heavy read. Um, but it was a good read. So, I’m just gonna throw that out there. If you like those kind of novels, and that feels like something that you can disappear into.

safely for your mental health at this time, uh, one second after by William R. Forshtian. And we will link to that in the show notes so that you can check it out. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 252: Why You’re Not Reaching Your Ideal Clients (And How to Fix It) appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

You want to reach your ideal clients and customers with your marketing, but no matter how much you put out into the world, it seems like you never quite reach them.

And next week I’ll be sharing why it is you aren’t reaching them and how you can fix it, but first I wanted to share the 5 marketing ecosystems that you should have in place within your business to make sure that you’re able to reach your ideal audience.

Without these marketing ecosystems, you’ll have a hard time reaching your ideal audience no matter what.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

You want to reach your ideal clients and customers with your marketing, but no matter how much you put out into the world, it seems like you never quite reach them. And next week, I’ll be sharing why it is you aren’t reaching them and how you can fix it. But first, I wanted to share the five marketing ecosystems that you should have in place within your business to make sure that you’re able to reach your ideal audience.

Without these marketing ecosystems, you’ll have a hard time reaching your ideal audience no matter what. You’re listening to episode 251 of the Chase Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chase Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching GameCog sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Here’s the deal, friend. It’s time for your marketing to stop feeling like a constant grind and start feeling like the ball is in your hands. 2025 is the year that you’re going to make more sales with less effort through a simple but impactful marketing strategy. And you’re going to do it with the help of the Chasing Symbol playbook, which includes all of my courses, templates, and workshops in one spot.

It’s everything you need to simplify your marketing and fill more seats in your course. If this sounds like exactly what you need, head on over to amandawarfield. com slash shop to join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist when the playbook launches will be getting a special bonus and discount. So head on over to amandawarfield.

com slash shop and add yourself to this list today. 

When it comes to your marketing, there are five marketing ecosystems that everyone should have working for them in their business. You’ve got the content creation ecosystem, the content strategy ecosystem, the launch strategy ecosystem, your evergreen ecosystem, and your growth marketing ecosystem. So what do all of these mean?

The content creation ecosystem is typically what I would recommend to be the first step to a strong marketing plan. And within that, you want to be getting consistent and sustainable with your current content efforts. , this is where things like content batching bootcamp would come into play, where you want to make sure that you’re setting yourself up for success and creating systems that are going to allow you to create content easily, consistently, and sustainably.

In order to get in front of and to reach your ideal clients, how does this come into play? Well, when you set up that sustainable content creation system, it’s going to consistently nurture your current audience and build those relationships with them. When you’re showing up for them and you’re consistent, you’re building the know, like, and trust factor for your business.

And so when you have that content creation ecosystem, you’re able to build that know, like, and trust with the people that are on it. already in your audience. And they come to feel like they have a relationship with you. And in a sense they do, right? It’s not just, um, it can be, um, what is it called?

Parasocial relationships. It can get to that point, but that’s not necessarily what we’re talking about here. But just having that relationship as far as you become someone, an expert in their eyes. Who they can look to to learn more about whatever it is that you teach them, right? So that’s the first ecosystem.

I would suggest that’s where you start. If you don’t have that in place, you don’t have content creation sustainably set up in your business, that’s where I would suggest starting. The second ecosystem is the content strategy ecosystem. And within this one, once you’re consistent and you’ve got more room for creativity and innovation, then you want to focus on creating a strategy.

that converts. And this is where you focus on leading that current audience that you’ve been building the know, like, and trust factor with and building that relationship with. You’re focused on leading them towards a sale instead of throwing out random content ideas as they come to you. So when you’re setting up your content creation ecosystem and your whole goal in that is just Consistently showing up for your people, building relationships with them.

It’s okay if your content’s a little bit random. As long as it’s within the realm of what you’re doing and what you’re trying to teach, that’s okay. It’s okay if it’s a little random. But once you have that set up and you feel confident, and you feel consistent, and you know you’re building those relationships, and you’ve got more space mentally, That’s when you want to start focusing on that strategy.

And in that way, you’re able to reach the people who are exactly where they need to be in order to be ready for whatever your current offer is that you’re trying to lead them towards, right? So it’s not just, okay, here’s my whole audience and I’m just going to build relationships with everyone. Instead, it’s more so, okay, here are the people within my audience that are a really great fit, and I’m going to talk specifically to them with this strategic content.

And so you’re able to reach not just any potential audience member, but those ones that are really specific. And specifically, the ones that are in their content journey, their customer journey, where you need them to be to be able to lead them to that sale. So, that’s how the content strategy ecosystem comes into play.

Then we’ve got our launch strategy ecosystem. Launches are an important part of getting more eyes on your offers and seeing cash influxes throughout the year. There are some people who are going to say, oh, live launches are better for marketing. Oh, evergreen systems are better for marketing. The truth is you need both because, and I tell this to all of my clients, a launch Is simply preparing your audience for your next launch.

What I mean by that is, when you run a successful launch, that brings in new students now, right? It gives you an income boost now. But it’s also priming your audience for the next time you have a launch or a promotion for this offer. Because there are going to be people who are ready to buy. Who have been following along, who’ve been following that strategic content you’ve been putting out.

But! There are going to also be people who haven’t been seeing your content around this, who’ve never heard of this offer before, who aren’t quite ready yet, but will be in the future. And what you’re doing with a live launch is you’re getting tons of eyes on your offer. They may not buy this time, but they might the next time or even the time after that.

And so a launch strategy, having that in place and having live launches in place, even if it’s just one a year, having at least one in place and having an ecosystem where you do have that launch strategy within it, it’s so important for really just getting more eyes on your stuff. And they convert much, much higher than an

evergreen funnel will. And so it also helps to really pull in those people who have been thinking about it, have been on the fence, but haven’t yet pulled that trigger, right? Then the fourth ecosystem is that evergreen ecosystem. No strong marketing game is complete without evergreen marketing. Things like funnels, and your opt ins, and your email systems, and your sequences, and your automations, and All of those fun things, that all goes into an evergreen ecosystem, creating an opt in that converts, creating a welcome sequence, creating a sale sequence, creating consumption sequence, abandon cart sequences, all of these things, running ads, all of these go into that evergreen ecosystem, right, where you’re creating this massive system on the back end that is going to help sell. 

It doesn’t have to be massive. It tends to end up being massive the more you do, but at first it can be really simple. However, you need this side of things to sell throughout the year. And so when someone opts in to an opt in, you’re selling to them without having to actively run a launch. Now, again, You need this in addition to launches because an evergreen ecosystem is going to allow you to reach more people when you pair it with your growth marketing ecosystem and your content strategy ecosystem, right?

It’s going to allow you to reach more people. However, it’s going to see a much lower conversion rate. My clients see anywhere from 5, 10, 25 percent for a live launch, and then about 1 2 percent for evergreen ecosystems. And that’s just normal. That’s just industry average, right? Because there’s not, it’s very difficult to build in true FOMO with an evergreen ecosystem without lying, because we’re not doing that around here.

We’re not gonna say that something’s expiring when it’s really not, right? Um, there are a few ways you can set up some expiring things that are true. The reality is it’s really hard to build that FOMO up within an evergreen ecosystem, not impossible. But harder, and so they don’t convert as highly. They also don’t feel as, um, as high touch point, whereas with a live launch, people who are following you on Instagram and seeing you show up on stories and talking about it every day, it’s got a higher touch point feeling.

Anyways, all of that just being said, you need both. But having that evergreen ecosystem really works well when paired with live launches because you’ve got these people that go through that full sales sequence throughout the year, and then when you live launch, they’ve already heard about it. It’s not new to them.

And so they’re more likely to purchase during the live launch. Because they’ve already heard about it and it’s not the first time they’re hearing about it, right? So it just adds another layer and another element. Now, the fifth and final marketing ecosystem that you’re going to use to reach your ideal clients is a growth marketing ecosystem.

Once you’ve got your nurture marketing, which all of the other ecosystems, the content creation ecosystem, the content strategy ecosystem, the launch strategy ecosystem, and the evergreen ecosystem, those are all nurture marketing. It is all about marketing people that are already in your audience, right?

Once you’ve got those, they’re up and running, your evergreen ecosystem is starting to make you some sales or at least bring in some people. It’s time to start bringing in new members to your audience in order to see a continuation of sales, because what’s going to happen is Eventually, your current audience is going to dry up.

You’ll have reached the people that are going to buy the offer. You’ll see some trickle in, but if you want to sustain sales, you’ve got to be continually bringing in new people into your audience who then are going to see you showing up consistently. And you’re going to build the know, like, and trust factor with them, who are going to see that strategic content that you’re putting out, who are going to watch you live launch, who are going to become part of your evergreen systems, and they’re going to work through that content machine, right?

That marketing machine that you have created for your business. But how do you do that? How do you get in front of these new people? These are the things where You are going to go and you’re going to be in someone else’s podcast. You’re going to go and you’re going to speak to somebody’s course or somebody’s membership.

You’re going to write a guest blog post. You’re going to focus on Pinterest. You’re going to run Facebook ads. All of those are ways to get in front of a brand new cold audience. And when you get in front of that cold audience, because you’ve got that evergreen ecosystem in place, it’s going to be selling for you.

