Today I want to talk about your offer. I have talked about offers before on the podcast, Season 1 Episode 7 is where we go into how to create your perfect offer but today's episode will be different in that we are going to talk about why it's such a fundamental piece of your business and why it's actually the FIRST thing I like to start with my clients. Join us in the Empowered and Free: No BS Organic Marketing for Female Entrepreneurs FB group for free training.

I'm so excited for Season 2 of The Empowered and Free Podcast! The first five episodes drop on February 18th and the next five release on February 25th. So while you're waiting for the new season enjoy this episode where I spend time answering questions from members of my Facebook group- Empowered and Free: No-BS Organic Marketing for Female Entrepreneurs.

Today's episode of Make Biz Happen has a very special guest, my husband Scott. This year threw everyone some curveballs and it caused me to grow my business in a way that I didn't expect. Due to an unexpected job layoff (thanks, Covid!) Scott transitioned into a new role at home and I spent my time and energy growing my business to an income that could sustain our family. It wasn't always easy but we've really enjoyed the process. Tune in to listen to our honest conversation about how the transition is going!

Today we're talking about morning routines. I'm getting into what I think is important for a good routine and some myths that circulate about what it takes to have a morning routine. I don't think the cookie-cutter morning routine works for everyone. I have a young daughter and I've had to adjust my morning routine during various stages of her life, change in bedtimes etc. I'm sure parents out there will know the struggle. But it's essential to find what works best for you and is sustainable.

The first myth I want to bust is that it has to happen first thing in the morning. I don't believe that's true. The importance of a morning routine is having a routine at all. For most of us, it makes us feel better and more prepared to do them in the morning. For mothers of young kids that are getting up at night, doing feedings, and missing out on sleep it may not make sense for you to pop out of bed and get right to your morning routine. Building habits is important but not to your detriment.

The next myth we're getting into is that you have to do certain things. We've been told all these things that are so necessary for a morning routine and it's just not true. You don't have to journal if that's not your priority. It has to be things that are going to help your business along and not just check off a thing you heard would help your business.

I do believe that morning routines start the night before. It's much better and more effective when I start my morning routine the night ahead. Whatever you can do to prep for your morning routine is so helpful. Maybe it's filling up your water bottle, setting out your workout clothes, or gathering your books or planner. For me, sometimes I'll get caught up tidying or organizing in the morning. So I try to do all of that the night before so I'm not distracted. My morning routine starts when my husband takes my daughter to school. This is best for me because the house is quiet and I can focus on my routine and myself. This isn't a time to work. I got really inspired by the book Thrive by Arianna Huffington. https://www.amazon.com/Thrive-Redefining-Success-Creating-Well-Being/dp/0804140863/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WZX09PKXRIIB&dchild=1&keywords=thrive+arianna+huffington&qid=1609853214&sprefix=thrive+arianna%2Caps%2C295&sr=8-1 I decided to make a list of things that just help me thrive. These are a few things on my list- organizing a closet, doing a craft project, reading a book, taking a shower, and even watching the third hour of the Today Show. And depending on how I feel this is what I pick from to help me recharge and helps me pour back into myself.

I hope this inspires you and you get started on a routine that works for you and helps you thrive!

