As a creative entrepreneur, you’re full of ideas – new products, services, and offers that can help grow revenue, impact, and serve more people. A big proponent of building your business is having a signature service, but it’s also a great idea to have complementary offers. However, we’re faced with the difficulty of making these ideas happen because we can’t find the time and we’re not sure if anyone will be interested.

There are two things that hold us back from actually working on our ideas and creating offers. One is that we tend to over-complicate it, and another is our mindset that the first time has to be perfect. So we end up never launching our new ideas. 

For this week’s episode, I’ll be walking you through the 4 steps of beta testing a new offer in your business. Whenever we create new things in business, we need to go through a beta testing process. This is where you create an offer to test on your clients, asking for their feedback and refining the offer so you can decide whether or not you’ll be keeping it as part of your business. Doing this makes it easier for you to launch new things and empowers you so you can make more money and serve more people.

Whether you’re brand new in business, still figuring out what your signature offer should be, or have an established signature service and want to test new offers, these 4 steps will help you beta test new offers in your business:

1. Market research
2. Outline the basics of the offering
3. Minimum viable marketing plan 
4. Debrief

Links

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Comparison is a huge problem in the entrepreneurship space, and can be a real confidence-killer for women. The problem is that everyone is struggling with it and no one seems to be able to help us really overcome the problem.

Here's the truth: there's nothing wrong with comparison. Comparison is neutral. The root issue is the emotional baggage that comes up for us when we compare ourselves to others.  So for today’s episode, I want to have a more specific conversation around three negative emotions that come up for us when we compare ourselves to others. More importantly, I'm sharing practical strategies to fight these emotions when they come up. 

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The Confidence Code, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman

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One of the ironic things about starting your own business with the intention of working less and experiencing more flexibility to enjoy life is that we find ourselves doing the exact opposite. We as business owners tend to work too much, overextend ourselves with too many clients and too many services. In the end, our businesses don’t serve our lives in the way that we originally planned.

The biggest reason for this is because we believe in the lie that if we want to get better results, we have to do more. That’s not the case. One of the best ways that we can start to simplify and streamline our businesses so that we can achieve that freedom and flexibility in our lives are to simplify what we offer with fewer products and services.

And that’s what today’s podcast guest, Ashley Gartland, is talking about in the episode. Ashley is a small business mentor and coach who helps business owners simplify and streamline their businesses so they can scale sustainably and run a business that deeply serves their life. She’ll be walking us through:

• How to know when you are ready to streamline your offers
• Designing services not just for the financial return but for the life that you want to live
• How streamlining can actually help you get more and better clients if your bookings are slow

Links

Learn more about Ashley Gartland and her work in her website or follow her on Instagram.

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Business owners are starting to get some momentum and traction again. They are starting to think about the future – relaunching their businesses after COVID and coming back to social media after taking time away. And right now, we’re going into the summertime which brings a lot of disruptions and distractions. While most of them are good, there are still some business owners, particularly those with kids, who spend a lot of time feeling defeated about what they perceive as constant interruptions to their progress.

Taking time off isn’t going to break your business. There’s no problem with you or your business, you just haven’t approached the season with intention. However, when you do it with misguided expectations and without intention, you:

• Go into a season that’s going to look different without acknowledging that it’s going to need to look different
• Expect the same level of productivity from ourselves and from our businesses even though the season is different
• Feel defeated and like, “I just can’t get momentum”
• Expectations of what you can produce don’t match what your life actually looks like day today

We need to make a mental shift and acknowledge ahead of time that we are entering a different season. This will help up make the necessary internal adjustments in our business so that we can feel like we’re making progress without spending the whole summer working. 

And in this week’s podcast episode, I’ll be discussing the different areas that you will need to adjust in order to fit the summer season. Here are the 4 areas in your business that you need to adjust:

• Mindset
• Schedule
• Workload
• Marketing

Links

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Authentic engagement on Instagram is a form of networking, and actually a pretty powerful one. A lot of us think about social media, specifically Instagram, primarily in the category of content. It’s a place where you publish content so that your ideal client is attracted to your business.

If your only social media growth strategy is creating good content consistently, you are going to struggle. Because creating high-quality content is only a piece of the puzzle - the other VITAL piece of the puzzle is engagement.

This week’s episode is the last in the 3-part series about building relationships through networking, and I’m spending it interviewing Shannon McKinstrie, an Instagram marketing expert who has been in social media marketing for 8 years and a background in PR and communications before that. She helps us understand: 

• what social media engagement is
• how you can do it
• the impact engagement has on the growth of your social media account and businesses

Furthermore, you’ll be learning about:

• Marketing based on connection
• Social media agency
• How to spend less time on the platform to grow your Instagram audience
• The best way to start a DM conversation without being awkward
• Shannon’s 30-minute engagement routine for client growth

Links

Learn more about how to create authentic engagement on social media by checking out The Social Squad Society or connect with Shannon on Instagram.

