Clover: Conversations with Women in Leadership on Visibility, Authority & Owning the Room

"And I discovered that as a journalist if you don't have a pitch or a story to share with the big boss on Monday morning, you didn't have a job. What's important for entrepreneurs to realize is that journalists aren't just helping you with your business, you are helping them keep their job. Because if you don't pitch your story, they don't have anything to tell their boss on a Monday morning." - Adela Hussain

That's one of my favorite pieces of insight from my discussion with Adela, founder of Startups & Co and my guest this week on the show. The first thing that Adela teaches her students in her course, Pitch to Press, is that you as an entrepreneur are keeping journalists/podcasters, etc in their jobs - they need your stories and expertise!

The second thing she teaches her students is that when they're pitching to anyone, they have to lead with the story and not their ego. Mention what you've noticed or learned from their work and why your specific topic would be of interest to their readers/listeners.

Tune in for the full scoop of how to pitch your business to press!  Connect with Adela on her website and Instagram.

Sami Miles, founder of Catchiest Copy and creator of Automatically Funny AF in Four Weeks, talks all things funny in copywriting.

When working with clients, she found that the funnest time was when they were joking around, when she could bring that humor out of them and onto paper. 

A former stand-up comic who has opened for some of the biggest names in the biz, Sami knows exactly how to inject humor into copy in just the right way.

Whether it's punching up copywriting assets,  speeches, or presentations, Sami tells us how to bridge the gap for our audience through humor. One of the tips she shares is she has her clients watch the opening jokes of their favorite comics. From there, they workshop everything from signature talks, guest teaching, webinars - even podcasts. All messaging is curated as well - launch emails, welcome sequences...they all go through her process to increase connection through laughter.

Head over here to grab Sami's '10 tips to Grab Your Audience by the Funny Bone'.

Email tags. A simple yet powerful tool that way too many business owners don't use to their full potential.

Cheryl Rerick guests on the show this week and goes over how email tags can be:

• a simple and intuitive way to sort your contacts based on their interests, preferences, and any special attributes that set them apart from each other
•  used to trigger automation
• a functional tool, as well as give you information about your subscribers 

We chat about the difference between (and strategies/tactics around) segmentation and tags as well as Cheryl's three favorite uses for tags.

Toss me a note and let me know how you use tags, or a tactic you discovered from this episode.

Connect with Cheryl at her website here and on Instagram here.

So many entrepreneurs are, as I've heard Marie Forleo describe it, 'multi-passionate'.  There's a school of thought out there that says as an entrepreneur you have to focus on one thing and one thing only.

I call BS.

Laura Scholes joins me on the show this week to explain how she launched another business from her core business. Some overlap between the two? Perhaps. But, she still started her second business essentially from scratch. Not knowing exactly how to manage two businesses at once, let alone launch it.

Listen in as she describes the exact steps she took to explore another one of her passions enough to turn it into a business.

Connect with Laura:
The 24-Hour Site
Story House Creative

Monica Hollins, founder of OTBC (Outside The Box Consulting, LLC) has decades of experience building super-successful communities. From health clubs to master-planned communities, she has crafted impactful strategies to increase inclusion, engagement, connection...loyalty. These attributes are key during a normal business year, but post-pandemic, they are mission-critical.

Tune in and learn ways to grow not just an audience, but a community clamoring for your brand and your mission.

Connect with Monica at her website.

Rachel Simon, CEO and founder of Connect the Dots Digital, helps entrepreneurs of all backgrounds "look good on LinkedIn". LinkedIn is the top networking platform for corporate and entrepreneurial professionals, so ensuring your personal and company profiles are structured with the right information and messaged in a way that immediately connects with your target audience is paramount.

Learn to craft your headline with a hook, exactly how to use that 'Featured Section', modern use of your 'About' copy, and more. We go through every section of the LinkedIn profile and spell out exactly how to use it to your advantage. 

Head over to Connect the Dots Digital to learn more about Rachel and ways you can work together.

My conversation with Nicole Rollender, founder of Strand Writing Services, was one that will make you want to take action immediately. My favorite entrepreneurs are those that leave it all on the table - they're open to sharing the minute details on each aspect of their business growth...the roses and the thorns of it.

After being downsized from her six-figure salary executive editor-in-chief role, Nicole decided to go out on her own. Within less than a year she scaled her business to six-figures and has never fallen below that income. In this episode, she shares super specific insights and tactics on how to set the foundation to scale your business to a consistent six-figure income each year...in a sustainable way.

From how to structure your payment process and cash flow to showing up as a CEO rather than a victim, Nicole gives direct, valuable guidance - all substance, no sugar. Should clients pay you upfront? Which is better - a 3-month or 6-month retainer? Should you do test projects to introduce yourself to a new client?  What's the quickest way to get a set income every month? Should I zero in on a niche? Is LinkedIn worth it as a business growth tool? Listen in as we discuss all these questions and more.

Want to connect with Nicole? Check out her website, STRAND Writing Services.

From clarifying your message with a reduction of words to how to use personal stories to get a professional point across...(including ways to use the emails you have sitting in your Inbox to improve your writing skills), these seven tips will have your copywriting take on a whole other level of expertise.

There are so many tools out there that look nice and shiny that you can buy to increase your skills at copywriting or an online business in general, but in this episode, I want to show you 10 FREE resources that you can use to help out your copywriting. 

I include some popular choices like Grammarly and Canva but also some that haven't gotten their full due yet such as  Read-able, WordCounter, and OneLook.

Stream the episode and check these incredible FREE resources out below:

• Grammarly
• Readability Test
• Character Count
• WordCounter
• Merriam-Webster and Thesaurus.com
• Google Docs and Google Drive
• Google Keyword Planner
• OneLook
• Related Words
• Uber Suggest

This week, I'm going over the call to action aka the CTA. There are a variety of things that go into creating a very clickable call to action.

I'll go through some of the nuts and bolts with you on this episode. A CTA encourages your audience to take a specific action - it's really a conversion tool. It can help in converting members, subscribers, followers, customers...you get the idea. You must know exactly what you want your audience to do, before you even start to create your call to action.

From how to guide your audience to take action to the color, shape, and placement of your CTA, this episode focuses on all things conversion by call-to-action.

________
Need some help with your copywriting? Customers not converting? Not okay! Let's take your copy from 'meh' to 'marvelous'.  Check out how you can work with me here.