Today's episode is going to be about planning for your year. If you haven't set goals and you haven't figured out how you're going to achieve them yet for 2021 in your business, please don't beat yourself up about this. We talk about years as though they are these 12-month commitments and we have to hit a goal within these 12 months. And it's really not like that. It doesn't really matter that the calendar year changes over. I want you to understand that whenever you decide to make your business happen is a great time to make your business happen. So the good thing is that there's always time to do this work. Today I want to talk about how you call your shot, how you even begin to start making a plan to reach your goals, these really high-level conversations here. I want you to know that we go into detail about this inside of empowered and free, which is my free Facebook community We are having a lot of conversations this month about planning and about what your year is going to look like, what your quarter one is going to look like, and really how to do this so that you're not just talking about numbers and you don't actually have a way to reach the goal. The first thing is knowing how much you want to make each month or for the year, and then breaking it down to each month. So this is really, really important because you can take a number and then reverse engineer how you're going to hit that number. That's the first thing that I would suggest to pick a revenue goal. The second thing that I think will be really, really helpful that a lot of people don't do is to give that number and importance. So I don't like to use the phrase your why, if you've been here for a while you've heard me talk about this. I would prefer that instead of calling it your why, just match that revenue goal to something you really want to have happened. I'm going to give you an example. Let's say you want to make five thousand a month. You call that number out because it's $60,000 a year and you think that's what I was making in my previous job. So obviously if I make that with this business, I'll feel successful, right? That will make me feel successful. The thing is though when you're in the weeds, when you're doing your business and you're in those sort of consistent actions, you get hurt. You, you hear the word, no. And you have your peaks and valleys in your business. That's not enough of a reason to continue to push yourself on, right? So instead, I'm going to give you a different example. Let's say you want to make 5k this month because you want to pay off a credit card balance. This will allow you to save money that you're putting towards the credit card balance. Currently, let's call it $300 a month. So when the 5k comes and you can pay off that balance, you're seeding the 300 a month. And by the end of the year, you have $3,600, right. 12 times 300 to spend on the holidays, and you can spell out what that looks like. So that's just an example. It is so much more motivating to spell out exactly why you want to make a certain amount of money. That might not be your situation. I really just wanted to pay off our debt once and for all. And it might look different for you and that's okay. Maybe you'll put away a thousand dollars so that you can take your family on a Disney vacation, like be really specific, really spell out what that looks like. Maybe you want to take your parents out to eat. Maybe you want to see a show. Maybe you want to go on a weekend getaway with your partner. Really spelling out what that number, that revenue goal looks like, giving it importance is going to be really helpful because it's going to keep you going when you get tired or when you burn out or when you're having a hard time seeing anything come from your consistent actions. It doesn't happen right away. So the next step is to decide what you're going to sell. What are you going to sell to get to let's say your 5k months. This can be easily figured out by taking your offers and sort of dividing them by how many of them you need to sell. So for example, let's say you have a membership program and you also have a one-to-one coaching program. How many spots of each do you need to sell to get to the 5k? It is a lot easier to sell one program at a time because then your messaging is not super confusing. That's a really great way to decide when I should launch the membership and how many people do I want to get in at that point? How many times should I do that throughout the year? And then when do I want to get one-to-one spots filled? And when will that one on one experience be over and then I can book new one to ones. And what does that look like in terms of revenue? So how much, what do you have to sell to get to the 5k? I'm making sure you're focusing on one program at a time and the programs that get them to close or above your goal. And then the last tip I have for you is to make sure that you have the audience to sell whatever offer you want to sell. So let's say you've decided that the membership is going to launch in March, and it's also going to launch in July. And it's also going to launch in October. Well, the months that are previous to those are the ones where you really need to make sure you have the audience and you're getting your audience ready to want to buy this offer. Don't set yourself up for failure. This happens a lot. We like to say, Oh, well, you know, I'm just going to launch in March and I'll get myself ready for it. You know, I'll get the website ready, I'll get the landing page going. And, um, I'll, I'll obviously be building out the membership itself and I won't worry about getting an audience for it. I mean, you have to make sure that you have the audience that will jump for this offer. That's the most important thing. If you don't have that, then the months prior to the months that you want to actually launch is when you have to lead, generate, and make yourself plan for that. Now you should always be lead generating, but you can generate leads specifically for the people to find the people that really need your particular offer. So if you do have that audience in like already, and they're ready to go, you think that you have that audience and they're prepared to join your membership. For example, start nurturing them, start getting them ready for this offer. What could that look like? What are some ideas you can have that could be really fun to make sure that you are getting them ready for this, right? So if you are feeling a little bit overwhelmed about planning for the entire year or even planning for the entire quarter, cause that's three months, you can take yourself through this step-by-step plan every month, if you want or every quarter, if you feel like the month is too long or the, the year is too long to plan for it's a better way to make sure that you're not scrambling, right? This is how you can stay focused and keep the whole making money thing. Simple. It gets to be simple. I'm not saying it's easy, but it does get to be simple and it gets to be fun. Once you figure out what you want to sell and when you want to sell it, then you can figure out how much fun it can be to sell it. You can figure out some fun ways to sell. You can figure out some fun ways to nurture your audience so that they're ready for what you have, right? And then when you sell it, not only is it fun, but it's simple. It makes total sense to everybody, right? Because your messaging has been clear the whole time. So hopefully this has been helpful to make sure that you are planning in a way that's super intentional and in a way that makes it so that you can actually reach your goals this year. If you love this episode, please let me know by leaving me a review, subscribing to the podcast, I would be so grateful! Have a wonderful day, go out, and make biz happen.

