ReWild Your Business

This week I'm joined by the fabulous Steph Durbin, co-founder of The Coach Directory, an international directory for well trained, qualified, certified & accredited coaches.

The directory gives its members a platform for opportunity to develop themselves through ongoing professional development and supervision, and to develop their businesses through online exposure.

In this episode we talk about the importance of self-regulation within the coaching industry, and how the directory offers coaches a community of likeminded peers, who are all committed to being the best coaches they can be for their clients.

If you'd like to find out more about becoming a member of The Coach Directory, check out the website: https://coachdirectory.co.uk/

You can connect with Steph personally on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph-prospect-coaching/ and follow the directory here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coachdirectory/

I'm joined this week by the incredible Sara Hartary - Founder & CEO of BizOps Solved.

We're deep diving into annual business planning and how to make it meaningful. Sara is an absolute genius at making planning feel natural, and utterly 'doable'.

She's keen to remind us that your annual planning session is just the start, the implementation and reference to the plan should be happening all year round.

Honestly, by the end of the episode, I guarantee you'll be blocking out some time in your calendar to follow Sara's method.

Grab a pen and paper for this episode.

Sara Hartary is the Founder & CEO of BizOps Solved, a management and fractional COO consultancy dedicated to helping business owners build more valuable companies while also having the life they want.

Sara is a value creation guru with over 20 years of experience in improving the way companies run. She uses her background in IT professional services, in particular navigating the space between the needs of the business and technology, to apply the best practices of agile software development in creative, non-technical ways. The result is transforming organizations into the businesses they want to be.

Sara is a Certified Exit Planning Advisor and project manager. She's served as a management consultant, director of professional services, IT chief of staff, and COO. Her specialty is setting businesses on a path to growth. She has worked extensively in the public and private sectors to deploy enterprise-wide solutions that get the job done, and that organizations can embrace.

Find out more about Sara & BizOps Solved: https://bizopsolved.com
Connect with Sara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahartary/

This week I've pulled apart the way I write - ooh this was a challenge! It's really tough to try to explain something you do automatically, but I think I've managed to get it down.

I get a fair few people commenting on how my copy / posts are easy to read, and how they can hear my voice coming through the text.

As promised in this episode here's a list of my top tips for writing like you talk:

1. 
   

   Use contractions - We'd / we would; I'm / I am

   
   


2. 
   

   You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas - keep your language simple like you would if you were explaining something in person

   
   


3. 
   

   Don't 'we' all over the place. Use 'I' and 'you' wherever you can so the reader feels like they're talking with you.

   
   


4. 
   

   Ask questions. Questions engage your readers, again, it makes them feel like it's a two way conversation as they read.

   
   


5. 
   

   Write your draft in one go, resisting the urge to edit it as you go along. Step away from the back-space! Edit once the entire drafted post / blog / section of copy is complete.

   
   


6. 
   

   READ TO YOURSELF ALOUD - top of the top tips. Anything that doesn't flow will stick out like a sore thumb. Donald M. Murray once said: “The ear, not the eye, is the final editor.”

   
   

Honestly, mastering this will make an incredible difference in the way your audience receives your carefully crafted messaging, I promise!

I started my first business as a virtual assistant because it felt like the realistic option. It felt achievable, 'doable'.

It wasn't long before I realised I'd started entirely the wrong business for me.

As a business coach, I speak to so many women who have either, like I did, started the wrong business, or are beavering away creating a 'lite' version of the full fat business they REALLY want.

Believe me, building ANY business is hard - so, if it's going to be hard anyway, why NOT bring your biggest, wildest vision to life?

You can do hard.

Introducing the What IF workshops - half-day online workshops where we unravel, explore and begin to co-create the rewilded vision you've been too scared to share until now.

Maybe the thought of pivoting to, or launching a new, profitable venture, doing what you love feels like a magic carpet ride away right now - if so, a What If workshop is PERFECT for you.

Find out more here: gillmoakes.com/whatif

This week, I'm joined by the amazing Hayley Maxwell and we're diving into the secret to standing out online.

Hayley is a brand positioning and messaging coach, an outcome creator and imagination generator. Not to mention a ferocious ice cream eater and leopard print lover. With close to two decades helping large organisations and small businesses to communicate with impact, Hayley now works with talented business women to carve out their unique and fierce brand position and distill a momentous and impactful message that inspires action.

As a speaker and the host of the Fierce Impact podcast Hayley's on a mission to help her clients step into a fierce version of themselves so they can become memorable, meaningful, and the ONLY choice for their dream clients.

