Hi! Today, I want to talk about lazy marketing tactics that I see everywhere and what you should do instead. In this episode, I'm chatting about... The importance of personability Why popular marketing trends don't actually work Emphasizing quality over quantity And, how to tap into the beliefs of your audience to better sell I really want to hear from YOU and what your thoughts are about the episode, what you'd like to hear in the future, or just to say hi and be a part of a kick-ass supportive business community. Join my FB group Empowered & Free, tag me on Instagram @theallisonnelson, or visit my website www.allison-nelson.com.

In this episode, I'm chatting about...

• The issue with emphasizing the need to find motivation outside of ourselves
• How to cultivate your own motivation
• The best way to market for FREE!

I really want to hear from YOU and what your thoughts are about the episode, what you'd like to hear in the future, or just to say hi and be a part of a kick-ass supportive business community. Join my FB group Empowered & Free, tag me on Instagram @theallisonnelson, or visit my website www.allison-nelson.com.

Today's episode is conquering a topic that is a little more vulnerable than my typical content, but it's an important part of my journey. Here is just a bit of background to explain the title of the episode: I started my coaching business in May 2019, and I didn't make any significant money until April 2020, when I made $10k in the 3rd week of that month, in the middle of a pandemic, with a husband home because he was out of a job, and a 3-year-old who was home 24/7. A lot of the steps I was taking were the right steps but they just needed a few tweaks. Join us in the Empowered and Free: No BS Organic Marketing for Female Entrepreneurs FB group for free training.

Many people say that self-doubt is really holding them back in their business. When I saw the statistics I was honestly surprised. I thought fear would be a bigger factor. But then I came across more information on self-doubt in businesses. One quote I came across that I want to share with you is "doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will". I was shocked but I started to reflect on it. One thing I really talk about with my coaching clients is the belief that can accomplish their goals. And really a belief is the opposite of doubt so it started making more and more sense to me. Belief in yourself and your business is imperative to the growth of your business! You have to believe that you can, you have to believe it's possible and you have to believe in your dreams. 92% of people let that doubt creep into their thoughts and let it take over their business.

The definition of self-doubt is a feeling of insecurity about your abilities or any actions you might take. This can begin in childhood, maybe someone made you feel not good enough. But we're going to go into how this can affect your business now. I'm going to get into some strategies and questions you can ask yourself to help overcome self-doubt. Let's also remember that this is part of your mindset. Your mind is the last thing to change. Your actions change first so give it time and work to really get into a new mindset and headspace. Action is going to get you to the point where your brain will actually believe it.

The first strategy I want to talk about is shifting your weaknesses into strengths. If you've ever been in a job interview and they've asked you what your biggest weakness is. I think it's a terrible question. When you're in an online business it can be isolating you don't have a group of coworkers to talk to and that understand your business. We can get into the trap of comparing our own businesses to others and thinking well I've only been open for 6 months and they've been open for 18 months. So every time you've heard that "what's your weakness" swap it mentally into a strength. Instead of harping on the weakness of your business, trade that mindset for something good you can bring to the table. For example, your weakness is that it may take you a little longer to complete a project, but it's because you're incredibly thorough and detail-oriented and dig deep into each step and make sure it's done correctly. You may think that having three kids is a weakness for you, more people that need you, and more attention off of your business. But this can also be a strength. First of all, there are a whole lot more ups and downs that can happen, but that's exactly what a business does too. So your management skills are going to be strong and prepare you for this in your business. Take the time to write down a couple of weaknesses that you feel you have and rephrase them into a strength. Revisit them and remember them!

The second strategy is the vision you have for your life and why that matters. Your self-doubt will convince you out of things you really want in your life and business. You need to stop and think past that. One exercise you can do is write down all about the life you want. I don't care how scary or out of the box they seem. These are your big dreams! For me, I envisioned slow mornings, and I knew that meant retiring my husband. For all transparency, my husband got laid because of Covid, but he was able to not worry about finding a new job right away. Now that I got to check this off of my list, I'll keep dreaming and adding big goals to this list. Once you have the long-term in mind, make sure your goals are getting you closer to your vision. It's not just enough to just say "make money", make sure you're thinking about your impact and how that money can affect your family and others. You have a bigger purpose than just doubting yourself!

The third strategy we're going into is taking action. As women, a lot of us spend too much time overthinking. If you haven't heard of Mel Robbins' 5 Second Rule I highly recommend taking a look at her Instagram or her book. She says that when she has a big idea that she wants to do, she counts to 5, then gets up and goes for it. Doubt has to be negated with bravery and courage. One thing I encourage against is to stop consuming all the content you can find before taking action. You don't have to watch every single video or take every course to begin your journey or take the next step.

