Today we are going to talk about how to create your perfect offer. When I started as a business coach, I did offers with my clients last because at the time I thought there was more that needed to be done before we could know what we wanted to sell. I thought that we had to work on everything else before we had the confidence to create an offer, but now I actually have flipped it. I tackle offers pretty much first with my clients. The reason is that when you know what you offer, you know how you want to get clients from point A to point B and you know how you want the business to flow. Those things that I thought needed to happen first, not just money, but confidence, finding the right people, etc 

There are three big parts to creating your perfect offer. And the first one is my favorite tip. It is one clear result. Now we try to pack in all the things to our offers, right? We try to tell people that they'll have this awesome thing and this many calls and this many worksheets and all of these modules like a hundred modules, right? But we're just confusing the crap out of people. We're just overwhelming them, thinking that we are giving them so much when really they don't need a ton of features and they don't need a ton of results. I'm going to get into features in a little bit. Let's talk about results. Let's pick one struggle that has one solution. And that way your offer will be much more concise. Your messaging will be that much more clear because your offer is clear.  It gets people from point A to point B and your offer is that vehicle that gets them in between. It's the thing that drives them there. You might be asking yourself, well, how do I pick one struggle? How do I pick to pick one route result that I want my clients to have? So one of the tips that I have for you here is to lay out all your ideal client's struggles. Lay everything out. Let's say you take a piece of paper and you folded in half. And on the left side, you want to write out all your ideal client's issues and everything they struggle with. And then on the right side, you want to write down solutions. What solution does each struggle need? And be solution-focused here. Don't dig into problems. As you answer these struggles with solutions, try to dig deep as to what the problem is, and stay focused on the solution to keep it positive. The solution on the right, you choose should be in your wheelhouse. You look at the solutions on the right side of the paper, make sure it's something you really are good at. You're an expert at you've done it. You've helped other people, or you want to have other people know exactly what you need to do. The solution should be really something in your zone of genius.

The second tip is talking about the benefits versus the features. This goes into the specifics of your offer. Lots of times we'll add in stuff. Like all these extra calls, extra worksheets, we'll add a thousand modules because we think that it looks better and it's worth the money.  If there's more, it's super overwhelming to your ideal client. And also you're not really giving them what they need. You can give them focus trainings. You can give them your value in fewer worksheets, in fewer calls. It has to be a certain number of calls. That's going to get them to the goal. And that's up to you as the business owner and also up to you as the expert in this particular solution.  Also, I gotta be honest with you guys. They don't want a ton of stuff. Your ideal client doesn't want a thousand modules because actually, it's probably pretty overwhelming to them depending on your population. I know for me, moms who are trying to run a business,  some of them work nine to five or have multiple children. They don't want to be watching a thousand modules. They don't want to be pummeled with a thousand things. They want focused information. Your features are still important. But what you want to do is talk more about the benefits of your features.

The last thing we need to talk about is pricing. Lots of people love to ask me about pricing. A lot of people I know have trouble around pricing. And of course money, mindset is a big part of pricing, but I will not go into money mindset too much. In this episode, you do need to have confidence in your pricing though. There are a lot of coaches out there who will make you feel bad for your pricing. Like, you'll see them. You're like, Hey, I don't know who you are, but double your prices by. It's like, no, you don't know anything about me. I don't believe that that's a good strategy. I also don't think it's a good idea to be a martyr to your ideal clients and undercharge yourself like saying, Oh, they got hit from COVID, et cetera. We don't need to be a martyr to our deal. Our offer is still valuable. Are there ways around it? Yes. I remember when COVID first hit, I added extra payment plans. I didn't lower the price of my services, but I did make it a little easier to pay them off in a longer period of time. 

When you are wondering what to price something, you have to look at two things. The first thing is it starts with how many dollars per hour you're willing to get paid. I can't tell you how many times my clients don't even think about how much they're getting paid per hour. You really have to be able to look at your offer and say how many hours am I spending with the client? Face-to-face and then how many hours am I spending developing on the backend. Then how also you have to add in if they have unlimited access to you, you have to add in that as well. You have to decide how many dollars per hour you want to get paid per client. The second thing you need to have is the confidence to say the number out loud. Now this goes back to sort of finding that number between like not doubling or tripling your prices just for the hell of it, but also not lowering your prices and undercharging because you're a martyr.

