Your Dream Business

Hello and welcome to this episode of the podcast. How are you doing? How's things? So today I'm gonna jump straight in and tell you that we're doing a podcast episode around the questions that I get asked around list building. Now, you know, if you've been listening to me for a while and if you haven't, welcome, I'm so grateful you're here, but I'm obsessed with list building. Because for me, no matter what your business is, no matter what size it is, no matter where you are in your business.

Building a list is one of the most important things that you can do, because you're basically gathering your community together. You are having another way to market to them. You are connecting with your audience and you are basically almost collecting people who are your perfect customer, which is amazing.

So I talk about it all the time and I'm going to be running a five day challenge soon, which I'm really excited about. So I thought it would be a great idea in order to run up to that challenge, to let you know about the challenge, to also go over some of the questions that I get asked all the time about list building.

And I'm hoping that as you listen to this, maybe some of the questions that you've had in your head about when should you post, is there a better time of day? How do you stop it going into the spam folder, how to stay consistent, what you should actually email people. I'm really hoping that some of these questions will be ones that you've got and that I will get answering them for you.

But first, let me quickly tell you about the challenge. So it starts on July the 11th and runs through for that week. And then there's a bonus call on the following Monday, just to kind of wrap up and answer any further questions that you might have. And basically over the five days, I'm gonna be walking you through the main steps that you need in order to get your list set up.

So if you've wanted a newsletter out to your customers, if you want to send emails to them, If you want to start building that community, then you need this five day challenge and you need an email list. So over the five days, like I said, each day, you'll get a lesson sent out to you. That'll be short and sweet, and they'll tell you exactly what you need to do.

There's also going to be prizes. So someone is going to win a free course of build my list. That explains how to do everything. And it's just gonna be great fun. We're gonna be hanging out for a week, talking all things list building. So if you wanna join me for that challenge, I would love to see you there.

It's gonna be great fun. Go to teresaheathwareing.com/challenge and you can find all the details there and you can sign up and join me for that. It's going to be fab. But anyway, let's get going with some of these questions. So, what I did is I went back through previous, build my list courses that I've done. Facebook groups from a previous challenge.

And I've basically looked at all the questions I get asked, which is lots and lots, which is great about list building. And I've picked some of the ones I thought are probably the most common they come up the most and that I think you might have. Okay. So let's start by talking about. Actually emailing them.

What do you send someone when you email them? This is a question I get a lot. So often they will come and think about doing, build my list or they'll come and they'll be list building or they'll create something in order to get people onto their emails, but then they don't email them. And I did exactly the same.

And I've talked about this, a millions times before. I'm sure you have heard me talk about it, but I did. I built an email list and I didn't email them, which was a really stupid thing to do. Uh, so hands up, I did the stupid thing first. So you lot don't have to, you can now just take my advice. So the first thing is that you do have to email them from, from day one.

I get people saying to me, you know, "Well, there's only 10 people on my list." Well, they don't know they're only 1 of 10. So all they know is they signed up and they want to receive something. So make sure you send them something. In terms of what to send them. I often teach between love letters and newsletters.

Now neither is right or wrong. They are personal preferences to which you think would be most appropriate for you and your business. But basically a newsletter is what you would traditionally see where there are. Where it's quite a designed looking thing. There tends to be lots of links and the, and they tend to be less frequent because instead of like talking about one thing, they talk about lots of things.

So they only send out maybe every other week or once a month or whatever it is. And whereas when I talk about love letters, I talk about the kind of emails I send. And obviously if you're not on my list, then please do. Go ahead to my website and you'll be able to find a sign up there. But love letters for me are I write them as if I'm writing them for one person.

I literally think of people in my audience as I'm writing it. And I imagine I'm talking directly to them. And then I tend to talk around one subject, one thing. And then I tend to only give one call to action or one link in each email. So like I said, it doesn't matter whether it's one or the other, it doesn't matter.

There's not a right or wrong. It's just what fits with you. And what fits better with me is that kind of style. If you are a product, if you're selling products, then probably a newsletter style might be better. If you don't want to email very often, but I'm coming to that. Then again, a newsletter style might be better.

If you think about like what you might put in a newsletter, so you might talk about an achievement of someone who bought your thing, a testimonial or a case study. You might talk about a new service you're offering. You might talk about a tip or a frequently asked question. They can all be broken up into individual emails.

So I can literally take that one tip and write an entire email around it and just talk about why that tip is important, how I've come to that tip, what I've done. So you can see how like those bigger things can be pulled down into one email. Also, when you're thinking about what you put in these emails, think it's just another content.

Okay. Previously many, many, many, many years ago when I first started marketing and we would use, I think we used constant contact back in the day and I would send emails for Landover or whatever it was. Like, they were so different then. It wasn't seen as content as such. Because emails were really specific often it was your work email address.

You'd only see it on a computer. You'd only see it during work days and therefore things like, you know, what time you sent it would matter more than it does now. But, it's not. Now your emails tend to be on your phone. You tend to almost go in them as often as you would go into your social media. So just see it as another arm.

If you've put a post on social media about a case study, then why wouldn't you send an email about that? So often I think when people think about what to send, they get really heads up in terms of, you know, they've gotta write war and peace. You absolutely don't. They can be long, they can be short, they can be whatever you want.

So it purely depends on you and what you prefer. So, how do you stay consistent when you're emailing? Well, the thing that I had to do is I had to commit myself to the world and basically say, I say the world, like my very small audience, but I had to say to them, I'm going to email you this amount of times or on this day or this time or whatever it was.

I had to make that decision kind of public. I had to come out and go, this is what I'm going to do, because that would hold me accountable. If I didn't, I wouldn't have done it. So sometimes just having that accountability of promising that you're gonna show up in a certain way or a certain time or a certain whatever.

Even if you think someone's paying attention or not, it just really helps. So that's what I did. I committed to saying. And when I first started probably emailing, I emailed once a week on a Wednesday. So I committed to saying this is what's, you know, happened that this is what I'm gonna do. And, and I'm gonna email every single week. And I did.

Apart from actually, when my mom passed away, I was, I missed two weeks, but then I emailed to go. This is why I've missed two weeks. I'm sorry. And I'm back. For me saying it out loud, telling people really helps about consistency. The other thing that helps me now, because I do three emails a week, I do a Monday, Wednesday and a Friday, and we'll get to frequency and how often you should email and that sort of thing in a bit.

But when I do those days, now, the only way I can stay consistent is by batching those emails. So literally right before, it's like my batching day today, as I'm recording this. I did a month's worth of emails and I'm doing a month's worth of podcast. So for me, I tend to put it all together because when you are doing one style of things, so when I'm writing, it's much easier to just write one email then another, then another, then another.

And you get in the zone, the same with podcasting. Once I've kind of got into the flow of doing it, it's so much easier to just knock out the four podcasts at once. So for me, that's how I stay consistent. I batch those things together and to the point where you could even write them and schedule them ready.

So you don't even have to think about it. My only slight thing with this is. That sometimes when I want to be spontaneous or something's come up, then obviously my whole thing is planned and all of it's written. Now it's not to say that I don't change it sometimes or tweak it, but it's just, it's just another thing.

But if I didn't batch, I know I wouldn't do it. So that kind of downside of occasionally have to tweak and move things is well worth that effort because it's getting done.

Okay. Next question I hear a lot is how often should you send emails? This is a big one. So it used to be, like I said, back in the day, I've been around a long time that like once a month was when you sent an email. And that was fine back in the day.

The problem with it now is if I said to you, you can only post on social media once a month. And do you think it'll do anything for your business? Like I'd be laughed out the room. Of course. There's no way we would think that. There's no way we would consider just posting once a month and think that that's going to be okay.

And I'm really sorry to tell you that that's kind of the same for emails. Once a month is not really gonna cut it because it's almost too far away. And also it's 12, that's it? 12 emails in one year. You know, whereas I'm doing 12, am I doing 12 in a month? That's quick math’s. I should be able to do that math’s, uh, three times four.

Yeah. That's 12. No, it's not. 2 4 8, 2 8 to 16. I can't believe you were actually listening to me. Do my math’s on the podcast. I am so sorry. Uh, I'm actually doing a minimum of 16 a month. Um, you probably sat there shouting at me before this going. That's not 12 Teresa. So, so yeah, so 12 emails, that's it. 12 posts in a year.

That's it? That is not enough. So once a month, for me really now I would say is not enough. Every other week could be okay. Every week could be okay. Obviously I email three times a week and I know some people who email every single day. And when I first heard that, I literally like couldn't believe that they did that and thought it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard.

But the truth is, as long as you tell people what to, you know, what to expect, then it's going to be okay. Cause if you sign up to my emails and you get three emails a week and you don't like it, you'll unsubscribe. I did have someone message me saying they find three too much and was there an option to drop to less?

But the problem is the way I write my emails. I tend to write them in a theme for the week. So normally I'll talk about something on Monday and then Wednesday's emails relating to it and so's Fridays. So it's really tricky to just pick, which would be the most important for you to get. So, unfortunately that's not the case and as is they didn't unsubscribe and they're still, they're still getting my emails.

But I do get for some people that will be too much, but as long as I'm consistent and I tell them. Also the other thing that you don't wanna do, regardless of what you choose of your frequency, you don't want to suddenly go from once a week or every other week to five times in a week, because you've got something to say.

So it's about that consistency of you showing up in their inbox. So if I rarely email on a day that isn't a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I will, I will say, you know, I don't normally email you today, but I wanted to share this or I wanted to do this. And it's normally, if something extra's come up, like I said, you know, because a do batch ahead, sometimes if something extra has come up, I really wanna get it out there.

Then I will add an extra email in. So like I said, it's not about how often really it's about being consistent and not when you go into a sales mode or a launch mode that suddenly you absolutely bombard people, cause you're going to suddenly see a really big unsubscribe. In those times when you are doing that, cause they're not used to it.

Okay. So then the next question I get asked a lot is, is there a better time or day to send? Now, it's a bit like social media really? Yes and no. And, and it's so personal to you if you know, so for instance, if you are running a restaurant and you wanna be getting bookings for the weekend, then maybe Wednesday would be a good day to send it.

If you are talking to businesses and you want to let them settle into the week, then maybe a Tuesday could be good. Friday afternoon probably not. If you're talking to business people. Monday morning, probably not. If you're talking to business people just because obviously Fridays and Mondays tend to be the days that they're either gearing up for the day or finishing for the week.