Hayley has generously shared with us her guide: How to be Wildly Unforgettable - see links below.

LINKS

www.instagram.com/thehayleymaxwell

www.hayleymaxwell.com/blog

www.hayleymaxwell.com/wildly-unforgettable

We talk a big game, ‘round here, about the beauty and fulfillment of creating a full-fat version of your business. Knowing who you are, loving what you do, and being outstanding in your work is the recipe for happy success for many fearless entrepreneurs willing to take risks and commit to being irrevocably genuine and it is my wish for each one of you—today and every day for the rest of your life. But what exactly is a full-fat business?

Allow me to introduce Stoned Fruit, a delightful new concept built to innovate the way that marketing and creative services are produced, packaged, and distributed. Get a taste of what this self-proclaimed Brand Dev Micro-Agency and Creative Writing Studio has cooking and why it represents everything that is possible when you quit cultivating the light version of yourself and start fertilizing creativity and collaboration. 

Bringing a brand story to fruition in this full-fat bonus episode.

Check out https://www.stonedfruit.com/headstogether for some downloadable treats from Rebecca.

Learning to trust your intuition is a hugely important part of being a successful business owner. Until we do, we tend to seek constant external validation for every decision / action we take.

In fact, we take comfort in outsourcing our decision-making to others, becoming dependent on that validation / permission before we take action.

In this week's episode, I'm talking about the importance of tuning into your gut and really listening to what it's telling you.

How to be aware of the physical signs your intuition will give you.

How to distinguish between true intuition vs excuses for doing something you know isn't right for you.

Your intuition is RARELY wrong.

Ignore it at your peril.

Have you signed up for the ReWild Your Inbox newsletter yet? If not, here's the link: https://www.gillmoakes.com/rewild-your-inbox

Want to know how to work with a VA? How to find a good VA? What tasks can I outsource to a VA? How do I trust someone enough to outsource to them? What questions should I ask a potential VA?  

These are questions I'm delighted to dive into on the podcast this week with my special guest - my own virtual assistant, Emily Pilbeam.  

Emily is my secret weapon, my CEO sidekick and the wind beneath my wings (ok, ok, I've taken it too far, but seriously I can only do what I do for my clients because I have Emily keeping things like this podcast, running in the background).  

If you KNOW you're limiting yourself and your business by wearing ALL the hats then this episode is for you.  

You can reach out to Emily here: [email protected] or https://www.instagram.com/intune_business_solutions/  

Grab Emily's free guide to the tasks you can outsource to a VA here: https://www.subscribepage.com/how-to-quickly-identify-tasks-to-delegate

Exactly HOW do you simplify your business? How do you pick the right one or two offers that your clients can't resist?

Your business model is made up of 3 things:

Market - You’re crystal clear on who your target market / ideal client / customer avatar is.

A simple business serves one kind of client with a similar set of problems / desires. Just because you CAN help more than one type of client doesn't necessarily mean that's the right thing for YOU. Complex segmentation leads to overwhelm. Every. Single. Time.

Offers - Because you’re clear on your market, you know what they want from you and how they want it delivered to them. You can confidently craft the one of two offers that they want the most and will meet their real need the best.

Pricing - Because you have just one or two offers, you have just one or 2 prices (max 4 if you offer instalments). You have faith in your pricing and are consistent. Of course you still have flexibility to work for less if you feel drawn to, but it's the exception not the rule.

If you'd like help to simplify YOUR business, you can apply for a free Breakthough Session with me: gillmoakes.com/apply

Have you subscribed to my new weekly newsletter yet? ReWild Your Inbox is a curated collection of stuff I find interesting and suspect you will too...

Sign up here: https://gill-moakes.mykajabi.com/rewild-your-inbox

The exchange of thought leadership; the exponential power of projecting your most authentic self in a digital world; the potential to publish your original thinking, compelling your perfect-fit network of people to join you in conversation—this is what an active role on LinkedIn can deliver. 

These are the ideas that inspire Rebecca Gunter to reimagine her relationship with the “world’s most mostly boring social media platform” and adopt a new attitude for LinkedIn done right; not a necessary evil at all, rather, an unfair advantage for anyone making a name for themself and strengthening a culture of conversation. Rebecca shares her vulnerability around opening up on social media and feeling held hostage by algorithms and finally learns how to curate content/connections on her own terms.

RESOURCES ->

https://rebecca-l-gunter.mykajabi.com/heads-together-linkedIn

CONNECT WITH US -> 

ther-linkedIn 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccalaytongunter/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillmoakes/