Market Like A Nerd

I always say that if you want a sustainable and scalable business, you must do 3 things: Leverage, Automate, and Delegate. Well, today, we're focusing on Leverage & Delegation. Educating us on the topic we have here: Business Strategist Christine Gallagher! She's going to share with us her 3 top tips for building a team for ultimate leverage in your business. Listen in!

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 01:53 – Introduction.
• 6:12 – Some of the biggest mistakes that Christine made earlier and that others do now are being anxious and try to control everything in your business. Because she has a tech background she would rather do things herself thinking that she could do them faster and better. So one must give up that control and trust others. It's true that the other person is not going to do it exactly like you but they are going to do it good enough that your business is going to be able to grow.
• 7:12 – Christine waited way too long to hire her first team member and when Christine hired her first VA, her income more than doubled in that year and she tells people all the time not to wait too long to add team members.
• 9:14 – Tip # 1: The big thing you need to think about are the red flags and there are many things that you can delegate in your business. People wonder what is the right time to delegate things in your business and when you notice that clients are not being cared for the way they should or things are not happening on time or things that need to be done on a particular time keep getting to the bottom of your to do list and you feel you just can't get to it but you know that if you got to it you would move your business forward.
• 9:59 – There are also some things which you don't know how to do but you are trying to do them. So Christine says that is not a very good idea as you are going to get frustrated and lose money so avoid doing things which you don't know how to do.
• 10:24 – Also avoid doing stuff that you are not good if you find yourself in that situation you know it's time to find some help and if you are doing things that are not directly related to bringing in revenue and you are getting bogged down by them you need to get help.
• 13:19 – Tip # 2: It is a big obstacle to figure out if it makes financial sense for you to bring on team members and so Christine says there is a formula for that you need to look at what your time is worth per hour to do your genius work and then think about all other the things you do in a day that are not your genius work and make a list of them and give a dollar value to the other things that you are doing and decide if you can outsource that other work to someone else for a much lesser amount.
• 16:05 – You need to put the time upfront to do the interviews and the research before hiring because if you don't you are going to end up paying more in the long run.
• 19:06 – Tip # 3: There are tools out there that you can use on yourself and with your team to get crystal clear on who should be doing what. So the two tools that she uses and recommends to her clients as well are the Strengths Finder's assessment they have a book that you can buy and they also have a test online which costs $20 and using this assessment you can find out what your strengths are and shows where you can put your genius work in place. You can use it to weed out people when you are interviewing them and although it is an expense that you pay for a person to take it but you are going to end up paying in the long run if don't get clear. The other tool is the Kolbe A index which tells you how you are wired and helps you work with other team members.
• 22:13 – The Kolbe A index also helps you find out what your instinctive method of problem solving is for example in Kolbe there is a part of it that tells you whether you are a fact finder or a quick start and Christine is a fact finder and that isn't always good when you are an entrepreneur and that tells her that she needs to have some quick starts around her who are going to take her away from that constant analysis and put it into motion.
• 23:23 – Christine always her second tier mastermind clients take the test because you can then see why they do something and why they don't.
• 24:17 – The biggest way Christine uses to find employees is personal referrals and that is a really good place to start and there are a lot of online places you can use to hire people like Craigslist but a lot of people end up being really disappointed with who they employ or the number of people that are out there and they hit a dead end and it keeps them stuck so she says it is always better to go back to the people you trust and the people you like and see where do they find people or who do they know that might be looking for a position. There are sites like Upwork.com, Fiverr.com, Guru.com and Freelancer.com where you can hire people but Christine always prefers to go to people she knows first.
• 26:03 – For hiring people Christine first narrows down people for a position and then she makes them take the Strength Finders and the Kolbe and sometimes that's the thing that decides no or yes in her hiring process. You should also thoroughly check their references by personally talking to people. She asks situational questions to potential employees like what would you do if this happened because that's a good way to judge how a person is going to respond in a given situation or scenario.
• 27:31 – You can also ask your potential employees to do a trial period and tell them how many hours you want them to work and what you want them to accomplish in that period of time and then you can talk at the end of that that can be a big life saver as well.
• 29:20 – The thing about leverage is not negotiable if you want to grow and without it you cannot grow to the next level but when they don't do it their income gets capped, they're totally exhausted, their overwhelmed and they think I am never going to get past this income level which is frustrating if you have big goals in life.

Resources mentioned:

• The balanced entrepreneur Facebook group.
• Shesgotclients.com is Christine's website where you can find out all the information including the social media links to connect with her.
• Shesgotclients.com/Surefire is the link for Five surefire strategies to escape the dollars for hours' trap and it's a free pdf guide with an accompanying audio which helps you find out how to leverage your time, your expertise and your offers to bring in more money and experience more freedom.

I'm going to make you famous! I mean, it's no secret that I am pretty big freaking deal *brushes shoulders off* (just kidding... or am I?)... So if you want to be a big freaking deal in your industry too, then you have to be seen as an authority or expert in your niche. No matter your industry... if you want to have name recognition, to make an impact, and experience seamless sales too, you have to be seen as an authority or an expert in what you do!