So, so yeah, I think it really doesn't matter so much now, like I said, unless you could see a reason such as. The restaurant example I gave then really it doesn't matter. It more matters what day you are likely to be able to get it out. So if you know that on a Tuesday, you're always quiet because you don't book in clients or whatever, then do it on a Tuesday, cause I'd much rather you do it on a day that suits you, but you get it out than not.

So yeah, in terms of day or time, it doesn't really matter a whole lot. It used to back in the day, uh, not so much now. Okay. Another one I'm I get all the time is how do you stop the emails going into junk or spam? Now, this is a tricky one because at the end of the day, no one can really control what happens once they send the email. Because you are going into different email systems and different email systems, look at different things and require different things.

So it's kind of impossible to say, this is what you should do to get it, to stop going to junk. Cause there's really nothing you can do. Other than using a reputable email provider, which you know, all the ones I would talk about are reputable and, and great. Also the fact of, you know, make sure your content is good.

So no one's marking it as spam. Make sure you're not emailing people whose addresses you don't, you haven't collected properly. And again, those people might mark you with spam and that's gonna affect your whole email list. I'm not saying it's gonna put it all in spam, but it might affect the deliverability of it.

The thing that I do is I always ask for responses. Now I ask for responses cause I genuinely love getting responses and I genuinely love hearing from people. And I like replying to people. But one of the benefits of people doing that is that you almost get put on their safe senders. You can also ask them to put you on their safe sender.

But to be honest, I think, I don't know how many people do that. I don't think I've ever done it, but if you reply, then your email is kind of acknowledging that this is a proper email and it's more likely to go into the inbox. So do ask for replies that will help. But unfortunately there's not a whole lot.

I can say about getting at the junk and spam other than the other thing. So if you are getting people to sign up to a lead magnet or a freebie or whatever it is. In the thank you page, make sure you put, check your spam or junk. It might be in there. So make them aware that it might have gone in there and they should go look for it.

Okay, then the last question I've got for you, cause I just wanted this to be a bit short and a bit sweet, is what system should I use and why can't I just send my emails from my normal email. So when I say normal email, you might have an email address. Like we have [email protected]. Well, I couldn't, we just email everybody from there.

Why don't, why do we need a system? Well, first off you can't and shouldn't email people from those email addresses or Gmail or anything that you would use for day to day. You're not allowed to email. You must have an unsubscribe button on the emails that you send and therefore best practices to send it through a system, not through your own emails.

Hello, and a super warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you? So we have an interview this week with the lovely Jane Walters. Jane is a financial coach and talks all things money. But what I really love about this conversation and Jane's take on it is Jane comes from an almost financial background, a very practical money background. But as interweave, this money background with now, things like the money mindset. And we talk about things and I joke about the film, the secret. I dunno if you've seen it or read the book and, you know, I love a bit manifesting, you know, I'm totally into all that, but in that film, It shows this thing of this guy, literally waking up and wishing for a Lamborghini or something.

And then the next day it's there on his drive. Like yeah, no, I don't think that's true. So. What I really love about it is that she talks about the kind of good money mindset, things that we can do in terms of the slightly woo side, but also teams up with a bit of practical stuff, which again, for me is, is a really good way to look at this.

So if you're not feeling the money mindset from a, from a woo side, then you're gonna have something to listen to. And if you do feel it, then you're gonna have some practical stuff as well. So she is a really, really good expert on this, and I'm excited for you to get listening to her. But before I play the interview, I wanna remind you that if you do like the mindset side of stuff, which I do, and honestly attribute most of my success to doing mindset work.

This is something that we regularly look at in the club and it's open to all levels of members. So we do mindset exercises on things like values. Like how do you work at your values? So you know that you're in align with them and everything just feels nice and much easier. We do things about reframing a mistakes that maybe remain in the past.

We look at things like imposter syndrome. We look at meditation, we look at all these amazing things and there are all these different trainings that I've already done in the club. So when you join straightaway, you can dive in and do as many of them sessions as you want. So if you are interested, please go and check out the club at teresaheathwareing.com/theclub .

Okay. Time to listen to the amazing interview with Jane. Here she is. Okay. It's my great pleasure today to welcome to the podcast Jane Walters, Jane, how are you doing?

Jane: I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Teresa: Thank you for being on. And we, we have found a time that works, cause as you can hear by Jane's accent, she's not in the UK. So tell us where you are Jane.

Jane: Well, there are lots of Aussies in the UK. Let's be honest, but I am from Sydney, Australia, and yes, it's evening for me, but yes.

Teresa: And it's fairly early morning for me. I've managed to get up, put my face on, do the school run. I haven't fed the dog. I just remember that I need to feed the dog.

Okay. it's, I'm used to doing this quite late. Yeah. Well, this is the thing you, you have to juggle a lot when you, you know, doing all this stuff, being a parent, it's, uh, not an easy task. But anyway, Jane, we always start the same way by you introducing what you do and how you got to do what you do. So if you were happy, that would be wonderful.

Jane: Yeah, for sure. So my name is Jane Walters. I I'm a financial coach and I'm also a money mindset coach. So I help women to create wealth, um, by dealing with, um, a lot of the mental or emotional kind of blockers that keep them stuck. So, um, I used to be a financial planner. I've been in the financial services industry, my whole career, and.

I, I ended up getting a bit frustrated with the industry for a couple of reasons. Um, one is very male dominated, and I think that tends to turn a lot of women away. And I think that got me quite frustrated because there were a lot of people who would come in and even couples who would come to see me, but often it would be the man who was directing it.

It's a husband who was, you know, taking control of things. And I really wanted more women to get more interested and involved and understand that isn't just a man's world. Um, and also I think that part of what financial planning ignores is the fact that we are an emotional, we are emotional beings. And so our behavior around money is related to how we think about money and how we feel about money and what we think about ourselves as well.

So that's like the relationship to money side. Um, and so for me coming from, you know, a point of, of loving the personal development world, but also seeing this big need on the, you know, financial side and especially around women is bringing those two things together, which is how I ended up here.

Teresa: Mm. So the, this is really interesting that you came from that finance world and then married it because sometimes do you find that.

For me anyway, speaking to you, that gives me some more credibility of you. Like that makes me think because sometimes when we think of like the mindset on the money side. I have like a bit of a love-hate relationship with it. Like, so have you seen, uh, now I've not read the book, but I've seen a bit of the film, the secret, and it's like.

And it's basically like, you know, just, just wish for a Lamborghini. It's gonna turn up on your drive. Like, and it's like, yeah, yeah, no, that's not, that's not gonna happen. And it's kind of the same with the money mindset thing. Like there are points of money mindset that feels like, just go and do that thing.

The money will come. And it's like, almost like there's an irresponsible level of money mindset. So how do you. How did you kind of match and marry the two coming from a very responsible, practical way, and then on the money mindset side?

Jane: Yeah. Um, so for me the mindset stuff, I mean, I personally, I like a little bit of woo.

You know, I think that it's important to bring in, like, just to understand that there are things limitations in science and in the real world that, you know, we can't explain and that's totally fine. But I also think, I think that things like your mindset and, you know, manifesting things doesn't have to be as you know, crazy and woo, woo.

And out there as what we think it is. Like the idea of the secret and just saying, oh, I, I wanna, I just want to think positive and this thing will happen. It's actually, if we break that down and look at what law of attraction is, it's let's understand that a lot of our, a lot of how we, um, behave is driven by how we feel and our, how we feel is driven by our thoughts.

And we have the ability to, you know, get underneath those thoughts and understand them and to change them and to think things on purpose that are gonna support. The kind of, um, I guess the kind of, um, thoughts and feelings that are gonna create action. So it has to be action. And that's where I like to marry the two in that we have to have the practical action, but we also really have to address the mindset stuff.

Because they work together. And a lot of, I find a lot of my work is in balancing and I tend to see that in the world quite a lot in balancing the masculine and feminine and balancing the practical and emotional it's like balancing the two and yeah. Also leaving a bit of room for that magic or the, you know, we were kind of energy as well.

Teresa: And you you're so right when you talk about, you know, how we feel is determined by our thoughts and that we can think things on purpose, like I'm, you know, and my listeners know this, that, you know, I have therapy and honestly, I just spoke to my friend about it and I was like, isn't it the best thing in the world?

Like, totally. I feel like if I could only give one piece of advice ever, it would be have therapy like it's so good. And, this week when I was talking to her, it was about the fact of how much I am changing my thoughts and how my thoughts are kicking into play quicker. So rather than like, you know, I'm a normal, nothing person.

So, you know, rather than thinking, I'll have this one glass of wine and then that driving into 20 before I even have one. I, my, my brain is going, hang on a minute. Like, did, did you really want that? Or would you really do this? Or like, you know, when you, we all get a lot of shame and that's, it's a horrible thing to deal with.

And so again, like when you do something, instead of me going straight into shame, God, you're ridiculous. Can't believe you did that. I then go, I'm not gonna beat myself up about that. Like, so generally that thing in itself, whether it's related to money or wine or love, whatever it is, is so flippin powerful to be able to go.

I just want to choose to think slightly different and because I think slightly different I'm gonna act different or I will get a different outcome. I think that's, that's crazy powerful. Isn't it?

Jane: It is. It's really powerful. I often say to my clients' sake, your level of awareness happens, um, quicker over time.

So initially if. I've been working with, um, you know, a couple of clients recently around sort of spending kind of problems and issues. And so even when you notice you've spent on something you didn't want to spend on, noticing it after the fact is still something to celebrate, because the more you notice it after the fact, then what happens is your awareness increases.

So that then you notice it in the moment. And then you notice that before it actually happens and that's the whole progression, it's actually having that awareness at different points in your journey, but also then acknowledging that you have the awareness is a really positive and really, um, you know, important thing to celebrate as well.

Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. And you, the awareness is everything, isn't it? Cause I often think like, How did I go through life without not without thinking or knowing these things. And there are so many people out there doing it, but it is huge. So let's, let's go back to the money mindset thing then, because the word money mindset, like didn't exist in my world.

Like, I didn't know what it was. Didn't know how, you know, it worked or whatever it was until I started doing some work on myself until I got my business. And then I realized. What a dreadful money mindset I had and where it had come from and what I'd inherited. But so just sum up like the, the kind of term money mindset and what you mean by that.

Jane: Yeah, sure. So I kind, I like to differentiate it a little bit, so I like to think of money mindset as all the thoughts and beliefs that you have around money. Um, but then I also go a little bit deeper when it comes to your relationship to money because your relationship to money is also those thoughts and feelings that you have around money, but it's also about how you relate to money and your thoughts about yourself as well.