You’re also going to have that consistency between launches. And then when you do launch, or they do go through that evergreen ecosystem, you’re more likely to see sales. So what you want to do is you want to grow your audience. Grow your email list, and with that, you’ll start seeing more sales of your course and digital products.

When you have these five ecosystems in place, you’re able to reach those ideal audience members, those ideal clients, those ideal customers, within each of these different ecosystems, and you’re giving those touch points in a lot of different ways, which is going to really help you reach those ideal customers and bring them in, walk them through that customer journey.

Your action step for this week is to determine which ecosystem you’re currently in and focus on getting that one set up. And I will say these aren’t, they’re not linear. They’re, they’re more like a web. You’re consistently always working a little bit on each of them. But again, if you don’t have that consistent content in place, I would suggest starting there.

Uh, if you do feel like you’re consistent, maybe you focus more on strategy or maybe you focus more on launches. Maybe you focus on evergreen ecosystems. When you know you’re messaging, you’ve got really strong messaging, and I’ll link to the episode in the show notes that’ll give you more on messaging.

But, when you’ve got strong messaging, you don’t have to wait to finish the Evergreen, the launch, all of these other ecosystems to start on the growth marketing ecosystem. Get a freebie in place. And then get out there and start focusing on that growth marketing while you’re building these other systems.

So like I said, it’s more of a web, it’s not linear, and you’re always going to be working on each of them. But determine on which one you need to focus in next, which one is your biggest weak point. And go ahead and focus on getting that one set up now within the chasing simple playbook which is going to launch on march 11th 2025 Within the chasing simple playbook.

We cover every single one of these ecosystems the playbook has It gives you access to every single part of my educational suite. My courses, my workshops, my templates, everything. And it also includes a year of VIP access inside of the community, which gives you a one on one call with me. every single quarter for that year.

So if you know you want to get these ecosystems set up and you want to do it in the simplest way possible without feeling overwhelmed and feel like there’s a ton of jargon and just no clear path, go ahead and head to amandawarfield. com slash playbook and join the waitlist because those who join the waitlist are going to get the best price, they’re going to get the ability to access the course itself a day early and It’s going to be the best way to make sure that you’re reaching your ideal clients because we’re going to make sure you’ve got all of these ecosystems in place.

So, highly recommend. amandawarfield. com slash playbook. Hop on that waitlist if you’re even remotely interested and be sure to get that best possible price when that launches on March 11th. Now your book recommendation for this week is The Romcommers by Catherine Sinter.

This book focuses on this woman who wants to be a romcom screenwriter and she gets this opportunity to help write with one of the Best known names out there and he doesn’t want our help and at first he just says this is what I wrote, this is what we’re doing, and it’s really terrible, uh, if I remember correctly he doesn’t normally do rom coms and so this is like outside of his wheelhouse and anyways, she gets hired, she eventually, you know, all the things that happen with a rom com.

I won’t spoil it, but you know how it goes, uh, but The Rom Commers by Katherine Sinner. I will link to that in the show notes so you can check it out if you’re interested. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 251: Marketing Ecosystems to Reach Your Ideal Clients appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

For the first time, I accidentally ghosted my listeners. If you’re new around here, as you listen to more episodes you’ll realize that this is something I actively teach against doing. In fact, my best selling course, Content Batching Bootcamp is all about how to set up a content system so that this doesn’t happen.

And yet, here we are. The irony being that today is episode 250 of this podcast. 250 episodes in and for two weeks there was silence. A reminder that none of us get this perfectly right all of the time.

But regardless, I’m glad you’re here. Whether you’re a new friend or old. Today to celebrate 250 episodes, I’m going to be sharing a timeline of Chasing Simple and how we got to 250.

So thank you for being here. Thanks for tuning in each week, joining us for the first time, or binging episodes. Thank you to everyone who has left a review (and if you haven’t, now would be a great time.) And to everyone who has sent me a DM in the past about an episode they loved.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

For the first time, I accidentally ghosted my listeners. If you’re new around here, as you listen to more episodes, you’ll realize that this is something I actively teach against doing. In fact, my best selling course, Content Batching Bootcamp, is all about how I set up a content system so that this doesn’t happen.

And yet, here we are, the irony being that today’s episode 250 of this podcast, 250 episodes in, and for two weeks, for the first time, unintentionally, there was silence. A reminder that none of us get this perfectly right all of the time. But, regardless, I’m glad you’re here. Whether you’re a new friend or old, today, to celebrate 250 episodes, I’m going to be sharing a timeline of Chasing Simple and how we got to 250.

So, thank you for being here. Thanks for tuning in each week, joining us for the first time, or binging episodes. Thank you to everyone who has left a review, and if you haven’t, now would be a great time. And to everyone who has sent me a DM in the past about the episode they loved. Thanks to each of you.

We are able to reach that 250 mark and beyond, and I’m so excited to see what all is to come for this podcast. You’re listening to episode 250 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash book. 

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching GameCog sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Here’s the deal, friend. It’s time for your marketing to stop feeling like a constant grind and start feeling like the ball is in your hands. 2025 is the year that you’re going to make more sales with less effort through a simple but impactful marketing strategy. And you’re going to do it with the help of the Chasing Symbol playbook, which includes all of my courses, templates, and workshops in one spot.

It’s everything you need to simplify your marketing and fill more seats in your course. If this sounds like exactly what you need, head on over to amandawarfield. com slash shop to join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist when the playbook launches will be getting a special bonus and discount. So head on over to amandawarfield.

com slash shop and add yourself to this list today. 

In order to really put this timeline into perspective, I think we need to go all the way back to 2018, when I first started my business. Now, January 2018, late January, early February, is when I first started thinking about starting this business. And around March was the final, okay, we’re doing this. And then it launched May 1st.

And so since Early 2018, I have been working towards running a business, right? And originally, when I started my business, it was all about simplified living and intentional living.  

I really just wanted to, to speak to this idea of choosing. the direction your life takes instead of just letting your life happen to you, being proactive instead of reactive. And I originally started talking a lot about those things, talking a lot about productivity, talking a lot about capsule wardrobe was a big one because that for me was really, um, That was a life changer for me and that is what really started my journey into simple living.

And so my very first course was all about creating a capsule wardrobe. And that all got started in 2018. Well in early 2019, I decided to start a podcast. I had been doing guest blog posts. I had been blogging on my website. I had even started pitching myself for other people’s podcasts. And I was doing interviews and I decided, you know, this isn’t so bad.

I could do this. I could have my own podcast and that could help grow my audience. So early 2019, I started my podcast and it was called Live Organized, Live Simple. Now that was really the, the name I used for my entire business at that time. Quite a mouthful, but it was the best I could come up with.

Naming is not a gift that I have, but it worked. And I ran that podcast for a while. Unfortunately, and I’ll get to the switch later, but when I got to the switch, in order to make sure that things, that my SEO was where it should be, I ended up deleting. Everything from the original podcast, and I’m pretty sad about that now, all these years later, because I don’t have any record to look back on.

I don’t have, I have no idea, I can’t remember how many episodes I actually did. It was more than 50, I’m pretty sure, but not quite 100, but I don’t know how many I actually did. I can’t even go back and look at topics or anything because all of that data is gone. Because I deleted all of it in order to make sure that when I restarted the podcast, again, I’ll get to this in a minute, in order to make sure that the Chasing Simple podcast showed up the way it should.

That’s what I did to make that happen. I don’t know if I needed to, but that’s what worked. So unfortunately, all’s I have is that I know I started it in early 2019 because I can vividly remember running into another church member when we went to buy my microphone. Um, And so I know we were living in Washington at the time, and we ended up moving mid 2019 back to South Carolina.

And so, I know it was early 2019, and I know that in late 2019, I started doing time management coaching. And that was really the catalyst for a lot of change that came. So, end of 2019, like December, very end, I started doing time management coaching. And I’m pretty sure That in the winter of 2019, or early 2020, I put the podcast, the Live Organized Live Simple podcast on a hiatus.

Because when I started doing time management coaching, I realized really quickly that the people I loved working with were other business owners with their time management. And that set off this domino effect of, okay, I want to work with other business owners. I really like helping them with their time management.

I really like helping them with their productivity and, um, you know, simplifying their time management and productivity and helping them live intentionally through that, but through the lens of business ownership. And so I knew that a change would come and I could feel it was that first time I’d really felt like, oh, there’s a big change coming in my business.

And so I put the podcast on hiatus. And again, I can’t remember which and I wish I had all of those data points and numbers and everything. Um, but I put it on hiatus because I need to just take a step back and figure out what’s going on in my business and take a step forward. Well, again, I don’t have those dates, but I do know the date of the relaunch of the podcast, which was now called.

Chasing Simple, and was now focused specifically on, and towards, business and business owners. And those first episodes aired April 23rd, 2020. And so, it’s funny because at the time it felt like such a long break, but it couldn’t have been that long of a break looking back, because I know I had a whole launch plan when I relaunched it, and I had a bunch of other business owners.