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 00:52 – Introduction.
• 1:04 – If you want to be famous then you have to be seen as an authority in your niche. If you want to have name recognition make an impact and experience seamless sales too you have to be seen as an authority or an expert in what you do.
• 1:30 – Some people think that authority means getting thousands of likes on Facebook or hearts on Periscope but the truth is that it's actually much simpler and a lot faster than that too.
• 1:42 – You require just three things to be seen as an expert or an authority in your niche. The first one is expert content. Your content allows for you to showcase your knowledge and your expertise to your followers in a way that's really easy for them to consume. A lot of the biggest names in the industry are people who create a ton of content at least that's the case in the online business and marketing world. You should ensure that you are creating consistent valuable high quality content. I create these podcasts and vlogs as a way to give value to my community so that they see me as an authority in my niche.
• 3:14 – The second thing required is influencer marketing. Another way to get people to trust you is to stay in the same circles as other influencers who they already trust. So just figure out who the big names are in your industry, follow them, become active members of their communities and ultimately find a way to collaborate with them because when you collaborate with other high profile influencers who your market trusts they are going to see that you have aligned yourself with them as a peer and by being a peer to those other influencers by proximity that makes you an influencer too. This could include them interviewing you or you interviewing them or writing guest blogs for them. Just ensure that you are consistently aligning yourself as a peer to those influencers because the closer you are to them, the more circles you are in with those influencers the more you seem like an influencer yourself
• 4:44 – The third way is authority branding. If you take a look at the other influencers in your niche you will notice that they have invested in themselves, in their website, in their visual branding and the quality of their content.
• 5:03 – When I first launched this podcast, people in my Facebook group told me that you make me feel like my podcast is crap because yours is so good and when I launched my web TV show people went crazy for it because I invested in the quality of the content.
• 6:10 – It's not enough to actually be an expert and trust that people will take your word for it you have to look like one too. So visit my website marketlikeanerd.com and use that as an example of an authority website.
• 6:47 – Recap.

Resources mentioned:

Marketlikeanerd.com – Visit my website to use it as an example of an authority website with authority content.

In this episode, I'm geekin' out with fellow sales funnel lover Stephanie Nikolich, who grew a million dollar business while living life as a single mama! She's going to share how to unlock your passive profit potential and set up sales funnels that really work so that you can bring in sales and clients each and every day WITHOUT having to work so hard! [WARNING: It's going to get a bit nerdy in here!]