Because I do find that some of the more, you know, we can think, oh, money is the root all evil. For example, that's a, a money mindset that we might have a belief that we have, you know, inherited. It may not actually be a belief that we want or that we own, but it's some that, something that we've taken on board. Whereas then having, you know, shame around the way that you spend your money is something that is goes a little bit beyond mindset and more into what your relationship to money is.

And so they are they're the same, but they're, they're also different. They're connected. Um, the, the mindset piece is. No, I wouldn't say surface level, because I think often there's, they're very, um, deeply ingrained beliefs, but then the relationship to money is something that is a bit more complex and a little bit deeper.

Teresa: Yeah. And, and I think it's funny cause it's only when you start looking at this that you realize how complex it is. And how it fits in with so much other stuff. So I always have this conversation with my husband because I think he. Not that he'd want me to share too much on here, but I think he has some money, thoughts and feelings that he might need to look at.

Like, so, you know, well, yeah, everyone does. Yeah. So you know how, like, I came from a very poor family. We didn't have a lot when I was growing up and therefore, like if we went shopping and I'm gonna use the example of toilet rolls. Okay. If we went shopping, we'd buy four toilet rolls because.

It was more about keeping the cost of that shop down. Right. So we weren't one of those families that would have like a big shop or go and get the stuff for the month cause we couldn't afford it. So it was like living almost day to day buy four toilet rolls. And now obviously my husband and I are, you know, we do okay.

And we could buy a whole big bunch of toilet rolls. Right. So I say to my husband about this and I'm like, you know, so what we should do cause we have a lovely lady that comes and cooks for us. And, but we still need to get the cleaning stuff or we sometimes get the clean stuff. And Paul likes to get it from this certain shop.

Cause it's cheaper cause he's very frugal. And I said to him, that's fine, but why don't go every week to buy the stuff? Why don't we go at the beginning of the month, buy everything we're gonna need for the month? And that cause what I'm trying to do is save his time. And he's like, okay. So then we go to the shop, I go with him and I'm like, so we'll get three of these.

Oh no, we don't, we don't need three. I just get one. I'm like, how, how much do we go through? Oh, well, yeah. Uh, just a lot of money. Isn't it. I was like, but we'd be spending it anyway. Like, it's not like, it's not like we're buying three when we only need one, we will need three. We're just buying it in bulk, saving us the time.

And he really didn't like it. He really couldn't get his head around it. When I said to him, This reminds me of being poor. This reminds me of there's not enough. So we've got to hold back what we spend. Whereas it's not saving you any money by not like it's, it's saving you money by not having to go to the shop every week. But like he just, this in his head just couldn't compute.

Jane: And, and the interesting thing with that is that they are, and this is where, like the neuro kind of biology comes in, where it's, you have really deeply ingrained neuro pathways in your brain. That's telling you, this is how we, this is how we act in this situation.

This is a pattern that plays out. One, you get a trigger to that. And your natural thought pattern is we need to save. We need to not buy. We need to be very careful with our money. And so a lot of that work in retraining your brain is understanding that...

• 
  
• Why comparison doesn’t serve you, and is the worst thing you can do
• 
  
• 
  
• Knowing what success looks like to you, and what your goals are
• 
  
• 
  
• The importance of goal setting
• 
  
• 
  
• The ways we can let our ego get in our way
• 
  
• 
  
• Being realistic about what you can achieve
• 
  
• 
  
• How work isn’t everything and rest is essential
• 
  
• 
  
• The importance of celebrating every win, no matter the size
• 
  

• 
  
• Practical ways you can stop the comparison and make sure you stay in your lane
• 
  
• 
  
• The mistakes I made this year, because not setting my goals, resulted in me having no lane
• 
  
• 
  
• Take everything you see with a pinch of salt because it’s never the full picture
• 
  

Instagram live

Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. Thank you as always for listening and being in my amazing community. I appreciate you so, so very much because otherwise I'd just be recording these things and putting them out and like into the ether.So I really do appreciate you taking the time. I know your world is busy. And no doubt you are doing something while listening to this, the school run, a walk. I normally listen to stuff when I put my makeup on. Uh, so I do really appreciate you listening and being there. So this week we're going to be talking about staying in our own lanes.This is something that I think has helped me massively and something that I've had to learn to focus on over the years because it's so incredibly easy to get distracted. I can't even speak, get distracted by others, lose focus and become disheartened. So how do we do it? Like. You know, we know the phrase, stay in your own lane.We know what it means. It means focusing on your own stuff and not getting distracted and just keep driving forward. But how do we actually do it when we're in business? Because it's not, it's not a bad thing to know what others are doing. So sometimes it's helpful to have an idea of what a competitor's doing or, you know, they might have an interesting angle on something that you could offer a different angle on, and then that inspires you to do some content.So it's not like I'm saying don't ever look at competitors or people in your world, but how do we make sure that we don't spend way too much time? Now I am going to admit which I'm sure the rest of you can get on to someone's, you know, seeing something of someone's and then clicking through and clicking through and then getting on their website and then looking at this and then seeing this and that.And by the end of like the 10, 15 minutes, I've wind myself up into absolute stupor of like oh man. You know, they're doing everything and look at how they've achieved this and why have I not done that? So we need to make sure that we can focus on our own stuff. So the very first step of staying in your own lane is knowing what that lane is and where that lane is going.Because like you can't just sit and do your own work and focus on your own stuff without actually knowing what that lane looks like, because. How do you know? So for instance, one thing for me is I don't get jealous about people having YouTube channels or YouTube success, because that's not what I do.And therefore that doesn't even bother me. I don't look at it. I think maybe I should be doing YouTube or I should definitely do YouTube. I probably have had numerous different times in the past. God knows how many years, but. But now I know I'm focused enough as to where we're going. Now. It's not to say I won't ever do it.It's not to say that, you know, something might change, but I know that that is not my lane. That's not what I'm focused on. And therefore, I am not going to concern myself too greatly when I see someone having crazy, amazing success over that. So that's the first thing you need to know what that goal is, where you're heading, what you are doing, and what's important to you. Now, you know, and there's probably many podcasts you can go back to listen to.There's definitely goal setting podcasts, but you know, I'm big on this. And I talk about this a lot because it's so very important, but this year. At the beginning of this year, sorry. At the end of last year, I did an awful lot of sessions around helping and coaching people to create their own goals and plans and structure and visions and all of that great stuff.And I love it. I absolutely love it. And I stand by every single word I say about it. However I did it so much for other people that I didn't do it for me. And because obviously while I'm taking these workshops or I'm doing the VIP retreat or whatever it is I'm doing, I'm the one, you know, like creating that space to do the work.So even though there are points where everyone goes quiet and they do a bit of the work of their own goals or their own thinking. And then we all come back together to have conversations about, you know, what they've put and how we can help them and that sort of thing. I can't do that. While in that session, I can't be doing my own stuff.So I kept saying to myself, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And previous years before COVID I went out to Nashville and I did it with the amazing Mary and Michael Hyatt. And. That was brilliant. But this year I was too late. So the event that I normally go to was on the week before we actually ended up being in Nashville.So Mary gave me a workbook to work through and stuff, which I tried to do on my own. It didn't quite work. Anyway, I ended up not doing it. I ended up having no goals for this year. End up having no vision. I end up having no direction. I knew what I needed to achieve in the first few months of this year, which was the brand, the website, moving over to ActiveCampaign, doing all this other stuff.But. I didn't set a goal for me. I didn't have any kind of focus and we got to May. And I literally was like, what, what am I doing? Where are we going? What am I focusing on? And I think it was a huge mistake I made. So I literally sat down on something like, and I joked with everybody like the 6th of May and wrote my year's goals.Um, Actually one of the things I'm doing as I'm recording this, it's the 13th of May. And the next thing I'm going to do today is after I finish my podcast, I'm going to create my vision board because I haven't done one. And, and I think that is huge. So for me, I have noticed a big difference in my focus and my energy and my, I guess, drive because I haven't had my lanes set out from day one and I won't be doing that again.And I have done it now. Make sure I've got everything in place for it. So that is super, super crazy important to have that goal to, and somewhere you're going to understand what your lane looks like. So the next thing, and this is really tricky. Okay. And I can give you a couple of tips of things that I do, but the next thing is to try not to look and compare yourself to others.They say comparison is the fith of joy. Is that what they say? If I just made that up? I think that's what they say. I like the they. I don't know who they are, but anyway. So, and it is comparison is just awful for a business owner. And I have dealt with it many times of myself. I've dealt with it many times of my members of them like coming to a coaching call going "This person they're you know, we started at the same time. And now their business is this and mine isn't and dah dah dah." And it's just the worst thing you can do because it doesn't serve you. It doesn't do anything for you unless you're one of these people that is over competitive, it might drive you a little bit. But the truth is don't believe everything you see, and hear. Now we can make everything look amazing online. Course we can, we know how this looks, we know how it works. We know what an Instagram lifestyle looks like to a normal lifestyle. We totally can make everything look so good, but you don't know the reality behind the tool. So you don't know if someone's just. Like, let's say you are a social media manager and someone's just got an amazing contract with someone that actually they are not, uh, they, that wasn't a family member or someone they knew, or someone says I'm full.I've got no more work. Well, you don't know what they're charging for it. You know, they could be charging half the amount you've got, and that's why they're full. The same with how much money people earn. Yeah. Granted, they might give you a screenshot of their you know, PayPal or whatever. However, you don't know how much money they spent to get to that point.So, you're never going to know the truth because people are not honest enough. I did, um, and Instagram life while back, and I'm doing more of them, but I didn't want one a while back. And I admitted that it sounds like it was a dirty secret. I did a coaching call, not so long ago, that had four people on it.And I didn't want to talk about that. I didn't want to publicly say. I did a coaching call that only had four people on it. And I spoke to Mary about it and she was saying, you know, what was that coaching call like? I was like, well, I was flipping amazing. They had the best coaching call in their life. Because there were only four of them.And I literally went through each one of them and their business. And, you know, we focused a big chunk of time on their business each. It was a two hour call. So they probably had like, you know, half an hour each on their business with me, which ordinarily a one-to-one time with me is a lot of money. I said, so they had a brilliant call.I had a brilliant call because I'd love chatting with them and it didn't make any difference to me that there's only four of them. And she was like, so what was it? And I said, I think it must be my ego. My ego must've been like, well, I can't possibly put up, you know, a photo up of saying, oh look the four of us on the coaching call because people think, oh my God, is that it?And I know I've seen photos of other people's calls where there's been like a full zoom screen of all these faces. And it's like, yeah, but that kind of doesn't mean anything does it? It doesn't mean that it was better than what I did. It doesn't mean that they got more from it. It's just different. So I think not allowing ourselves to be. Sort of tainted by that. And it was funny. Cause while I was on this live, one of my other members who also has a membership said I did one the other day. It said I only had one person on it. And it's like, and you know what? That one person would have had the best time with you ever, like, why was so ashamed of admitting that we've only got one person on a coaching call or you launched something and only 10 people bought it or.You have only got five clients and you'd like seven, we're all on a journey. We're all trying to do stuff. We're all trying to, you know, make this work. So I think we should be thinking about celebrating everybody and trying to lift everybody up. Instead of watching those people who seem to be doing it crazily successfully.And they'll always tell you, of course they will. Um, and then thinking, oh, well I'm a complete failure. Like I said, you don't know what has gone into that. They could be working every hour of every single day before, you know. You might have had a lovely afternoon off with the family. You might have had a relaxing weekend, like I do in the garden and I could have spent it.I could have spent my entire weekend creating content, showing up, doing all this stuff, writing sales emails. But I choose not to. I choose to pass around in my garden and talk to my plants, like a crazy plant woman. Um, and that's important to me, but like I said, when it looks, when you look at other people and they've done this, that, and the other, you can go, oh, okay.One thing I had for a while was, um, quite a few people that I coached to a twos and obviously they were coming to me to be coached, you know, which was one thing. And those two, their memberships grew faster than mine ever has. And I used to really beat myself up about it. Cause I was like, well, I'm the one teaching them this stuff.So if I can do it for them, why the hell can I do it for myself? I'm going to have to remind myself there's two of them. So they can literally get double the amount of work done in the time. But then I have to remind myself that there's two of them, so they get half the amount of income. So even when you look at something wow that's amazing.Yeah. But they've got to split that two ways. So just, just try and think about that. So what do I do in terms of practical stuff? I mute people. I actually mute, like cause quite a lot people I don't mute a lot of people. I mute lots of people in my world because I don't want to see what they're doing because everything is so similar.And. And it's just, it's just not worth it. I just spend far too much energy and time on other people. I don't want to, I just want to spend time with my members and on my stuff and doing stuff I love. So I have muted some accounts that I don't want to see the content anymore, especially the accounts that like, and you know them, you've got them where they're constantly showing off, or they're constantly going to look at this.I'm so amazing and good on them. Brilliant. Well done. But also sometimes, you know, it's not the whole truth, so I've muted people off. Um, I've unfollowed people. If I felt that it's not in line with my values or me, or doesn't bring me good energy, I've asked people to stop sending me stuff. So I have some very lovely friends in this space and they will often go, did you see this. And I'll be like. No, because I muted that person and, and then the scandal starts and it's like, so now they know that I don't want to see it. And there's a reason I don't want to see it because I don't want to get involved. I just want to do my own thing. So, yeah, I think that for me is one of the most important things, because again, when I'm going online and we talk about this, when you do something like a morning routine, that you shouldn't look at your emails, or anything before your day starts. Because that can affect your mood. So let's just say you wake up this morning, you're feeling really good. I got this to do today. I'm working on my new thing. A new service that I'm going to talk about later in the week, and let's say, I don't know you as a social media manager, and you're gonna start doing things like power hours or content hours or whatever.And suddenly you go on Instagram and someone who's in your world who does what you do and you think does it slightly better or. It's slightly more successful, and suddenly announces to the world. I'm going to do content around people. What is the point in that? No, one's going to buy mine. No, one's going to look at me because they've done it.They stole the idea first. I'm useless. I should have done it quicker. I'd beat myself around the head and then your day is ruined. So that's why I mute some people off because you don't want to do that. You just want to, you know, people might buy from you because they love you. They might not buy from them because they don't like them.They might buy from them and then they might regret it and come to you or they might never come to you. And that's fine as well. So for me, it's about, like I said, taking everything with a pinch of salt because it's never the full picture. And then also, you know, doing what you can in terms of unfollowing and muting. You know, accounts or people that don't serve you. Next thing is to remember to rest. Okay. Remember that it's not all about work, work, work, work a little bit, like I said before, you know, someone's success that you can see might be at the detriment of their family or their health or their friends, or their relationships, their partners, you don't know that you don't know what's going on in their world.So when someone seems to be flying ahead of you, cause like how do they get all that stuff out? How do they do this? How do they do that? They could be working constantly. And I don't want you to fall into the trap of thinking. In order to do that, I've got to do the same. I've got to be hustling. I've got to be working every single hour of every single day.I want you to ask yourself, how can this be easy and fun? How can I do this? How can I create this life and do this job and make some money without it feeling hard and, and difficult and being unhappy. So remember that it's not just about going out there and working to try and catch them. It's not a race.The only person you're racing against is you, that is it. The only person who you should be looking at is where you were and where you've come, which brings me really nicely onto my last point about this, which is you need to celebrate every single win, no matter how small you think it is. The first 10 people on your email list.Yay. Cheers. Congratulate yourself, the first person to reply to an email, pat yourself on the back. I remember the first person to DM me that I didn't know. Oh my God. It was phenomenal. One of the things that my husband asks me all the time is if someone joins the membership, do you know them? And I get so excited.No, I don't. It's amazing. So again, when you see people celebrate all the big things that they celebrate online and publicly, and you think, oh my gosh, I'm nowhere near that. And then you feel like. Well, I can't celebrate that because that's just stupid or pathetic or whatever. Horrible things we tell ourselves. It is not like the fact that you even have a business means you are in the minority, like the fact that you even dead to do this, or even started it, or even thought about it and had the guts to do it means that already is something you should be celebrating and patting yourself on the back for every single day.So don't let seeing other people and what they're doing and what they achieved, stop you from feeling over the flipping moon about what you've done. And like I said, every single step of every single part of your journey, celebrate cheer, be amazed at it because they're all amazing. All of it, every single one.So there we go. Keep your head down, keep focused, know what you're working on, know what you're not working on. Remember that you are...