When I was starting fast track to four figures, which is my signature group coaching program. I was having a really hard time with the monthly price. I knew I wanted to add a pay in full price option. But my pay in full amount didn’t divide well and I just didn’t like the number. I was choking on the price and it was definitely holding me back, along with my marketing and my messaging. After I worked with my coach on it a little bit, I realized that it doesn't matter what the price is. It doesn't matter if I'm charging a little less, but if I can say it with confidence, then it's fine. Then I'm happy. Because at the end of the day, what do we really, really want? We really want clients, good clients who are going to get transformations. Yeah, we want money too, but we want really good clients that are going to get transformations and the money is going to be that much sweeter.  I decided to lower the price a bit. And just so I can say it out loud. So it was an easier number to say out loud.

Belief, as we've talked about in this podcast before is huge in your business, it is so, so huge and it does not stop at the price. So I want to give you guys an action step. As you walk away from this podcast today,  I would love for you to look at one clear result that you get from your offer. And why that result is so important to your ideal clients. What will they be able to get? What will they be able to do? Where will they be able to go? And why is all of that important? Thanks for listening! If you’re enjoying the Make Biz Happen podcast, leave a review and let me know!

Today we're going to talk about five ways to get clients from email marketing. By now in your business, you have most likely heard that email marketing works from a bunch of different business gurus, but you've been on the receiving end of some emails that are super annoying. You delete them, you don't open them. You send them to an email, you never check you unsubscribed from them. So if you do that, then your clients are probably going to do that to you, right? And why waste your time? So email marketing is a strategy that doesn't always feel effective, but I want to talk about it today with you because it can be a great place to show up and it can be a great place to direct your audience to where you'd like them to show up for you. It can be a great way to drive a point home because people need to hear things over and over again before it starts to sort of wake up in their brains and start to connect, right? It can be a great place to start building relationships and really just reminding people that you're there. They may not read your emails every time. They may not even open your emails, but they see you in their inbox. You are showing up for them, and you have to believe that on a regular basis that you are showing up for them. And for that, the right people will appreciate, you know, the wrong people will do just the opposite, right? They won't appreciate it. They might even unsubscribe, which when you start to see your numbers go down, it feels awful at first, right? But if you can get to the place where you separate yourself from the outcome, to know that your message is just not for them and that's why they unsubscribed it doesn't mean it's not a good message. There's a difference there. It's still can be a good message. It's just not for everybody. And the wrong people are excusing themselves and that’s ok. That way you're making room on your list for people who want to hear what you have to say, people are actually going to open up your emails, um, and build relationships back with you and who allow you to show up for them. The first way is a welcome sequence. When people sign up, for any reason, you can throw them into a welcome sequence. Every email marketing platform has all of these capabilities that I'm going to talk about today. They might call them something a little bit different. They might use different words, but they are all really the same function. Personally, I use Mailer Lite. Not a paid advertisement! When people sign up for any reason to your emails, it can be because of a freebie or it could be because of a workshop, any reason at all, you can throw them into a welcome sequence. A welcome sequence consists of about an email a day for somewhere between five to seven days is typical. You can do whatever you want. You can do three days. You can do 10 days or somewhere in between. And typically each piece gives your people an all-around view of your business and how you help them. This is how you build relationships with your audience. And it's also how you can provide value. So I'll give you an example. The first email might be a welcome email to the business. And it could have the freebie or whatever the reason is that they signed up. Maybe they signed up for the workshops. Then you give them information about the workshop. The next email can be how you started your business and why you started it. And what the purpose is behind it. Then another email might be about you that is a connection point. If you're a mother and that's a lot of the people that you attract, maybe you want to talk about motherhood. If you attract a lot of people who need time management help, maybe you want to start talking about that a little bit. If you have a podcast, you might want to dedicate an email just to the podcast so that you let people know, this is another way to connect with me. If you have a Facebook group that you love hanging out in, that might be an email. This a way that you can start to build relationships with your audience and show them how you provide value. You let them know what the brand is and what your secret sauce is. Just a little bit behind who you are and how you've become the way that the person that you are in the business that you are. So the second tip is a lead magnet. Now you have heard this called many things before a freebie, opt-in, etc... It is a piece of content that's completely free. And it is a way to kind of give people a little taste of what you help with and how you do your business. It can be a ton of different forms. This can be a checklist, a video, an ebook, the possibilities are literally endless. And the biggest reason that we do this in our business is that it turns a cold lead into a warm lead, pretty instantly. It's how you get people to taste a little bit of what you provide. It's also how you show off what to give your audience sort of a small transformation, and then having an offer at the end to stay in your audience so that they can get more from you. Whether that means booking a discovery, call joining your Facebook group, hanging out on your podcast, and your Instagram community. As you get this list growing, anything that you do that is directly related to the lead magnet can be targeted to this particular audience. I'm going to talk about