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 1:36 – Introduction.
• 5:41 – The biggest mistake that comes to Stephanie's mind is not testing and just assuming that one time if you put a page up or if your ads up or you put your upsell up or you launch a program, that if it doesn't go well the first time, then it didn't work but that's not necessarily the case and she actually loves it when things don't work out, a person came to her and she was very disappointed because she had spent a lot of money and yet her opt in page was only converting at 4% so she told the lady not to quit because the page is converting at 4%, Stephanie suggested some changes in the opt-in page and asked her to test the changes and after that there was a very significant increase in the page conversions.
• 6:47 – A lot of funnels will not perform the way you want them to, minor changes like changing an image can very significantly boost your conversions sometimes.
• 7:20 – Stephanie strives to educate entrepreneurs about what changes they can make to get better results when things are not going right, once you understand how each piece of a sales funnel is laid out, how each piece connects, how they all go together and create something that's magnificent and beautiful, you can go back when something's not converting the way you want it to, make a couple of little changes, shifts and get pages that are converting really well.
• 8:13 – The reason why Stephanie's pages convert as well as they do is because they were tested and they didn't necessarily convert very well right out of the gate, she made many changes, she knows what to change in order to get better results.
• 8:38 – She had a new copywriting team and the opt-in page was converting at six percent and she got it up to 47% by just making a few changes over a three-day period because they were driving traffic to it. When it's cold traffic it's probably going to convert differently than warm traffic. So you need to take all these things into consideration but you must not just give up when something doesn't work because when things don't work that is actually an opportunity.
• 9:58 – Tip # 1 is delegate to dominate so stop trying to do everything by yourself. Stephanie doesn't set up her Facebook ads she only does the high-level strategy for them and she is very actively involved she knows enough about each piece of her sales funnel so that she can convey to others what her vision is and what she wants them to do.
• 10:31 – Stephanie analyzes her ads and makes sure that they are moving in the right direction. When you stick in your school of genius, you will grow more than you ever imagined possible. It is even possible to double your income month over month and this happens because she is doing what needs to be done and she is outsourcing a lot of her work, hiring the right people, interviewing people and taking time and being patient and as a result of that her business is blossoming.
• 11:31 – One of the best things that Stephanie did in her business was that she stopped trying to do all the things and began to focus on the areas in which she was an expert and when she did that her business began to grow out of control and that's what happens when you have the right people to support you in your vision.
• 12:18 – Stephanie masters one funnel at a time, she has about 21 active sales funnels in her business and they are migrating everything over to click funnels, she has more than 70 pages in her funnels and a lot of them are multiple step sales funnels.
• 12:48 – All the funnels lead to the end goal which is bigger high end program so the end goal is all the same but the entry points are different.
• 13:18 – Stephanie does many Tripwire funnels because they work well. She did a live stream and she had 4000 people live, she mentioned a product and they came into her funnel. She has small micro offers because they generate a lot of revenue as they build trust with your audience. Sometimes people will come to you but they are not ready to spend $10000 right out of the gate, but if they have those offers available to them wherever they are you are on their vision board, you are on their bucket list, you are on their Christmas list and you are the one for them and they can't stop thinking about you. A funnel is active all the time and leads are coming in but there are leads going through at all the different stages and three months in she may get a call that drops down to book with her and that person is ready to buy her high level program because she came in three months ago and bought the $27 product and she has been nurtured and she has seen so it builds a lot of trust by offering them a micro offer that meets them where they are and then brings them through the funnel to higher price point products.
• 15:20 – The first digital product that Stephanie came out with was for $27 called the lucrative list builder and she has sold over a thousand units of the product and the product hasn't even been out for 11 months yet. It took her just 4 hours to create this product and for that she earned $2700 of direct revenue and that product has also led to over $200000 of additional revenue because when people buy that product they come back to her and one of her clients came back to her three days later and jumped from a $27 product to a $10000 program.
• 16:55 – Stephanie served around 25 clients last year and by the end of this year she will have served over 3000 entrepreneurs through paid products and services.
• 17:36 – Tip # 2: The key is to unlock your passive profit potential; passive profits were attractive to her when she started her business because she was pregnant and her business was growing but it was all one on one support and she was working 12 to 16 hours a day and she was stressed out in the beginning stages of her pregnancy and she was very concerned because she wanted to be a fully present mom and spend time with her child and she realized she couldn't do that by working one on one with people. She wanted the freedom to build sand castles on the beach with her baby and so she decided passive income was the way forward and she couldn't continue to serve people one on one.
• 19:19 – Stephanie's first digital product was born out of her own personal experience, she did this marketing campaign where she built her list 0 to 4000 names in 4 weeks and she was gearing up for the launch and the launch went terrible but she did build her list by 4000 names and that's a pretty cool thing that a lot of people would want to know how she achieved and it wasn't all paid marketing and she created a product around it the lucrative list builder, which has sold more than a thousand units in less than 11 months. Stephanie is very passionate about passive income and creating sales funnels because it has given her the freedom to do whatever she wants.
• 20:50 – Stephanie is a big advocate for working smarter not harder. She did a case study and she showed people the difference between her best month last year and her best month this year she worked for 241 hours last year to get $78883 and this year her income was $153129 working just about 41 hours.
• 22:38 – Tip # 3: Facebook ads are your friends and many entrepreneurs are scared of running ads on Facebook and Stephanie spent a lot of money on ads earlier on in her journey and didn't make a lot of money back but once you really tap into your formula and your audience and you know your brand and you know your messaging and you know who your prospects are and who your clients are and how to connect with them and how to engage with them, Facebook ads are your friends. Typically, she puts in a dollar in Facebook ads and she makes $10. Using Facebook ads Stephanie has been able to reach clients in more than fifteen different countries.
• 25:52 – Time is your friend, everyone is in such a rush and Stephanie was going to go in a launch and they pushed back the date of the launch because she knew that if they spread it out a little bit they would get much better results. She needed the time to be putting up the ads and start testing them because all this takes time so instead of being in such a rush you should give yourself a little bit of time because if you do, you could actually multiply your results.
• 27:04 – Stephanie was not a very big fan of launches but she revealed some programs in an academy and they really need a launch and so she talked herself into that and they were able to enroll 403 entrepreneurs into the legendary entrepreneur which they are structuring more like an academy and it worked really, really well. There are benefits to launching and there are benefits to evergreen but obviously you can reach the same types of goals overtime if you have an evergreen funnel in place but sometimes you want to do a launch because whatever you are selling wants a launch and you can get amplified results in a short amount of time but also those amplified results come from amplified budgets so you've got to have more members in your team, more money invested upfront and if that is not something that you have access to then the evergreen model just getting that going and testing and tweaking and making sure your opt ins are converting and your upsells are converting will still bring you money or you could do both.

Resources mentioned:

• Facebook group called Female Entrepreneurs Collaborate.
• www.stephanienickolich.com/sales-funnel-profit-producer contains a free gift which is the secrets to unlocking your sales funnel potential, it is a profit producing checklist

People make marketing way too freaking complicated. Truly all it comes down to is two steps. That's it! If you want to make money in ANY business - online or off - there are only two steps. And I'm going to reveal exactly what those steps are in this episode!