I had five episodes drop, , and I believe almost all of them were with other guests and it was just a whole launch team and it was, it was incredible. It was a great launch of the podcast. And so I know I was coordinating that for at least a month before, which means the hiatus couldn’t have been that long, but to me it felt so long and maybe that’s just because it, it was such.

a big change and transformation that the business was going through. But again, I can’t remember exact dates. So that’s to me is so frustrating, but that is the gist of the timeline. And then this is early 2020. Um, I started doing even more time management, and then I launched my course, content matching bootcamp that I mentioned in the introduction.

And When I first launched that, it was literally meant to be just about systems and time management and productivity, and then I started getting all of these questions about the actual marketing aspect of all of it, and at first I kind of brushed it off, but then the more I taught it live and the more I got those questions and the more I realized I did know those answers, the more I started leaning into content strategy.

And just content marketing in general. And over the years, that’s been more of a gentle transition than the transition from capsule wardrobes and intentional living to time management for business owners. But that slow pivot, in fact, episode 69, I believe is where you can see where I really embraced that slow transition.

And I start talking less about productivity and time management and more about content. I believe episode 69 is, it was one of my top episodes for such a long time, but I believe it’s the one about four content plans that you can steal or something like that, or maybe it’s the one about seven places you can find inspiration.

They’re back to back, 169 and 170, but those two episodes were one of my Like some of my top episodes for a really long time. And that was when I really started to transition even more towards content strategy and content marketing way back in August of 2021. And now it’s, as I’m recording this, February 2025 and here we are still doing that.

And it’s just been really cool to see. The evolution of the podcast and through that the evolution of the business as you look at the podcast And again, some of this you can’t look at anymore because I’ve taken it all down But just looking at this entire timeline and how we’ve gotten here. You can really see how the business has evolved and man It’s so cool.

It’s so cool to look back on and see And now here we are 250 episodes, about a year ago in April 2024, I started playing around with YouTube and adding YouTube in and incorporating that with the podcast and so it’s been quite a journey and quite the timeline, and man, I’m just so thankful to you for being here for, for all of this, whether you’ve listened to 250 episodes, whether this is your first, like just being here, being part of this community.

Thank you for that, for making this possible. Before we wrap up, I did want to share some of the top episodes of all time. Um, just in case you’re interested in checking out more and you don’t know where to start. These are some of the ones that have been the most listened to of all time for the podcast and 250 episodes in, that’s a big deal, right?

So episode 81 is the number one episode of all time. And that is a look at my quarterly planning part one, episode 100. A 16 tips to simplify your business. Episode 98 is my step by step guide for batching reels. Episode 97 is how I structure my days. And there is actually a newer version of that episode.

This is one of the top ones, but there is a newer version of that episode that I recorded and put out fairly recently. And that is episode 220, Finding Time for Marketing, my latest weekly schedule. That actually came out almost a year ago, so I guess it’s not as recent as I thought it was, but episode 220, Finding Time for Marketing, my latest weekly schedule.

And that is an updated version of that episode that everyone loved so much. So if you haven’t listened to the updated version, you should check this one out. And then finally, the fifth Most listened to episode of all time for the Chasing Smoke podcast is episode 104, nine posts that build relationships with your audience.

Now, I would love to know what your favorite episode of all time is, or if the podcast has impacted you in any way, or if it’s helped you in any way. And so your action step for this week, help me celebrate episode 250 by sending me a DM and just let me know. Share how it’s helped, share how it’s impacted you, share a new way it’s made you think about marketing or about your business, share a favorite episode, it would truly mean the world to me.

Um, if you would just do that and help me celebrate in that way. Your book recommendation for this week is The Reason I Married Him by Megan Quinn. This was one of This was one of the first Megan Quinn books I read, and I gotta say so far, it’s the best Megan Quinn book that I’ve read. Um, and the premise is this guy needs to get married in order to claim his inheritance, and I don’t remember why he chooses this one girl, but he does, and they end up Fake married, but then obviously it’s a rom com, so they fall in love.

Anyways, it was a really cute book. I really loved it, and, um, if you want to check it out, we will have the link to that in the show notes as well. Alright, my friend, until next time, I hope it should go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business. 

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post EP. 250: The Journey to 250: A Look at the Chasing Simple Timeline appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

I did not set any business goals for 2025.

That might sound crazy – okay, it definitely sounds crazy, but in today’s episode I’m going to share why and what I did instead.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

I didn’t set any business goals for 2025. That might sound crazy. Okay. It’s definitely, it definitely sounds crazy. But in today’s episode, I’m going to share why and what I did instead. You’re listening to episode 249 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple content planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching GameCog sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Here’s the deal, friend. It’s time for your marketing to stop feeling like a constant grind and start feeling like the ball is in your hands. 2025 is the year that you’re going to make more sales with less effort through a simple but impactful marketing strategy. And you’re going to do it with the help of the Chasing Symbol playbook, which includes all of my courses, templates, and workshops in one spot.

It’s everything you need to simplify your marketing and fill more seats in your course. If this sounds like exactly what you need, head on over to amandawarfield. com slash shop to join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist when the playbook launches will be getting a special bonus and discount. So head on over to amandawarfield.

com slash shop and add yourself to this list today. 

If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I left goal planners in the past a while ago. I stopped using gold planners for about a year and then I came back to using a gold planner and I used Lakenstrom’s Plan with Laken. I used her goal planner. Let me tell you the prep work in her goal planner is worth It’s weight in gold.

I will link to her planner in the show notes actually because truly it’s so good and that prep work Honestly was worth What I paid for the entire year as a planner. Um, so I’ll link that in the show notes because I do think the prep work part of a planner is so valuable. But, I used hers for a year. And by used, I mean I did the prep work and I filled out the goals for January and I filled out the goals for February and then I never did anything again.

So for 2025, I’ve once again said goodbye to a goal planner. Now, if you’re a long time listener, you also know that My problem with goal planners, it’s not the planner, it’s a me problem. I have this compulsion to fill out every line and to, to overburden myself with goals. And I know logically not to do that, and yet I still have this compulsion.

So I’ve just found that it’s better for me, mentally, at this point in my life, to not use them. That’s just what I’ve decided. However, Moving into 2025, I’ve also decided not to set yearly business goals for myself either. Now, is this something that I recommend for everyone? No, I think that this uniquely works for the place I am at in my business right now.

And by that, I mean that one, We’ve had a lot of life changes in the last year, year and a half, which again, if you’re a long time listener, you know that I am now the breadwinner and I am making a full time income without working full time in my business. I’m actually working very part time in my business, which is amazing.

It’s the dream, right? But because I’m working very part time, I I don’t have a lot of time for all of these big ideas and all of these goals and all of these things that I would love to accomplish. I just don’t have it. And so mentally, I know that setting goals is not going to be, it’s not going to be healthy for myself.

So that’s one thing. One reason why where I’m at currently in my business. This no goals is, it works for me for this year. The other thing is that I also have I’ve been doing yearly planning for myself for so long now that I already have my promotions and my launches and all of those things that you would do in your yearly planning.

I’ve got to love that down. I don’t need to sit down and say, okay, which month am I going to launch this? Which month am I going to launch that? I know. Without having to set up an entire plan when I’m going to do my live launch of content batching bootcamp I know when I’m going to be promoting a year in preview I know when I’m going you know, I’ve got all of these down.

It’s Pretty much the same every year and I have all of the marketing copy. I have the emails I have all of the things that I already need and would need to create and so I don’t have to have this big long I need to set aside a ton of time to work on this project for this launch because all of that’s already done So if you’re not in that place not having goals and not doing a full yearly Marketing planning session might not be a great idea.

I already know, okay, all of my big dates for this year, I mark them off as we plan them. They’re already done. Um, I already know when those promotions are going. All of those things that I teach inside of a year in Preview and how to set up that marketing calendar for the year, I do that as I go. It’s just part of my natural rhythms and routines, and so I don’t have to set aside all of this time to do that and do all of these big goal setting and whatnot.

Because it’s, it’s just naturally part of my rhythms. And so that’s another reason why this works for me this year. I don’t have the capacity to have a ton of goals. And I also naturally do these things that I teach in my yearly marketing class, right? Here’s the thing. I am not in a growth year. for my business.

The first, I don’t know, six, seven years of business, I was focused on growing, growing, growing, growing, growing. Which is natural, right? As you’re getting started, you are hustling, you are going, you are going, you are going. Last year was my first year where I wasn’t focused on growth. I was focused purely on sustainability.

And I still saw growth, which was so fun, but I wasn’t focused on growth. And this year I’m also not focused on growth, which means that if I was really to sit there and set goals, it would just be keep serving my people. Well, I have my clients for 2025 already. I have my full client roster and if more people reach out, that’s great.

But. I’m really happy with what I have at this point, and I’ve already got a couple of big launch copywriting clients on my calendar for this year. I’m set, and I have my, my courses, I have my shop, I have my community, and so I’m not in a growth phase. I’m in a Sustainability, serving my people well phase, which is another reason that I didn’t feel the need to set goals this year other than just keep doing what I’m doing, serve my people well.

But that being said, I always like to have something I’m working towards, right? I, I may not have big goals, but I do have this, this idea of what I’m working towards. And something that I did was I read the, um, the 12 week year by, I believe, Brian Moran. I will link to that in the show notes. Spoiler, that’s your book for this episode.