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. I want to talk about this today because I see it happening with so many women. And I see some dreams getting cast to the side or a growing frustration of being able to only do some things in your business, but not being able to go full out. It can be discouraging. It can be debilitating in a lot of ways. It can debilitate how you show up for your business on a regular basis. It can affect your time management or just your marketing strategy in general. Or if you have clients that can affect your relationship with your clients. The good news is there are ways to deal with us. I want to sort of give you a roadmap for how to navigate these waters. Now I am no marriage counselor. In fact, I'm very honest and open with my audience about my husband who is super supportive, but has also, at times, especially in the beginning of my business journey, been a little more than questioning and had his own doubts that he made very clear. Your roadmap starts at figuring out the kind of lack of support you're feeling from your partner. There are two kinds of lack of support. The first one is aggressive and the second one is passive. Let's talk about aggressive for a second. Aggressive can look like being vocal about how "this is never going to work" or pushing away conversations. There might even be some arguing, fighting and yelling. If there's aggressive behavior, don't talk about it. And the reason here is that if there is aggressive behavior towards your business, you are going to expend your energy, trying to persuade or fight, and that's not good for your mental health, let alone your business. We don't need to use that energy on that. We need to focus our energy on our business. It's not going to happen by talking, fighting, struggling. Nothing's going to change. My suggestion is to let it be. Now, I say, nothing's going to change. And that sounds a little negative. But what I mean is nothing's going to change by talking and fighting and struggling. There are ways to work around this without having to expend your energy on those things that I know for a fact, don't work. In the meantime, you can focus your energy on your business, even if you don't have a lot of time. I can probably do an entire episode on how to grow your business in very little time, but that's not for today. The thing is support from anyone in your life can waiver, but your business can't afford for that to waiver. You have to be the one to say, remember, you're in control. You have to be the one to say, I'm supporting my business. I trust in myself, I'm driving the car here. And regardless of who and what kind of support is going to come and go while I'm on my journey, I'm still driving the car. The second kind of lack of support is the passive kind. Now, this could look like you kind of talking about your business, but your partner is either not really interested or just doesn't seem to really get it. And really isn't working harder to understand, but maybe they are, but it's kind of a struggle. They go in and out, right? Basically, they aren't actively against you, but their actions have also made you kind of feel like they don't really believe or support. Now the next step here is the same step as the one before to talk about it less because your energy is going into trying to convince someone. We never ever want to convince someone, whether it's a potential client or somebody in our life, that's supporting us. Instead, now this is where the two different roads meet. You will always take the next step of taking action. You'll work. When you can on your income-producing activities, you'll stay consistent. You'll give it time and then you'll get results. Now, when we get those results, those are going to be the next step you need. So you can go to your partner and say, you know, this is where I'm at right now. And I'm going to need more help. This is going to work better for the partners who are more passive than aggressive. But what you can say is I've looked at a few clients' money's coming in and we're gaining momentum over here. Now ask for what you need. This can look like anything. This can look like childcare. This can look like just getting more time to work on your business, or it can look like something that he can participate in or something that he can provide so that he can help you grow your business. And I say he, but I mean partner. So it can look like something that your partner is good at, or maybe something your partner does for work that compliments the business that you're trying to build. If your partner is good at website design, let's say, ask if they can be a part of designing your website. If they're great at numbers or financials, ask if that's something that they can do for you. So you can sort of keep track of your income, but it's not your favorite thing to do. Take that off your plate or when your clients are with their contractor, whatever it is. I'm not great with the numbers either. I will tell you, my husband puts together a mean Excel spreadsheet, and that's one of the ways that he supports me. And he feels like he is part of this business. It's all about finding a place for them in this new and sort of strange world that you've entered them into by being your own boss in the online business space. So they can feel like they have a hand in your success. And that is going to start the belief factor, which is absolutely necessary for growth and to move forward in your business. The takeaway that I really want you to have from this episode is that trust and belief, that those things are super, super important in how you get to them might feel a little different than what you're trying to do. Now you might be trying to ask for it and extending your energy on it. When really what we need to do is keep our head down and do the work. Now, this works for the aggressive partner. It works for the passive partner. Your partner needs to trust you. Your partner needs to believe in you. And so I hope that this episode has helped you find a roadmap so that you can help your partner get on board with your business, but also keep yourself in your business growing. So I would love to know if this was helpful content, please leave me a review when you get a chance and go out there and make biz happen!

