The Traveling Introvert

today I would like to talk about intentionality, something that I was thinking about, one of those shower thoughts where right now I'm currently starting taking some time off. I'm taking about two weeks of client work. And yesterday I spent the day resting a little and pottering around and doing stuff. And I wasn't on the verge of being bored because I was tired. And so I napped, you know, read a little.

And that's more played some games, a trend. But I realized because I hadn't planned my day, I had to be really intentional in what I was going to do with my time. I was intentionally napping. I was intentionally going to eat now and then eat again in three hours or prepare whatever it was. I was intentionally attending a planning session. Even though the end of your planning session will start of your planning session really was a five hour session.

I was tired, but I was enjoying what I was doing. So I intentionally stayed and focused on that work and the process that I was going through with my cohorts. So what I realized is when I'm not officially working, I have less control maybe over what I am intentionally doing and how I am intentionally spending my time. And so this is making me think about how I want to set up my time next year, next week, next month.

And I can intentionally work with clients and be very much I'm here to intentionally do this thing. And maybe that's a slightly different mindset to, OK, I'm going to do this thing because it pays me money or because it makes somebody happy or it helps them with their business. And so the intentionality around intentionally napping, because my body is telling me that I am tired, even though I had a good night's sleep or intentionally spending time on crochet or intentionally spending time planning X, Y and Z, because I didn't have a jam packed calendar.

And normally I'm a very strict calendar person. So I'm wondering, do I need my calendar to be as strict as it has been? And is it stopping my intentionality or how can I breathe intentionally out intentionality into my calendar? That's something I was thinking about and also intentionality in my time off. I do have a bunch of stuff planned that I want to do that I'm excited about, but I actually get to choose the time when I'm going to do it, how long I'm going to take on it.

And it's it feels very different to me and I can't quite explain why. I've had people talk about intentionality before and I didn't fully understand it. And now I think I'm starting to get a little idea about intentionality and what that might look like in general.

So, listeners, what question I have for you is. While you are thinking about what you want to do in the future this week, this month, this year, except that you always have choices, even if you don't like the choices that are available to you, you still have them. Any time you tell yourself that you must do something because you have no choice, it's a lie. It's not true. The thing is, you may not have a choice that you like, but there is always a choice between things and it is yours to make get to know yourself if you don't know yourself and what you want from your life, your morals, your values and that sort of thing, that is hard to make choices and you kind of make random decisions.

It's hard to live a life of intention if you don't know where you want to end up and you don't know what success is or happiness is to you, you won't be able to get there because you won't have an end point and learn how to set your goals and understand what it takes to reach those goals. You set goals and make it the smart method and all that good stuff, but make sure that you track it so you know when you've succeeded it.

Small daily actions that impact your goals will get you somewhere further than hodgepodge here, there and everywhere, doing random things to get towards your goal. But the main thing is stay focused and be mindful because these will have a long term effects on your goals and your plans just being intentional in what you do and why you do it. Can change the world, thank you for listening. This is [email protected] helping us build our brand and get hired. I look forward to getting your e-mails.

If there's anything you want me to talk about on the show, please email me at [email protected]. Have a great rest of your week.

I want to talk about sales, doesn't matter how amazing your business or your product is if your sales guy sucks. So I've been looking to work with a company about a project that I've got coming up next year. I've been vetting them out. I loved the mission. I loved the values. I loved what they stood for and I loved the product. And so I was on this page and I needed to get in contact with them.

So they have a contact form and the contact form asked the usual questions. Name company. Why you how did you find us and any other questions that I would like to ask to make the call? You know, better for everybody. And so I put specific questions. I wanted to know about time zones. I wanted to know about opening hours, and I want to know about invoicing and hours. And I put that in the form along with my name, my company.

You are well, that sort of a thing that then led me to a calendar link and like a great perfect. Now I get to look at a calendar link straight away. Wonderful. I go. And I booked time with someone who wasn't who they said I was going to talk to, but that was fine. So far, so good book. The time I get a confirmation email to my email address. Great email confirmation is from a name dot company at Gmail dot com, a bit of a red flag because this company has been around for at least four years.