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 00:52 – Introduction.
• 00:57 – A couple of weeks ago, I decided "Hey! I want some extra income" So in the course of just 7 day I generated $10,000 in extra revenue for my business AND I only spent $57 to make it happen.
• 1:14 – The truth is that making money is really easy, it just comes down to two steps. Here they are:
• 1:29 – Step # 1 is to create an offer, in order for someone to buy from you, you have to have something to buy. It sounds simple, but a lot of entrepreneurs focus so much on list building, giving value, or posting on social media, that they forget to just put an offer in front of people and ask for the sale.
• 1:54 – So if you're not making money, ask yourself am I making offers? The other problem I see is when entrepreneurs only have one offer and their audience has either already seen it, already bought it, or doesn't want it, so there's nothing else for them to buy. That's why last week when I wanted to make $10K in 7 days, I actually created a brand new offer that I knew my clients and community members had never seen before.
• 2:40 – Step # 2 is send traffic. Once you have the offer and a way for people to buy it (meaning an order form or a sales page), the only natural next step is to send traffic to that offer. Because no one knows it exists, no one is going to buy. So once you create an offer, promote it everywhere you can think possible without worrying about how salesy or annoying you're being. Send an email to your list, post in your Facebook group, in other people's Facebook groups, make a Facebook event, do a live stream, create a Facebook ad these are ways of sending traffic.
• 3:28 – Recap.

Resources mentioned:

www.marketlikeanerd.com – Where you can find the web TV video version of this podcast.

This week we've welcomed Heartpreneur and Digital Marketing Expert Nathalie Lussier to share with us her secrets for creating a profitable business without the sleaze. Nathalie is a genius when it comes to leveraging tools and technology to create an out of this world user experience for your prospects and customers, so that they not only feel good while consuming your content, but become brand evangelists who share it with their friends and rave about you online!

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 00:59 – Introduction.
• 6:06 – Nathalie says that some of the common mistakes people make when they are ready to scale is that they create their first launch or their first course and it is not a huge success but maybe there's something there that attracts attention or it hit the right point but maybe they didn't have a big enough list yet to grow it. What Nathalie sees people do a lot is that they throw the whole thing out and they decide to do a second course or a second program instead of trying to reach more people with the same thing that you sold in the first place. So one must think that I did great with this so how can I improve it and reach more people this time maybe it's getting more affiliates on board or improving the marketing around it a bit so that the next time you go out there it is even stronger.
• 7:08 – Nathalie says that when you want to scale you can't do it all by yourself and she also struggled with it in the beginning because she had a team consisting of just one VA and herself and when she added more people they were able to grow much faster.
• 8:44 – According to Nathalie you need to find out is it a lack of people seeing your offer, is it lack of traffic, is it a lack of list building and thinking about those numbers will help you make the right decision so that you are focusing on the right stuff. So don't assume that people didn't like your stuff they probably just didn't know about it.
• 10:22 – Tip # 1: Creating free courses works very well and then you can focus your energy on marketing your free stuff and then people can go into your paid offers. So focus your creative energy on new ideas and stuff on bringing people in through your free courses. A free course is more powerful as compared to other free resources because you actually get people in your membership site, you also get their name and email, you get them to login and be a member and that member experience is one step above a subscriber or a website visitor and you can build a relationship with the members.
• 11:24 – Tip # 2: Once your visitors are inside your membership area you can show them your different courses or programs that you have and they can see what's available. You don't necessarily need to have a sales page with a buy now button but it is that curiosity and you are letting people self-select without being pushy. So when people opt in to your free course and start getting value and if they like the experience they are having with your free course then they are a lot more likely to say yes to a paid course.
• 12:23 – Nathalie likes to look at the stats on her website and she found that a lot of people visit her products page but they are not actually looking to buy but if they are in a member's area already and if you are seeing the free course and then a couple of paid courses so they can't escape it and if you do click through you can bring people to a sales page and give them some more information or promote special offers in the member's area and you can give them some time sensitive reason to sign up for the paid courses using a countdown timer or a special price instead of creating an evergreen offer to encourage them to enroll.
• 14:33 – Nathalie uses AccessAlly which has one box which says unlock your free course and they see a greyed out icon or something that says I don't have access yet and we humans have a psychological tendency to have access to everything and this way is not pushy if it's not for them they are not going to sign up but if they are already in that direction then it's a much easier and gentler way to get them to say yes.
• 17:11 – Nathalie learned a lot of these things through experiencing and practicing and trying different things in their membership site and you might not find these features of in other plugins because they tend to be built by mostly developers and not necessarily people who are in business as well.
• 18:28 – Tip # 3: As a course creator you must think about the user experience side of your courses and your programs. Nathalie has taken a lot of online courses and as a course creator she wants to make sure that people get the results that she is promising on her sales pages so she ensures that they do finish the course or are able to take action on the stuff that she is teaching.
• 19:18 - Nathalie gives the example of the thirty-day challenge where there are thirty videos over thirty days and that could be a bit overwhelming so they have put little checkboxes that people can check off as they are going through and if they wanted to come back to day 10 they can keep it unchecked so that they can come back and go through it again or take action on that and as they progress they'll see how far they've come. There are also things like a video bookmark option so when people click that button it will start playing the video at the right spot.
• 22:00 – You can even go further with ProgressAlly so let's say you want to have it as a certification or you just want to reward people after they go through your course you can actually have a quiz that checks people's understanding of what they've gone through and then you can give them an auto generated pdf certificate. You can also follow up with people who haven't completed something for a while so if they haven't logged in or if they haven't completed anything in say two or three weeks you can have your email system send them an email saying hey is everything alright you should probably log back in this is waiting for you and that can also increase people's completion rate and they feel better at having used what they purchased.
• 24:37 – As the whole focus is on list building and scaling, people might think I created these free courses but how is that going to help me build my list but if you have really good content the people and people are going through your free courses you can set up social sharing for them within your membership site and have people share your opt in page for your free course and Nathalie has noticed that about 20% of the people end up joining from social shares saying hey I am taking this free course come and join me.
• 28:11 – Your business doesn't get built in a day all of us are extremely ambitious and we have great ideas but implementing them takes time and Nathalie says that your website is never done it is like the spiral staircase that you are going to keep improving upon and the same goes for your membership site and your courses you will probably have more great stuff to add to your courses or you might have new ideas for your membership site and the beauty of the internet is that you can change things over time and it's not like a book where you publish it and you can never make changes.