Another thing that really holds people back is stopping in their tracks when something doesn't go their way instead of pivoting and trying something new. If Covid has taught us anything we have to be able to pivot and be flexible. The businesses that can make changes and be creative are going to be businesses that survive and thrive. I want you to write down the triggers that cause you to procrastinate. These triggers can stop you and make you avoid the things you really need to be doing. If you can identify these triggers it will help you avoid and overcome them in the future.

Join us in the Empowered and Free: No BS Organic Marketing for Female Entrepreneurs FB group for free training.

Today I wanted to talk about creating compelling content through being vulnerable. It can feel awkward to figure out exactly what and how to share on social media. If we share too much, then ooh, that's like TMI. It makes us feel icky. And if we don't share enough, then we risk losing authenticity. It's really hard to find that balance if we share, and doctor it up a little. But everybody has done it. So don't roll your eyes. You've done it. We've all done it. Then we look really inauthentic if we do that, right? This is where attraction marketing has taken sort of had that bad turn. Think about those perfect newsfeed pictures. Their hair is perfect. Their makeup is perfect. They're so happy. And the reason they're happy is because of what's in their cup and they're holding up this amazing, beautiful cup. But the thing is, they're holding it in such a way that the logo that's obviously on that cup is covered and their caption is something like how they were able to go for a blowout because of this company and message me if you want the company name. This is why that doesn't work. Number one, it's sleazy, which is obviously a synonym for being inauthentic, right? The second thing is it's not vulnerable. It puts you in a position of power versus a position of leadership. And the third thing is it's not actually giving any real results, like, I can go get a blowout. That's great. I mean, that's a short-term result I suppose, but can I quit my nine to five? Can I spend more time with my kids? Because that just kind of feels like when would I fit in a blowout, but that doesn't mean I feel like I see my kids enough or I feel tired all the time or I don't feel I'm making enough money as it is. Being vulnerable means sharing stories. And I say stories because stories are what people resonate with. Stories are what we, as humans are wired to understand. The cavemen told stories, right? That was their entertainment. There was storytelling on the radio, now we have tv and movies that keep us entertained with stories. That's what they make their money based on the fact that we are wired to learn, understand, listen to stories. The story in this case would put you in a compromising position, a position you might not be totally proud of a position that you were in at some point. Then the catch is how you tell your story to make sure people realize you've had a transformation. So right now we're just going to talk about the point of being vulnerable. Like why it's important to be vulnerable. It gets you remembered and it gets you to stand out as a storyteller. For example, sometimes you can tell a story of something that happened to you and you can connect it to something that you've learned that your audience needs to learn. So one example I can give you from a piece of content that I wrote quite a while ago, but it's still very powerful was from when I was pregnant. I was a little bit overweight when I was pregnant. So obviously I was also gaining weight while as I was going through my pregnancy. I used to work in a high school and I was eating a cookie. It was like 10 o'clock in the morning. And all the moms out there, you can feel me on this, that cookies at 10 o'clock in the morning when we're pregnant is ok and it's just what we do sometimes. I worked in a high school, so 10 o'clock in the morning was like lunchtime, so one of the teachers called me up to her room because she needed some help with something. I go up to her room and I'm chomping away on this cookie. I am living my best life. I'm in my second trimester. I'm starting to show, everyone knows, and I am eating a cookie. This is the best thing that has ever happened. The day can only get better from here. Right? This teacher I'm going to help says something to me like, aren't you afraid of gestational diabetes? And I said, what? And she was like, well, I wasn't overweight, but I had gestational diabetes with my two. She sort of shamed me for eating a cookie. I had a terrible day, the rest of the day. And I decided that any decision I ever made was bad. And I hid in my office for the rest of the day until I realized that it's obviously a reflection on her and not on me. And when I told the story, I waited until I was over it. When I told the story, I connected it to making sure that we're not bullying people for what they're doing in their business. That we are leading with kindness. And we're not bullying them into working with us, not bullying them into being our friends or into convincing them that what we have is what they need. It was a really helpful story that really helped make my point. I was vulnerable because I was telling a story about a time that I got shamed. It was really compelling in the sense that I was able to connect it to something that I know my ideal client struggles with. So that's just an example. If you have a pen and paper, and if you're able, please write this down, because I think it will be really important to ask yourself these questions. Every time you go to write some content and you want it to be compelling. The first question is, am I afraid to get vulnerable? Are you afraid to get vulnerable about some things that have happened to you and your life? If so, then why are you afraid to get vulnerable? What is that trigger? What happens there when you are looking to get vulnerable and something stops you, right? And then the third question, what's the worst that can happen? If this is something that has happened to you and you think that your ideal client can learn from it and one way or the other, what's the worst that can happen. What can happen if they don't