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Sometimes we think something can’t be natural and intentional at the same time, but it can. As entrepreneurs, we know that networking is foundational for our business’s growth however we feel awkward about it because we think that networking = pitching. If this is the way that you approach networking, you won’t be able to do it well, even if you work up the courage – it won’t work.

Remember that the goal of networking is to build relationships, and that takes time. It’s also not automatic. When you network using organic and authentic methods – networking with intention – you can build deep and meaningful relationships with your clients, peers, and others within your industry. And you will be able to see growth in your business as a result of those relationships.

In this week’s episode, part 2 of my series about networking and growing your business through building authentic relationships, I will be teaching you how to actually network. Today, I’ll be talking about the right ways in which to build relationships that is natural, organic, and intentional. Whether you’re at an event, engaging on social media, or just in your everyday life, these principles will hold up in any networking scenario:

• Knowing your goal
• Building rapport
• Making an ask
• Following up
• Playing the long game

Links

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Getting enough of the right clients is something that is constantly on your mind as an entrepreneur. If you’re not able to get enough clients for your business, you won’t be able to sustain it for very long. It’s no question that you’re involved in many different ways to market your business, but there’s probably one thing that is the most important and most effective that you’re missing.

The most important thing you can do to market your business is networking. Marketing is not curating the perfect feed, having the most beautiful branding, or getting discovered by the right influencer. It’s not a magic trick. At the end of the day, marketing is about building relationships of trust with your audience, your customers, and your industry. Everything that you do in your marketing should be about attracting new people to your business, nurturing a relationship, and continuing that relationship as they become your customers. 

In this week’s podcast episode, I will be discussing how networking – intentionally building relationships with people who can grow your business – can get the right customers coming into your business. Specifically, I’ll be focusing on who you should be networking with, who are:

• Your friends and family
• Ideal clients
• Peers in the industry 
• Leaders in the industry

Links

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The right mindset will seriously impact your ability to take the right action to be able to build your business with the results you want. Many people make the mindset mistake of thinking that they “are not really a business person”. Engaging in this line of thinking will push you into a little bit of self-sabotage.

To combat this, for this week’s podcast episode, I’ll be helping you fully embrace the fact that you are a business owner. I’ll be sharing 3 areas you need to take seriously – for yourself and your business. Embrace the fact that you are a business owner and start making changes in these areas to get the results you want:

• Making smart investments
• Consistently working on your business 
• Giving your full effort

Links

Take your business seriously and get all of your legal templates from Bobby Klinck.

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Many creative entrepreneurs struggle with having a well-defined process for turning service inquiries into paying clients and projects. Most of the time the way it goes is that someone reaches out to you, you send over your pricing, some back, and forth emails, and then sending your Paypal link. This is a loose-y goosey process where most end up with a lot of inquiries, but not many sales.

It’s important to have a well-defined sales process for two reasons: you’re able to vet out the wrong clients and close the right ones. Having some steps in your sales process will allow you to filter out the people you don’t want to work with and convert your target customers. But how do you make them want to work with you? The answer is a well-crafted proposal.

In this week’s episode, I will be talking about how a proposal for your prospective clients and the 7 things you should include to help them make a decision to move on to signing the contract and payment. The 7 things you should include in your proposals are:

• Objective or goal
• Benefits
• Scope of Work 
• Deliverables
• Client Expectations
• Scheduling
• Price

Links

Use this link for 30% off your first 3 months of bookkeeping with Bench Accounting. 

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A lot of people struggle with social media, email marketing, and getting the attention of their ideal client because they are missing an important piece in their business – and that is having a clear brand message. 

In this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Amy Schutte who is the owner and founder of Hudson & Co., a marketing and branding agency that serves impact-driven businesses and thought-leaders across the globe. We’re going to be talking about how to get started with defining a clear story or message for your brand. We also discuss:

• Why entrepreneurs struggle with marketing
• Using StoryBrand as a framework to help clients with their marketing
• What a brand message is and why it is important
• How to get started with defining your business’s brand message

Amy is a former journalist turned marketing professional, whose expertise lies in helping her clients get seen, get heard, and get results by using the age-old power of story, clear design, and human psychology. As a StoryBrand Certified Guide, she uses one of the most well-respected marketing frameworks in the industry. 

Links

Visit Hudson & Co. On their website and Instagram for more marketing and branding. See more of Amy on her personal page.

Learn more about StoryBrand here.

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