Um, your book recommendation. But I read this book a few years ago and I thought, this is crazy. A 12 week year? Absolutely not. I need to have yearly plans. I need to know what’s coming in the quarters to come. And so I put it aside and thought, that’s cool. In theory, but it’s not for me. However, I reread it at the end of last year.

And again, now that I have these rhythms in place where I know what my year looks like, as far as my marketing goes, I was able to, to really stop and think about how I could implement it. And I thought, you know what? Yeah, this 12 week year. makes a lot of sense for where I’m at currently. And so, all I’ve really thought about thus far is Q1 for 2025.

I haven’t thought about what I’m going to do in Q2 or Q3 or Q4 because all of the plans that I needed to make for Q2, Q3, and Q4 I made last year. I already know what conferences I’m going to. I already know what my big sales are going to be. I already know where I’m leading people, right? So, I don’t need to focus on anything besides what am I doing right now.

So I’ll share this. I know that my big ultimate goal for the year Or for the quarter, I guess you could say. Um, but I think really, realistically, into the year is that I am really going to be promoting my best sellers. And I love everything in my shop. And it’s so hard for me. I know there’s the um, the writer phrase, kill your darlings.

And I’m struggling to do that. There’s some things in my shop that probably need to go and I just love them so much. And so I haven’t been able to do that. But my focus this year It’s going to be on the bestsellers and probably unsurprisingly, my bestsellers all align really well with each other. What a shock.

Um, but those things that sell best, that’s what I’m going to be really focused on this year. I’m really going to be focused on ultimately getting people into content batching bootcamp. It’s my bestseller. It’s the one I get the most feedback from. Students love it. It truly changes their life and business.

And that’s just where I’m going to focus. I’m going to be focused on funnels and promotions. that lead to content batching bootcamp. That’s the ultimate goal this year, setting up those funnels. So I have my free challenge, content planning bootcamp. If you want to check it out, I will link to it in the show notes.

And with it, you spend three days where I walk you through how to create next month content plan. Spoiler, that leads you to a natural place where, okay, I have my plan, now I need to create content. How do I create content quickly? Oh, I have content batching bootcamp. Here’s how you can sustainably create next month’s content now that you have a plan for it.

And they flow into each other. And so that’s my big ultimate goal, I guess you could say, but it’s not really a goal, it’s just a plan where I’m going to be sending people throughout the year to content planning bootcamp, which will then lead them into content batching bootcamp. That’s the big plan.

That’s it. That’s all I’m focused on outside of here are my people. Here are my students that I’m currently serving. Here are my clients that I’m currently serving. Here are my community members that I’m currently serving and giving them all the value that I can, right? Showing up for them. My big plan.

Sending people through that funnel and saying, Hey, here’s what you need help with. You need help creating a plan. Well, now you have the plan. Now you need to create the content. How do you create the content sustainably and easily and keep up with it month after month? It’s, that’s it. That’s, that’s it. Now, outside of having that big master plan of how I’m going to bring in these new people, right?

I have one. Project that I am focused on right now and that is getting the Chasing Symbol playbook out into the world The Chasing Symbol playbook is Honestly, it’s literally everything. It’s all those darlings that I can’t kill off. No, I’m just kidding. Um, I mean it is but That’s not why I created it, but it’s everything you need to create a sustainable marketing plan.

And I walk you through these four different ecosystems where we’ve got the content creation ecosystem. So we’ve got content patching bootcamp and all of my templates and small offers and things that go along with that to help you create your content. And then we move into, okay, now you know how to create content sustainably.

Let’s talk about strategy and here’s how to create your content strategy. So we’ve got a year in preview. And all of the different things with that. Okay, now you know how to create a strategy and you’re showing up consistently. Let’s talk about launches. And then let’s talk about evergreen ecosystems.

And so these ecosystems build on each other. And what I found is that. I have so many different offers, it can be overwhelming and I just wanted, I wanted one place where people could go and they could go, here’s everything. And here’s how you walk through them in a way that makes sense so that you can have sustainable and simple marketing instead of should I do this first or should I focus on this first or should I do this first?

It’s creation strategy launch evergreen. And it walks you through that. The other beauty of it is that when you enroll in the playbook, you actually get a year in the community at the VIP tier. And so the VIP tier of the community, they actually get a one on one call with me each quarter. And so you’ll have four one on one calls with me where each quarter we can focus on a different ecosystem and we can walk you through.

Okay. This quarter, I want you to focus on creation. What are your questions? What do you have for me? And so on and so forth. VIP tier members also have the ability to submit content and copy for review every single week, which is such a great perk. And so with this, you don’t only get access to everything I’ve created educationally, but you also get one on one access to me.

So, I’m super pumped about this, and that’s the one project I have going on right now. That’s it. Just getting that finished and up and out and out into the world. And so And that’s how I set goals this year. Instead of having goals, I have one ultimate plan and I have one project. And when I finish that project, I’ll look at the plan and I’ll go, okay, what’s next?

What do I need to do next to, to continue working towards this ultimate plan and making it even better? And as far as revenue goals, I didn’t even, I don’t really have a revenue goal for the year. I have that, okay, I want to, I don’t want to do less than I did last year. That’s really the only goal. It’d be cool if I hit six figures, but I’m not necessarily working towards that.

It’s very much a year of, I need this amount, I have the clients to hit this amount, and everything else is extra. So, it sounds messy, as I say this all out loud. But that’s, that’s a behind the scenes look on what I’m doing in 2025 instead of setting goals. Now, 2026 may look totally different. I don’t know.

I’ve learned to, to, um, never have expectations for where life is going to take us. And so I don’t know what 2026 is going to look like. I don’t have a clue. Will I be back in a growth cycle? Will I continue to just enjoy running my business? I, I really don’t know. Um, we’ll find out together, I guess, in next year’s Coffee Over Conversations Goals Edition episode.

Um, no, truly, I don’t know what next year will bring. Maybe I’ll go back to goal planners. Maybe I will continue to do something like this. I think if I could give you an action step for this episode, uh, it would be to sit down and And be honest with yourself about where you are in your business and to ask yourself what you actually need instead of what other people tell you you need.

Because I have found the most joy in running my business and asking myself that question and really living into that instead of I need to do this, I need to do that, I need to do that. I need to do what these other people are saying that I’ve got to have as a business owner. Instead of doing all of that and just simply saying, you know what, I want this, or this is what I need in my life right now, or this is what fires me up and just leaning into those things.

So not a super firm action step this week. Sorry about that. I try to give you really, really actionable things, but. Maybe it’s simply give yourself an hour to go to a coffee shop with just you and a journal.

No phone, no computer, just a journal and just see what happens. Like I said earlier, your book recommendation for this week is The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran. And again, read it and if it’s not right for you, say that’s a cool thought and put it away. You don’t have to implement it. But it may be something that comes around in five years that you say, Oh, maybe I want to read that again.

That was an interesting idea. Let me see if that makes sense for this current phase of my life and business. All right, my friend. With that, I hope it should go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 249: Coffee Over Conversations (Goals Edition) appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

One of my favorite activities is voxing my friends and discussing business finances and the different ways we each manage and view ours. As we’ve lamented time and time again, business finances feel so much more overwhelming than personal finances.

With personal finances, your goal is to save as much money as you can in order to retire comfortably. You take the amount you make, you subtract your bills, you put some aside for fun, and you put the rest away for the future. Simple.

And yet, with business finances, it’s far from clear cut. Not only do you want to save well, you also want to make sure you’re paying yourself, AND you want to be wisely spending in order to grow your business. It’s a fine (and sometimes impossible-feeling) balancing act.

I wish I could give you answers or advice on how to do that well, but I can’t. However, what I can do is pull back the curtains on my own business finances by sharing my latest income report. So if you’re nosey like I am, stay tuned because today I’ll be sharing what I made, where I spent my money, and what my profit looked like for 2024.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

One of my favorite activities is foxing my friends and discussing business finances and the different ways that we each manage and view ours. As we’ve lamented time and time again, business finances feel so much more overwhelming than personal finances. Personal finances, your goal is to save as much money as you can in order to retire comfortably.

You take the amount you make, you subtract your bills, you put some aside for fun, and you put the rest away for your future. Simple. And yet, with business finances, it is far from clear cut. Not only do you want to save, you also want to make sure you’re paying yourself, and you want to make sure that you’re spending wisely in order to grow your business.

It’s a fine and sometimes impossible feeling balancing act. And I wish that I could give you answers or advice on how to do that well, But I can’t. However, what I can do is pull back the curtains on my own business finances by sharing my latest income report. So if you’re nosy like I am, stay tuned because today I’ll be sharing what I made, where I spent my money, and what my profit looked like for 2024.

You’re listening to episode 248 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash planner. 

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching GameCog sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chasing Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. 

I’ll be honest, this episode is not as full of a picture as I would hope. If you listen to last year’s income report, my 2023 income report, I’ll link to it in the show notes, it gives a much better picture of the full scope of my income and my expenses and all of the things for my business. Um, 2024 was a A year, a lot of changes personally and with my business.