learn from it? And then the fourth question I want you to ask is what happens if you don't do this? What happens if you don't tell your story, who benefits from you not telling your story? I would love for you to ask yourself those questions as you go and learn how to write some more compelling content that's vulnerable. Some ideas to consider some of you are like, I don't know what stories to tell. Nothing happens to me. I'm a very normal person. I would also consider myself to have a pretty normal upbringing. Nothing ever too crazy has really happened to me. Except for this past year. Nothing super life-altering that I have like a hero story, right? Most of us are like that. I think we don't need to have a hero story to be successful. I hope that you know that. Here are a couple of just some ideas for you. The first thing is something from childhood. It doesn't have to be about sad things or compromising things necessarily. It can be about happy things. It can be about things that you recall and reasons that you do certain things. It can be lessons you've learned from happy times in your childhood, that can also be harder times, but they can be happy as well. And you can also think about some perspectives on something that had that's happened. So if something else has happened to someone that you know, that you care about, or you love, what's the perspective there. One time I wrote an entire blog post about what it's like to help a friend through grief. I haven't personally experienced a lot of grief at this point. I am very lucky to still have my parents and still have my in-laws. My grandparents have passed away, but they were older and I wasn't extremely close to them. I've never really experienced really heavy grief, but I do have some very close friends who have, and I wrote a blog post about what that was like from my perspective to still be able to be helpful to them and not actually have gone through it myself. Another thing you can talk about is a mistake you've made now. Sometimes we want to talk about our mistakes to be super vulnerable. Another thing that you might want to talk about is some tough love. So if there's a topic you have some really strong opinions on. If you've listened to me for any length of time, you know that I am all about that. Then you can talk about milestones in your own business. You can also connect it to your ideal client's struggle. And then you have to just start to write. So now we need to talk about how you connect your story to the transformation. Some of you might be thinking well, okay, great. I have a list of stories. And then I've got a list of my ideal client struggles, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to connect the two. So this is essentially where point B is, you know, their transformation isn't before you're sort of talking more about struggles, right? Actual vulnerable stories. So if you do the action step of writing down your stories and how it relates to a struggle that your ideal client has, then you have a list of stories. You have some scenarios, you have some hard truths that you want to be able to talk about so we can bring out your vulnerability, right? You also have a list of struggles that your ideal client thesis, and now we're going to bring them together. You don't just want to leave people hanging. They need to see that results can be had from a story or the struggle. They don't want to just sit in the struggle. And then they walk away from your content feeling awful, right? Or you start attracting people who love to struggle and don't have a dream for the future. So we can't just sit in the pain points and hope that someone just like gets inspired enough to come and hang. Right. We have to show people there's a way out. So it's the same thing as sort of having like a cliffhanger, but there's no second movie or second book out yet. So the strategy here is to number one, take a struggle that your ideal client faces and let's change it into a result. So take that struggle. But what does it look like when the struggle is gone? This is sort of a solution-focused way to go about their struggles so that you're not deepening the problem for them. You've done that, right? You've pushed on the pain points a little bit. Now offer a solution. What does it look like when the struggle has gone? Are they happier? Do they have more money? What can they do with more money? What will they do when they're happier? Will they get out of bed earlier in the morning? Will they actually go out and take a walk and be in nature? With money, what will they be able to do? Pay off their debt, have less stress. What will they be able to do? Right. When the struggle that particular struggle has gone. The second thing is, don't forget to talk about how you get them there, right? So my action step for you today, as we move out of understanding vulnerability and how it relates to creating compelling content for your audience, I love for you to create some posts like this and send it out into the world. Please do it for me. Practice makes perfect. And if you do need some help and if you are not sure you can absolutely take advantage of market day in my free Facebook group, it's called Empowered and free Business Strategies for Busy Mamas and anything that you're sort of noodling on, in terms of content. You can absolutely post it on market day. It happens every Thursday. At any point during the day or night, you can post a piece of content and you can even tag me in it and ask me what I think.

As always, I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on the episode. Leave a review or post in the FB group about your takeaways!

I have a very special episode for you, all about the mindset shifts you need to hit $5K months. The word "mindset" gets thrown around a lot but it really is so important. Your mindset is your default settings. You have to change your mindset surrounding the things in your business or you could limit your growth. One thing that has to be considered is imposter syndrome, which all entrepreneurs deal with at one point or another. After this episode I want you to come away with a better understanding of your objectives, not other people's. Join us in the Empowered and Free: No BS Organic Marketing for Female Entrepreneurs FB group for free training.