Teresa: Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I am so excited for you to listen to this one. I've just be listening back. 'cause you know, I batch and this was done a while back now, which is really odd, but amazing that it's coming out now, considering the episode I did last week, if you haven't listened to that one, then go back and listen. It was basically talking about why you don't want an online business.

Not saying everyone doesn't want one, but just some truth. And then this was coming up, which is crazy timing because it's so good. So this is a conversation with the amazing Dr. Michelle. All about bro marketing and some of the very unpleasant tactics that people use. Now, interestingly enough, there was a time in my world where I was getting into this, where I was like, okay, that's the way we do it.

And that's the way I taught it. And now I'm sure if you went back and looked at some of my earliest stuff and now I might contradicted myself and. Although, I don't like doing that because I like being very transparent and honest, but I've learned, I learned the difference and it took me ages and I spent a lot of money getting understanding of what this looks like in practice.

And I've been sold to in so many different ways and had so many different tactics. And it's, it's a hard lesson to learn because it costs you money. And I think I. Like I said over time, I have now developed and changed what my messages and what I'm saying. And like I said, that might contradict some of my earliest stuff, but that's because I've learned.

And I understand now and I don't like it and it doesn't fit with my values. And I don't think I was strong enough in the earlier days to go, oh, this doesn't feel nice. Do I really have to say this? Or is this the way we do it? Or is this like, it feels like I'm tricking them into buying something from me, which is things like why my cart is always open now because I am there when you are ready.

Like, I love the fact that I just get, you know, wake up on a random day and I've got a new member. Like, I love that. I love that I'm there when I have. I give you the opportunity to make the decision yourself. I am not forcing you into going, you must join or otherwise, you're going to miss out. So this conversation, I have to apologize a little bit because I think I just get into this point where I'm like, oh, and they do this.

Oh, and they do this. So passionate about it. Like that's I was just the back I was doing, like listening to myself thinking. Less speak Teresa, like what the hell? Anyway. So she was great and I loved it and she was so refreshing and it was just so nice to hear. So yeah, I am. I'm really excited about this episode. I am not going to talk any longer, uh, link up to everything about her and how amazing she is in the show notes. But here she is.

Okay. I am super excited today to welcome to the podcast Dr. Michelle Mazur. Michelle, how are you doing?

Michelle: I am great. And I'm so excited to be here with you.

Teresa: Oh, me too. I was just saying that before we got on, I was going through Instagram like yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this is going to be such a fun conversation. But we start, exactly the same way every time by getting you to introduce yourself to my audience and tell them, how you got to do the thing that you do today?

Michelle: Ooh, that's such a good question. So I run a company called communication rebel and we specialize in messaging. So I created a framework called the three word rebellion, and it's really about how do you create your own start with why your own five second rule. And then what are the key messages you need to get people to buy into that, that you can use in your marketing, your sales, your PR efforts. So that you can be radically consistent and get known for your work and create demand for your work. So that is what I'm focused on, how I got here. So this is my 10th year in business. Which I'm very excited about.

Teresa: Congratulations.

Michelle: Yeah. And my background was I'm an academic by training.

So I have a PhD in communication, long story short hated the politics of academia was not a good time. Decided to I was teaching at the university of Hawaii. I moved to Seattle where I am now. Went into market research. Realised, I love research, but I didn't like being an employee wasn't particularly good at it.

And I ended up starting this company because of friends said to me, you know, you have all of this information about communications stuck in your head. And he's like, you should be doing something with that. You should be helping people with everything, you know. And I'm like, oh, he was just started broad start something.

So my business started as a blog. I originally was a public speaking coach because I loved speaking. Then I realized later I really did not like this professional speaking industry, but that's a story for another day.

Teresa: Okay, save that for another podcast.

Michelle: But everything I was doing was really focused around how do you construct this keynote speech?

Like, what's the core message, what's the change? How do you market this so that people actually want to hire you? And I began to realize that my clients like, wow, my clients are using what we do together in lots of different ways. Like I'm seeing our message pop up on their website, their home page, you know, they would do like a launch sequence around there in what we created.

And I'm like, Ooh, I see a bigger opportunity by going broader and really focusing on helping people powerfully communicate the value their business is creating, and especially for my rebels who are doing things a little bit differently, and especially for the people who don't love the current online state of business with the manipulative tactics and kind of the sleazy sales tactics as well. So that became my focus. And now I've been doing again, I've been working with the three word rebellion framework for almost five years.