I’ve shared this previously, but if you’re just now tuning in for the first time, we moved across the country from South Carolina to Washington state . I moved November, 2023. My husband moved in March of 2024. And I also took a part time job at my church as the, um, youth director and the communications director.

And that,

 Left my business with part time hours. I still would say the business is my full time job based on revenue and, how much I get paid from the business and how much I get paid from the church. But hours wise, I worked way, way, way, way less this year. And that means that I had to really prioritize.

And it meant that a lot of things that I normally do that I’m hoping to get back into the rhythm of doing, they fell to the wayside. And one of those things was keeping track of my KPIs and filling out my income and expenses report every single month. That was something that Since I started my business in 2018, I have been so good about doing like clockwork every single month.

It happened. Um, and this year just didn’t, um, so. I got to a place where I said it’s okay, it’s okay, I will do the work to finish it out, I will fill out the spreadsheet, I will catch back up in time to record this episode. And, spoiler alert, that didn’t happen. I got some of it done, but I did not get all of my expenses done.

All of those, um, written out and tallied up and everything. So, all of that being said, This episode is different, um, and I just want to put that out there because when someone puts out an income report, simply giving the income is not a full picture of the health of that business, right? So, part of me wondered if I should just scrap this, but I know that I like to hear how other people are doing it and what’s going on.

So, anyways, I decided to move forward. But, the expenses chunk is not, where I would like it to be. Um, but that’s okay. We’re gonna move forward and we’re just gonna, I’m gonna share what I’ve got with you. Because like I said, I got, I got a large chunk of it done. All of my income got tallied up.

And here’s the other thing. I’ll say this also. My spreadsheet is supplemental to my QuickBooks. So, my QuickBooks is all reconciled. It’s all good to go. I just haven’t gone in and written out my own personal spreadsheet with the way I like to have it broken up. So, um, I guess I could have pulled up QuickBooks, but we’re already doing this thing.

So we’re gonna, we’re gonna keep moving forward. Um, all right. So first things first, my 2023 revenue. Revenue being the total amount right off the top before anything’s taken out. 2023, I made 61, 000 in the business. 2024, I made 66, 000. Now, I will say this is the smallest amount of growth that I’ve ever had in my business.

And yet, that’s still a 7 percent increase. And honestly, the fact that I worked 10 15 hours a week, and I mean 15 honestly is pushing it, if I’m being really honest. Um, 10 15 hours a week. And still saw a 7 percent increase in a year where, honestly, education took a hit. And that’s something that we can talk about in a second.

Um, but I know that the education side of my business took a hit all throughout the industry. I saw other educators saying similar things. Um, 2024 felt like a really hard year. And so the fact that it felt like such a hard year, sales wise, and the fact that I stepped back because when I say that I was working 40 plus hours a week.

before on the business. I’m not kidding. It was unhealthy, um, which is a large part of, you know, why I decided, um, to take this other job and to do something else I’m passionate about so that my whole life just didn’t revolve around the business. Um, it was unhealthy. I was a workaholic. I was working nonstop.

And so the fact that I cut my hours back so drastically and was still able to serve other course creators and other educators and help them build revenue streams and create freedom for themselves, man, I mean, I’m, I mean, I call that a win, but also I’m kind of surprised that I saw an increase this year.

And. It just goes to show, you know, you can hear people say it. Like, you can listen to me say this, right? Until they’re blue in the face. And it just, until you actually take that leap to cut back on what you’re doing, it’s hard to believe. So anyways, that was a big aha moment for me. Now, in my next, I would normally talk about expenses in my 2023 income expenses report.

I would have talked about expenses next. Like I said, I don’t have those numbers for you, so I cannot give you the exact numbers in the exact increase decrease. Um, I will say, my guess is that on one hand, My expenses decreased and on another hand they increased and what I mean by that is, um, in my mind, my owner’s compensation, my paycheck, is an expense.

However, To a bookkeeper, to a CPA, that’s not the case. It’s totally different. It would be considered profit, and this is kind of getting in the weeds a little bit, but just so those of you that are bookkeepers or are CPAs, don’t come yelling at me, okay? Um, Technically, my owner’s compensation is profit because I am a single member LLC, or my business is a single member LLC.

Once you become an S Corp and are filing your taxes as an S Corp, then you can write off your compensation as an expense because you have to do payroll for yourself. However, I don’t have to do payroll for myself because I’m not, there’s no laws around how much I pay myself at this point. When you are an S Corp, you have to pay yourself, um, I don’t remember the exact phrase, but it’s something like a realistic and reasonable salary for the job that you’re doing or something like that.

So, that being said, I mentally, in my mind, consider my compensation, my paycheck, Part of my expenses, but technically it’s not. So, that’s what I mean when I say on one hand my expenses increased and on one hand they decreased. Because, with our move, I became the breadwinner. And that meant that I had to pay us a whole lot more than what I had been paying us previously.

In the past, I was able to I have a very high operating expenses budget, which was so fun. Uh, I really miss those days, but that’s not where we’re at in life right now. And with that, my operating expenses, operating expenses budget had to drastically decrease. I actually, very sadly, had to let go of my podcast editor, Hayley.

She’s been on the podcast. I will link to her stuff and those episodes because she’s incredible. Uh, and my VA, Jennifer, and I didn’t let go of them because of anything they did. I love their work. I loved working with them. It just truly was. I had to drastically decrease my operating expenses and so technically My expenses decreased very, very, very drastically this year compared to last year.

However, if you count owner’s comp, which again, technically it doesn’t, but in my mind it does, it increased very drastically because I paid myself a large chunk of the revenue. from the business this year. Again, I don’t have those exact numbers to give you. I’m really sorry about that. But yeah, that’s how that broke down this year.

So my total expenses technically decreased this year significantly from 2023, but my owner’s comp increased significantly from 2023. Now my profit, here’s where we get into the technicalities again, because if you remember, I mentioned that technically. As a single member LLC, my profit, or my owner’s comp, is considered profit.

So technically, my profit increased drastically this year. Because I had to cut that operating expenses budget. However, I didn’t feel the effects of that. This is very much, I’m not sure if you’ve read, um, Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. I know I’ve shared about that on the podcast previously, but one of the top business books that I’ve read for sure.

He makes this comment in one of the chapters. I don’t remember where or anything, but he makes this comment where he says, He says, you know, he gets his report from his bookkeeper or tax guy or someone, whoever’s giving him the report, and they say, Congratulations, you made a profit. And he goes, What are you talking about?

I don’t feel like I made a profit. Where’s the money? That’s kind of how it feels for me this year. Which, again, we knew going into this year that it was going to be. Like that, we’re in a transitional phase in life, and I’m so excited that we have the ability to be in the transitional phase, thanks to my business.

Anyways, that’s a whole tangent I can go down, but it’s why I’m so passionate about having this business. I love marketing. I’m so excited about it, but man, I want to help other women build this freedom so that they can do this too. So that’s how I feel about my profit this year.

Technically it increased a lot. I did, other than, you know, paying our bills, I mean, yes, I saw the effects, but I didn’t really get to feel those fun effects when a lot of times we think profit and we think, oh, vacation or, oh, this, uh, we didn’t get those side effects, um, which is great, but it just, yeah, definitely a different vibe this year with the business finances.

So, okay, that’s my, my breakdown. Revenue, expenses, owner’s comp, and profit. And a little of everything mixed in there. What I did also want to share is some of my, my largest categories. So, first, my largest income streams. Without a doubt, my number one income stream was my one to one clients this year, which is a drastic difference than it has been in the past, actually, which is so funny.

Um, In the past, my one to one clients have been one of my lowest income streams and I was really, really focused on the educational side of things and that just wasn’t the case this year. I took on more one on one clients. I did more VIP days. I repurposed content. I took on projects. I got to work on one off launch projects with people.

It was a really fun year and the vast majority of my revenue, in fact, I believe the number If I remember correctly off the top of my head, 55, 000 of that 66, 000 was from one on one clients, whether it was ongoing, one off projects, VIP days, whatever. The next second largest income stream was the community, which makes sense.

It’s an ongoing Monthly subscription. Um, so that was the second largest. And then the third was, technically it was content batching bootcamp, but really close behind that was book sales. Which was kind of cool. Not something that I expected, and honestly the majority of those sales came through a subscription box that I got to be a part of, which was an incredible experience.

And I. I’m still kind of in awe that that happened this year, but content patching bootcamp and book sales were the third largest. They’re just like neck and neck. And honestly, I think last year, 2023, it was the same. One on one clients, the community and content patching bootcamp. So that honestly didn’t come as a surprise at all, as far as the order or what was up there.

The only really surprise there was just. the largest. Oh, I did make this note. Amazing. Okay. So yes, 2023 last year, one on one services was first, then the community, and then it was content batching, bootcamp, and the content planner, actually. So that was almost exactly the same, truly. So not really a surprise at all, other than the fact that just how much.

of the income came from those one to one clients this year versus last year. Now, my largest expenses, again, for being technical, this one doesn’t count, but I’m not going to be technical. Largest expenses was owner’s draw. That’s where the vast majority of my money went this year. And then one on one services, while I still had them, again, About probably halfway through the year is when I stopped working with, um, Haley and Jennifer.