Resources mentioned:

30daylistbuildingchallenge.com – Totally free to sign up and get more tips on list building.

AmbitionAlly.com – To check out the different plugins and other stuff by Nathalie and her team.

Today we are going to be talking about what business model can make you millions! This is a really fun topic because a lot of you - my listeners! - are the ones who dreaming bigger... you don't just want the six figure hustle! You want to make way more with way less work, and I am here to tell you that it's 100% possible!

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 0:54 – Introduction.
• 1:28 – A lot of people think that it comes down to the model and there is a right way to grow your business and as long as you know the right model to do it you can do it because you can model off of it.
• 2:17 – I started going out and looking at the different businesses that are making millions of dollars in the industry and a lot of people came to mind so I decided to see what they are doing and what their business models are and go from there.
• 2:45 – Tip # 1 is first thing that I realized was that there were a lot of different business models.
• 4:52 – Tip # 2 is there's no one size fits all solution I just went through all these business models and none of them really have the same setup so there's no one size fits all solution but that is a good thing because it means that you can really grow a million-dollar business doing whatever you want. You have the freedom and the power to choose how you decide to grow your business. Decide what's going to align with your interest, personality and lifestyle and build your business around that.
• 5:38 – Tip # 3 is to reframe the question the original question was which business model can make me millions and I would love for you to do is to reframe the question to what's my dream business model because you can make millions doing whatever you want you might as well create your business model around your lifestyle, your interest and your personality.
• 7:07 – I looked at what these million-dollar business models were, who these people were and how they were making their millions and I picked and chose which ones I thought were fun for me.
• 7:43 – Some people would probably say that I'm crazy because I have a vlog and I have a podcast and that's not a great way to build your business because you should have one type of content at a time and some people might think I am crazy for doing open closed door launches and automated funnels but I have seen that you can make money doing anything and there are tons and tons of different models so I am going to ignore what those people are saying and I am going to build my business the way that I want.
• 8:20 – Recap.

Resources mentioned:

Free Facebook group: The Balanced Entrepreneur join at marketlikeanerd.com/invite

After growing up an orphan, spending most of her childhood in severe poverty, bouncing around from multiple abusive foster homes where she was molested, beaten, verbally abused, locked in rooms that had no carpet or furniture and even forced to eat her own vomit....Ann Strout has created an aligned freedom business that she loves. She is a prime example of how no matter your circumstances, you CAN come out on top to create the business and life of your dreams. And in this episode, she's going to share with us her 3 best tips for making it happen.

