The Online Prosperity Experience

Always put aside an emergency cash fund

There is a ton of advice I can give, and have given to coaches, consultants and small business owners.

But I think the best advice I can give is this:

Always put aside an emergency cash fund equivalent to about two months of earnings.

Why? Because there are always ups and downs in the life of a coach, consultant and small business owner, whether you are just starting out, or have been an entrepreneur for years.

It doesn’t matter whether you are just doing OK as a coach, consultant and small business owner., or superstar. You will always have an occasional month that doesn’t deliver the money you need to cover the bills. Or maybe one month you have an unexpected expense. Or maybe you are sick and can’t work.

You need to have a cash reserve to make up for those months. This is a simple business practice. It’s called cash flow management. Every company, large or small, has to manage its cash flow.

You need to create diverse, recurring revenue streams to skyrocket your profitability and ensure your business remains 100% bulletproof even during market downturns, global pandemics and sweeping lockdowns

No pictures of happy, leaping people required.

We all know that how your website looks is a key part of getting prospective clients to contact you. However, the combination of what the eye sees and what you read is critical. Your site can look amazing, but if it’s full of spelling and grammar errors people will form unflattering conclusions about the products and services you offer.

Proofreading your text is essential. Make sure you get other people to read through it as they are far more likely to spot errors that you’ve missed.

In addition to being typo-free, your website copy needs to reflect you and your brand.

The tone of voice and vocabulary should be consistent across all your promotional formats, whether in print or online. Your customers need to feel that their experience with you is seamless, no matter where they are seeing your brand.

Graphics and user interface design can encourage visitors to your site to visit specific pages or draw attention to important pieces of information. What gets them clicking is a clear Call To Action (CTA).

Have your customers’ journey through your website in mind and steer them towards the action you want them to take – like using your contact form or buying online from you.

BTW – Before you respond, I do know that images, infographics and videos can add enormous value when done well, and used in the right circumstances.

And I do know that adding other elements to a text-only page can give you some SEO brownie points. And I do know that multimedia can be a big draw when promoting your pages through social media. I know that stuff.

But even so, I resent having to search far and wide to find a quality writer who has taken the trouble to write a high-quality page.

As with that first book without pictures, a well-written text-only web page can stimulate your brain into making all the necessary connections without any extra help.

No pictures of happy, leaping people are required.

How marketing changes based on the current level of maturity of your business.

Marketing changes as your business grows and develops.

In the early stages, your marketing efforts will be focused on outreach and building awareness. As you establish your business and gain more authority, your marketing will shift to inbound strategies like content marketing and SEO.

And finally, as you become a well-known and trusted brand, your marketing will focus on outbound strategies like advertising and PR.

Let’s talk about how marketing changes based on the current level of maturity of your coaching, consulting or small business.

The first thing that’s really important to understand here is that it’s your marketing will change not just based on the maturity of your business, but really on the maturity of the marketing in your business.

What I mean by that is you may be in business for 10 years already, but you’ve received all your business from your own network and referrals and so forth.

And so that really means that the maturity of your marketing is almost zero because you haven’t done very much in the marketing department.

In the early days of your outreach, you should be very focused on getting in front of ideal clients.

Want To Advance To The Next Stage In Your Coaching, Consulting or Small Business?

This is how the marketing maturity mix should be or how you should allocate your time and focus as your business grows from early to mid-stage, and mid-stage to kind of late and more developed.

It’ll shift from outreach to more inbound.

If you’re looking for help with your own marketing and advancing to the next stage so you can attract more clients consistently, just reach out to us at Livelong Digital

Successful people ask for help.

“Everybody should have a Coach,” says Google CEO Eric Schmidt

The definition of a Coach is “someone whose job is to teach and help improve at something”

Every successful person in Sports, Politics, Business, Entertainment, Religion and Life has or has had coaches.

Cristiano Ronaldo has a coach. Barack Obama has a coach. Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, and Tony Robbins have coaches. Even Buddha had a coach.

None of these people got to where they are on their own. They realised early on that they would get more out of themselves if they had the support, advice and accountability of a coach, even multiple coaches.