And then CARDRA is always one of my largest expenses every year. And then other education. I found myself investing a lot more in education this year. Probably because my time was so limited. I very much looked at it as, okay, my time is limited. I can’t put the money into because of, you know. The reality of my operating expenses, I can’t put the money into one on one services.

So the next best thing is, let me find a course. Let me find a training. Let me find a workbook. Whatever the case may be, a workshop. Let me find what I need so that I can get the full picture right away and just invest in that education. So I actually spent Relatively speaking, a decent chunk of my expense money, my operating expenses on education this year, which was a change.

My 2023 largest expenses were my one on one services. That’s not surprising. 2023 was a large investment year between, um, the book and my rebrand and everything. Second largest expense was my Mac and then my third was an educational membership I was part of and then Cartra So fairly similar, but This year definitely had a different vibe, whereas 2023 was very much a, a year of investing in the business and 2024 was a lot more of just doing the work, head down doing the work.

So that is my 2024 income report. I hope you liked this little breakdown, despite the fact that I didn’t have exact numbers for you in all of the areas. If you did like it, let me know, is this something that I should share again next year, or is it something that you’re bored of? I’d love to know. Your action step for this week is to take a look at your largest streams of income and your largest expense streams, I guess.

Just knowing where your money is coming in from, and that percentage wise, and where it’s going can be so helpful as you make decisions in your business. And so, even if you have no interest in doing your own bug keeping, even if you don’t want to keep track of a spreadsheet, or you don’t have the time, that’s totally fine.

But, Know where those streams of income are coming from. Which ones are the ones that you’re consistently seeing over and over again? Which ones are bringing in the most money? Which ones are working for you? Which ones can you lean into this year? And then your expenses, where are you spending the majority of your money and are you seeing a result from it?

Is it something worth the money you’re putting into it? Or is it just something that, unfortunately, Money’s tight this year and you need to cut. What does that look like for you? So that’s your action step. I would really encourage you to do that. And going with the theme of this episode, your book recommendation is Profit First by Mike Michalowicz.

If you haven’t read it yet, I cannot recommend it enough. It gave me such a strong financial foundation for running a business and helping me to have a clearer idea of what it looks like to have money coming in and leaving your business and how to manage that well, because it’s not, and I’ve had this conversation with many of my friends, actually, it’s not as simple as personal finances are.

It’s a lot more complicated and profit first gave me a really strong foundation that I could then build on. So if you haven’t read that, I highly recommend it. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business. 

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 248: My 2024 Income Report appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

You’ve heard last year’s predictions, you’ve heard my evaluation of my 2024 predictions; now it’s time to give you my 2025 marketing predictions.

I’ve got 5 predictions for you this year, and one really important action step to help take your marketing and your business to the next level in 2025.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

Last week on the show, I re aired my 2024 marketing predictions, and today, I want to share more about how those predictions actually worked out. Because, I believe that it’s important to evaluate what truly happened this year in marketing before we can then predict what’s to come in the new year, which Spoiler is next week’s episode, so stay tuned.

You’re listening to episode 246 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, which you can snag at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Here’s the deal friend. It’s time for your marketing to stop feeling like a constant grind and start feeling like the ball is in your hands. 2025 is the year that you’re going to make more sales with less effort through a simple but impactful marketing strategy. And you’re going to do it with the help of the Chasing Symbol playbook, which includes all of my courses, templates, and workshops in one spot.

It’s everything you need to simplify your marketing and fill more seats in your course. If this sounds like exactly what you need, head on over to amandawarfield. com slash shop to join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist when the playbook launches will be getting a special bonus and discount. So head on over to amandawarfield.

com slash shop and add yourself to this list today. 

The first of my 2024 marketing predictions was that there would be a continued emphasis on video content. And while I do think that that’s true, I think that, you know, we, we are still emphasizing video content and it’s still so important. And I would still say it is. A top, if not the top way to share information.

I also do think that a lot of people actually used video less in this last year because of social media burnout. I think that, um, We use less and we, I think we’ve even consumed less, but I think we collectively feel so burnt out on social media that the idea and the thought of trying to create video content just feels like too much.

And I actually saw a lot of people moving towards simpler content methods and doing a lot less, which I love, but Yeah, video content is still important. There is still such an emphasis on it, but it was less than I expected and I think a lot of that is due to that social media burnout that we’re all feeling.

The second prediction that I had made for 2024 was that there would be more emphasis on email marketing. And this one definitely ended up being wishful thinking on my part. Um, I did notice, I will say, I noticed that my students were getting more serious about email marketing and a lot of my clients, especially the ones that I just onboarded at the end of 2024, they all have setting up sequences and email sequences.

They have that on their goals for 2025. So while I didn’t throughout 2024 really see a shift in the industry, I am now starting to see that shift and hopefully that will continue. But I did notice I did notice that it is within the last few weeks, I’m starting to see my clients more interested in focusing on that instead of me saying we should focus on this, which that is a shift.

And honestly, when I outlined this episode a few weeks ago, that was not the case. I don’t even have that on my outline for this episode. It’s just literally something that in the last two weeks as I’ve onboarded my 2025 clients that I have noticed. Now, my third prediction was that even more small businesses will close, and I’m glad to say that I was wrong.

I personally didn’t see that many people closing their businesses this year. I expected to see it because there were a lot of big names at the end of 2023 that were starting to close their business, and that shocked me, and so I was like, well, if These bigger names are doing so and closing their businesses.

Maybe that means we’re going to see a lot more of that, but that wasn’t the case. I didn’t personally see all that many. I did see over and over again that. Many people had rough years and I will say that to an extent I was included in that. My client work did really well in 2024 and my shop did not do as well as it typically has in the past.

And it ended up evening out, but as far as revenue goes on all of that, which I’m going to share my income report in a future episode. But yeah, I did notice that my, my shop and my digital products, those did not sell as well as they have in the past. And I think that’s what people were thinking when they were saying like, I’m having a rough year.

I can’t get things to sell. Those one to many offers weren’t selling as well, I think, this year. But again, I’m starting to see that towards the end of this year shift a bit as well. And I’m wondering, and this is complete conjecture, I’m wondering if we didn’t see as many people close their business this year because we were so far past COVID, where so many people started businesses because they had time, that now anyone who’s, for the most part, again, total conjecture, but for the most part, if you’ve made it this far, if you’re still running a business, you know, you’ve, you’ve got business pretty figured out, right?

Like, it may not be exactly where you want it to be, but you’ve got the basis and the foundation. Now, my next prediction is that there would be Bigger focus on tiny offers. And I definitely saw a lot of this. Like I said, shop items, one to many items did not sell as well this year as they had in the past, particularly things like courses.

Right. And because of that, I saw a lot more tiny, tiny offers like 7 offers, 10 offers, 14 offers, those smaller offers that pack a big value and yet Don’t cost much. I saw a lot more people creating those, sharing about those, marketing those. I also thought that mini chat will become inundated and stop working quite as well.

And I am very glad to say that I was wrong about this one. I have clients that continue to use mini chat and use it successfully to this day. However, I did notice some best practices this year. I did notice that Truthfully, the ones that get the most success out of Minichat are the ones who are pairing it who A, either have a massive audience or B, are pairing it with ads.

So that’s something to think about. If you’re paying for Minichat, it may be something that you, if you don’t have a massive audience and you are able to keep up with when someone comments, it may be something that you, you may or may not use. I think it’s worth it. It’s not a large sum each month. And I mean, I don’t have a massive audience, right?

If I put. A mini check keyword in my post, it’ll get maybe like zero to four comments, right? Is typical for me. Um, and so I think it is worth it just for the fact that it’s, it takes one more thing off of my to-do list and it’s still makes it so easy for someone to get whatever offer I’m talking about, whatever freebie, whatever resource.

I think it’s worth it. Something to consider for yourself though, if you don’t have a major audience and you’re not planning on running ads anytime soon. Is it for you? I don’t know, but it does work. I do not think it has become so inundated. I do just think there are some best practices in how to make it work.

And then my final prediction for 2024 was that relationships will be more important than ever. 100 percent I saw this this year. I saw more small groups. I saw more co working. I saw people, um, Connecting even deeper with their clients. Uh, people are investing in relationships. 100%. And I The best representation of seeing this was in chasing some of the community this year.

I saw people showing up to co working, showing up to office hours, showing up to networking calls. Every single Tuesday they showed up and with that they started to see results. Not only from getting to take action steps and from learning but just from building relationships with people. There were so many collaborations that I saw come out of the community this year and it just It truly warmed my heart to, to be able to provide a space for people to build those relationships, but also, man, to get to see these people that you’ve brought together to start connecting and helping each other out and cheering each other on there.

That is the coolest feeling. So relationships will be more important than ever. I think that’s going to continue into the new year and in many years to come. I think the days of. Let me just put up a blog or let me just put up this or let me just put up that. I think those days are over. I think networking, relationships, all of that is going to play a very, very, very important role in all of our marketing and all of our, our businesses.

And with that being said, your action step for this week is to find a community. I’d love to see you join us inside of Chasing Simple, the community where we meet every single Tuesday, but. Even if it’s not that, I really, really recommend that you, you put yourself out there, you find a community, and get involved.