Today we are going to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart, because it is something that I have been growing into hardcore in 2020, and that is having fun and having a simple business. Now about a year ago, I never would have thought that business was supposed to be fun and simple. I thought that that was just a perk like if you were having fun and your business was simple, then that was nice but it probably didn't happen often. And if it's simple does that mean that I'm not doing enough?

If my business is simple and fun does that mean I'm not taking it seriously enough? This is what was going on in my mind when I thought about running a simple and fun business. So if you had these thoughts and this is a great episode for you to listen to! In 2020, a lot of my businesses changed and I have learned that there is so much abundance in doing less. You can have fun in your business and actually, you should! And I would really love it if you did because I think that people would be attracted to your business and people would be attracted to you having fun. I see a lot of people in their business get confused because there are so many things you could be doing, so many places you could be showing up… It's overwhelming, right?

There are so many different strategies out there. But you can quickly over-complicate your business and you don't have too much fun. When you have fun, it shines through your messaging. And when you have a simple system that makes it a clearer message and it frees you up to do other things, it frees you up to do the things that you want to do. A lot of my clients just want to work in their zone of genius. They just want to be creative, or they just want to work with their clients and they just want to work on their craft. And it frees you up to do these things that are your passion.

Now I have some action steps for you to take. The first one is showing up in one place and showing up really well. Now there's a myth out there. They have to show up everywhere that you have to be on Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat and Tik Tok. That is a huge myth. You do not have to be everywhere. There is way more abundance in less. So when there's more focus on a particular social media platform, then there's more clarity in your message. The way that I like to do this with my businesses to have a primary social media platform, and then I have a secondary social media platform. On my secondary social media platform, I am repurposing the things I put on my primary social media platform.

Your ideal client really matters here. You really need to know if you're picking a primary and a secondary, you need to know where the majority of your ideal clients hang out. Again, remember simple and fun, right? So if it's not simple or fun for you to do a Facebook live, then Facebook might not be your primary social media platform because doing lives is a great way to get more attention on Facebook. Maybe Instagram is your primary platform. For me, I like to have fun in Instagram stories. And I find a lot of times, I'm not talking about my business. Sometimes I'm talking about my clients. But for the most part, I'm not talking about my business too much. So it's my secondary platform. It's where you will find out about the things that we're having for dinner and the garden we grew and what my daughter's having me play, what my daughter's having me dress up as today, or whatever might be going on in my life currently. Sometimes I will talk about my business because it's repurposed content from Facebook, but for the most part, my primary social media platform is on Facebook. I really love the fact that I have some focus there and I know all of my efforts can go here and it makes everything else, all of my content, all the things I want to do, it kind of makes that easier to create. And it makes it easier to deliver because I'm delivering it to one place and I'm not worried about, Oh, well, will this work on YouTube or will I have to redo it totally. Or will this post work on LinkedIn? Or is that not really making any sense? And I don't have to worry about any of that.

The second thing is that your content has to be planned out. I know some of you are like, okay, Alison, I know I have to batch. I know I have to write content ahead of time. I know you might not like this message, but I know you kind of want to free flow it. I know you want to write it when you feel it, but you will actually give yourself more freedom by planning ahead. You're actually putting a lot of pressure on yourself to come up with something daily. Your creativity is stymied because you are just talking about wanting to free flow. But you also know that you need to show up pretty consistently in your business. If you want to attract clients and you want to grow your business. So you're trying to wake up and try to create new content every day. That can be a lot of pressure! And your creativity isn't what you need it to be. If you are in creative in your marketing, then you're just like everybody else, pretty boring. You have to be yourself. The best part of your business and what makes it unique is you!