We have all had coaches in life…

Who taught you to speak, play football, do maths, or learn a musical instrument? A parent/teacher/instructor. These are all types of coaches who not only taught you something but helped you improve.

Yet, since leaving school or graduating from university, how many coaches have you had in your life?

• At 31, Cristiano Ronaldo still sees the benefit of a coach to continue playing world-class football.
• At 55, Barack Obama still needed coaches to continue to be the President of the United States until last year.
• And at 62, Oprah Winfrey still relies on coaches to stay one of the most respected people in the Entertainment industry.

It was these coaches that have helped educate, empower, advise, hold accountable and supported them in their successes.

Paul Dolan, a behavioural scientist at London School of Economics and the author of the bestselling book Happiness By Design, says:

“Just as people have for years been employing personal trainers to help them get fit and lose weight, so too achieving goals can be accelerated by using an advisor or coach to apply similar principles to success in life.”

Now, very few of us have the means to employ a team of people. We do, however, have more of a team than we think. Remember “no man is an island”. Rely on your friends and family for support in reaching your goal.

“Successful people ask for help” Camille Preston, Fortune

Along with your family and friends, there are countless support networks on and offline.

If you are learning a new skill, find a course at a local educational institute or online.

If your goal is to get fit, look for local classes or a personal trainer. Alternatively, there are countless online exercise videos, free and paid.

If you are looking to start your own business, look for a local business person to be a mentor or alternatively find an online mentor or coaching course.

Here are a few ideas to help you go out and win your first consulting client.

Your challenge is getting to be visible so that your ideal clients know that you exist — so that they’re then able to hire you.

Many coaches, consultants and small business owners have trouble finding their first client.

In this podcast, I want to offer you a few ideas to help you go out and win your first coaching or consulting client.

Here are 4 ways to get your first consulting client.

1. First-Degree Connections

2. Second-degree Connections

3. Direct Outreach

4. Sell What They Want To Buy

When you follow these four steps and work them consistently, you’re going to be able to land that first client much faster and make a lot more progress and feel a lot more momentum in the early days of your business.

I wish you great success with this, and as always, feel free to reach out through Livelong Digital where you’ll find many resources to help you grow your consulting business.

Whether you’re at the earliest stages or you’ve been a consultant for 10 or 15 years, looking to get to the next level, we have resources for you.

Avoid saying YES before you know the scope.

It’s easy to say YES

When the client asks for something – new keyword research, some ad-hoc Google or Social media analysis, an extra workshop for their staff member who was not present on the scheduled one – it usually seems like a reasonable request.

After all, they pay the bills and shouldn’t they get the most out of their coach, consultant or small business service provider?

When the consultant says YES to a new request, it may feel comfortable and collaborative.

The consultant feels like she is doing a good job listening, and the client is happy that his idea was accepted. There is no stress or pregnant pauses. It is the path of the least resistance like water running downhill. 

Experienced consultants and lawyers will tell you there are many reasons why being overly agreeable can create problems. Here are four of them that I speak about in this podcast:

1. False promise

It is easy to say YES in the heat of the moment, then completely forget about it. It is the equivalent to a husband telling his wife “sure, honey”, when he was not listening (and definitely not writing things down).

2. Overpromise

It’s a crude graph, but it visualises what all consultants know to be true: “under-promise, and over-deliver”. When the client asks for 100, promise less (red bar) and deliver more (blue bar). Sad, but true. By lowering client expectations, we have a better chance of exceeding. Call it cynical, call it sandbagging, but it works.

3. Waste of time

Don’t get me wrong. Clients often give good feedback – especially when explaining the organizational context (read: politics). I have learned something from every client. That said, every client request is not valid. Sometimes, they are a waste of time. Remember: we are paid for our expertise and often paid by the hour. No reason to waste the client’s money, waste our time, or worse – put the project timing at risk.

4. Poor alignment

In my mind, this is the greatest danger. If the client keeps bringing up new ideas and ad-hoc requests. . . AND the consultant keeps agreeing to them . . Something is wrong. It is a symptom of a deeper problem:

Well, you have to tune in to hear what this is, and that's the reason why most consultants go out of business.

Do you want to grow your business?

If so, you should start by listening to what your customers, suppliers and interested parties have to say.