that deeper in a second, but let me give you just an example. So if you are a virtual assistant, a VA, and your freebie is five ways to automate your business, then you decided to do a Facebook live about one of those tips. Let’s say you’re doing to do a training on Dubsado in your Facebook group… Maybe you're going to do the three ways that you can use Dubsado to automate your business. So that audience, that grabbed that freebie about automating their business. That's what they're interested in. They're going to want to know about that Facebook live, because you're still talking about automating your business. You're bringing them into your world more and more by doing this. They're already in because they've got the freebie, they're clearly interested in automating their business. It could have been the best freebie in the world, but it didn't completely solve their problems. And so they need a little bit more information. They also get a different side of how you give content and how you do your business. Maybe you gave them a five page way to automate their business. And this Facebook live will be a way that they can actually see your face and talk to you or see how you talk to people, how you interact. And they can ask you questions live. And all that interaction came from them downloading your freebie. I know that email marketing is not always everybody's preferred platform. So let's talk about the call to action that you have in your email so that you're not just sending emails, just to do it, just to show up in their inbox. If you’re going to do it let’s make it worth it! So for example, if I have something going on on a different platform like Facebook, like for example, I do weekly trainings in my Facebook group. I also weekly podcasts episodes. These are two other ways, kind of more my preferred ways to be honest, to connect with my audience. So I'll send an email to my list and make sure they know that this is happening and they know how to get there. You can repurpose your content for this. This is not something that needs to be a third or fourth or fifth piece of content. This gets people to see another side of you in your business and connect with you in another way because an email is great and a freebie is great, but hearing me talk is a lot different and you can connect with me a lot better. I could literally read my email to you and you would still process the content totally different. My fourth tip here is a nurture series that specifically happens after an event like a workshop or a challenge. We talked about a welcome series in the beginning. This nurture series would be similar in a way, but it would happen after an event that people signed up for through your email. Let me just back up here. The first step is if you're doing some kind of workshop or a challenge, you might want to set up a quick opt-in or pop up so that anyone who is interested can quickly put their name and their email address into your opt-in or your pop-up. That list of people can be targeted with any updates you might send throughout the challenge or, or the workshop. Think reminders, any last minute changes, links. If there are tech issues, or if the zoom link doesn't work. You have a targeted list of people that are specifically trying to get to this workshop, and you're going to let them know how it's going. It can also be used to continue the conversation figuratively speaking. So let's give you an example. If you're a parenting coach and your workshop is about tantrums, you now have a list of people who signed up so that they could listen to the workshop and participate in the workshop about tantrums. That list of people are specifically interested in learning about how to deal with tantrums. They wouldn't have signed up for the workshop, whether they came to the workshop or not. And hopefully, they did because you made it super simple. You have a targeted group of people that is interested in learning more about that specific topic. So now when you have an offer and let's say it's a one-to-one offer, you can tailor your content to that specific group of people and make sure you're talking about tantrums in your content because that's one of the things that you can help with. You have a workshop on tantrums. Now you have one-to-one spots open. Clearly, you're comfortable helping parents deal with tantrums. We can talk about tantrums. You might've seen the workshop, loved it, or you might've missed it, but here let me provide you some specific content about tantrums that, you know, I hear you, and I'm here to be the person that can help you with this specific problem than I know you have. My last tip for you is to direct your content towards specific audiences using the groups feature. Now, this tip is related to the last tip I just gave you. And it's just kind of a cleaner way to do things. So if your brain is a lot more linear, just like mine, you're going to want to figure this out. By using the groups or segments feature in your email marketing platform is a great way to do this. Every platform has something like this. It can be called groups. It can be called segments. That way you can kind of split up your audience. You can send an email to everyone, right? To every single person let's say you've got a Facebook live, you've got a workshop going on. You want everybody on your list to know about that. Or you can send targeted emails to different groups of people. So let's bring back that parenting coach example. If you've created a group for the workshop on the back end of your email marketing platform, those people who wanted tantrum information signed up for the workshop, they got put in a group, they got put in one group and you can call it whatever you want and call it the tantrum group. You can create a group for a freebie as well that you might also have. So I have a group for people for time management because I have a time management freebie. So whenever a new person lands into that group, I know that that person got my time management freebie. Clearly, she wants some time management tips and she struggles and she probably feels like I'm answering her struggles. If I sent her some targeted emails on a regular basis, write some emails about time management, the same thing with the tantrums. And I can get a client this way from being really specific to the needs of a group of people because I know what they want. I kind of got permission to tell them how I can help because they've given me some information, which is that they're interested in time management and the parenting coach got the information that that group of people is interested in how to help less than tantrums. I would love to know which email marketing tip you'll be putting into place today or which one you have put into place and has been working for you to grow your audience and get more clients!