Today I thought it would be fun to talk about 2020, what a year, right? Like what the? It is hard to even understand how a year ago we were all dying to get out of 2019 out of that decade. We were all so excited to just turn over a new year. I am willing to bet that if you are the journaling type, you have entries about how you couldn't wait to get out of 2019. I have those, I was even a part of group chats where the title of the group chat was 2020 will be our best year.

Needless to say, there was a lot riding on 2020, and it kind of seems like homegirl buckled under the pressure a little bit. I don't think I need to really rehash everything that has happened. And of course, I wouldn't be encompassing everything, even if I tried, but it's safe to say that this year we'll be in history books. While 2020 seems to be bringing blow after blow, it's manifested for all of us in a different way. I know it unfolded way differently for me than I could have ever imagined. And even though things have been frustrating about this year, there are things that have been good.

Yes. I said it. You have to look for the good sometimes and I do believe it's there. In the spirit of honesty and transparency with my listeners, I want to make sure that I talked about the things that I've learned this year. This has been a big growing year for me. I'm honestly not sure what the year would have looked like if it hadn't turned out this way, I will always wonder if I would've had the same opportunities for growth in 2020. If it hadn't been the strange year that it is. But since we'll never know, I want to share with you some of the things that I've learned in the hopes that you will resonate with them yourself and sort of figure out how to move forward with these lessons. Or maybe it's just things that you need to hear. So I'm going to mostly talk about business, but there are definitely some things about being a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend that I also want to share.

The first thing that I learned after living through this year is that you can, and you need to be creative enough to pivot in your business. If you are a business that was hit by the shutdown, then you know that the word pivoting is probably the word of 2020, right? You've heard it several times. Or if you're working in a nine to five, you probably spent some time working from home this year. You've maybe taken this time to realize that your business, your side hustle business can really grow. Maybe your business dreams have grown themselves. You want to rely on that more. While it feels like 2020 and the things that have changed, it was forced upon us. I want you to realize that we were always meant to pivot in business in life. We are always meant to learn and grow and try new things. We're meant to niche down, niche out. We're meant to try new opportunities. We're meant to explore new possibilities. So while of course, you could have lived without it being forced upon you. Like, thanks, but no thanks. And you might not have felt as ready as you needed to be. If you were in the middle of a pivot, I hope that you're starting to see the other side. And I hope you give yourself permission moving forward to always know that you can pivot that you can.

My business has pivoted a lot. This year. I've worked with a lot of clients who are also pivoting. They're pivoting out of a certain industry for, for many reasons, or they're moving their lives from one state to another across the country. And they're taking everything that has happened in 2020 as a sign. Life is not long enough to wait. It's not the time to wait and see what happens. It's not the time to wait and let the economy or the election or whatever it is, influence your decision, which is going to lead me to my second lesson learned that you were always in control of the things that matter. Now, if 2020 has taught me anything, I don't know about you. It is that we are not in control of a lot. Like there's a lot. We can't control which for a mother, who's a business owner. That's a hard blow, right? We want to be able to control lots of stuff.

