How to grow your business with my NEW Small Business Growth Plan

In today’s episode of the podcast, I talk about my NEW Small Business Growth Path, The Marketing That Converts Academy and a VIP Mastermind Stay I am hosting in December.  KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST It never gets easier, it just gets different. Each stage in your business you hit will bring fresh challenges.When you first start your business, you are doing everything including trying to learn so much and join every course – The information can be overwhelming.There is SO much out there right now for resources and information.My NEW Small Business Growth Plan – 3 different stages (Bloom, Grow, Flourish). This allows you to identify where you are at in your business and gives you ideas on what you need to do to get to the next level.My membership doors are open Friday 24th September to Wednesday 29th September – this is the last time before the price goes up next year!

 THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE… Now is your last chance to join The Marketing That Converts Academy before the price goes up! HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS My NEW Small Business Growth Path 06:03The Academy Next Level 18:10VIP Mastermind Stay 19:37

 RESOURCES MENTIONED  Join The Marketing That Converts Academy before the price goes up!  TRANSCRIPT  Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So last week's episode, I've just got to touch on it before we get on with this week's. Wasn't it good? Honestly, I loved that episode and in fact, it's on my list to go back to listen to again, and jot some things down that we need to do. And fully enough, I've just recorded the episode that's coming after this one, which is with Dennis Yu, it's a really good one, lots of really, really good stuff in that episode. And at the end of the episode, I say that, you know, even though we know there's this big list of things to do, it doesn't necessarily mean that like, we should beat ourselves up if we haven't done them. Because. But some of these people who I have on the podcast, they come on to talk about one specific thing that they do all the time. So it feels like easy because that's the thing they do, or they're at a different part in their journey to where you are. So it might be that, you know, for, for instance, take me in the podcast that I have a process now that kind of works itself, which is brilliant, but it didn't start out like that. And I think what happens is sometimes you look at someone else's sort of journey or you look at where they are and you look at what they're doing and you beat yourself up thinking, "Oh my goodness, I should be doing that. Why aren't I doing that? Why isn't my business at that point?" And it's just because you haven't got there yet. And that's okay. Because everyone you're looking at was exactly where you are right now. And they had to get there themselves and some get there faster, some get there slower, some do it one way, some do another. It really doesn't matter. It's just a case of don't beat yourself up about it. Which is a little bit, what I want to talk about today. And to tell you it might be a bit of a weird episode. I'm sat here. It's really early in the morning. I'm with my coffee and I feel like we're just going to have a chat, which I like, I like, I get nice reviews on the podcast saying that it sounds like we're just out for coffee, having a chat, which today we are, I'm sat here with my coffee chatting to you. So, yeah, that's lovely. I love to hear that. Also. I love to get the reviews and reviews really helped me get seen and get the podcast seen. And, you know, what's really frustrating. Like I've been going at this for 209 episodes and like I watched the rankings, I get an email every week telling me what rank I am and it makes no sense. No sense. I get regular consistent downloads, lots of downloads. And yet my ranking goes up and down and up and down sometimes disappears. Like I'm not even ranked and I'm just like, how can this be the case? And then I see someone start a podcast, like five episodes of one review and they're ranked higher than me. And it's like, I don't get it. So if you're not doing anything at any point today, which probably isn't the case. Cause I know you're super busy. But you know, Uh, scrolling Instagram later. Maybe could you go to the apple podcast app? If you're with apple, if not, wherever you are and go and write me a lovely five star review, I'd really, really appreciate it. Cause sometimes these things feel tough and that's the other thing, actually, I want to say. Is that it doesn't change, you know that, don't you. So in my head, when I started my business, everything was like, if I could just get to this point, it will be easier. If I could just get to this point, I'll manage that better. If I can just get to this point, I'll feel more confident. It never stops. It's like, it's like having a child. I remember my sister saying to me when I had my daughter, she had already had three children by that point, she had had a girl in twin boys and she said to me, "It never gets easier. It just gets different." And I think that's a great analogy for business. I think that's really good because it's right. It never gets easier. Like. You know, and funnily enough, I've been writing some emails for next week. It could be no, is it for this week? I don't know when it's for anyway. And that's, from when you batch, you don't know when things go out and it talks about New Level, New Devil and that's exactly true. It's so true. So when you struggle and think, I just need to get to this point, when you get to that point, you suddenly then have a whole new host of things that you've got to think about and worry about. Like I said, a bit like having a child, you desperately want them to sit up so they can sort of, you know, whatever, manage themselves a bit better. And then when they sit up, there's another problem. And then you want them to crawl and then when they crawl there's another problem. So. And you think that when they can talk, it's going to be better. And then that causes something else. So it's just like that in business. So, like I said, today's going be a bit of a random episode. I've got random bits of paper in front of me which I'm about to move. So I'll probably make sounds I'm sorry. Um, I feel very unprofessional today. But I want to tell you