Don’t just join a community, but be inside whatever group they have, whether it’s Slack, or Facebook, or school, or something else. Show up to the calls. Connect with those people that are inside of that group in other places as well. Follow them on Instagram, respond to their stories, really embed yourself in community moving forward.

And your book recommendation for this week is Funny Story by Emily Henry. And this is a, it’s not really enemies to lovers. Um, it’s like a, I guess forced proximity is probably a good word, a good way to describe it. But there’s this couple, they’re engaged. They break up, he ends up with his childhood best friend, so childhood best friend breaks up with her boyfriend, and then ex fiancé and childhood best friend’s boyfriend end up moving in together because they both need a roommate, and they end up breaking up.

deciding to essentially post on social media, pretend that they’re dating now, all of this stuff. And you know how those books go, but it was a really good one. I gave it four stars when I read it and, um, highly recommend. So, Funny Story by Emily Henry. I will link to that in the show notes for you and you can check it out.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 247: 2025 Marketing Predictions appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Last week on the show, I re-aired my 2024 marketing predictions. And today, I want to share more about how those predictions worked out. Because I believe it’s important to evaluate what truly happened this year in marketing before we can predict what’s to come in the new year (which is next week’s episode – stay tuned!)

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

Last week on the show, I re aired my 2024 marketing predictions, and today, I want to share more about how those predictions actually worked out. Because, I believe that it’s important to evaluate what truly happened this year in marketing before we can then predict what’s to come in the new year, which Spoiler is next week’s episode, so stay tuned.

You’re listening to episode 246 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, which you can snag at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Here’s the deal friend. It’s time for your marketing to stop feeling like a constant grind and start feeling like the ball is in your hands. 2025 is the year that you’re going to make more sales with less effort through a simple but impactful marketing strategy. And you’re going to do it with the help of the Chasing Symbol playbook, which includes all of my courses, templates, and workshops in one spot.

It’s everything you need to simplify your marketing and fill more seats in your course. If this sounds like exactly what you need, head on over to amandawarfield. com slash shop to join the waitlist. Everyone on the waitlist when the playbook launches will be getting a special bonus and discount. So head on over to amandawarfield.

com slash shop and add yourself to this list today. 

The first of my 2024 marketing predictions was that there would be a continued emphasis on video content. And while I do think that that’s true, I think that, you know, we, we are still emphasizing video content and it’s still so important. And I would still say it is. A top, if not the top way to share information.

I also do think that a lot of people actually used video less in this last year because of social media burnout. I think that, um, We use less and we, I think we’ve even consumed less, but I think we collectively feel so burnt out on social media that the idea and the thought of trying to create video content just feels like too much.

And I actually saw a lot of people moving towards simpler content methods and doing a lot less, which I love, but Yeah, video content is still important. There is still such an emphasis on it, but it was less than I expected and I think a lot of that is due to that social media burnout that we’re all feeling.

The second prediction that I had made for 2024 was that there would be more emphasis on email marketing. And this one definitely ended up being wishful thinking on my part. Um, I did notice, I will say, I noticed that my students were getting more serious about email marketing and a lot of my clients, especially the ones that I just onboarded at the end of 2024, they all have setting up sequences and email sequences.

They have that on their goals for 2025. So while I didn’t throughout 2024 really see a shift in the industry, I am now starting to see that shift and hopefully that will continue. But I did notice I did notice that it is within the last few weeks, I’m starting to see my clients more interested in focusing on that instead of me saying we should focus on this, which that is a shift.

And honestly, when I outlined this episode a few weeks ago, that was not the case. I don’t even have that on my outline for this episode. It’s just literally something that in the last two weeks as I’ve onboarded my 2025 clients that I have noticed. Now, my third prediction was that even more small businesses will close, and I’m glad to say that I was wrong.

I personally didn’t see that many people closing their businesses this year. I expected to see it because there were a lot of big names at the end of 2023 that were starting to close their business, and that shocked me, and so I was like, well, if These bigger names are doing so and closing their businesses.

Maybe that means we’re going to see a lot more of that, but that wasn’t the case. I didn’t personally see all that many. I did see over and over again that. Many people had rough years and I will say that to an extent I was included in that. My client work did really well in 2024 and my shop did not do as well as it typically has in the past.

And it ended up evening out, but as far as revenue goes on all of that, which I’m going to share my income report in a future episode. But yeah, I did notice that my, my shop and my digital products, those did not sell as well as they have in the past. And I think that’s what people were thinking when they were saying like, I’m having a rough year.

I can’t get things to sell. Those one to many offers weren’t selling as well, I think, this year. But again, I’m starting to see that towards the end of this year shift a bit as well. And I’m wondering, and this is complete conjecture, I’m wondering if we didn’t see as many people close their business this year because we were so far past COVID, where so many people started businesses because they had time, that now anyone who’s, for the most part, again, total conjecture, but for the most part, if you’ve made it this far, if you’re still running a business, you know, you’ve, you’ve got business pretty figured out, right?

Like, it may not be exactly where you want it to be, but you’ve got the basis and the foundation. Now, my next prediction is that there would be Bigger focus on tiny offers. And I definitely saw a lot of this. Like I said, shop items, one to many items did not sell as well this year as they had in the past, particularly things like courses.

Right. And because of that, I saw a lot more tiny, tiny offers like 7 offers, 10 offers, 14 offers, those smaller offers that pack a big value and yet Don’t cost much. I saw a lot more people creating those, sharing about those, marketing those. I also thought that mini chat will become inundated and stop working quite as well.

And I am very glad to say that I was wrong about this one. I have clients that continue to use mini chat and use it successfully to this day. However, I did notice some best practices this year. I did notice that Truthfully, the ones that get the most success out of Minichat are the ones who are pairing it who A, either have a massive audience or B, are pairing it with ads.

So that’s something to think about. If you’re paying for Minichat, it may be something that you, if you don’t have a massive audience and you are able to keep up with when someone comments, it may be something that you, you may or may not use. I think it’s worth it. It’s not a large sum each month. And I mean, I don’t have a massive audience, right?

If I put. A mini check keyword in my post, it’ll get maybe like zero to four comments, right? Is typical for me. Um, and so I think it is worth it just for the fact that it’s, it takes one more thing off of my to-do list and it’s still makes it so easy for someone to get whatever offer I’m talking about, whatever freebie, whatever resource.

I think it’s worth it. Something to consider for yourself though, if you don’t have a major audience and you’re not planning on running ads anytime soon. Is it for you? I don’t know, but it does work. I do not think it has become so inundated. I do just think there are some best practices in how to make it work.

And then my final prediction for 2024 was that relationships will be more important than ever. 100 percent I saw this this year. I saw more small groups. I saw more co working. I saw people, um, Connecting even deeper with their clients. Uh, people are investing in relationships. 100%. And I The best representation of seeing this was in chasing some of the community this year.

I saw people showing up to co working, showing up to office hours, showing up to networking calls. Every single Tuesday they showed up and with that they started to see results. Not only from getting to take action steps and from learning but just from building relationships with people. There were so many collaborations that I saw come out of the community this year and it just It truly warmed my heart to, to be able to provide a space for people to build those relationships, but also, man, to get to see these people that you’ve brought together to start connecting and helping each other out and cheering each other on there.

That is the coolest feeling. So relationships will be more important than ever. I think that’s going to continue into the new year and in many years to come. I think the days of. Let me just put up a blog or let me just put up this or let me just put up that. I think those days are over. I think networking, relationships, all of that is going to play a very, very, very important role in all of our marketing and all of our, our businesses.

And with that being said, your action step for this week is to find a community. I’d love to see you join us inside of Chasing Simple, the community where we meet every single Tuesday, but. Even if it’s not that, I really, really recommend that you, you put yourself out there, you find a community, and get involved.

Don’t just join a community, but be inside whatever group they have, whether it’s Slack, or Facebook, or school, or something else. Show up to the calls. Connect with those people that are inside of that group in other places as well. Follow them on Instagram, respond to their stories, really embed yourself in community moving forward.

And your book recommendation for this week is Funny Story by Emily Henry. And this is a, it’s not really enemies to lovers. Um, it’s like a, I guess forced proximity is probably a good word, a good way to describe it. But there’s this couple, they’re engaged. They break up, he ends up with his childhood best friend, so childhood best friend breaks up with her boyfriend, and then ex fiancé and childhood best friend’s boyfriend end up moving in together because they both need a roommate, and they end up breaking up.

deciding to essentially post on social media, pretend that they’re dating now, all of this stuff. And you know how those books go, but it was a really good one. I gave it four stars when I read it and, um, highly recommend. So, Funny Story by Emily Henry. I will link to that in the show notes for you and you can check it out.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 246: Evaluating My 2024 Predictions appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Today we’re doing something a little bit different here on Chasing Simple. For this episode, I’m going to be giving you a replay of an episode I released a year ago. Episode 190: My 2024 Marketing Predictions. This episode aired originally on December 12, 2023. And the reason I’m replaying it for you is so that we can discuss it next week.

Often, you’ll see podcasters put out these types of episodes about their predictions, but you don’t usually see them go back and talk about them later. But I thought that would be fun, so today you’ll hear my 2024 predictions again, and then next week I’ll go over where I was wrong and where I got things right.

