Your Dream Business

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk all about speaking and the impact it can have on your business. I tell you how I got into speaking and how it has changed me and my business.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

• Start small – this allows you to work out your style and how you like to present. It also helps you to get comfortable with it!
• The more you do – the better you get!
• Speaking can put you in front of HUGE audiences which in turn gets your business out there, build your email list and increases your know, like and trust – you are seen as an expert!
• Speaking allows you to share your story and can inspire others.
• Speaking also gives you the opportunity to meet and connect with new people.
• Becoming a confident speaker also helps for online or in person training, interviews, podcasts and working with other businesses.
• Many speaking gigs are unpaid – especially conferences.
• The speaking world is not as diverse as it could be.
• Smaller talks are good for getting business, bugger talks are good for growing your audience.
• Know your subject and be able to talk about your subject for 20 minutes without notes.
• Start with practical talks – 5 ways to etc…
• We are all human – you may mess up, you may not know an answer.
• Don’t worry about your ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’.
• Scared? Write down all the possible things that could go wrong and then write down what you would do about it if it did. This helps to get over the fear.
• Speaking is not for everyone. It is not about how much knowledge you have – it is about how you put it across.
• You need to engage the audience so they take in what you say.

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Don’t try and be anyone else, they are already taken. You need to be authentically you.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

• How I got into speaking 03:03
• The impact of speaking on my business 08:15
• The truths about speaking 11:49
• How to get started with speaking 12:20

 

Transcript

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are things? So I'm recording this on a weekend. I don't normally work. That's absolute rubbish. I was about to say, I don't normally work weekends.

 

 

I do. I often work on a weekend, but I don't normally do something like this on a weekend, but I have had a slightly unusual weekend and the fact that I've been completely on my own, which is very unusual in a house that's normally quite busy, but my husband is away with work in Seattle. And my lovely daughter was meant to be here with me this weekend for her birthday and her dad's got COVID and I couldn't risk getting it before my in-person event.

 

 

So she's had to stay with him, which is a real gutter, but unfortunately is part of the world we are in today. So, as I just mentioned, I'm recording this the week before I have three events, two online. Well, it's kind of the same one online, but next level get an extra day. So next level get a day of SOAR my online event.

 

 

And then everyone gets the next SOAR day. And then I do my VIP business retreat, which I am so excited about. And it wasn't until I find out that my ex-husband has got COVID that I thought, Oh wow. Now I can't get COVID because if I can't run this event, well, it would spell disaster in many, many ways.

 

 

Financially, emotionally, cause I've been so excited about it. Uh, so I'm heading away in my home on my own. I'm doing a of work on a weekend as there's no one here. So weirdly considering I've got all these events next week and the week before recording this, I did another in-person event, but it wasn't mine. It was someone else's.

 

 

I'm going to talk about speaking, now the reason I'm going to talk about speaking is because it has done so much for me and my business. And you might be sat there thinking maybe, maybe not, you know, I might or might not want to do it, but I just thought let's have a chat about it. Let me tell you and share my story about how I got into it and what it's done for me and that sort of thing.

 

 

So I've all the phobias, you know, that speaking is considered the highest. Seriously. People are very, very fearful of it. In fact, people fear death and end of life less, which is crazy. So why is it that I decided that I wanted to become a speaker and how has that changed me and my business. You obviously know, or you might know by now that I never actually intended on being a business owner at all.

 

 

I was employed and I was very good at what I did. I did marketing, I did it all my life, and I decided that when my life changed a bit and I ended up becoming a single parent that I joke that I have nearly midlife crisis very early. And basically decided I was going to give it my job, but I was going to get another job.

 

 

And I was very good at what I did, who would want to employ me anyway, long story short, uh, cause you've probably heard this before. No job was coming because I realized that I was on quite good money for where I lived. And I had to think again, because I'd already was in my notice and I decided to set up my own business thinking, well, I've just bought in X amount of money for this business I've worked for. Surely I can do that for myself. Not thinking about all the other things that you have to do as a business owner, just thinking, I'm sure I can do that. So I started my business and like, you know, when you, when you start your business, you have this thought in your head. Or I guess if you'd asked me, I would have thought this, that as, you know, being a business owner, you get to manage your own time.

 

 

You're your own boss. Obviously I have a daughter, so, you know, I could manage it around here. I could do the school run and it would just be lovely, obviously, because, you know, I was my own boss. But it doesn't quite work out like that. Does it? You, you go into it thinking that's the case. And then suddenly you end up like finding.