about something I've been working on and I'm super excited about it, but also I'm the queen of doing things last minute, but I don't know about you, but I work really well under pressure. When I don't have like loads to do. And people literally hammering on my head for stuff. I'm a little bit. I take too long. I'm a perfectionist. I take too long. I work on these things. So one part of me is panicking. I'm not going to get this done. And another part of me is going, you absolutely have to get this done Teresa, because one, you're literally talking about it on the podcast. Two you've written emails about it that are ready, scheduled to go out whenever they're going out. So you will make this work. So sometimes I think that's great, but basically let me try and explain to you what I've done. And how this kind of fits in with the fact that the academy doors are open this week, as you are listening to this. And I think I gave you a heads up that they were opening last week. So I have created a Small Business Growth Path. Now that name might change. I'm still not convinced on all the stuff, all the details. So, but I hopefully I think that that will do for now. So basically what this is, is it's comes from the fact of exactly what I said at the beginning. When you are in business, you are doing an amazing job. You're listening to this podcast. You're learning. You might be in the academy, you might be getting support. You might be right reading blogs, doing online courses. You're doing all the stuff. But the problem with that is, is that you are totally overwhelmed with everything you should be doing. So for instance, on last week's episode, you know, the amazing Rachel talk to us about all the different types of posts we should be doing. And how to get all that engagement. And how to make something go viral. She talked like writing all those insane amount number of blog posts. Next week, Dennis Yu's going to talk about how we should be using video and where you should put that video and all these things. And honestly, your head could just spin off with all the stuff that you could do. And this is where this world we're in now is a double-edged sword. When I started in marketing, things were limited. Like you could only do certain things and your budget often meant it made your choice for you. So that almost as frustrating as it was, was simpler because of the fact that you didn't have many choices. Now we have a million choices and a million things we should be doing. Should we be on every different social media? Should we be on TikTok? I don't do TikToks yet. Should I be doing them? Should I do more reels? How do I do more reels? Should I be writing a blog as well as a podcast? Should I be doing videos on YouTube? Should I be going live every week? Seriously, so much stuff. So what I wanted to do was put together this, this path that basically told you at what points to do what. Because you know what happens, right? So what I've done is I, I it's up in three different stages. So I've called each stage a different thing. So why I think I've called it. I've called it bloom, grow, flourish. So bloom is like, when you're first showing up and starting to shine and sort of like sticking your head out of the, of the parapet almost. Grow is when you're already stood there and you're like, right now we need to expand a bit. And then flourish is when like, let's go crazy. So, and, and the other interesting thing about this is I've been working with one of my amazing team on this, and we've been using gardening analogies because like, you know how I got into the gardening thing, but it's so true. So for instance, like at the beginning, when you first start gardening and when you first start marketing, You've got to have like the right environments and the right climate and the right conditions. So, and those things can be like, uh, you know, have you chose the right market? What competition is there? Like is a wanted thing? Have you got the right conditions for it? So are you, you know, putting out there in a place where it should be, is it got the right sort of website or the right way you can communicate with it. But the key thing that really struck with me when we talked about this gardening analogy is the fact of. When you first start and plant those seeds. So your seeds being a product or service, you've got to have a good quality seed to begin with. And you need some tools. You need some things to help you. So that might be, you know, social media stuff or some tech tools or whatever. But when you start putting it in the ground, It takes ages to come out of the ground. And you need to water it. You need to be consistently looking after it for it to get to the point where you can even start to see it, let alone grow into the thing that you want it to grow into. So when you're starting marketing what happens is, and what often people get so disheartened about is they, they put the, the seed in, they put the, you know, the first post on social media and they don't water it, or they're not consistent with it, or they're not looking after that platform. And they're not, you know, nurturing those people who are like, there's five people who are interacting with them. And they're just thinking that like, if they just keep putting more seeds out that basically that's going to do the thing and it doesn't. What happens is you get disheartened cause you don't see anything cause you sit there and think, you know, my marketing I've been doing it and nothing's happened. But the truth is it is happening. You just can't see it. And it's those people who can be consistent and keep doing it and keep doing and having the faith that at some point it will start to work. And at some point when you grow a plant, the seed will come and sprout out and you'll start getting the beginnings of your shoots, which again is not your, it's not the sales. It's not the big stuff. It's, it's the beginning. But again, that's where we need the faith to keep being consistent and keep putting it out there. So what I've put together, and this is going to be in the academy. When the academy does open right now, there's a couple of reasons why now is a good time to join. One is that this is the last time the doors open before next year. And I think we'll probably be something like February, March time. I think, I think it was May actually this year. Two the prices going up. So I've decided. Um, and