My hope is that this series is informative for you as you move into planning for 2025, but also that it’s a fun break from all of the end of year hustle that we’ve been doing lately between Black Friday and the holiday season.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

Today we’re doing something a little different here on Chasing Simple. For this episode, I’m going to be giving you a replay of an episode I released a year ago. Episode 190, my 2024 marketing predictions. This episode aired originally on December 12th, 2023. And the reason I’m replaying it for you is so that we can discuss it next week.

Often, you’ll see podcasters put out these types of episodes about their predictions, but You don’t usually see them go back and talk about them later. But I thought it would be fun, so today you’ll hear my 2024 predictions again, and then next week I’ll go over where I was wrong and where I got things right.

My hope is that the series is informative for you as you move into planning for 2025, but also that it’s just a fun break from all of the year end hustle that we’ve been doing between Black Friday and the holiday season and starting to prepare for the new year. You’re listening to episode 245 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

 Hey there friend, I’m popping in really quickly to ask for your help. If you haven’t already, would you mind leaving a rating and review for the Chasing Simple podcast? You see, ratings and reviews are really important in the life of a podcast because it tells the podcast player that people are listening and enjoying the show, which means that this show is more likely to get Suggested to a wider audience.

Not only that, but honestly, I love to read the encouraging words from listeners, especially on those hard days of entrepreneurship. So if you felt encouraged by this show, or you’ve learned something that you’ve been able to implement to improve your business. I would love to hear about it. So please go leave a rating review if you haven’t already, it would truly mean the world to me.

Last year, I only had four predictions for 2023, but today I have six for you. So we’re going to go ahead and dive right on in. The first one I feel like is a no brainer. And that is that there’s going to be a continued emphasis on video content. So whether that means you are showing up on YouTube. Or tiktok or reels or stories, whatever the case may be, video content is going to continue to be king.

It just really builds those relationships with people, especially for content. That’s going to be. The foundation, I guess you could say, it’s that first entry point, whether they find you on YouTube, or they find you on TikTok, or they find you on social media, and it’s going to be, you know, the, the thing that gets them into your world, whatever it may be, video is going to be such a A big part of that, a big part of bringing in those foundational relationships and just letting people into your world and into your personality.

So I encourage you to really lean into video marketing. You don’t have to use video in every platform, but I would choose at least one platform where you’re using video. And again, it can be as simple as stories and you just Put your face on stories a couple times a week and talk to the camera. That can be it.

It doesn’t have to be this huge coordinated thing, but if you’re not already using video in some capacity, I really, really suggest that you do. The second prediction I have is possibly wishful thinking on my part, but I think that there’s going to be more emphasis on email marketing versus social media marketing.

Now, I do think this is going to be happening because I’ve already been noticing this year in 2023 that there has become a lot of apathy towards social media. We kind of talked about that in the last episode, but there’s just been a lot of apathy towards social media where people, Instagram engagement particularly has really died off and people are not interested in pouring a ton of time into a platform that’s just going to do that to them again, which honestly I’m here for.

I have. I’ve always said that worrying about the algorithm is not worth our time, and it’s not worth our mental health to pour all of our time and energy and efforts into social media. Do I still think social media has its place? Yes. But I’m hopeful that people will start doing more with their email marketing.

Instead of their social media marketing. And when I say instead, I mean, strategy wise, focusing their strategy on their email marketing, not only doing email marketing and not using social media because social media can be a great way to get your leads. Into your email marketing, which we’ll talk about one of those ways and when I predictions later, but that’s kind of what I’m thinking is going to happen is people will be more interested in email marketing strategy and less interested in social media strategy because of the apathy that we’re seeing with social media.

But I’m hopeful that we won’t give up social media totally as business owners, just because it is such a great way to build community and be connected. My third prediction is one that I. Don’t love to say, but I really do think is going to be true. Um, and that is that even more small businesses are going to close.

We have seen many small business owners closing their doors this year. We’ve seen a lot of small business owners quitting their business and going back to working a corporate job. That has just been the case this year. And. You know, if it has to happen, it has to happen. And that’s just the unfortunate reality of a recession and economic downturn, but I hate to see it.

And so my hope is that I can continue to give resources and give education that will keep business owners from having to do that, but I do worry that that will be the case on a happier note. Let’s talk about some things that can help you avoid that. So my fourth prediction is that there’s going to be a bigger focus on tiny offers in 2024.

There was already a clear uptick in this in 2023. So again, this is kind of a no brainer one, but I think that that will absolutely be continuing into this new year. That as long as we are in this economic downturn, that we will be seeing tiny offers being a bigger focus. It has certainly been a bigger focus for.

Purchasers and I think in 2024, we’re going to see a lot more focus from the business owner side of things where they’re really trying to take what they have and turn it into smaller offers, whether it’s a course and they take that course and they split it into multiple many courses that are cheaper or whether it’s adding on payment plans to turn a bigger offer into something that’s more affordable.

Or whether they’re creating totally new tiny offers, whatever the case may be. I think we’re going to see a lot more business owners really leaning into that this year because even though that means they need more sales, right? If you sell a product for 10 versus a product for 100 and you’re trying to make 200, well, it’s two sales versus 20 sales, right?

Which a lot of business owners, when the economy was doing really well, kind of Decided they would rather just find two people to pay a larger sum. And yeah, in theory, that is easier when the economy is doing well, when we are focusing on trying to keep things afloat, well, finding 20 people sounds a lot easier to pay 10 a piece versus two at a hundred each.

So while 2023 was full of purchasers focusing on those tiny offers, I think we’re going to see a lot more business owners focusing on creating and repurposing tiny offers. My fifth prediction is that Minichat will become inundated and stop working as well as it is now. However, I say this, and if you have not already taken advantage of Minichat, I want you to do so.

Hop on before it gets inundated, um, because it will, as does any new tactic, right? But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing in the meantime, especially because it’s free. So if you haven’t heard of mini chat, you’ve probably noticed it happening on your social media feed, where someone puts up a reel or post and says, comment, these specific words in the comments, and I will send you the link to this specific thing.

It could be a podcast episode. It could be a freebie. It could be a course. I mean, it could be linked to anything really. I’ve, I’ve been using it, uh, many, many of my clients have been using it this year. This has been a very well used thing already. And what it is, is that you can set up automations. And again, this is free.

You just have to connect your Instagram account to it or your Facebook account. When someone comments those specific words, there are also other triggers, but this seems to be the one that most people use. When someone comments those specific words, then it automatically has this automation. Where it will DM them a specific message or link and it also you can set it up so that you have a variety of comments that it will leave for people that do respond.

So you’re not just saying the same thing over and over. So it’s a really cool automation tool. Again, it’s free, and I’m sure that they will come up with new ways to be used as it does become inundated. But I think the way that it’s being used now with the comment, this and I’ll send you the link will probably get overused.

But I It’s still early enough that you should get on it still and start using it until that case comes until that day comes where you see it’s not working as well. And again, because many chap wants to make money, they will most likely find new ways. to automate and, uh, people will find new ways and it’ll be continuing to reinvent itself.

I am sure. So I do think the current way will become inundated at some point in 2024, but I don’t know when that will be. And I think it’s worth hopping on. Now, my final prediction, I kind of alluded to this one in last week’s episode. Well, I didn’t allude to it. I straight up said it in last week’s episode, but relationships will be even more important than ever.

And. This is something that I predicted in 2023, and I think that it will go even deeper in 2024, because without relationships, if you’re trying to do business alone, you will not survive. You will not survive this economic downturn. The way we’re going to survive is by doing it together. There’s that quote, right?

A rising tide lifts all boats. And when you link up together and you build that tide together and we all rise together, that is when We all succeed. So, your action step for this week is to come hang out with us in the Rising Tide Society. Rising Tide Society is a non profit that I volunteer with that I am really passionate about.

If you’ve read my book, you have heard me talk about it multiple times at this point. But, Their mission is to help lift each other up through community over competition. And they, you know, have tons of resources for business owners. It is a really, really great way to get connected with other business owners and also continue to learn and be educated and improve your business.

So I’m going to link to the rising tide Facebook group in the show notes. If you haven’t already become part of it, I really, really recommend that you do. And so that’s your action step for this week is to go join that Facebook group. There are over 75, 000 small business owners inside, and this is a global community.

Be sure to go do that. Now, your book recommendation is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmas. This one was really, really popular last year, so you’ve likely heard of it. The cover gives off rom com vibes. It’s not. Um, it, it is a more serious cover. type of book. Uh, it really touches on a lot of issues that women face in the workplace, and especially that women in STEM face in the workplace, especially previously, but it’s not, um, who is it, Allie Hazelwood?

It’s not that type of women in STEM book. It is a much more serious book. There, there are some trigger warning, warnings associated with it that I won’t go into here, but, um, Yeah, it, despite the fact that it’s not what it looks like, you know, don’t judge a book by its cover, but despite the fact that it’s not what the cover really kind of showcases it to be, it really was an incredible read.

So much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 245: Looking Back at My 2024 Marketing Predictions appeared first on Amanda Warfield.