 

 

You work more hours than you've ever worked before. You're juggling more things. Your brain is more distracted. So I probably was a worst parent than I was previously. And also I started building the business, doing an agency. I was an agency. We did stuff for clients and I started putting myself out there as an expert in order to get people for the agency. So I would pitch myself to anyone that would have me. Now, like I said, some people don't want to do this and they might not think, but to even think about doing this, but for me in the early days, it was really, it was really a case of just getting clients.

 

 

Because if you're the person stood at a network breakfast doing a talk on social media or marketing or whatever it is that you're an expert at, then who are they going to come to when they need an expert, they'll come to you. And also it's the fact that you've basically, I was going to say, get to pitch yourself for like an hour.

 

 

You don't really get to pitch yourself, but you are pitching yourself by talking and showing that you know what you're talking about. So, like I said, I started small. I remember speaking to some mums and a play barn, about four of them, I did the tiniest, smallest events you've ever seen. And it was, you know, and it was good because I was getting clients and people coming to me.

 

 

But also the reason you start small is because you can work at what your style is. You can work out how you like to present, and then also start to get comfortable. I've I know people that want to speak and they want to go straight for the big stuff. Well, if I'd gone straight to the big stuff, I would've been absolutely horrendous, like all the mistakes and all the probably terrible ways I was when I just got started, I would have done a big stages.

 

 

Not only what I've done it in front of more people, but out of room of chances, so start small. And like I said, it really worked. I was getting noticed and I was getting business. And then I found the online world, like I said, the whole point of me speaking initially was purely for getting clients. And I started watching the likes of Marie Smith, Amy Poterfield.

 

 

I really liked it. I really liked the fact that they got to sit in their office and they got to speak to people from around the world. I remember being on one of my first webinars and Marie shout my name out, it couldn't be more excited. And although I'd built myself out as knowing what I was talking about, I wanted to take it further.

 

 

And I wanted to see whether there was any chance that I could have a bit of the online thing that they had had. So I decided to step out of my comfort zone and decided to put myself on bigger audiences and bigger stages and decided to start to really take the speaking thing seriously, becoming a speaker rather than just someone who spoke at events.

 

 

And the more I did the better I got, like, I got more confident. I was more willing to put myself out there. I was willing to ask for, to go on bigger stages. So it was like every time someone went 'Yes Please' or 'Yes, happy for you to talk.' They then encouraged me to try again and try and go somewhere else and don't get me wrong.

 

 

I got nos. And I remember one of the first no’s I got of someone I knew and they were putting on an event. And at this point I was a speaker. I remember taking that no really personally thinking, why don't they want me? They don't think I'm good enough. And it was nothing of the saw it was to do with the fact that I didn't meet the profile.

 

 

As in you needed to have something specifically or be part of something. Oh, that was it. You had to have a membership and I didn't have a membership. I was able to help set up other people's memberships and market them and launch them. But I hadn't got my own, which is why I wasn't considered for speaking. Anyway.

 

 

So like I said, I started speaking all the time, getting on bigger stages and it did so much for me and my business. More than maybe you might think, well, the first thing I need to say is that I love it. Right. And I remember someone wants telling me that, you know, speaking doesn't make you money. So, you know, they said to me, they're not going to do it anymore.

 

 

And neither should I, and I was like 'But I love speaking. I love standing on stage.' And it meant that I get in front of big audiences. I did an online event during lockdown that was streamed to 104 countries and had over 500,000 attendees. Like what the hell man. So, yeah, I've got to speak to big audiences. I got to build my email list.

 

 

So I've done lots of summits. I've done lots of standing on stage speaking and people opt into my list. If I offer them something as a lead magnet, which again is really great. It built my know like, and trust factor. I became an expert because of the fact of standing on stage because in people's heads, the people who stand on stages are the experts.

 

 

Now not the only expert, obviously there's lots of them. But they saw me as that, which was great. Uh, it grew my business. So doing, this is one thing that was really interesting, actually. So when I was doing the small talks, it was getting me clients. When I start to step up to the bigger talks, it didn't get me clients.

 

 

And it was almost like. Because you're talking to bigger audiences on bigger stages. It's almost like they expect that you're not, yeah, that maybe you're too expensive or you're not as available. I'm not entirely sure, but yeah, it definitely the biggest stages didn't help me get clients. However, by this point I've gotten online business and it helped huge for that.