Kind of thought I would get a domain name. So it should be name and company name, dot com or Gmail or whatever it might be. But fine, what have you next day I have the call now bearing in mind that it asked me some questions and got me to fill out a form so soon as we get on the call, the first thing the sales person says is, please tell me about your business. I'm already like and I just sent you a bunch of information about me and you can take the two minutes to go and Google company name or me my name.

I happened to be lucky enough that my name is unique enough that you pull up something. And so I ambivalent about something that is not exactly my business. It's just part of what I do. We continue on with the core. They ask me what my requirements are and I, I tell them what I'm looking for and then the person is very much like, OK, well, we think we're going to be a very good fit for you. And so I said, well, as you think, you're going to be a good fit for me and my organization.

Please tell me like what the top thing is that my clients are looking for, not persons response was. Well, they're looking for your unique service proposition and your offerings. Now, if you've been listening to this long enough, you would know they only had to mention the word introvert. That's it. That's all they had to say. But they obviously, even during that twenty minute call, couldn't be bothered to Google my name or Google my my company.

And so they tried to B.S. me some now really annoyed about it. And so they asked me if I have any other questions and I'm very much like, well I did ask questions in the form. And you haven't answered those questions because we still hadn't talked about when they open timezones that their staff are in and invoicing. And so the person got defensive and said, well, what do you think? I haven't answered. And so I repeated my questions and they sort of kind of answered them.

Then they said, OK, so when can we get back to, you know, to get this ball rolling, really have very limited spots, yada, yada, yada. Hartsell and I said, well, this week is very busy. I'm doing this for my clients and then I'll be working on this sort of thing the week after that. And so the person then says, OK, so I can contact you at the end of this week.

No, you obviously weren't listening. I just said I'm busy this week and then you can contact me next week. So I had to reiterate, we close the call normally most salespeople at this point, we then go ahead and send it if formational email that says, hey, great talking to you today. We covered X, Y and Z. I will follow up with you on this day. No email. Oh, wait, no, I lied.

I did get an email, but I got an email from a different person in the company saying, hey, I noticed you filled out this form and one of our team would love to speak with you. Please click on this link to put the time.

Really, really, it's not only does the left hand know what the right hand is doing, the systems are messed up and the sales guy blew it. I was so happy I was going to throw money at the most happy to work with them because I loved their vision and their mission. But he couldn't be bothered to just Google my name or my company name. Instead, he tried. They got defensive and then tried to to be asked me to be fair.

And that's how not to run your sales process, or at least the sales guy. He didn't use any common sense. It would've been better if he admitted and said, you know what, I just hopped on this morning. I didn't have a chance to look you up. I'd love to know more about you. Or can you give me a second while I do it? Now, that would be better. Coming clean would have been better, but the lying and the squirming around kind of made it look kind of sleazy and unethical.

And now I don't want to work with the organization and I don't care how much I love the mission and what they do, I now don't want to work. And actually there was a point where I was like, maybe I'll just email someone higher up and explain the situation. And then the other email came through the automated. Only one of our team would love to speak with you. And I was just like, oh, I'm done. So that's what I wanted to talk about today.

Thank you for listening. This is [email protected] helping you build your brand and get high. If there's any questions on topics that you want me to cover on this podcast, let me know. Email me at [email protected]. Have a great rest of your week.

Today, I'm going to talk about why you need to regularly assess your skills. I think something that happens as we go through life and we come across a problem, we deal with it, we move on to the next problem or move on to the next thing. And now's the time of year where people are planning for the next year and not just out and looking back from the previous year.

And we tend to look at what we've done, what we've accomplished. And one thing that really needs to happen is to really assess what skills you have and what you've learned or what you need to change or what isn't useful anymore. And we don't do this enough. Anyone who wants to improve and prosper in your professional or your personal lives, you need to make time to assess your skills. And this can be an every quarter is a good way of doing it.

I mean, when you're an employer, you know, often employers will have a yearly assessment feedback, so on and so forth, to make sure that their employees are learning and growing with the new company. This is because it benefits the company as a whole. You know, if you improve your team, the company improves and the bottom line improves. And so whether you're an employee or an employer or just a solar panel, regularly assessing your skills is really important.