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 1:26 – Introduction
• 6:13 – Ann says that to alignment for her means that she is able to have a business and a life that is total bliss all by her choice by her demand she creates both and in both areas she is giving a hundred percent a hundred percent of the time and doing what she loves a hundred percent of the time. So being in Alignment for Ann is being able to create that business that will support that lifestyle so that she can have the and life and she doesn't have to make choices.
• 7:19 – Ann says that the growth never stops so you never master anything and you are completed there is always the next thing. The next step for Ann is tapping in to something even bigger than her, even more meaningful than what she does now with a higher level entrepreneur. Ann and her team are working on something bigger but she is also taking some time for her and her family.
• 8:49 – Ann says that you do fall sick and it is part of the process and she embraces it and she is ready for new heights herself.
• 9:47 – On the point of being able to create the dream business regardless of your circumstances, Ann thinks it is important that we are really clear that what we see around us or what we are experiencing is something that we are creating and it doesn't have to be the reality so you can change it, you can look outside your window and see whatever you want to see it doesn't necessarily need to be what's absolutely there and if you can shift your mind to believe that you can make anything happen.
• 11:02 – When she had her son Ann was on food stamps and welfare for more than two years and she lived in subsidized housing and when you looked out of the window you saw welfare, poverty and all kinds of terrible negative things but when Ann would look out she would see possibility and hope and she would think this can be different it doesn't have to be this way. Ann says that it's all what you believe and what you see. Some people just stay there and some people grow.
• 11:57 – Tip # 1: The first mistake that Ann committed was thinking that she knew everything. The reason that that was a big mistake for her was because it didn't leave open space for her to learn from anybody else and so she struggled for many years in the beginning of her business. Ann says coming into business instead of competing with your competitors collaborate with your competitors they will teach you everything you need to know.
• 14:02 – Ann says learn from your competitors be open to that.
• 14:26 – Tip # 2: The second biggest mistake she made was she pivoted from everything under the sun. So constantly pivoting from one thing to the next to the next really makes it hard for you to get in front of your ideal clients and it makes it hard for you to enjoy your business and so her biggest motto is one step at a time so whatever your genius is focus on that one thing you can grow and advance later there is no rush.
• 16:54 – Ann says that you have to master the one thing and you need active income, leveraged income and then passive and it goes in that order like you just have to do one thing at a time and you have to figure out what that one thing is and then once you master it and you know how to market it, sell it and make money with it then you can start to move on. If you want to be a coach, you need to figure out what is that one thing as a coach that you can help people with.
• 17:41 – Tip # 3: Get a coach or mentor for whatever it is you need help with right now today and then the same thing should be applied to teams, systems and things like that so don't try to do this by yourself.
• 19:23 – Ann says there is no magic pill where you will get a coach and you won't have to deal with challenges, you will but you will be able to get through it faster because the only way out of it is go through it and you don't want to do that by yourself.
• 19:55 – You can't delegate anything to anyone if you are in urgency mode.
• 20:34 – Tip # 4: Constantly recreating versus repurposing. Ann says that typically most of us launch every 30 to 90 days depending on our business size and Ann noticed when she had her previous business that she was constantly recreating content, recreating free offers, recreating checklists so Ann says that you have to build a habit of creating a Standard Operating Procedure for your business, a checklist for everything you do in your business especially stuff you are going to delegate out or things that you are going to be doing on a repetitive basis.
• 23:26 – SOPs are not fun to do but you can do some and you can have your team do some and so when Ann's team members create an SOP she proofs it.
• 24:37 – Ann says that a lot of people don't like the word hustle but embrace it and get comfortable with being uncomfortable and embrace the hustle especially in the beginning especially when you are up leveling or you are going to do a launch you are going to hustle a little bit and there is no such thing as an overnight success.
• 25:19 – Tip # 5: Ann is a big geek on planning and it's pretty much what she built her business on. You have to have a plan and Ann breaks down her plan into 30 days for her newer aspiring entrepreneurs and for the six figure and beyond she looks at 90 days and this helps to be able to get clarity. You need to have specific lined out goals financially or even otherwise.
• 28:46 – Entrepreneurs don't know what actions to take and that causes them to not be able to focus. Ann has done many surveys and she has realized that people don't know how to stay focused and don't know what to focus on and that is because you don't have a plan that you are excited about. If you don't have a plan you have nothing to work toward. Ann says that there is no other way to do it you have to have a plan even if it's only for thirty days. You've got to take a big vision and work backwards from that break it down into manageable, actionable, trackable pieces so that you can actually reach your goals.
• 30:34 – Have a thirty-day plan and the biggest tip with it is that you make sure that you are excited about it because if you are not, you are not going to do the work and you have to stick it out for the minimum of the thirty days so if you don't get results in the first week don't start beating yourself up and calling it quits, stay in the game for the thirty days and you will get results.
• 31:03 – Recap.

Resources mentioned:

The balanced entrepreneur Facebook group

Four-part video training series which includes a worksheet at Ann's website: www.annmstrout.com

How would you like to interview the biggest influencers and celebrities in your niche? To invite them to telesummits, events, and podcast appearances and have them say "YES"? Well, iIn this episode we're going to be talking about how to do just that! In just one short year, I have participated in over 100 interviews... with millionaires, high profile influencers, and celebrities in my niche... and now it's time for you to do the same!