So if you feel like you're putting pressure on yourself by just kind of thinking about it all day and thinking about the post that you have to write, and then you have to wake up again tomorrow and do it all the next day, right? Instead set up a place that works best for you to write out your content for one hour, take one hour and see how far you get. This is not about writing content for an entire month. This is not even about writing it for an entire week. If you've never done it before, this is about writing it for as far as you can get. If you've got a couple of days worth of content written, and then you can post it, you can schedule it, or you just have it like ready to go to post it, see how that feels, see how it feels to be freed from not having to create content on the spot. The other thing is I really love creating content. When I feel it and if I've already got content created, then I can really dive deep into my times where I do feel super creative. And I don't have to worry about posting it right away, because sometimes when you're posting vulnerable content or storytelling content or something that you're not really sure how the wording is. You don't wanna put pressure on yourself to post it that day. Do you want to work on it? You want to noodle over it a little bit. You might want to add to it, take some things away, split it up a little bit. So that it's three pieces of content instead of one. That's why content needs to be planned out. And honestly, your business is going to be so much more simple and you're going to have way more time to be creative. Another thing that you can do, is see where you want to show up. Think of that primary platform, what the audience wants. And if you haven't asked lately, definitely do that. And then start with the end in mind. So sometimes when people sit down to write content for an hour, it's almost like forcing them and there's writer's block right away. That's what you can do to get your creative juices flowing for that hour that you sit down, start with the end in mind, think about what your audience wants, think about what you want them to know. What do you want to tell them? Then look at where you want to show up and think about what piece of content is best. If you want to show up on Facebook, sometimes the pieces of content that you have might look like a video or Facebook live. If you want to show up on Instagram, it might look like a series of stories or an IG TV, and not just a typical Instagram post, which is also fine.

Then the next step I have for you to make your business simple and fun is to boil it down to the moneymakers. Just do the money-making things. A lot of us take too much time trying different things going on, Canva, reorganizing our pictures, playing around with a couple of platforms that all has its place, but it's not where your money is. Income-producing activities are the things you need to be doing every single day. You can keep it simple by picking a few different tasks to do within these moneymaking activities. That way, when you do it every day, it's a lot more simple. You can do it your own way so that you have fun and you can start to see results. Just as a recap, income-producing activities are networking or building relationships. It's creating content it's collaborating or making yourself more visible. I would love to see you do a few tasks each day and do the things that are fun. If Facebook lives are fun, then definitely make sure you're doing them more. If Facebook lives are not fun and they're only not fun because you really just don't think that you're able to provide your best strategies and your best tips and your best value to people versus you being afraid of them, then do something else. Choose a different way to increase your visibility. Do a podcast episode, write a blog, anything!

The last thing that I want to talk to you guys about is putting a time limit on your tasks. I think a lot of what people don't understand is that it doesn't actually take hours and hours and hours to do your business or to market. It takes focused effort for a small amount of time. Now, remember, this is all about making things simpler, right? So there's less that you're doing, but you're doing more of a focused effort. And therefore you don't need to spend that much time on it. This builds intentionality in your business. It builds consistency in your business because you are going to start to know what works since you're focused on just a few things, you can actually watch those things and see this is working. And it can show you if these things aren't getting the results you want. And if this isn't working, then okay, let me make sure that I'm doing something different. Right? And you can do the things that are working more often instead of just trying all these different, new things all of the time. So when something doesn't work, you'll be able to know how to fix it or how to cut it out.

And when you do things for a shorter period of time, it creates a habit. And it's consistent because let's say let's just take a task like engagement. If you engage for 90 minutes to two hours every single day, or if you try to do that one day, you're probably most likely not going to do it the next day, because that's just too much time for one task, right? If you do engagement for a half an hour every day, then that will create a habit. Then it's consistent and probably more focused and therefore more intentional. And you will probably start to see results better than if you tried to do it for two hours once a week.

My action step for you today is to write down everything you do inside of your business. Because we want to make this simple and fun to have. First, we have to brain dump everything. We're doing every single thing that we do. And then very simply go down the list and put a check next to what works and put an x next to what doesn't work. You do not have to do the things that don't work. You do not have to do the things in your business that don't work. You can shorten the path between you and the money between you and the clients between you and your client's success. Right? So make it simple, make it fun. And I cannot wait to see how you guys make this happen!

Want to learn more or work with Allison? Join the Empowered and Free Facebook group!

In today's episode I spend time answering questions from members of my Facebook group- Empowered and Free: No-BS Organic Marketing for Female Entrepreneurs. There are many good conversations that take place there and I can't wait for you to listen in. I would love to have you join if you're not there yet!

Today we are going to talk about something that happens a lot unfortunately and it might even be happening to you right now. I hope that this is helpful and gives you some of the support that you need, and it is that your partner or your husband might not support your dreams to run your own online business. This might come up in a variety of ways. Let's say, when you ask him to watch the kids, so you can have some time to work, or when you're going to invest in growing your business when you need to make a decision about where your business is heading, or if you just want to talk something out, share something new you've learned, or a new connection that you've made.

When you came here, a place was carved out for you. A place that hasn't been made for anyone else, before or since.

You get to decide what to do with that place, but please know and understand that you get to do whatever the fuck you want with it.

You get to make an impact because nobody else is doing it the way you are.

Bonus episode from my heart dropped today: "The day you were born is the day G-D decided the world could not exist without you" - Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

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