Feedback from the people who visit your website can help you make smart decisions about creating content, promoting your products and growing your brand. 

When you look at how people feel when they visit your business, you can identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Use your strengths to keep customer satisfaction soaring and find ways to build on your weaknesses to aid in retention. 

In this podcast, we take a look at several ways you can use feedback to grow your company. But first, let’s look at some of the most common types of feedback and show you where to gather this valuable data. 

I read a story about a Boston University professor who asks for student feedback in every class.  Most professors might be satisfied with a student evaluation once a semester, but not this professor. Dr. Muhammad Zaman gets feedback daily from his biomedical engineering students. He publishes the results, emails the students to tell them about “any fine-tuning he plans in response to their comments”. This is teaching rigor.

As your business grows, you’ll have to gather more feedback to continue expanding.

Listening to your audience will naturally draw more users to your site as you accumulate positive written reviews and word-of-mouth praise.

Get crystal clear on your ideal client so you never doubt who it is you should be going after.

Any coach, consultant or small business owner who is creating a business that's profitable and enjoyable understands an important truth:

You’re not just in the business of coaching or consulting. You’re in the business of marketing.

Without marketing — generating conversations with buyers (leads) — you cannot generate revenue. And without revenue, you don’t have a business.

But marketing is much deeper than generating conversations with buyers.

Generating leads is an important part of your marketing.

But unless you build a foundation on which to generate said leads, your leads won’t develop into new business.

In this podcast, you’ll learn how to build that foundation.

You’ll learn what you should do before you generate leads — so that when you do start your marketing efforts, your leads will develop into new business.

Effective lead generation for coaches, consultants and small businesses is built on top of these 5 fundamentals:

• Identifying your ideal client
• Crafting a compelling message
• Creating a strategic offer
• Understanding the meaningful sales conversation
• Mapping out your proposal process

Once you have these pieces in place, your lead-generation strategy will be 10x more effective.

Without these, your lead generation (and business) will sink.

Are you a coach or consultant who is struggling to keep your business afloat during these uncertain times? If so, then this podcast is for you!

In it, I'll be sharing 3 simple but powerful strategies that you can use to not only survive but thrive during these tough times.

1. The first strategy is to focus on consistency. No matter what's going on in the world, the one thing you can control is your own consistency. When you show up consistently for your business, you send a powerful message to the Universe that you're serious about your success.
2. The second strategy is to shift your focus from quantity to quality. It's natural to want to attract as many clients as possible during tough times, but the best way is to be the most valuable person in your client's life.
3. The third thing we go into is your health and well-being. Yes, you can do well if you are not feeling well.

What strategy resonates with you most? Let me know in the comments below…

And if you have some best practices of your own that you’d to add to the list type those in the comments below as well.

So, if you’d like our help taking advantage of these challenging times, our Online Prosperity Program is for you.

We’ll work hands-on with you to develop a strategic plan and then dive deep and work through your ideal client clarity, strategic messaging, consulting offers, fees and pricing, business model optimisation, and help you to set up your marketing engine and lead generation system to consistently attract ideal clients.

Schedule a FREE growth session today to apply for our limited capacity Online Prosperity Program by clicking here.

Your clients raving about you is far more impactful than you raving about yourself.

Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake behaviour in a given situation.

The principle of social proof says, "The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.”

Which is more persuasive:

• A friend recommending you buy their favourite product…
• Or, an unknown coach, consultant or small business recommending you buy their product?

It’s natural to be sceptical about people promoting themselves. But when their customers promote them, it feels more organic, trustworthy, and safe. That’s how social proof works.

Social proof is incredibly powerful in business. And testimonials are another example of social proof.

By showing praise from former clients who’ve benefited from your service, you show potential clients that your service will benefit them.

To get testimonials from your consulting clients, you’ll have to do three things:

• Do great work
• Ask for them
• Make it easy

Once you’ve received your testimonials, start using them to market your consulting business:

• Turn them into case studies
• Add them to your landing pages
• Ask those clients for referrals

Consulting is a relationship business, and social proof helps you leverage your relationships to win new business.

Aim to make every project you complete worthy of a glowing testimonial. The more testimonials you gather, the easier it will be to attract new clients.