And we know that we are not in control of a whole lot, but that there is actually a lot we can control. And I think that there have been times where we sort of take that for granted, or we don't realize that we do have control over certain things. For example, many of us wait for the new year to start over. We think that just because it's a good time to start something. And I think a lot of us got hurt by the fact that we may have waited until 2020 to start something new, only to see it not be able to thrive in this new environment. The thing is you always had the power to start where whatever you wanted whenever you wanted, because the fact that clients do or don't sign with you, or the fact that you're showing up and providing value, that's all in your control.

You have control over whom you spend your time with. You have control over what your environment looks like. In general, you can put yourself in a container that will allow you to grow. I believe fully that you can get a client whenever you want. And you can build a business that you want. You're allowed to have the things that you want. And you are in control of that. I think a lot of times, women, especially we have this problem with sort of deserving something, right? Or feeling like a privilege that we have the ability to, to be in control of things. We have the ability to have a thriving business. So we kind of hold back on that because of other people, right? When we think about what others are thinking, we immediately give away the control we had and we give it to those people.

And that's not going to help your ideal clients, your family, or yourself, your ideal clients, and your clients that you have. And that will sign with you. They deserve your best. Your family deserves your best and you deserve your best. You deserve to know that you're in control. You deserve to believe that you're worth this, but you're worth your dreams. So 2020 has taught me that we are way more powerful than we think we are. So even in the midst of losing control to understand that we actually had way more control than we ever thought we did is kind of a huge, huge lesson learned for me. And I hope it is for you too. So despite the fact that things feel out of control in other ways, in certain ways, I hope it's opened up the doors for you to realize that you can literally shape your year.

However, you want it to go. You are in control and it is a beautiful thing. And you're also in control of your thoughts and everything starts with a thought. So that is a huge thing that you're in control of that you don't want to give to other people. So really focus on those thoughts and make sure that you understand that you can have better thoughts. You can have thoughts, you are in control of them. So you can have different thoughts. You don't have to have the thoughts that you have right now, currently, they are keeping you stuck. You are in control of them. So the third lesson, that I learned this year is that forgiveness is a gift. You give yourself. Now I have known about this quote, forgiveness is a gift to give yourself for a long time. But I think as I get older, probably every year, I relearn this lesson.

The things that were supposed to happen in 2020, you know, the things that you had planned for most likely, they're not happening. Maybe some relationships you've started or some relationships you already have. They most likely look a little different now in good ways and bad ways, right? But I want you to do something for me. I want you to forgive. I want you to release yourself from the life you thought you'd have this year. I want you to release yourself from the plans that you made that had to be put on the shelf. Um, the vacations, you thought you were going to have the friends you thought you'd have, that you don't have anymore, the experiences you thought you were going to have. And for the things that you might have done, right.

To create that create stress in your life and the things that we were supposed to be doing. Um, because those things are most likely not happening for you right now. And you might not even know how to work that out or really where you went wrong. Like, was it 2020 that did it, was this something else? Like sometimes, especially when it's somebody else that we're talking about, we can't really put our finger on why it happened, right? But the biggest gift, you can give yourself as a gift of forgiveness. Because if other people have wronged this year, then that's been hurtful, but we really can't. And we really shouldn't carry that pain and be a martyr to that pain. We need to forgive ourselves. Please give that self, that gift to yourself. This season, please release yourself from the life you thought you'd have this year because we need to be able to start healing those scars.

We need to do that before 2021 comes, we need to make something really beautiful out of that. My life looks totally different than I had planned for it to look literally every aspect good and bad. But for the sake of my daughter, for my husband, and my clients, they deserve the best parts of me. Like I said to you guys before, and the people who have hurt me, they don't deserve the best parts of me. They don't. So they don't deserve my thoughts and they do deserve my forgiveness so that I can release them from my thoughts so that I don't have to think about them anymore. So turning your scars into lessons is something that I've really been trying to work on this year. And so I want to share it with you because I think that if you're trying if I'm trying to work on it, you're probably trying to work on it.