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 00:52 – Introduction.
• 1:19 – I recommend if you haven't done many interviews before that you start by interviewing other people and often you will see that you will naturally get people who want to interview you because they see that you are in the interview space.
• 2:13 – You might do a video interview for your Vlog with someone or an audio interview for your podcast or a lot of people also do tele summits where they interview 21 different experts over the course of two weeks or thirty days. I have done a bunch of tele summits. I have been fortunate enough to find some really high profile guests for those interview series.
• 3:25 – Some of the people I was able to secure for those tele summits don't even accept interviews or don't even do tele summits and I was able to get them to do the tele summit for me.
• 3:44 – I've got a few secrets that I am going to share with you today.
• 4:00 – Tip # 1: If you want to have a high profile influencer say yes you can interview me then you want to go into it with extreme confidence that you are worthy of them saying yes. If the expert doesn't know who you are then they probably don't know how new or established, you are either. Don't approach the situation with them out of fear you don't want to appear as timid because the expert is going to look at you like this is charity work. Instead you want to be confident and own your value. When you believe in yourself and you talk like the expert you are, this is going to inspire them to believe the same.
• 5:23 – Craft your interview invitation email with the assumption that they will want to join with the belief that it's going to benefit them to be aligned with you. I often craft my emails in a way that sells the benefits of me interviewing them and sells what I bring to the table. I do interviews in a different way I always find some way to add a twist to it that's how I position myself as an authority and as a peer to them.
• 6:13 – Tip # 2: Start off your invitation email by creating a personal connection. The first line or two of the email should show the expert that you already have some type of connection with them. The idea is to create the know, like and trust factor by establishing a preexisting connection.
• 8:56 – Some people idolize influencers in their industry but I look at them as people just like me so that I can talk to them in a very human way like I would talk to a peer and that's how I recommend you approach the situation.
• 9:22 – Tip # 3: You need to play with the ego of the experts because just like everyone else experts also like to feel important. So make them feel important without downplaying yourself in the process. My favorite phrases for this are "are you currently accepting interview requests?", "I instantly thought of you because…" or "I'd love to share you with my community"
• 10:49 – Tip # 4: Do name dropping do not be afraid to leverage someone else's name. So if you know someone who has worked with them or you have a client who has bought their stuff say so. If there's other speakers on the summit that you are planning big or small just mention them because the more experts you mention or the more connections you make the more valuable this is perceived by the expert.
• 12:15 – Tip # 5: Respect the time of the speakers because they might be super busy or they might have a team who handles this stuff for them. When you email them, have all of the details worked out including the dates the interview is going to air, the dates you need them to promote, what their requirements are and when you'll have things ready for them. Have some FAQs that the experts might have about the interviews and have the answers ready.
• 13:07 – I send medium sized emails which are organized and contain headlines which are bold and in caps. The emails also contain bullet points so that they are informational but perusable. The more information you can provide, the better it is going to be perceived by the person you are pitching to and the faster they are going to be able to make their decision.
• 14:24 – I sign off my emails by saying so from here I'd love if you just shoot me an email back and give me a quick and then there are bullet points with options so that they don't have to think about a response, I've given them a prompt for the response.
• 15:04 – Recap.

Resources Mentioned:

The Balanced Entrepreneur Facebook group at marketlikeanerd.com/invite

Being visible is the first step to being seen as an expert, and in this episode Visibility Coach and my very own Publicist Kristi Dosh is going to share with us her exact step by step process to become visible in your industry. Working with Kristi, I was able to secure over 30 podcast interviews in 30 days, become featured in Influencive as one of the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30, and snag multiple high profile guest blog and feature article opportunities as well. Now it's you're turn to learn from her!

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 2:13 – Introduction.
• 7:03 – Tip # 1: Develop your niche. Know what it is, live it, breathe it, have an elevator speech for it and commit to it a 100%.
• 7:21 – Tip # 2: You've got to build a visibility strategy. Kristi's tag line is "It doesn't matter how good you are at what you do if no one knows you do it."
• 7:35 - Tip # 3: You need to implement that strategy and position yourself as an expert by getting in front of the right audiences and being in the right format for what you do.
• 8:59 – You've got to decide what is it that you want to be known for before you start to put stuff out in to the world. It is not sufficient just to be visible but it is good to get started and get over any fear you have.
• 10:22 – Kristi always starts with asking people their short term and long term goals so that she can develop a strategy and determine visibility techniques to be used. Some people want to reach out to people in just one industry but Kristi works with people from a variety of industries but they all have one factor in common and that is they want to become more visible and establish themselves as experts.
• 11: 02 – People get worried that they are excluding people by niching down but in reality it is much easier to reach people that way and you can branch out a little down the road and people will automatically come to you if they really want to work with you even if you are outside of a particular niche.
• 12:25 – You should go where your audience is and you shouldn't try to drive people somewhere else that will not work
• 13:01 – Once you have decided what your niche is and who you are trying to reach you have to figure out how to reach them. Some people love to write so they prefer doing guest blogs whereas some people dislike writing or are not confident of their writing skills so guest blogging might not be the right option for them.
• 14:03 – Sometimes appearing on TV can be helpful because it sometimes elevates you in people's minds but you should have the right expectations because if you are not in front of the right audience or on the right show you are can't expect overnight results.
• 14:26 – You need to develop the right strategy to reach your audience and asking people helps so if you have a Facebook group or a newsletter list you can ask them what kind of blogs do they read instead of trying to drive your audience to some new outlet, find out where they already are and get your stuff into that outlet.
• 15:58 – Kristi likes to set a schedule, she is an organized methodical type of person and she knows the order she wants to do things in to get her clients to achieve their goals. Some people want to do guest blogging and TV and radio and public speaking so things need to happen in a certain order so it gets easier for her to pitch so that more people can say yes.
• 16:57 – You need to first decide what your goal is so if someone's goal is to build a platform to get a book deal from a traditional publisher so you have to do things in a certain order and over a certain timeframe before pitching to the publisher. Some people think that writing on some outlets and going on TV will help but depending on the goals those might not be the right steps to get to their goals so Kristi tells them that that isn't going to work and she tells them what is going to work. And it is different for everybody some people need more clients and grow their business to a certain revenue level or some people want to sell more products and becoming known as an expert for that particular kind of product.
• 18:02 – There's got to be a strategy in place you can't just gain visibility and expect people to notice and hope that it leads you to your goal.
• 18:45 – Being visible is the first step in becoming an expert you've got to piece some things together and you need some tangible proof to show people that you are an expert.
• 19:47 – If you are not willing to call yourself an expert nobody else is going to either. Kristi called herself an expert and started saying she was a nationally recognized expert when she was focusing on the business of sports and radio hosts started introducing her as an expert on the business of college sports and she started getting mentions in papers and blogs that called her an expert.
• 22:00 – People wait far too long before they start calling themselves experts if your business is profitable and you have that well defined niche then you start identifying yourself as an expert. Once you start calling yourself an expert other people will also start calling you one.
• 22: 46 – We live in an age where there are a lot of different ways to establish yourself like blogging, podcasting, media appearances
• 23:28 – A professional looking website is the biggest hint that you are an expert. You need to make sure that everything is updated on your website it needs to have photos and details on how to contact you. If you want to write people should see articles on your blog or links to other blogs where you've been writing.
• 24:26 – What talent bookers are looking for is different from what clients might be looking for and so when Kristi starts working with somebody new she gives them suggestions to make small tweaks to their website for things that are important for talent bookers and to make it easy for them to find the things they are looking for. The as seen on banner on your website will ensure that talent bookers know that you've already been able to be visible in these big outlets.
• 27:42 – Ensure that a way to contact you is listed on your website. Some people do not have a way to contact them listed on their website. You need to have your email address or a contact form on your website.
• 29:42 – Kristi is getting ready to launch a course that is all about how to be your own publicist and one of the modules of that course is on public speaking so Kristi is giving all the listeners of this podcast is her guide on where to find these speaking engagements. It is her brainstorm list of places she has found speaking gigs so that you can get in front of people.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• The Balanced Entrepreneur Facebook Group
• Guidemybrand.com
• Guidemybrand on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
• The visibility workshop – Free private Facebook group
• Guidemybrand.com\marketlikeanerd – Kristi's list of places where you can find speaking gigs.