And so think think about these things. When you are assessing your skills, what can you do to improve your quality and speed? Productivity? Productivity is a crucial attribute for successful people. And to do this, you must improve your quality. And by doing so, you'll take less time doing things. After all, getting more done isn't good enough if it's not done well. Also, you know, when you're regularly assessing your skills, use it as a time to self reflect.

Self reflection is vital for successful career business life in general. It provides time to look within yourself and see where you can improve and what you've accomplished. So putting this in your calendar on a regular basis and making it a non-negotiable is a way of doing this. Now, when you are thinking about assessing your skills, also think about your strengths and how you can maximize those and all lead to new ones. Competing daily life stuff can make things easy to ignore what you are truly good at.

So reflecting and testing your skills and reassessing your abilities will allow you to focus even more on areas that you are great at, allowing you to perfect that skill even more. And on the flip side, of course, is also understanding your weaknesses and how to improve them. Just how looking back and reassessing your skills will highlight what your strengths are. It should also highlight what your weaknesses are, your shortcomings, and make them far more visible to you.

This is great because if it's done more than once a year, your ability to work towards bettering them or having a plan to mitigate your weakness. If you are a partner, if you are bad, a certain thing, you can outsource it or you can learn to make it better. Often, if you reassess this in a more regular basis, you'll figure out where that gap is. And outsourcing is fine. But the sooner you figure that out, the sooner you know things can balance out and work out better.

Also, when you are assessing your skills, it allows you to take education and learning into your own hands. It provides you the ability to be more self-aware and acknowledge your achievements as well as your failures, and also give you a clearer, more defined path to learn and develop yourself into personally and professionally. If you want to grow as a person and have a more successful career or business or, you know, work on your life goals, you need to continually make time to evaluate your abilities so that you know where to improve and where you lack.

You can go ahead and look for online skill assessments or personality tests. Ask friends and co-workers to assess you, look at past reviews, past things that you've said about yourself. These are just a few ways that you can get valuable feedback on your current abilities so that you can enhance your career, advance your business and accomplish your goals. Reviewing is crucial. Thank you for listening. This is [email protected] and helping you build your brand and grow your business.

Have a great rest of your day.

I'm actually recording this on Thanksgiving, so actually it's midnight. So Black Friday and what I am doing is unsubscribing from Black Friday. And what I mean by this is Black Friday week and Cyber Monday. Tuesday tends to be the time that any mailing list that you are accidentally or on purpose on will send you an email or 15, because this is the time when people who have these mailing lists that they've left dormant for months or years or whatever will be like, oh, but Black Friday, I need to do a sale.

I need to do this a promotion or whatever it might be. So you're almost guaranteed to get an email from companies, organizations that you haven't heard from in a long time, or also companies that you have been hearing from on a regular basis. So what I've been doing is using this as an opportunity to unsubscribe from organizations, people that I haven't been engaging with, that content is no longer relevant for me. It's a really interesting thing. Now, there are some people who I have been reading the emails on a regular basis.

And yes, they happen to be doing a promotion or they are specifically doing a promotion for Black Friday. And I will just delete the email, but I won't unsubscribe because I've been in regular contact with things have been going on. But Black Friday is a great time to unsubscribe and clean out your mailbox. And also you'll find that the amount of emails that you get will be more. Now, there are a lot of organizations that decide Black Friday is a thing.

This is what I'm going to do. They have amazing discounts of 25, 50 percent of whatever it might be, or they put together bundles or they do lifetime deals or they work with other competitors or other organizations to put together this Black Friday deal. Um, some other deals that are just available on the Black Friday. Some have been known to up their prices before Black Friday and then discount this amusing bunny ears, discount those things afterwards. And so when you're looking and thinking about your Black Friday deals, I think it's really good to take a look and think about the kind of organizations that you want to work with are the ones that try and do.

It's only nineteen dollars to sign up and then, you know, your next payment is three hundred and something where they do the bait and switch or that they decide, no, I'm not going to, you know, live into the Black Friday and fade into the Black Friday sales thing. And my prices are my prices. And this is just what your pay. Maybe I'll do a special on offer something extra, but I'm not going to discount my base prices.

