Creative Freedom with Lisa Robbin Young

A long-time friend of mine came to visit Nashville not long ago. He paid me a compliment or two, as he often does, and I poo-pooed nearly all of it. Later, when we were at lunch with my family, he turned to my husband and asked: “How does she not see how talented and gifted she is?” My husband shrugged in agreement that I wasn’t owning my gifts and talent, and I certainly wasn’t accepting the compliment.

Hello, Impostor Syndrome!

What is Imposter Syndrome anyway? Well, it can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. Maybe you’ve felt it, too, but sometimes, Impostor Syndrome is a symptom of something much different. In this week’s episode, I talk a bit about the difference between Imposter Syndrome and what I call the Passed Over Paradox.

I’ve been holding onto this episode for a long time. Decades, in fact. You may already know that I’ve been in the online space for nearly 30 years - back when it took 15 minutes for an animated Gif to load and we were actually excited about that! I’ve seen the rise and fall of many an internet marketer in my time - and the cult-like followings and mythos that those gurus often created around themselves. In that time, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work. Which is why I’m still here.

So many folks were wooed by a promise only to find out they needed to invest more before they were really ready to step into a program like that. They were sold on a dream of “success in their sleep” with images of fancy cars and exotic locations. Except that their “way of doing business” was a cookie-cutter formula, or an online success “blueprint” - no joke - that was an actual thing back in the day. Those formulas and blueprints were often high-level overviews or outlines that didn’t give you enough details to help you make real progress. They just kept you hamstrung and needing to invest more and more money with the guru in order to finally get the details that they’d been holding back from the beginning.

Blueprints and cookie-cutter concepts can only take you so far. Heck, we use them when we build business models. We start with the same framework for every person we work with. But, like a good builder, we don’t stop at the blueprint. That’s the what. We also need the “how”. We take that model and help them see how to implement it in ways that work for them.

And you can do that, too... You can do business outside the box! Listen along as I bust 4 myths so that you can feel at ease and start doing business YOUR WAY.

If you haven't already downloaded this week's bonus content, you'll want to do that here. Not a member yet? It's free! When you register for the Rising Tide, you also get email updates, the FREE learning library, and access to episode transcripts, worksheets, and more!

It's finally Season 7! It has been a long road to get here, and I’m so excited to be digging into the new content this season - all around helping you overcome the passed over paradox and step more confidently into your Great Work. To Be that star in your market, instead of a best-kept secret.

Last season I talked about increasing your brand visibility by showing up, giving people a reason to pay attention and by collaborating with colleagues. But that third point - collaborating with colleagues - deserves an episode all to itself. We’ll hit THAT topic next week. Promise.

But this episode is about building a community network and finding the right moments and opportunities to tap into those communities for business growth and visibility.

This is the LAST episode of season 6!!!I am ready to CELEBRATE with this week's episode where we dig into the questions I recommend asking yourself before you decide you are ready for coaching.

Coaching is not a magic pill that cures all ills. In fact, many of my clients will recount the times they’ve sat with me and cried or told me to eff-the-eff-off because they didn’t like the hard truth they were facing in the moment. Truths that they ultimately HAD to face if they wanted to move forward.

You’ve got to be ready for coaching. If you’re still standing around wanting someone to tell you what to do or be your boss, then that’s not what coaches do. In order to know whether or not a business coach is your right next step, these four things must be true:

Our money stories shape our choices... which chape our money stories... and so on, and so on!

Today, I’m sharing the biggest money blocks for each creative type. Because, while we’re all unique, we do carry a few patterns in our types that can put up BIG roadblocks to our business growth and success.

Each creative type has can have similar symptoms when it comes to hitting a plateau in your business, but the CAUSE is often one of these thought patterns.

If you haven’t already taken our free quiz to discover your creative type, you’ll want to do that in order to know your type. Head on over to LisaRobbinYoung.com/quiz to get your results.

After you get your result, or before, tune in to learn how to adjust your money choices.