Um, and I live my life through the things that I have learned, not how I'm going to get back at people who have hurt me or showing up in 2020 or anything like that. Let's just turn our scars into lessons and live our lives through what we have learned already. Okay. So the fourth lesson that I learned this year is that the same things that made a business successful are the same things that still make a business successful. This was a huge revelation for me. So I am so excited to share it with you. So in March of this year, as a business owner, you might have seen an uproar in the online business community. When it came to selling during a hard time, you may have felt confused about whether your business should continue to grow. Is it right to sell? Do I have the ability to sell?

Should I sell? Should I be really poking the bear right now, or even do anything with my business? Right? So the truth is there are some industries that have thrived in this season and the other truth because it's, there's allowed to be two or more. The other truth is that there are some businesses that have thrived in this season that aren't necessarily in industries that are thriving. There are some people who were at certain levels in their business, and they were able to very quickly take off kind of like a rocket. So I was super curious about that. And I had to take a look, my whole career counseling background, kind of reared its ugly head. And I was like, what is this? What is going on here? So what I've learned is that businesses that thrived did these three things with consistency and they were the ones that were sort of thriving in this crazy unknown season.

Let's say now the spoiler alert here. The biggest thing here is that these three things are always going to be moneymakers. It doesn't matter what's happening in the world. Now that has been proven. So I'm going to share with you the three things that have been moneymakers that these businesses who are thriving are doing and were doing before and are still doing, and they are using these things with consistency. So the first thing is pouring into your audience. Now it's no secret that knowing what your audience wants is going to help you build your business, right? Build your offers and your content and all of that. So having their ear as 2020 started to make less and less sense as things just like shut down super quick, as different States had different rules and some States didn't know, they just made up rules. That was everything for a thriving business.

If a thriving business was already pouring into their audience and building relationships with their people, then they were able to have these conversations really early and they were able to be there for them. So to know what your audience needs just gets you to the solution of providing it to them that much quicker. So businesses that were able to thrive in 2020, were really able to do that. They were able to stand out that way and really hold space for their audience when they needed it the most. Now the second thing that I noticed was really, really helpful in continuing to thrive or shooting off like a rocket, and doing it with consistency was building relationships. Now, this is a similar point that I made before about nurturing, but I think it deserves its own category because everything is about building relationships.

It's the cornerstone of any business and having an intentional way of doing this so that you are building with your ideal client and with people who are also helping your ideal client was really, really helpful to thriving businesses in 2020. So I'm going to give you an example when March and April sort of came around and I started to see that my community needed help and support in ways that I wasn't qualified in. I brought in people that I had built relationships with that would make me, that would help me pour into my community because I wasn't necessarily qualified support into my mama's, who were like, my three kids are home with me all day, every day. I wasn't necessarily qualified to answer questions about money. And I wasn't necessarily qualified to answer questions about, you know, being with your partner all day long, all day, every day and job loss and dealing with things like that. I was able to bring in through the connections and the relationships that I built, a parenting coach, a money coach, and a time management coach into my group so that I can still pour into my community and give them what they needed, even though I wasn't qualified.

The third thing that I want to impress upon you here is selling, being about serving. If you didn't believe that selling is serving before, then you must be having a very hard time right now you might even feel like a martyr to 2020. You might even feel like you've had to sacrifice your business because people just aren't buying. That is a lack and scarcity mindset. There is nothing out there saying that people aren't buying. People who have thrived in this season understand that building relationships and nurturing their audience, it gives them permission to sell. You are allowed to sell actually, you're more than allowed. You are required to sell in order to complete a transformation. You can't stop at here's a little bit. Here's a little bit, Oh, I'm going to nurture you a little bit and then not give them the full monty. You have to be able to sell, but you have to get permission. And these businesses have thrived because they've been asking for permission on a consistent basis. Therefore they can sell no matter what's going on in the world.