And I think that is a good way to go, because all in all, what Black Friday encourages, especially with software deals, is for people to buy something cheaply, not really see it at its true value, because even if someone says, oh, it's nineteen dollars, but really it's five hundred and sixty eight dollars, you know what it's worth. People don't perceive it that way and they'll buy it at the eighteen dollars and then be shocked the next year or the next quarter whenever the next billing cycle is, when the price is whatever it is and they won't see the inherent value in that particular item.

So it goes with courses and with coaching sessions or with branding, whatever it might be that you have as a business, it is better to offer a bonus like a bonus, one on one session or a bonus workbook that only comes out once a year or something of that nature. Offer more instead of discounting your prices, because people will see that, oh, this is your price and you're going to offer this extra thing, Black Friday. So you're still getting paid your worth.

That's my viewpoint on it. And the other thing is it's overwhelming. There were so many emails and so many Black Friday deals that you don't know what might be good for you and your business. And you might buy something on impulse and then realize it's not a good fit. Oh, it's not exactly what I need. And so unless you've done your research in advance and had a game plan or I'm only going to spend this amount on Black Friday, this tends to be a time of year where people impulse spend and then regret later.

And maybe you don't want to be that organization that people regret buying later. Just just something to keep in mind. So thanks for listening. This is [email protected] helping people, mainly introverts, build their brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.

Today, I want to talk about learning how learning from criticism, how to take criticism, how hard you try, it's often difficult to hear any type of criticism, especially when it's about your work. And if you are creative, even more so because you are your work and it's very personal, it can cause us to second guess ourselves. And worse, it might even make you stop doing whatever it was that you wanted to do.

It might send you into a tailspin and like wondering and thinking and round and round it doesn't have to. In fact, the most criticism can be turned into like valuable feedback even. It sometimes feels like a very negative experience. One thing we really have to remember is that most of the time when someone is giving you feedback, it's not usually an attack. Most critiques are not about attacking you. The person, even sometimes when it's given negatively, they're often like kernels of truth that you can gather from it.

You just have to let go of the emotion. And even if you pretend it's not an attack and lies with the critique was without passion and emotion, without being personal about it, it's normally about your work and or how you're doing something, not about you. The person. Something else that you can do when reacting to criticism is listen carefully and try not to react when the critique or that feedback happens. Either listen or read it with a minimum emotion as possible.

You want to take or take all of the information in and just listen to it for complete understanding. Don't make assumptions or rush through. If it's a conversation, it's OK to ask questions, but don't interrupt. If you're reading it, that's usually easier. Just read it out loud and let it rest and sit for a bit, then come back and read it again to make sure what you originally thought when you're just like rushing through is exactly what's being said.

Once you allow yourself to kind of sit and understand as much as you can, as much as you think you can, now you can ask for clarification of things that you're not sure about and you do this carefully without sounding defensive. The idea is to say, OK, I've I've heard this feedback. I just want to clarify X, Y and Z. I just want to check is this exactly what you meant? Because your understanding of what they have said or written might not always be the same thing.

Now, as I mentioned before, try not to take it personally, even if it's someone trying to get under your skin with their feedback and usually they're not don't take it personally. Often criticism and feedback is more about the person delivering it than about you, the person, unless you have a mentor or coach giving you feedback and then that's a little different. Now, one really important thing is. Letting go of things that aren't factual, focus on the meat of the feedback at first, if the entire thing is someone's subjective or like just what they're thinking about, then you only need to talk about it with the person because it's just their opinion.

But and because it's not like truth, you know, it's OK. But if it is actual facts, that is what you need to focus on. One tactic is if someone is mad and they're giving you, the feedback is to mentally and physically delete anything that's not factual and just mean what they read and process the rest. So you just need to process the things that are facts and not subjective. And whenever you do get feedback, always, always say thank you what someone has given you and taken the time to give you feedback, it's vital that you thank them and follow up with them, especially if you can tell them how it helped you improve and or change something.

Getting feedback is an important part of improving yourself. No one ever gives you any type of feedback.

If no one ever gives you any type of feedback that doesn't make you uncomfortable, then you might be hanging out with the wrong people. Then yes, people instead of those who really want you to succeed, can really give you critical feedback. So consider hiring like a coach or a mentor or someone or having a group of people that are willing to give you regular critical feedback that is honest, transparent and upfront. This can only help you moving forward, because one thing that we're not taught is how to take feedback and to learn from it to improve ourselves.