I might do an episode on why I've put the price up, but I decided that the quality in there, the community we have, the level of knowledge, I guess, means I want to put the price up. So the price is going from $59 a month to $97 a month. And I know that's quite a big price hike, but it really does denote the quality that you're getting in there. And. And if you join now then it'll only have the $59 a month. If you don't join this time, then the next time you won't get it, $59. So that's the other reason. And the third reason is this new growth plan ah growth path that don't even know the name that I've put together. So I just want to talk you through how this looks so you can understand a little bit. Okay, so I've put it into three different stages. That's the first thing. So we have the stage one, as I said that's bloom, stage two that's growth, stage three that's flourish. So let me take stage one. Each of the three stages is broken down into social content, emails, sales, and clients, systems and team, and then your community. And at each stage, I have a statement for you to read and see. Is that me? So for instance, on the first stage, and obviously I'm still finalizing this and tweaking it and doing various updates. So this probably won't be the finished what I'm reading now, but so on the first one for stage one in social, it'll say you have social media, but you're struggling to post consistently and you aren't getting all the all-important engagement. You're a bit baffled by it. You feel overwhelmed by all the things you've got to do. You don't know what platform you should be doing it on. And like I said, you're not consistent. So if you read that and go "Oh, that's me." Then I give you an action or a few actions to do in order to get you over that mark. Because there's no point in me talking about batching content or Facebook ads or some of the other kind of more in-depth stuff. If you aren't doing that first bit. And that's why I think. I'm so excited about this and why this is so important because we can do the courses on all the stuff. But like I said, if we're trying to create something and we haven't even got step one, then it's going to be impossible. So for instance, on content, it says, you're not sure what content you should be doing, or what you, or what would attract your customer? What to say to them? Again, you're sort of baffled, you're doing a scattergun effect and you're not sure what your customer wants to hear from you and what's going to engage them. So in that particular lesson, in that exercise and action, I talked to you about how to find what your audience want, where you can get the topics from. I talk about why you shouldn't sell all the time. And again, I give you very specific tasks in which to do. And once you have those tasks done, tick you've done stage one of content. Now I know this seems quite a lot, but this isn't meant to be done over like five minutes. This is like, this is building a business and businesses take months and years to build. So, I know it sounds a lot to be like, "Well, okay, how long have I got to do that? That sort of consistent social media stuff before I can move on to the next stage." So again, I tell you that I tell you. Okay. Once you've done this consistently for a couple of months, then you're ready to go to the next stage. Again with the team. So in stage one, I've put basically you're just doing everything, you know, normally in stage one, people don't have a team, but if I take stage two, uh, I've put, you have a VA for a few hours, or you're thinking about getting one, but you're not sure how to get one or, and what work you can give them. You're at the peak of overwhelmed because the business is growing. Uh, but you've got so much work to do and you need to start looking at how you can outsource it. You're scared of messing up. You're scared of giving it to someone else and you feel like you're not organized enough. So again, what I teach you in that section in stage two, when I talk about teams and systems, is how to bring on a VA, what to outsource, what questions to give them and the process that's involved to that. But like I said, that's only at stage one at stage two, because at stage one, you're not ready for that at that point. Now the other thing about this growth path that I've done is the reason I've chunked it up into social content, email sales slash clients, team systems, and then community is because you might be at stage two in, in social, but actually your sales a stage one. So you can be in different stages for different things, which is why I've split it up like that. Because otherwise I'm going to be talking to you about how to do social at a level that you're not at you're at high level. So I'm really, really crazy excited about this and the potential for it and how it's going to help people really grow. And then what is brilliant about it is it's it's in the academy. And I don't know whether it will always stay that way, whether I'm just going to give it to the academy members in this next go when I close the cart because I want to test it out. And then after that only they will have it. I'm not entirely sure how that works at this point. I'm not sure whether you will have to go through this as a course, or you'll have to go through this before you join the academy, I'm not entirely sure, but anyway. So that's why I put it together. That's why the academy is going to get it because we're going to see how this goes. But honestly, I just think this is a business game changer, because like I said, The courses are great. And the other thing that's great is the academy is full of courses. So for instance, on social stage one, I recommend the courses to go and watch and have a look at that are the ones that are appropriate for that stage that are in the academy. And then, like I said, the other great thing about it is that you'd get to come on a coaching call. So if you're at stage one on content and you've done the work, but you're still not a hundred percent sure that it's right. You get to come and talk to me and you get to share with me what you've done and I get to go, "Yes that's right. Or I would look at this or have you thought about this?" So I'm so, so crazy excited about this. I honestly think this is going to be amazing and I'm really hoping that you've listened to this and think "I want, I want to be part of that. I want to, I want to know