Teresa: Amazing. And like, I feel like talking to you it's like, you're gonna wrap me up and go, it's safe here. It's safe.

Michelle: It is.

Teresa: This is the online space I'd been looking for. You know, my background is traditionally marketing. I have a degree in it. Spent 16 odd years in it now. And I came into my own business.

I didn't normally do an intro about myself, but kind of leads the question. I'm with the business. And I created an agency. So I had my own agency. We did other people's marketing and I bet like, you love speaking. Yes. Going up stage. Seeing those people. It was amazing. And all the online experts and all the people that I went and learned from were doing that they would have been seen as the expert.

And I was like, I want to be that I want to be the person who's standing there and telling, you know, the world I know a lot of stuff, I've done a lot of stuff. And I still look at the online world and I was like, actually, I really love this because now I'm not just working with companies who could afford me.

I've got a lot of experience. I was an expensive agency to go to and I wanted to work. I loved helping small businesses and I'm a complete end of the server like I constantly to deliver, because I see things it's like, it's the easiest breathing thing. It's like, someone comes to me, tells me about their business plan like ting ting.

And my brain just wakes up like an outlet. So we came into this online world and a really kind of. This is brilliant. Like what an opportunity, because this was like six years ago when, especially over in the UK, it was not as big as it is. I would say that's still in the same today.

Michelle: Yeah. I would agree with that from what I can see.

Teresa: You guys are ahead of us on this.

And so I came into it thinking how wonderful it was and then slowly over time. I wanted to like scrub my skin with bleach.

And then I was watching these people who didn't know anywhere near as much as I knew. Weren't as kind of like didn't care. Like they literally didn't care about their customers, about their audience. About their success and were selling this stuff. And were more successful and still the more successful than I am and to this day, in some instances.

And I just thought, How can people not see this? How can like people not see what they're doing? And this is something that you've obviously jumped fully on board. So yeah. Let me start by just to say like we, I went and we looked at the podcast and what the word bro marketing came up.

What do you mean for my audience about bro marketing?

Michelle: Yes. So bro marketing is the use of psychological triggers. Like we think about scarcity, social proof authority in order to manipulate people and take away their consent so that you make a sale. So that, and you see it all the time in the online world. So it can include things like, you know, the, those scarcity pushes those disappearing bonuses, the rags to riches stories, the really income-driven testimonials with like zero contacts around them.

All of that would fall into bro marketing. But at the end of the day, it's based in manipulation and coercion with the goal of shutting down critical thinking. So you're no longer making the best purchasing decision based on what your business needs. You're making it on things like fear and fear of missing out.

And, oh my gosh, this is going to be the thing that helps my business forward.

Teresa: This is the golden ticket that, yes, I need this. I can't be successful without this.

Michelle: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Teresa: So this is something that I have seen, like the worst of the worst. And there are some like that who are disgusting. Like literally shocking.

I can't believe people are buying from them but they seem to be very successful and they're doing all the things like we've seen the adverts went someone sat in their jets. I see that a lot. Uh, we see them stood outside either stood outside the jet or in the car, leaning against that like crazy evasive car or some crazy amazing holiday, or like all these things.

And, and then we've seen like some people who are, who seem pretty good, but underlying there's like some stuff, but oh yeah. My concern in mind, like I think what I want to get from this interview. I started watching this guy on YouTube called, oh, it's gonna drive me crazy. If I was named it'll come to me in a bit.

Oh, Contrapreneur that's what it's called. Do you know him?

Michelle: No, I do not.

Teresa: Okay. So go check him out on YouTube and he basically calls out Contrapreneurs and he calls like the big ones. Like there are some pretty big names uh, in this space. And he calls them out and basically says like he has, he has Contrapreneur bingo.

It's very funny. So it's like, is there a value stack? Yeah, there's a value stack. It's

like, he is, they're like the rags to riches story. Yeah. Like, you know, how did you tick up all the bingo things? Cause they said all the things. So I was watching this and I was like, oh my God, this is so good. And then suddenly the fear like started to hit me into. Oh God, how much of this do I do? And how do I not?

It's hard. How do I not do it, but how do I still sell in this industry? Because I'm up against people who are using these tactics and sorry, and I understand this, like, my head is just explainable is that I'm literally on the screen in front of me. I've got your Instagram and it's, you've put a post up and I have a story about this that you can have a profitable course of even no audience.

Absolute rubbish.

Michelle: Yeah. No.

Teresa: You know, you've put on their truth. Courses convert a 1 or 3% you need a massive audience. And my, one of my friends was watching someone fairly big doing a webinar, talking about courses, and they gave an example of so-and-so who has lists of 150 people.

And he launched making $30,000 in his first go. And then of course my friend messaged me. "Oh my God, did you see this? Like, this is amazing." And I'm like, yeah, but they didn't tell you, like, did they have a Facebook group? Did they have an amazing podcast where they, this thing, like, you don't know all those things as well. So like I've just literally like vomited loads of words that yeah.

Michelle: Yes. Yes.

Teresa: How do we, how do we, how do we stop people buying from these people and how do we hopefully, very genuine, real marketers who can genuinely help people selling online product did an online world without using these tactics.

Michelle: Yeah. So to, okay. So I want to pick this apart in two different ways, because there's the, how do we stop buying this stuff?

How do we stop falling for this stuff? And as we were talking about my friend and podcast host Maggie Patterson, and I have a whole podcast on this called Duped: The Dark Side of Online Business, which has really focused into like how you as a consumer can protect yourself. So that you're making sure you're doing wise investments. Because once you start seeing it, you're like, oh, I can see what's happening here because a lot of it is very, very subtle.

Um, and women do it too. It's not just men. And so I think it's. And we kind of know when it's happening in our potties too. It's like, I swear like our, all of our recommendations are like, you need to slow down and critically think about your purchases. But I think it's that just getting that awareness of like, oh, they're using scarcity or, oh, there's that rags to riches story or, oh, look at all this luxury lifestyle.

They're showing me and the branded photo shoots and all of these things, or the high ticket, everything like everything's high ticket this year. And I'm like, that doesn't mean anything. To meaning once to her. So we can become aware in those ways. But I think the trickier question that actually has a pretty simple, but not easy answer is how do we divest our own businesses from this and still make money.

Because here's what you shouldn't do. I had a client recently who learned all about this, and then she stripped all of it out from her business.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So do you ever sit there and think they're gonna find me out. Who on earth who I think I am. I joke. I blank stuff all the time. Cause then if I say a blanket, then it kind of just makes out like, while if I get it wrong, I get it wrong.

It's fine. I think if you are running your own business, you have so many of these words in your head. I'm trying to feel confident about what you're doing, trying to really own who you are and your space and what you're good at. I think it's really hard or can be really hard. And I know for a long time, I didn't feel like that.

I didn't feel like I knew what I was good at or even if I had an inclination of, I thought I knew what I was good at. I didn't want to tell anybody and I didn't want to go, do you know what? I'm actually brilliant at this? Check me out. Because we don't like to do that. So today on the podcast, I have the very lovely Kierra Jones. And we are talking all about those messages that are in our head, the voices that are in our head that talk about.

You know that we're not good enough and who do we think we are? And we talk about how sometime our superpower is actually given to us as a negative thing. And both her and I tell stories about actually how that happens to us in terms of, you know, We were told for a long time that the thing that has actually turned out to be our superpower was a bad thing.

So, and then talking about how do we take all of these things and how do we then use them in marketing. How do we then use them to find the right people and work with the right people so that we're in our zone of genius. It's a really great conversation. She's really fantastic to talk to. And I think you're going to get a huge amount from it.

So let me tell you who Kierra is. Kierra Jones is an International Visibility & Sales Mindset Coach, Brand Messaging & Monetization Consultant, Speaker, & Amazon Best-Selling Author. She has coaching programs, courses and mentorship, and speaking helps women get the Messaging, monetization and mindset they need to show, speak and sell more powerfully, purposefully and profitably.

She is passionate about helping women stop undervaluing their expertise and giving it away for pennies! Specifically, Kierra helps women and coaches, consultants, speakers, trainers with services, speaking and expert based business, personal brands and their mindset message to elevate their visibility, attract aligned clients and amplify how they package position and profit their expertise.

She's great. I think you're going to get a lot from it. If anything, you're just going to come out of it, feeling like totally empowered. And you want to take on the world. I can't wait to see what you think of it.

It's my absolute pleasure today to welcome to the podcast Kierra Jones. Kierra how are you doing?

Kierra: I am awesome. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Teresa: My pleasure. My pleasure. So you will last a very long day of podcasts. So I pray to goodness that I am still like, you know, I'd have the, do you know what happens? I don't know about you, but like, even when you feel tired, the minute I'm on, I'm like, boom. And I'm it's fine. I will walk out of here. My husband will talk to me and I don't want him to talk to me. He's like finally seeing you, you're laughing. You're having fun. So, yeah. Yeah. But now I, now I want to be quiet. Like you.

Kierra: I can totally resonate. I think that really just goes back to the power of the work that we do and why, you know, really stepping into your zone of genius.

It's like, It's this it's just a part of your identity and that your business, isn't your identity. Like I went into this like space, um, couple of years ago where it was like, I had the transformation of how I thought about my work. It was like, it's not actually a business. It's actually like, I'm just showing up, doing the things that I already do.

So that's why I can easily go on a call. We talked about this. I completely just came from the gym from brunch. And it was like, you know, literally two minutes ago. Let my daughter out, I'm upstairs and it's like bam, we're on, you know, and it's just, it's really beautiful actually to me. And I think there's such power for more of us women to embrace that.

We think that we need to show up away, or we need to be something else that we need to add something on. And it's actually like, no, it's actually the easiest parts of us. And then you just need those moments where you recharge and now you're able to be present to husband, partner, children whomever, you know, uh, else you need to be present to including yourself.

Um, so yeah, I think that's a part of, to me, why it comes so easy of just realizing it's, it's literally just like me being me and, um, yeah, just need to, I need to recharge before I let you, you know come in.

Teresa: Yeah you're right. And I think when it's something you love, even if you're feeling tired, even if you're like, it's been a long day, I've worked really hard and all those things it's still like, but I love it.

So that helps massively. But Kierra it's so good to have you on. We're going to talk about such cool things, but first of all, I'd like you to just take a moment to introduce yourself to my audience and let them know how you got to do what you do today.

Kierra: Yeah, I'll try to make it short. Uh, so my name is Kierra Jones, also known as the shine strategist, and I'm all about helping women of impact shine, more powerfully in their genius.