The last lesson I want to impress upon you here that I have learned in 2020 is that quality matters so much more than quantity. Now we can look at this in so many different ways. I'm actually going to take more of the personal route with you here because I want to be a little bit vulnerable here and tell you that I used to spend way more time with my daughter than I do now.

And that's just the truth. It's just the way that 2020 has manifested itself. For me. I was pretty much a stay at home mom with a coaching business side hustle. And now I'm the opposite. And now I'm the breadwinner. Now I am the one who works. And so when that started to become our reality, I sat down with my husband and, you know, we sort of worked out this transition and just, um, some kind of guideposts for when we would continue to talk about this transition and what it meant for all of us. And honestly, I was actually the one who had the hardest time with it. And most of it was because of less time I was spending with my daughter, but here's the biggest lesson I learned more time, isn't always a good time. More time. Doesn't always mean more quality time. And that's just a real talk truth here.

Now, if you haven't felt like you can be honest about that, I get it, but you can be honest with me more time has always been good for me and my daughter. More time hasn't always helped our relationship. And on the flip side, what was so special about my husband's time with her pre-2020 was that there was less of it and he knew how to make it count if he was going to have any kind of relationship with her at all. So he's navigating what it's like to have more time with her and still make sure it's quality because we know that quality is more important than quantity. And I'm working out on my end, how to make the time I have with her quality and also how to spend time together as a family, not just kind of like tag-teaming every minute.

What does that look like for our family that looks like workarounds in my schedule, it looks like one of us getting out of their comfort zone and going on a bike. You can guess who that is! We can do things as a family and in the season where things have slowed down and we have just like, quote-unquote more time. I have learned so much about what more time actually means and how it can be good, but we have to be intentional about it now in your business because let's not forget about how quality is so much more important than quantity in your business. Now you might be sitting here and thinking, well, I don't have enough followers to sell anything. Maybe I just need to get more followers, more people looking at my things. And you might even feel desperate to get more people and get more followers. And it might not matter to you that their ideal clients are not just at the numbers going up. I promise you that quality matters over quantity every single time. If you want to build a long-lasting sustainable business with authenticity and integrity. Now, if you don't want to do those things, and if you just want something that is going to quickly get you some cash and then just for like this one thing, and then you're good, then I totally understand why you feel quantity is a value here, but in your business, quality should always be valued over quantity. Always. I'll give you one example that I give a lot of times my Facebook group to some is not very big. It's at this time in the recording, it's a little over 600 people.

When it was 300 people, I was able to pull five figures out of it. Now that it's 600 people, I'm able to pull consistent multiple five figures out of it. And the reason is that there's not a lot of people in there, but I have built relationships with most of them. I know them very well. They feel, they know me very well, and I believe that quality matters so much more over quantity. And I think that they believe that too. So in your business quality over quantity matters, right? It's not the amount of time you spend on your business. It's not the number of followers you have. It's what you do. It's what you do with that. It's the quality you put in. So with 2020 coming to a close, finally, I hope that you can do this exercise yourself too. I would love to know like five or even more things you learned in 2020 and share them with me. You can come into our Facebook group and share them. And the link is below in the show notes, and you can write a review so you can share with me some of the things that you've learned in 2020, I would love to see that!

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. And you can get some feedback from the group and you can get some feedback from me as well!

I'm so excited to have a special guest on today's episode. Deanna Seymour is joining me today to chat about business, body confidence, and how you can step into the spotlight and highlight yourself. We've all heard how important showing up and showing your face on social is, but how many of us feel truly confident doing it? Probably not many. Deanna is here for the pep talk we've all needed! She's a coach that helps women find their confidence, and use it to take their business to the next level. I loved getting to chat with her and I hope you'll tune in to the whole conversation! I've officially decided that we're business buddies because I LOVE what she's doing and she has the best no BS attitude which you know makes me thrilled. To learn more about Deanna visit her website at deannaseymour.com.

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? Head over to Make Biz Happen!