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.

Thanks for listening! For more info head over to Make Biz Happen!

We feel insecure in our lives and our businesses when we start comparing ourselves to other people. Social media definitely brings in these opportunities to compare. Before it, we would only be able to compare to people that we knew in real life. Now we have an endless amount of highlight reels to compare ourselves to. We have no idea how long it took them to get there, what their failures are, or how they struggled.

Each time you start to feel this way, I have some strategies I want you to try. The first thing I want you to do is to write down 5 things you've accomplished this year. Start the sentence with "I did..." and go from there. The next thing I want you to do is to do good and spread good! Cook a meal for a friend, reach out to someone to spread kindness or something that truly makes you and others feel good. The next thing I want you to do is to cultivate your good friendships. And I want you to walk away from friendships that are based solely in commiseration. The last thing I want you to do is to curate your newsfeed. Just because you're friends with someone doesn't mean you need to see their shit in your newsfeed. You can unfollow anyone or anything you don't want to see or that makes you feel insecure.

I hope this was helpful in getting these feelings of insecurity under control in your business!

Fear is a very common and normal thing to feel as business owners. Today we're going to talk about two of the most common reasons we experience fear in our business.

The first one is being visible and possibly stumbling while everyone is watching you. When you first start your business, there is a lot on the line and it's a vulnerable time. What if people see a mistake and what if they don't trust me anymore. I think in a lot of us this fear started as young girls. Girls aren't really conditioned to think making mistakes is ok like little boys are. It wasn't natural to put yourself out there and when you failed or messed up to just say oh well, that's ok! So I'm going to give you a solution that might seem obvious, but I believe that being 100% you is going to be the key to your success. You're a human being and you have an important message that people need to hear. Maybe you just haven't found the exact right audience yet but I'm confident with some strategies you will. There is a group of people that need your product, service or message! If you're not showing that you're growing and developing you're not showing that you're human. You can encourage others to grow and change by showing how you grow! You just have to keep going and keep trying.

The second fear that a lot of people have is a fear of failing. What does it mean if I lose the money I've invested? What does it look like if I don't succeed? But if you don't have confidence in yourself it will be difficult to be successful because that fear will try to hold you back. So this strategy may sound super simple, but you have to feel the fear, then do it anyway. You combat the fear of failing by trying. It's not other people, the Facebook algorithm, or any other thing that's keeping you from success, it's you! If you've had setbacks, you can take what you've learned and take it to the next level. You're allowed to feel all these feelings, but the life you want and the things you want for your family will not allow you to give in to those fears. Your business does not allow for action based on fear. Instead of acting out of fear, just act. Even if it's messy. Acknowledge it and move on! I'm going to leave you with a quote I love from Michael Jordan.