We give our genius away for pennies. We undersell it. We under uh, message it as I like to say. And so my focus is really helping women with the mindset and the messaging they need to show up, speak and sell more powerfully so that we can create the lives that we want in full alignment with who we're here to be.

So how I got into this work? Woo man, I, you know, I tell my clients I've been coaching since I was seven. I have, I understand that like, that's a part of my identity. I've always been on who thought deeper. My uncle would tell me, like, you think too deep, or like in fifth grade, my teacher, Ms. Matthew, she would say like, Kierra's always asking why, but she loved it.

The kids didn't. So I always was in this space where I wanted to ask deeper questions and, um, you know, now I joke with my uncle, you know, I'm like "Well, I get paid thousands of dollars to ask deeper questions and to speak and to, you know, do all these things that I thought used to be weird. And I was too much and I was too extra or maybe I wasn't enough and all that."

So a part of me, one is like this, this has literally been a part of me. I just didn't know that I could actually get paid for this. And this was like a thing. This wasn't an option on the majors in college. So, you know, I did the whole, like. You know, raised by a single mother. I did the whole like okay. To be successful, go to college.

So I went to college, I got to that corporate career. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college, the first to work in corporate America. Um, I was making more money than my parents at the age of 19 already. So it was it, you know, there was, this shifted me of like, oh, okay. So I am successful now I've went to college.

I graduated early and I got it. And I worked for a Fortune 500 Company. And, you know, Teresa, I had this moment where I was managing a $5 million territory. I was 20 something years old. I was often the only woman on my team. Always the only black person on my team. And, um, you know, I had moved several times every like 13 to 19 months cause I was a sales consultant.

And um, you know, I had this moment where in 2014, my company was going through a reorg and uh, I had already had these like feelings in me where I knew something was all off. And I was that like annoying girlfriend where at cocktails, you're like, this is what happened to me at work today. And this is what and they're like "Kierra we don't want to talk about work." I loved what I did. There was this moment where I felt out of love with it. Once I started realizing how much of what I call my shine, I was giving away. It felt like, wow, you know, here's this 5 million dollar territory. I grew by double digits, you know, fast forward I had took a demotion in 2013-14 to get back to the east coast because I was living in the Midwest at the time.

And I'm from Jersey. And I was like, man, I'm I kinda missed my family. And so, you know, getting into this space where, you know, I had on paper, like here's the top things I've done with my clients. And, uh, you know, I remember my, my management team saying, "Okay great." You know, but HR says that for us to talk about a promotion, you know, you need to be here for 12 months.

So there was this moment of like, so I'm performing like this, but I need to wait for this timeline. And it was kind of like, uh, like something happened in that No, or that like, you need to wait. And it was like, "But y'all, don't wait for me to go to work and do my job and you know everything." And it wasn't this like, oh, I'm in my ego.

This is what I do. It was black and white. You know, I had my largest client at the time, reach out to my management team, like, oh my gosh, she's the best consultant that we've had. Again, youngest person on my team, only black person at that time. I was the only woman. So it lit this fire in me that like, when did I be, I'm the first person to go to college in my family.

I'm like, you know, I've done things in my life where I was the first of so many things. When did I become this person who had to wait for someone to tell me and give me permission? So 2014, I came home. I had this mirror and this moment in the mirror, and I had like mascara, drippy nose was running all the things, but I had this ugly cry, this beautiful, ugly cry.

Of like, who am I? And in that moment, I didn't know what it was or what I would do, but in 2014, in that moment, I said, I'm going to do something that helps me step into me, even if it's like on the side while I still work. So fast forward, I was introduced to the online space and I had a product-based business at the time of jewelry boutique, an online accessory boutique.

And I hired a coach and I remember our first session. I was like, this is what a coach does. This is what I do as a consultant. There's some differences, but this is pretty much what I do every day, you know, for my job. And more and more, I had like style clients who would tell, like, I would give them little sales tips and everything like, "Ooh, thank you Kierra."

Or like, you know, it would shift their confidence around how they would show up in video when, when they're speaking on stages, because I worked with entrepreneurs from a style perspective and it was like, "Kierra you're really great with this. But like, when you share with me this sales or messaging tip or this. It really is amazing. Like you're sure you're on the right thing."

And I have my own limiting beliefs of like, well, I do that for my day job. Do I really make a business out of that? And you know, it took that year, but finally, so that was 2015, 2016 was when I was like, okay, it won't leave my head.

People keep telling me, like, I need to at least try this. And I went, full-time 2016 as well. And haven't, haven't looked back since, so that's whole life.

Teresa: Amazing. I loved it. I loved it. That's a great story. Really, really good. and it's really like, that's pretty interesting that the corporate thing that like that confinements of no, you're not at that point yet.

No, but I'm doing all the right things. You know, and, and giving that to someone else and going get that's their decision as to how successful I am. And so like coming into your own and doing your own. And I remember I never wanted my own business ever. Like it never crossed my mind that I was leaving my current role because thing, few things had happened and I decided I need to leave.

I need to go somewhere else. And I thought to myself, oh, I'll, I'll get another job easy. Like, I'm really good at what I do. I do marketing. I've done it for a long time. I'm really good at this stuff. And a joke was coming. And I was like, oh, because I was quite an extensive results. And then I started to look at my role where I bought in all this money for the business.

And I've thought of what if I could do that for me, like, you know, I was building their business by, you know, a hundred thousand whatever. And I thought, well, what if I sold me and got that? And then suddenly it kind of hit me. I could do this. So tell me about those early days. Like how was it first though?

Because one thing, like one thing that is the key thing that I didn't realize straight off the bat, I thought I've got to be amongst and I've done it all these years. I'm very good at what I do. This'll be easy, like stupidly thought this could be easy. Didn't for one second think anything about mindset and the impact that that might have on me, my business, my success, how I show up what I do, what I charge, like didn't think about that.

So, how were you in those early days?

Kierra: Yeah, mindset wise. I feel that when you were first starting out there definitely is that imposter that comes up. That like, even in the moment I show with my story, I do this for a job. I get paid a salary to do this. You're telling me I can go make a program in a package and put a price on it.

And other people, like not the people, not HR, like not my job, but other people would pay me for this? Like, there is a mind shift that I feel happens of like I could pick what that price is going to be like, you know, I used to say this joke. Hmm. I want to raise. Okay. I'm going to change my price. And I don't have to go and ask HR.

I don't have to go ask my management team. I don't need to go give you this long list of accomplishments. Nope. I decided I wanted to do it. I'm doing it. So I feel that there was this, that was one shift I had to make was like, oh, I actually it's so interesting. The moment when you see it happen for clients, especially when I used to coach entrepreneurs who were in their earlier stages more, it was so beautiful to see that permission that was granted.

So I would say that was one thing for me of like the permission that like you get to do this and letting go of that imposter of like, I'm not doing anything wrong, there's nothing wrong that I'm, that I'm doing here. Uh, the second thing I would say is actually around messaging. And I talk about messaging every day, all day, but it's, I look at messaging so much deeper than what are the words I'm putting on a paper.

What's the words I'm putting in a video or on a post email, all that stuff is so much deeper. It's actually deeply connected to you expressing, right? And so really that's to me, what's happening with sales and what's with messaging it's you expressing your value, but in order for you to not only just express it, but embody it.

You need to believe, like you need to know very much hell. I'm like, oh, I've been in coach since I was seven. I just get paid for it now. I just didn't know I could get charged for it now. Like, it's like, you need to know this is who I am. This is what I do. This is what the heck I know it does for you. And here's, you know how I think how I know it's going to help you.

Are you ready to move forward in that? And obviously there's more to it of like, just being able to position that offer or, you know, your expertise, your zone of genius, whatever it is, but there's this expression. And this embodiment that I feel early on, I have seen so many clients, even women who are any, you know, make low for low to mid four figures in their business.

Like you could be making $5,000 a month and still be in this space of like, I don't know, I have a client who's at, you know, 10 K a month and she's, you know, it's like, you've made $10,000 every month. You know, this year,...

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are things? So today for me is podcast batching day. I am now getting super organized again. Oh, it feels so good, so, so good to get ahead and batch. My earnest light problem is I've been doing a detox as I record today.

And it's affected my voice because I don't know about you. I know someone else's like this whenever I do anything, or if I ever get ill, always go straight to my voice. And I think it's because I use it so much, uh, much to my husband's dismay probably, but it always goes to my voice. So I'm a little bit croaky, but I'm way better than I was.

For these next couple of episodes. If you hear me a bit croaky, this might be why. So today we have a solo episode and I've decided that today I'm going to talk about the things that I did in my business that failed. Because I think lots of us don't like to talk about failing. We don't like the idea of failing.

We don't want to fail. It doesn't feel nice. It's a bit embarrassing, to be honest, when you fail or I find it a bit embarrassing. But it is so part of our business journey, it's unbelievable. I don't know a single business owner that hasn't failed at something. And there are a million amazing quotes out there that talk about the fact of, you know, if you're not failing, you're not trying, you know, that failing's better than doing nothing, you know?

I can literally like give you a million if I tried. So I want to talk about some of the places I failed, but the most important bit about this episode and generally about failing is the fact of what you learned from it or what came from it. So there's always that thing of, you know, you didn't fail, you just learned, you know, you either win or you learn and that's it.

And I think it doesn't always feel that good. It doesn't always think, you know, I don't always fail and go, "Woo, brilliant. Look what I learned." Like, I don't always feel like that. However, I think they're not wrong. I think, you know, the fact is you do learn when you fail and failing means that you've at least done something.

So you've at least got a conversation you can have about it. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to look at the places that I felt that I failed in my business and what I learned and what sort of came from that failure. So let's go right back to the beginning of starting my business. So I think, I mean, there's loads of things I did wrong when I started, but I wouldn't necessarily call them failures.

I think one of the biggest failures I had when I had the agency, which wasn't like a one thing, and then I went, "Oh, I failed." It was like an over a period of time thing. I didn't get clear on A who I wanted to work with B what I was good at and C what I wanted to actually do. And I think that was the big problem for my business in the first kind of year or two was, well not maybe the first year was that I was so concerned with the money side of it, that, and, and good reason I was a single parent and I had a mortgage to pay, child to feed and a car to run.

So it wasn't like I'm saying, you know, I shouldn't have concentrated on the money. I absolutely needed to. But the problem was, I wasn't clear on who I wanted to work, then what I want to do and what I was good at, which meant I took anything and everything. It meant that someone would come to me and go, "Do you know, Google ad words?" And I'll go, "Yep."