In 2007, Consumer Reports did a taste test with McDonald’s coffee and Starbucks. The Consumer Reports Coffee Taste Test showed that McDonald’s plain black coffee edged out Starbucks and other fast food chains and had the best tasting black coffee of them all.

Then in 2009, a more informal Starbuck’s taste test was held to look at some of the flavored coffees. This was a bit less scientific, but still a blind taste test. The result? McDonald’s wins again!

But here’s the point I thought was interesting: everyone still preferred the Starbucks environment, even though the McDonald’s coffee is better.

McDonald’s charges less for their comparably - and purportedly better - flavored coffees than the Seattle coffee giant, but people happily pay more because of the experience of shopping at Starbucks. This is a great illustration of how pricing is subjective and based, at least in part, on the story you’re trying to tell.

There are also a lot of “feels” that come up around pricing. Today, I want to tackle one of the most common concerns I hear from entrepreneurs with an existing book of business: How do I raise my rates so that I don’t lose my current clients or come off looking like I’m only in it for the money?

Listen in below!

I have an Incubator client right now that’s working on building their business, and they don’t have a large audience. Between fits of frustration around wanting to go faster and inspired ideas that need execution, we’ve been having conversations around who they serve and how to talk to them to stimulate sales without coming off as sleazy. As nice as it would be to just jump from a great business idea to loads of sales, it just very rarely works that way.

Could she walk up to every person she meets, introduce herself and offer her services? Sure. But she’d likely end up with more folks running screaming for the hills than she would new customers.

There’s probably nothing people hate more than to be sold to. And maybe you’re even thinking to yourself:

"I don’t want to be that slick, sleazy salesperson and have to push, push, push all the time just to keep my nose above water."

What can you do? Listen in to find out!

In our last episode we talked about how to find folks and I intimated a little bit about the need to talk TO them, not AT them. But we didn’t get into specifics of how to do that - what to say, etc.

I don’t want to leave you hanging. So, that’s what this episode is all about. This episode will be useful regardless of how well connected you are with this audience. Whether you’re just getting started with them or you’ve got clients, or the start of an audience but not many Raving Fans, I’m going to save you the two by four to the head.

Because it’s not enough to know who they are, you’ve also got to reach and connect with - engage with - them. Listen to the show below to become "coffee worthy".

There was a time in the big bad world of business, where you could pretty much sell anything and people would buy it. You didn’t need to persuade people about the benefits of choosing you because you were the only game in town. They either bought what you were selling or they went without. Period.

But buyers are smarter, do more research, and have a LOT more options at their fingertips. It takes more than just “buy my stuff, it’s great” to encourage a buyer to say yes.

But even in a world where a whole lot of people MIGHT say yes to your offer, you need to practice a little discernment.

Today, I want you to understand the principles behind finding your target audience - how to determine if you’re talking to the right people in the first place, and if not, what may need to shift so that you can actually FIND these folks.

Catch all the bonus action at creativefreedomshow.com

Special thanks to our Patrons for your continued support.

Theme music: “Welcome to the Show” by Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com. Music licensed under creativecommons.org

Pivot! It was one of the biggest buzzwords of 2020, thanks to the pandemic that shall not be named putting a monkey wrench into EVERYONE’S plans!

Not to brag, but I’ve been pivoting since before it was cool. I’ve probably done the pivot 5 or 10 times in my nearly 30 years online. I mean, nothing lasts forever and the only constant is change, right?

Last episode I talked about how Taylor Swift pivoted to a new music genre...and she’s not the only one. Fine artist Henri Matisse and lots of companies have started down one path, decided it’s not working for them (or has stopped working for them), and turned to something new.

So yes, pivots are a thing, and they absolutely CAN be done successfully, but how do you know if it is, in fact, time to pivot? Listen in to find out today.

Catch all the bonus action at creativefreedomshow.com

Special thanks to our Patrons for your continued support.

Theme music: “Welcome to the Show” by Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com. Music licensed under creativecommons.org