Our writing, our reading, our business, our everyday lives, we can all improve. None of us is perfect. So take what is given to you as feedback, work on it, adjust and move forward and reiterate. Go back and check with a person if that's what they meant. That's the way to move forward and improve. Thank you for listening. This is [email protected]. If you have any questions for me, you want me to answer on the podcast, email me at [email protected].

Have a great rest of your week.

today I want to discuss your customer journey. A lot of people, when they're thinking about starting a new business, they get very excited to do the website. They do the logo, they they have the product and they go out there and try and sell it, which is great.

But a lot of the time they don't think about the journey that the customer has to make. Either before or after or during the sale, and that's where you can figure out where there might be some issues. So, for example, OK, your client finds you, happens to find you via a blog post on that blog post page. Is there a way to contact you? Is there a way to grab your freebie? Is there a way to get one on one time with you?

If they own if the only thing they see is that blog post, how can they then get a hold of you? Is that even an option? Does a blog post lead to something that carries on from what the blog post topic was about, or is it something unrelated? Is there a special offer at the end of the blog post is an option to sign up for your newsletter. If they do sign up for your newsletter, do they get put into a welcome sequence or do they go straight into a sequence that leads on from that particular newsletter?

And if so, when do they get the welcome sequence to find out a little bit more about you? Do they get tagged in the system? If they do get Tegner system, what's the tag? Where's the workflow? You need to think about the workflow for your customer, your potential customer to make sure that you have everything in place required to make that happen and flow easily. You want your customer to find out more about you to feel like, know and trust, but also have a very consistent experience.

And so along with the emails, how do they then maybe buy a course from you or set up time with you? Is it easy? Do you always promote within your newsletter that the newsletter doesn't have to be happy about the course, but at the bottom of your newsletter, are there calls to action? Like if you want this information, click here. If you're more interested in this, click here. How do you go about segmenting your clients?

Because you might have people who are interested in travel overall, for example, but some might be more interested in train travel or plane travel. How do you go about segmenting people in that way and keeping them engaged? So the other thing is once they pay for a product, what happens? Do they get a welcome sequence from paying for that product or do they get something else or something similar as some of you could duplicate across all of your all of your products?

But they sort of get an email that's slightly tweaked. And what help and support do they get after that? Are all of your newsletter emails just by friendly neighborhood Spider-Man emails, or are they some of those kind of emails?

But every month you give an overview of what you're doing that month. How do you break up the information that you give to your potential clients and your newsletter followers? Do you have different newsletters for different things?

Once someone does start working with you, do they get a regular email? Do they get reminders for their appointments? How does that flow? What about payments? How do they regularly pay you? Do you invoice or is auto payment is a subscription.

So many coaches I know do manual payments and so they're sitting there once a month on different days of the month, like figuring out how much someone needs to pay and then running their credit card manually instead of just setting them up with paper subscription. So they pay once and then it comes out. And at the same time, every month, there are so many different ways to make your life easier and your client's life easier. But if you don't figure out your clients flow and how they get to you and what different ways they can get to you and their client journey, you have no way of plugging those gaps and no way of making it a seamless and hopefully mostly automated experience for your customers.

So before you get into selling in the flash sales on the phone, all of these things, figure out what your client journey looks like and then figure out if you have the tech stack to go with it, because that's the important thing. And once you figure out what you need, then you can make sure that you have a tech stack to support the framework that you have for your clients. Thank you for listening.

This is [email protected].

If you have any questions for me to answer on the show, please email me at [email protected]

Thanks for listening and have a great rest of the week.

I want to talk about how your money shouldn't come from just one place. If recent events have taught us nothing, it is that nothing is guaranteed. So even if you do have that day job that that 9:00 to 5:00 paycheck, having that as the only way that you earn money is not a great thing, is having all your eggs in that one basket. And the reason why this might not be optimum for a lot of people is when that basket goes, you might be prepared, you want to have savings, and then you are left in this position where things are very dire very quickly.