Like I think I can learn it. And I did, and I hated it. But. There were many different things that I probably signed up to. There were things that I priced myself wrong because I wasn't giving myself the confidence of going, this is what I'm brilliant at. So I think for me, the very first failure in my business was that it wasn't getting clear on who I liked to work with, what I do and what I like to do.

So I spent many a day learning things wasting way too much time learning things and trying to spread my knowledge even wider than it was. I spent many a day working with people that I didn't like, or that they didn't fit with me or their expectations were not the same expectations as mine. And I spent far too many days not enjoying and liking what I did.

So that one, the thing I kind of learned from that was that you've got to get really clear and there is a real strength in going "This is who I worked with. This is what I like to do. And this is what I'm really flipping good at." Like, those for me are such strong things to go into business with. And I think in the early days I didn't have the confidence and I think lots of people don't have the confidence to do that because they don't want to niche down, they don't want to like minimize their market.

They want to do everything for everyone who'll pay them. But actually it was one of the worst things I could have done. So if you're sat there at the moment and you feel this is you and your sat nodding, I feel for you, first off, cause that sucks and it sucked for me and it didn't feel great, but the good thing is, and the positive thing is that you are doing things and now, you know what you don't like. You know, sort of people you don't like to work with and you know, the sort of stuff that you aren't great at doing.

So now is the chance to either start to change and tweak a little bit in terms of what you offer. To start say no to people when they ask you, "Can you do Google ad words?" If you don't do Google ad words and various different things. So that's, you're learning, you're learning is when you do that thing, when you go into that part of your business and you realize you hate it, then you're learning.

You know, if you didn't have any clients, then you wouldn't know, would you. Well done, pat yourself on the back for getting the clients. That's awesome. Now you can start to tweak and start to understand who you want to work with, what you like to do and what you are brilliant at. Okay. So the second place I thought I failed in my business and I've talked about this before, but it's a big failure is the fact of creating something for online and sitting on it for like a year.

That was like now I look back and think I'd have just gone back and slap myself in the face and gone, "Just get on with it. Don't be ridiculous." And I think there are, there are lots of times I wish I could have done that, but actually again, when I think about the learnings, there are lots to take from it. So. I would say that this, this period in my business is probably one of the biggest learning points. Because I got everything I needed to launch.

And this was the point where I learned about mindset, where I learned about personal development, where I learned about the power of having your mind in the right place. So up until then, I'd done a little bit of kind of the, you know, the mindset stuff. And I dabbled the had, had a coach, but I don't think I had quite realized or put two and two together, but how much the business and me go together, which I know sounds ridiculous, but I really didn't.

So I obviously put together this course, it was a course on How to create content for social media. And I've told this story many times, if you're new to it, then great. If you're not, I'm sorry, you can hear it again. But I had signed up to do a mastermind over in Irvine with James Wedmore and I went over there and I was at an event and he asked me.

I didn't want to answer any questions cause it didn't want to be called out in front of everybody because I was in a room full of what I felt were really, you know, amazing business owners. They were American and they were really confident. And I was like, yeah, I want him to know who I am, but I also don't want to actually have him ask me a question.

So there was a part of the second day that said, you know, what was your key takeaway from the day before? And there's only about 80 of us in the room. And people were saying, this is my key takeaway and he was going great. Thanks. And then he'd move on. So I thought opera, brilliant. This is my opportunity. So he throws me the mic.

They have these like big sponge cube, mic things. And he's like, what would you take away? And I said that "I'm not showing up as the CEO that my business needs me to be." And he's like, "Why?" And I was thinking, no, no, that wasn't the deal. I was just going to say that you were going to go, okay, great. Next person.

And he didn't and basically he went into a whole hot seat that I was not expecting and the very long and short of it was that he found out that I'd got a course. I said, I hadn't launched it. He said, why hadn't I launched it? And I was like, I'm not sure. And he worked out that I was scared. And when he said, what you scared of?

And I said, well, I guess failing, you know, I teach this stuff. I have clients who do this stuff. I meant to know this stuff. And by this point, I think I'd got the podcast on the go. Yeah, definitely got the podcast on the go, you know, and I was getting well known and I was so scared of failing. I would put it out there or no one would want it or I'd put it out there and someone would want it and then they'd go, it's rubbish that I just didn't put it out there.

And he said, so you're, you're scared if you put it out there you'll fail. And, and you know, well, what would failure look like? I was like, well, no one would buy it. And he said, well, how many people have bought it so far? And I'm thinking, well, no one I've just told you I haven't launched it. And he's like, yeah, You failed already then haven't you.

And honestly it, and even thinking about it now, like, it still feels like a punch in the stomach. Because it was, it was huge. It was a massive failure that I did that. I did all this stuff and then I just sat on it and sat on it and sat on it and sat on it and just thought, oh, I can't do it because of this.

And I can't do this because of this. But the failure wasn't necessarily like a business lesson. It was a lesson for me to learn about myself, a lesson to recognize when I was standing in my own way. A lessons to recognize when I was scared of doing something because of the outcome. And for me, that was a massive lesson I learned that day.

And I kind of not ever since then, but certainly that was kind of the starting point where I developed more into the personal development. I developed more into the mindset. I bought more of the mindset into the stuff that I do for me and my members, but also that it kind of, you know, made me think, well, what's the worst that can happen.

And I joke that, you know, I could, I die? No, I'm not going to die from putting your course out, am, I. It can't be that bad. Like, so what I put it out and no one buys, so what? I put it out when someone buys and they don't like it. So what? I put it out and just 10 people buy it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

So for me, that was one of the problem, my biggest failings, cause I could have started my online business and even way ahead of where I am. And actually when I think back to. Like some of the other things I did. Oh, in fact, yeah. That's the next one I need to tell you about. Um, but yeah, you know, it means that my business could have been in a different place right now, but I'm not annoyed about it that little bit frustrated.

However, I'm just sort of like, well, if I hadn't have done that, I wouldn't have learned it. And actually I probably wouldn't be where I am now. So the next one that has a massive failure and I literally, it wasn't even written down. I literally just thought about it. Um, was I set up a lead magnet. My very first lead magnet, I paid a lot of money to go over to Minneapolis and I did a, a weekend course, a full days, and then a three-day conference.

It was a full on week in Minneapolis. All about lead magnets, basically and email lists and managing your list and emailing people and copywriting and landing pages and all this good stuff. And I did all this and I came back and I created a lead magnet. And the very first lead magnet I ever created was aimed at social media managers because I was a social media manager.

And. And I was, I was a good social media manager. We had a good agency by this point. Uh, we had got some good clients. We were earning good money. And I knew that a couple of processes that we used in the business would really help other social media managers. So I put together this amazing lead magnet I'd specifically like aimed at social media managers.

Um, I am slightly kicking myself at this one. And I put this lead magnet out there. And within two weeks I got 800 people on my email list. 800, like I have never been able to replicate that in that speed. Now it did put a bit of money behind on, on Facebook. And back in the days, it probably would have converted better than it does now, but still it was only like 40 or 50 pounds.

We're not talking like 500 quid. I got 800 people on my email list. I'd got like a captive audience and I did nothing with them. Like if you're not silent and trying to kick me listening to this. Oh, my word. What a fool, what a fool. And I don't know why I didn't do anything with it. I'm trying to think, like, what was the reason why did I think there was an element of disbelief?

I think the other thing was that been so much focus on building the list, getting the lead magnet out there, doing all of that, but actually I didn't think about what I was going to do afterwards. And that was probably a mistake. That was probably something that I did wrong. Now, one thing I want to say is this isn't necessarily don't build a list until you've got something to sell them.

That's not the case at all, but I didn't even email them. So I didn't even keep them warm. I didn't even get to know them further. I didn't do anything with them. I literally just built a list, put them in my email system and went "That's cool." Like literally that was it. So I, and one thing that I guess I've learned from it that I, I teach constantly and is a big part of my course build my list.

So I have build my list course where you can basically go on and learn to do the process that I spent a very long time. And about $2,000 doing. But basically the whole process start to finish. What's a lead magnet. Why you need one, what you should pick as a lead magnet, how you create the lead magnet, what you include in it, what emails do you put?

How'd you create the landing page? It includes actually creating the landing page on MailerLite active campaign or Kajabi. And then the key thing is in this course, the last section of the course is now email them. Now, what do you do now? How do you. You know, convert them. If you have certain to convert them to.

And I talk about this in the course, I talk about the onboarding emails. When do you introduce a sale? If you've got a sale. If you haven't got a sale, what do you introduce? So I think for me, that was a really hard lesson I had to learn. And it's a bit annoying because many years later, I coached some people who target social media managers only, and they have an over successful membership, which I helped them launch.

And it's really frustrating because I just think, oh boy, if I'd carried on down that route and I still have a large social media manager audience, and I love having them in there because that was my business. And I've taken my business from a one person to an agency from an agency to online. So no matter where they are in their business or what their goals are, especially if you're listening to this and you're a social media manager or a freelance social media person or marketing, does them, whatever your goals are that you're trying to get to, there's a fair chance. I've had some experience in it.

So, so I really love that I still have them in my audience and I love that I can help them because I've been that space, but it's just frustrating. The, I felt this amazing list and I did nothing with it. Huge failure. Okay. The next thing that was a failure, but not so not so big, but I think it's worth talking about is I have done numerous different ways to launch. I have launched numerous different ways. I have tried many different things and I think one of the failures I've had with launching when I've not had a successful launch.

And you have to remember that someone's successful launch and someone else's non-successful launch are not the same thing. So Amy's idea of Amy Porterfield's idea of a terrible launch. Or my idea of, of living unbelievable launch, because she's at a completely different level to me, whereas someone who's a year in their idea of a launch might be amazing that I might think, oh yeah, that wasn't great for me.

So it purely depends on where you are in your business in terms of what you deem as a success or not as a success, but I have to say every time I've had something about launching and I have, it's not gone the way I wanted and I saw it as a failure.

I've always been able to learn from it. I've always been able to go,...

A very warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are things? So this week we have got the excellent Gloria Chou on the podcast. You know what, just before I record the intro and outro because I do it separately after the interview. I went back and just watched sort of some of the key points and it was so good.

I pretty much watched the entire thing again. Obviously I can watch it cause I record it, but you know, otherwise you'd listen to it, but it's so good. There's so much good stuff coming. And as I mentioned last week, PR is something that I've been doing a lot more of. And I think it's just different ways of looking at it as to why you would do PR. If you're a local business, then it can really help in terms of customers and getting you seen and getting you out there.