"I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Today I want to talk to you about imposter syndrome. It happens to all of us, including me. And I want to talk about how that feeling never really fully goes away. But we can learn how to manage these feelings and move through them to get to the next level.

Imposter syndrome is the idea that no one is going to buy from me, I just got lucky or you have no idea what you're doing. The problem with thinking these thoughts are these are pretty mean thoughts. If a friend of yours had some success would you say these things to them? No! You would never! So let's not talk to ourselves like this.

The first thing I want to tell you is that you CAN feel these feelings. You don't have to dismiss them immediately. You can sit with them, acknowledge and think about where they're coming from, and eventually release.

The second thing I recommend is to talk to someone you've been able to help in the past. This puts your focus back to the people that you have helped and want to help in the future. It gets you out of your feelings. Pick out a couple of past clients and ask how you've helped them in the past and ask how you can support them today.

The next thing I want you to do is to write down 5 things you've accomplished in the last year. Keep the list where you can find it and remind yourself that you can do hard things!

The last thing I want you to do is to think about what would happen if you did nothing. If you stayed still and didn't do anything what would that look like? Write that down and really reflect on how you would feel and what life would be without pushing yourself further. If you're ok with what things look like now, then that's ok. If you want more and are dreaming bigger then work on these strategies and learn to push past the imposter syndrome!

Today we’re getting into Like for Like or Follow for Follow trains. If you hang out often in Facebook groups you’ve definitely seen these. It’s a post that encourages you to put your Instagram handle or Facebook page in the comments and you follow other people in the comments and they follow you. The reason why people want this is that reach is to a certain extent important. We want to reach the most people possible so why wouldn’t want as many people to follow us as possible? We know that the algorithm really isn’t our friend, and so if we have more followers it seems like the best idea. But in this conversation, I want to explain why these aren’t great for your business and why I don’t recommend doing them. 

When you participate in these posts you’re actually stuffing your numbers. If these people don’t care about you or your business they’re not interested in what you’re talking about they’re not your target audience. Just getting numbers is a lack of mindset. You walk away with large numbers so obviously, I’m going to make money. But you haven’t built relationships with them and you have no idea if they’re you’re ideal clients. So what should you do instead? Say you’ve got a freebie “Grow Your Email List with the Perfect Lead Magnet”. Instead of follow trains, you can go and find people that need that specific information. They’re the people you want in your audience. Now, will it be 100 in one day? Probably not. But what I can tell you is that even if you grow one a day and you go to launch a new offer or product, you’ll have the right people waiting in your audience to scoop up that new item. 

Another reason follow trains don’t work, it doesn’t even do what you think it does! You think you’re getting their eyes, and the people they follow eyes. But if the people that you have in your audience don’t want to engage in your content it’s not going to reflect well on your engagement. What I worry about is that your confidence is going to go down in the shitter. The excitement that you get from getting a lot of followers isn’t going to last. But can grow your audience intentionally and organically to have genuine results. Be intentional about who you are with, you’re backing, and who you want to be in your space. A great way to make a connection is after a chat with someone online, send them your social info so they can follow you. If you DM, watch someone’s stories and follow them chances are they’re going to follow you too if they’re interested in your content. 

The last thing I want to bring to your attention on like for like trains, if you really step back and look there can be red flags. You can easily get trapped in a scam. Some people go back in the next day and unlike or unfollow everyone they interacted within the follow train. They want to boost their numbers but they don’t really want to follow anyone else. What I suggest you do if you really want to be apart of these like for like trains, I suggest going through people’s content and see if these people are really someone that you want to invite into your online space. You don’t even have to post your own page. You can use it as an opportunity to look and see if people would make good collaborators in the future. 

I hope this has been helpful to you! I wanted to debunk the like and follow trains and give you a few ways to organically grow your audience!  I want you to find the right people for your audience and actually sell your offers! The right people will buy your product if you get the right people in front of you!

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