And so while you're in that panic mode, it's very, very hard to go ahead and think clearly about what steps that you need to do next and how you need to move forward to make your situation better. And so there's a couple things that I'd like to talk about. One is sort of, yes, you can have your nine to five job as do you get money from other things, be it interest on some savings that you have, or do you have stocks where you you get dividends, maybe you rent out a place, maybe you have a little side business where you create jewelry and sell it on Etsy and whatever it is, it's something that is very low for you to maintain.

It is really interfere with your day job, but you get joy from it and it brings you in a little bit of income in some way, shape or form. And if you don't have that right now because you think it will take up too much time or money or resources with that sort of thing, something to think about is at some point in the future, it might be helpful. What happens if you cannot do your current role? So, for example, if your role is very much computer based, what happens if your eyesight goes or you get carpal tunnel syndrome?

Do you have something that you can do that uses different a different skill set or different physicality so that if one thing goes, you are still capable of doing other things? That is something else to think about. For example, if you super into your own health and you like writing books, yes, it's great that you can maybe write it using a computer, but could you write it? I'm doing voice to text. It's doing the same role, but doing it in a different way in case something happens.

You never know. Also, you know, do you have enough savings for six months worth of paying your bills, for example, should something happen and you don't work for six months, can you survive? Will you be OK? Because sometimes six months is that job search process, sometimes at six months, is being sick and getting better again and not having the pressure of going back to work too soon, which will make you ill again. These are all really important things to think about.

So many different ways that you can go ahead and start to think about different methods of having income and learning different sorts of money. And it's the same that goes for you. If you don't have that nine to five job and you are working for yourself as a business owner, you could have a couple of different income streams. Yes, you might be a musician, but maybe you could also do production work or live streams or teach. There are so many different ways that you can use your skills to help other people, but also to earn money.

It's really important to have that that variety and that diversity within your portfolio of the things that you do so that at any given time you can pivot and or switch depending on maybe your energy, how you're feeling, your health, your finances, the weather, where you want to be in the world or, you know, a global pandemic. This what's happened recently has caught a lot of people off guard, but it's also made a lot of people very, very quick decisions that I wouldn't normally make.

Some of it has been good and some of it has been bad. But just, you know, with this upcoming year, take a second and think about how financially secure are you? Is there any changes that you can make? Can you do courses online? Can you create PDS for other people? How can you be of assistance to others? That's one way of being able to possibly make money in a different way if you are a teacher. I know that there was a lot of unpaid work with being a teacher, but can you create resources for other teachers that other teachers can use and pay for?

So you have a little bit of money on the side. These are all just things to think about for your mental health and your financial health. Thank you for listening. This is Janice at The Career Introvert, helping introverts build their brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.

. Today, I want to talk about why you must treat your business like you would a client so many times when you have a couple clients, you're getting money coming in. You tend to go ahead and forego everything that you were working on with an on your business to have that time to work on your client's business, which is great. You are trying to keep your clients happy doing what you said you were going to do, hitting those targets and maybe exceeding those targets and keeping your clients happy, because keeping clients happy means that you will get paid.

But if these are one of jobs, something you need to think about is where is the next job coming from? And yes, you could think, well, if I do a good job at this client, there will be a referral involved, or maybe they'll have another project for me to do or maybe something else will happen. But you can't always rely on that. And so when you first starting out, you should be spending at least 40 to 50 percent on revenue generating stuff, marketing yourself, blog post, getting yourself out there, being a podcast, whatever it is.

But you should be out there trying to generate as much business and drum up as much business as possible. And so the further along in you are in your business is spending less time on generating leads. There are some businesses out there that very much work on. They generate all the leads all the time and they have stuff or a team that will go ahead and execute on the systems and the strategies that they are selling to that leads there other people who might get someone in to go ahead and generate leads for their business.

But you have to be really fine tuned to know what you're going to get them to sell and how they're going to sell and how it's going to work. So make sure now when you have a client on board them and you give them some milestones and you say this is going to happen at this date, at this time and these things are going to happen, you need to do the same thing for your business. So set up some time on your calendar.

That is non-negotiable. This is going to be time that you are going to sit and be like, I'm going to work on X, Y or Z on my business to move my business forward, to get more clients, to make myself more visible, to get myself out there, to write a case study, to write a couple blog posts, to schedule my Instagram, whatever it might be, but set aside this non-negotiable time at least once a week.