But for someone like me, who's audiences worldwide. Then it's, that's a bit trickier. So for me, it's more about credibility. So, uh, recently I've been featured in Authority magazine on Yahoo finance on CBS, on Fox News, on an Australian news. I was interviewed for a TV thing. So the credibility of me being chosen to do those things. It's really awesome.

So that's how I'm currently using it for me. And also it was a lot of PR around the book and writing the book and all that sort of stuff. So, so it is really good, but I don't want you to be put off thinking, you know, it's that kind of PR. She gives some really good practical things that you can do as a small business owner in order to get that PR and get that coverage.

So, oh, and what's really nice for the the intro is because obviously when members of the club are in the club, I get to know them. One of the things that I love and I do kind of fairly often is if I think of a member in the club where actually their business might be a good example for, you know, this or for whatever the subject is, I'm interviewing someone about, I use businesses from the club.

As a sort of case study or as a test or as a, can you give me some advice about this? So what's really lovely is they get a bit of free advice from an expert, which is ACE. And I have used a, one of the club members in this one in particular, who is a online cooking class, a creator. So, yeah, so we talk about her and how it would work for her business, which is really, really cool.

If you are interested in joining the club and maybe getting, you know, featured on a podcast, uh, then you can go to teresaheathwareing.com/theclub and if this is the first time, if you hearing about the club, let me explain what it is. The dream business club is an online business building membership and community for business owners who want to build a successful business that they love and give them the life they dream of.

Now, what do I mean by a dream business? I don't mean someone else's idea of a dream business. I don't mean you know earning loads of money on a yachts, uh, being a billionaire, unless you want to, of course. I'm talking about maybe you only want to work three days a week and earn more than an average full-time salary, or you want to get the kids from school.

Maybe you want a team in a big office and earn 7 figures. Uh, maybe you just want to make a difference to the world and have a legacy to leave. So whatever your dream business is, it's about you and helping you. And I do this through teaching and inspiring and leading you. I do it through the dream business growth pathway, where which is the only thing you will need in order to grow your business. Because it talks about all the different aspects of your business, like social media and content and your email list and selling and your team and building a community.

And I take you through each stage so that when you hit one stage we take you to the next level. And when you hit that, we take to the next level. So whatever stage you are in your business, we have got you. Also, as well as that we have obviously the monthly mindset calls, coaching calls, live Q and A's, uh, inspired actions every week, challenges. So much because of oh, content hours. They're really good.

The lovely Becci McEvoy does a content hour. So yes, so much good stuff. So if you are interested in joining, come and head over to teresaheathwareing.com/theclub.

So let me introduce the lovely Gloria. She teaches early stage founders, how to "hack their own PR" with her proprietary three step CPR Pitching Method™.

This method helps thousands of small business owners get over a combined 1 billion organic views in top tier outlets, such as New York times, Vogue, Fast Company, Forbes and so much more. So she came up with this format herself and now teaches it around the world. I think you're really gonna like this. She's got some great ideas for you. So without further ado, here's Gloria.

So I am really looking forward to today's conversation with my lovely guests, Gloria Chou. Gloria how are you doing?

Gloria: Hi. I'm so happy to be here.

Teresa: Super happy to have you. I was just chatting to Gloria telling you that we don't track many people on talking about our subject.

So I'm excited to dive in and get some great stuff from you guys. But before we do that, we always start the same way, which I'm sure my audience get bored of but we do it anyway. Where we ask you to introduce yourself to my audience and tell them, How you got to do what you do today?

Gloria: Oh my God. If anyone is looking for a career change, this episode is for you.

I actually used to be it's the truth. I actually used to be in the government. I was a bureaucrat. I was a US diplomat. And then I made the switch to become an entrepreneur and small business PR coach.

Teresa: Wow, that is quite a switch. So like there's some, some jobs that you think you just probably born to do that type of job.

And I would say that working in the government is one of those things. How, try and explain to us how warm day is sat at your desk in the government. And the next day you're like, "Oh no, I'm just going to throw all that away. I'm going to start something new."

Gloria: You know, what's so funny is when I had the picture perfect job.

I had a pension. I could go through the diplomatic land, the airport. I do miss that though, by the way. Everyone thought I was, you know, living the best life. It just was not aligned with me. And now for the first time in my life, I feel completely aligned. I'm doing things that I love and I just wake up every morning feeling so enthused and energized.

The reason why I got into the diplomatic service was I grew up in a bi-cultural bilingual household. So I always was so interested in international relations. So I was going down that path. I studied political science. By the way, I never studied PR so, you know, or anything that I'm doing now. So I was completely different and I was on that path and I realized, you know that I kind of just I, I really wanted to be creative.

I wanted to take risk. I wanted to work with female entrepreneurs. I wanted to work with small businesses and it just wasn't allowing me to have that kind of like draw outside of the box kind of life. So I had to make the hard decision at age 30. I call it kind of like my mid-life crisis. You know, quarter-life crisis. And moved back home from having a pension and a condo to living in my parents', you know, house.

And then I just, you know, started to rebuild my life from there. And I applied, I think, to over a thousand jobs at that point. I wanted to work in PR because I knew I was a strong communicator. I love to see people win. And so, you know, I'm like everyone's unofficial cheerleader, hype woman. But no PR agencies would hire me.

They're like, you don't have agency experience. I'm a little confused by your resume. And so I just, I just had, it was like, you know what, I'm just going to do it on my own. I started picking up the phone. I started calling newsrooms at, you know, New York times and, and, you know, fast company entrepreneur.

And I just started cold calling to get these tiny little small businesses unknown into the top tier outlets. And they, I think they paid me like a couple hundred bucks here and there. And that's how I built my business just by cold calling.

Teresa: That's crazy. Like say what, what was it about PR like did, when you left that job, you knew you wants to go into PR at that point.

Gloria: I knew I wanted to go into communications because in the, in the government I was doing some communications work. So I was writing speeches for the ambassador. We would do some like video scripts, but that was unfortunately a very, very small part of what I did. And I wanted to do more. You know, and so doing communications, external communications was something I wanted to do.

So PR was for me kind of a natural thing that I wanted to get into. But again, you know, they want a very fit in the box type of, type of thing. And I just, I didn't have that experience and thank God for it. Thank God for it. Because now I have my methods that I teach to founders to kind of crack the code on PR like the way I did.

Teresa: Yeah. And I think the reason, I think one of the reasons we haven't probably had a lot of PR people on, is because, and I, I come from very traditional marketing. I have a degree now I've spent like years and I worked at big, big corporate companies heading up their marketing department. And PR always felt like something that that's who that was for.

The PR isn't like, you know, we've got the devil wears Prada kind of scenario. Like, you know, that PR is really kind of that kind of life. And I'm thinking lots of small businesses when they're looking at their marketing strategy, when they're looking at ways in which they can get out there. Maybe they're not thinking that PR is for them. Is that something that you've seen with your audience?

Gloria: Yeah. I, I think that the old school playbook is you need someone to do it for you. You need to pay them a lot of money so that they can go into their Rolodex and tap on their friend's shoulders. But in this age of working at home, no, one's going to fancy dinners.

The your chance of getting into that editors anymore.

Right? Look at iOS. Look at privacy blocks. How are you going to reach your audience? You just can't, you just can't keep feeding the beast of ads. So that's why I always say the biggest myth. Is that, you know, there's a certain type of company who's ready for PR and there's a certain type of company who's not, because I'll tell you what 90% of the people I work with are super bootstrap.

They're super early stage. And they don't have that many customers, but they have the longterm vision of saying that I'm here. I need to build credibility and getting eyeballs is simply not enough. People need to believe that I am here because of my mission and my value, and nothing communicates that, like getting a media feature, you can not communicate that in an ad.

Teresa: Yeah, no, you're right. And it's that whole thing of like, um, you know, when you put posts out saying, you're great, that's one thing when someone else post that saying, you're great, that is entirely different. And that's what PR is basically. Isn't it? Like the credibility of someone else going, Hey, listen to this person or look at what this person's done. This is really, really good.

So now I think there's some differences in PR in the sense of like, so we've had PR done, I'd like in local stuff, but obviously now I serve across the world. Like I have customers from all over the world, the local stuff doesn't serve me anymore. So as much as I know, I could probably head to my local regional paper and say, Hey, I did this cool thing.

Do you want to, you know, know the story about it? That obviously isn't going to hit my target audience. But then I look at like the big stuff, like Forbes, like entrepreneuring, like all these big places and things, but what would I have to offer them? Like, am I missing something in the middle? Or what's your thoughts on, like when you ask, when you are serving a bigger audience or a wider location audience, what sort of counselor I'd be looking at?

Gloria: So I, I will say, you know, just like social media PR is a tool, right? And I read somewhere that it takes 25 different touch points from when a customer meets you and gets to know your brand to when they are convinced that they buy. So I think of PR as a tool that shrinks those 25 touch points down to 3.

All right. So, so that's the way you think about. It doesn't mean that there's no room for social media. It doesn't mean that there's no room for ads. It just means that DM-ing people five hours a day it's just not a sustainable model. It's just not. So, so that's kind of a top-down. Now in terms of the media landscape it's complex, right?

So you have your top tier that may be reaches 30, 100 million people, and then you have your kind of mid tier and then you have your local and they all have their room in place. So for example, if you are a brick and mortar store, or if you're heavily invested in your local community, then I think 100%, you should definitely get into the local papers because you have equity in that community.

Right. You're helping people out. Now, if you're an online business, maybe if your product can be anywhere like for example what you're doing with coaching, then it might be more helpful to reach more of the top tier your audience. Right. And also using podcasts as well. Right. So it depends on where your audience is.

Now I always say, one thing you want to do is, you know, a lot of small business owners, like, well, I want to get into Forbes or I want to get into this. And it's like, number one, ask yourself, is your customer reading that? And number two is if you want to pitch to an audience like Forbes or Entrepreneur or Fast Company that has, I don't know, 80, 100 million audiences is your pitch relevant to a hundred million people.

If it's not keep working on it, don't worry. I'm going to share with you the CPR method to get there. But if your pitch is not relevant to a hundred million people, then it's probably not going to be the right fit. Right. So you're probably going to want to start small and there is something great to be starting small because the pressure is a little bit easier.

You learn how to talk to a journalist, maybe start locally and then maybe do two or three more podcasts. And then, and then at...