Today you'll discover 5 marketing hacks that will really accelerate your business momentum so that you can make money with your marketing with less effort. We're going to walk you through one time hack, one content hack, a marketing hack, a traffic hack, and a list building hack... all ways to accomplish your goals faster with less effort.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 1:20 – Introduction.
• 1:34 – Hack # 1 is a time hack. The tip here is to collect plug and play templates that you can use in your marketing. If you see a coach out there who is offering plug and play templates that you can buy or that you can download to use in your own marketing, then those are the types of things that want to snatch right up and use right away.
• 2:33 – I create these email templates and SOP templates that work for me and once I've proven that they work I include them in a lot of my programs. You should always be on the lookout for plug and play templates where they give you the template and you edit the text and make it your own and put it into your business.
• 3:16 – Hack # 2 is a content hack and this is to keep swipe files that you will save for using and leveraging later on. With swipe files typically you are not getting permission to use their stuff and so you can't copy it but what you can do is you can model it so I use graphic swipe files, swipe files of newsletters, ideas, ads, landing pages, funnels and I take screenshots of these things. So if you see something that you really like or something that inspires you, take a picture of it or store it somewhere in a folder on your computer so that later on you can pool from your swipe file for ideas.
• 5:22 – Hack # 3 is marketing hack and this is to leverage other people's marketing efforts. The only way to make money online is to send traffic to an offer. But the problem with a lot of entrepreneurs is that they don't have enough traffic because they don't have a list, they don't have a Facebook group, they don't have a social media following so if you don't have it you can leverage other people's traffic. You can do this by paying so you can leverage Facebook's traffic, Twitter's traffic or LinkedIn's traffic and pay them to borrow their traffic.
• 6:27 – The other is you can collaborate with them in some way or do some type of swap where you say if you promote me now I'll promote you later and leverage their traffic by doing some sort of bargain. You can come up with a way to work with them where it is mutually beneficial tele summit is a great example of this where you are collaborating with many other people and you are leveraging everyone else's audiences to grow your own. When you leverage other people's traffic it reduces the need for you to have traffic of your own.
• 7:14 – Hack # 4 is a traffic hack so this is to pay to swipe other people's traffic. If you approach someone who has a big list in your community and you tell them that you've got an offer that I think your community would really like so can I pay you to put an ad in your newsletter, a lot of people will agree to do that. This is called a paid solo ad where they've got the list and the traffic and they are already sending out mailings and newsletters to their list and you pay them to put ad space for your offer into their next mailing.
• 8:20 – Hack # 5 is a list building hack. I am a big believer in creating mini lists and so I consider my Facebook group and my push crew subscribers a mini list. Push crew is a plugin you can put on your site so that you can send out push notifications to the people who subscribed to it.
• 9:17 – Another way to list build is to leverage retargeting. So you can put pixels on every page of your website and if people go to the page and don't' opt in or go to the page but they don't buy or if they go to one page but don't go to another page you can have a pixel on that page that will keep a record of their IP address or Facebook profile and you can market to them in other ways like Facebook advertising.
• 10:18 – Recap.

Resources mentioned:

The Balanced Entrepreneur Facebook Group