And it can be for an hour, an hour, week. It all makes a difference. We go ahead and set up this time in your calendar that is non-negotiable, that you will spend working on something for your business. Now, the other thing is don't just sit down and be like, OK, so this is my allotted time now. What do I do with it? You should have a clear plan of what you're going to do. So, for example, if you're thinking at a summit coming up and so I sit down like, OK, so I could finish the landing page or I could create a form or I could create a feedback loop or I could you know, there's all sorts of things that I should do, but I should have a very clear plan of action, of what needs doing when.

And so I'll sit down and do the first thing. Once I've finished that allotted time, I will go ahead and make a note of what the next step is. So when I sit back down a bit like, OK, now that's been done, I now need to do this other thing. Even if you finish like a part of a project, there's always something else to do. So make a note of what that is. And so, you know, the next time you sit down in your allotted work on your business time, that that happens because you don't want that famine and drought and feast thing go on feast and famine, low time, lots of businesses, one where they have all I have lots of clients and all the things and feeling overwhelmed.

But the money's coming in and then there's a drop off because you haven't been doing those those activities that help keep you top of mind with potential clients and keep you visible. So that is a delicate balance that you need to do and treat your business like a client you would hate if you missed a deadline for your client for doing whatever it might be, the blog post, the Instagram feed, whatever it might be. So why is it so easy for you to say it's OK?

It's for my business. It's OK because you're already working on something else that isn't how it should be. You need to think about your future self and your future self as a client and how you want to do the best for you as your business. Never mind your clients and you can't do that if you're wondering about where the next paycheck is coming from. So set aside time every week, even if it's just thirty minutes, preferably more, where you work on your business and treat yourself and your business like a client.

Treat it like the best client you ever had and you will see results. Thank you for listening. This is [email protected] helping introverts build their brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.

I want to talk about friend rates, something happened recently and. Wanted to talk about how to deal with it when your friends ask you for work and they don't want to pay. So I was part of an online virtual summit and there was a pre-recorded section where I gave advice on finding businesses online. And then there was a free live Q&A segment where people could type in whatever questions they had, which was played directly after my pre-recorded session.

And a lot of people ask questions and some of that I knew from a long time ago. Maybe I hadn't spoken to them in maybe eight years as I go, hi, nice to see you, blah, blah, blah. OK, I didn't ask any questions, but this was a Q&A free for all and it lasted about 30 thirty to forty five minutes. And then after that I was answering specific questions within a Facebook group. This person decided to not ask questions during the Q&A, but go ahead and type in the Facebook group.

Oh hey, long time no see. I'd really like to pick your brain. Can we arrange some time to chat? And so they didn't ask a specific question that they wanted me to answer, they just wanted to pick my brain in general for free. Well, that's what it seemed they wanted to do to get some consulting, OK. Of course, here's the link, you know, to my calendar so you can set up some time. Here's like, oh, oh, but there's there's a cost.

I just I just wanted to pick your brain. And my response was, well, that wouldn't be fair to my paying customers and clients. I give away a lot of free content via email on my podcast. Why this particular summit that you attended for free and yet you would like to pick my brain for an hour with no cost. And I did not get a response from that person since, and I have not heard from them since now. One of my friends does when she has friends that ask for stuff like that is if you're doing a trade, for example, if you're saying I will do this thing, if I get this thing in return, she still invoices that because even though it's a trade and it's not necessarily cash going, she wants them to know the value of what she's doing.

So she'll still send them an invoice, an invoice for xx work that I did with the cost, but have how much it would be normally, but then have it like zeroed out. So people are aware of the cost of what you do. So when they refer you to other people, they can say, hey, she costs around this much to do this sort of work, because otherwise when you do get referrals, they have no idea of what you charge and what value you bring.

So that is a very, very good tip. You can give the friend discount if you wish, but make them aware of what you and your services are worth. Always invoice, even if they invoice get zeroed out or there's a discount. Put how much the discount is. If it's 70 percent, 50 percent, 20 percent, no discount because no one says you have to give your friends a discount is the other thing you can if you wish, or you can give them a rate that is compatible for where they live.

For example, if you have people who live in different countries, you might not want to charge US dollars. If your friend is living in a Gasca or whatever you think about it and be kind and sensible, but at the same time you know your worth and people will not know your worth unless you charge for it. So going back to the person who I gave my calendar link, what they did not know is I gave them a reduced rate calendar link.

They didn't even have the usual price that my clients pay. And I told them it was a reduced rate.

Still not enough interest. I highly recommend that to let people know what your worth is, charge them and if they say they want to pick your brain, let them do it for 50 minutes and then let them know that the next 50 minutes will cost X amount. No harm in letting people pick your brain a little bit, but don't let it get out of hand. Thanks for listening. This is [email protected]. Have a great rest of your week.

Today, I want to talk about due diligence, and it's not a subject I've talked about before, but something happened recently that made me think this would be a good topic for everyone to think about right now, especially with more people working online and the holidays are coming, a lot more scams are out there. And so recently I got an email saying, hey, I was recently a business manager of successful Game of Thrones podcast.

And while I was there, I was able to bring in a certain amount of sponsorship money in just six weeks of the last season. I mean, it's a Game of Thrones podcast. You're probably going to bring in money regardless because it's jumping on something popular. But anyway, you said I've reached out now because I've launched a podcast network and would love for your podcast to be part of it. We currently have over 20 podcasts on the network and adding more shows weekly and in partnership with the podcasting platform.

And we are able to give all the podcasts in the network to ads. And they gave a certain amount of money for click click Theroux's per hundred thousand listeners. And so they were saying, you know, we'd love to have you on board. Essentially, we're bringing together, you know, high quality podcasts of different genres and that sort of a thing. And it will be great to have your podcast on there, too. And they wanted to say that, you know, because they'd have because there'd be a network that have better reach and better ability to go and like, fight in your corner and that sort of a thing, they think that my content is great and they would never ask to change anything about it at all.

In fact, I shouldn't even mention the network, but the thing I would have to do is move my podcast over to anchor from whatever I am hosting now.

And they said they have a, you know, an easy converter and all you have to do is do this thing and and it will happen. And then you'll be available on all platforms, know maximize your exposure on Apple, Spotify, overcast pocket cards, radio, public, et cetera, and you get real time stats and all these wonderful things. And again, it went on about how I could earn money through advertising, through my podcast. And they would also help with, like banners and logos and audio quality and all of these things.

And if interested, that I should respond to the email and they'd be happy to jump on a call that was a name. And there was a website like, have they really listen to my podcast? But OK, sure, whatever. And I went to the website and the website because really you get excited like, oh, you know, someone thinks I'm wonderful, I'm going to offer me money. So really, my first thought would have been to possibly just jump on a call, but no due diligence.

I went to look at the website and the website was terrible. It wasn't even a website. You know, those websites where they've got they haven't figured out what they're going to put yet. It says the ipsum and blah, blah, blah, because they haven't figured it out on the website. That's what happened. And interestingly enough, the email came from a Gmail account. They gave a name of a podcasting network. And the name of the podcast network also doesn't really go with my brand.

So I found that really interesting. And so I went and used the website address. In fact, now when I look at it again, the site cannot be reached. Originally it just had this, like, fake site up there with no information, no podcasts, and it was like a slap up landing page. And so they were asking me to move my podcast over and possibly give up like access to my podcast so I could be on their network, which doesn't exist.

So due diligence, friends and people, I highly recommend this is something you you should do. Whenever you are making a business decision, go and look at the website. Go and see if you know anyone who knows this person. Go on LinkedIn and see if you have similar connections, see if there are any referrals or testimonials. Also, go with your gut. You know, sometimes it still looks so nice and shiny, but you got so they're not really doing your due diligence because really what I should have done or emailed them back.

What do you love about my podcast? Because ninety nine point nine percent of the time, whenever I do that, people don't have a clue because I also get a lot of people going, hey, I want to be a guest on your podcast. I really love your podcast. And I think blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And of course, I respond, oh, tell me which episode that you listen to that you liked.

Because obviously if they want to be a guest, they haven't listened to my podcast. So during due diligence, doing due diligence is something that is highly important. I will stop you going down some black holes and getting ripped off. That was a quick rant. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions or anything you want me to cover on the podcast, message me at [email protected]. Have a great rest of your week.