 

 

So you might think, well, you know, I don't want to speak on stage though. You know, this isn't something that I want to do. Even knowing that I still think some of these tips and things I've got can actually help in terms of generally or business and why you should at least consider speaking of some sort.

 

 

And I don't mean getting on stages that are big and huge. I might mean just doing a training to a small group of people, or just be willing to do a 20 minute insight thing on a zoom call or whatever. Um, and when I say speaking, that's presenting, that is basically you talking to people. It's gets you seen, it makes you an authority.

 

 

It can build your list. You get to share your story. So people, that's really nice actually, the first lot of talks I used to do was always really practical talks. Like this is how to use Instagram, or this is how to do this thing. And now I get to talk more about my story, which I really like. It inspires others.

 

 

It makes you sought after, like I said, it builds that know like, and trust. And you know what the best thing is, you get to meet different people. Like you get to. Like I, some of the relationships I've built up, I could only have built up by the fact that I was either speaking or the, I was at the actual event, whether I'm speaking or not.

 

 

So, so yeah, so for me it did loads and there are other areas where becoming a confident speaker will help. So when you're doing online training or in-person training, Or if you're asking a business for business, for business, for business, for business, if you're asking someone for business, if you're going on a podcast or getting interviewed.

 

 

So all of these kinds of things will help in terms of developing who you are and, and that sort of thing. So, like I said, when I talk about being a speaker, it's not just about speaking on a stage. So truth though, about being a speaker. If you do want to be a speaker in my world, in the online space and the marketing world and marketing conferences rarely pay.

 

 

So if I go and speak at marketing conference, I rarely get paid. The other truth is speaking. The world is not as diverse as it should be. There are not enough people who are not white males speaking. So often I can find myself on a panel or on a stage like I did just last week where I'm the only female and there is no one of color.

 

 

And like I said, the other truth is that smaller sorts of good for getting business, bigger talks, a good audience. So if you want to get started, if you want to start building your confidence with kind of going out there and speaking to the world, whether it's on a stage or whether it's just to help you with podcast interviews or whatever.

 

 

Start small. Don't go pitching to the big stuff straight away. Cause you'll be sorry that you did because you've missed that one opportunity to be brilliant. So do tiny talks, anyone that will listen, do online events, Facebook groups, schools, small businesses, anywhere that you can speak. Just try, just give it a go.

 

 

Don't try and be someone else they are already taken. So. You need to be completely authentically you. Now, for instance, let's take someone like Jasmine Star. I love how she speaks. She's a great speaker. I love how sassy she is. I love the way she talks. If I was to start talking like that, I would sound prize idiot.

 

 

Literally like a prize idiot. I can't be anybody else, but myself. The thing you have to do is you have to know your subject. Now I was talking to someone weirdly just last week about this, about, you know, you could say to me, right, you've got 10 minutes and he's stand, that stand on that stage and talk for an hour about Burr.

 

 

One of my things I talk about, and I could with ease because I know what I'm talking about. So if it makes you feel more confident, you know, it will make you feel more confident, but it doesn't have to be the be-all and end-all. In terms of like, it's not like you need to know everything about your subjects, but you do need to know that you can talk about your subjects for 20 minutes without notes and nonstop.

 

 

Do you know what I mean? Like if I said to you, tell me about what you do. If you could talk at me for 20 minutes, then that's a good place to start. Start with practical talks. Like I said, in the early days, mine were all practical, it was like five ways to get more followers or things you should be doing on social media now, or how to build a list.

 

 

And the reason I say not to go straight in with like the motivational speaker stuff is cause it's hard. Like practical stuff is far easier trying to be inspirational is, is not easy. If I'm speaking, I use slides to help me stay on track, but I don't put stuff on loads of stuff on them. They tend to literally just be like a few lines and it helps me then think what it is that I've then got to say next.

 

 

But yeah, so I always use slides. And then don't worry about being human. We all are as irritating as it is. We are. So you may mess up, you may get asked a question that you don't know, uh, someone in the audience might know more than you, but you need to remember you're just adding your voice and your thoughts to the subject.

 

 

Also, don't worry about your 'ummss' and 'ahhs'. I talk too fast. I get told I talk too fast. It's just the way I speak. Although as Jasmine Star says, I don't talk fast. You listen slow. So you, aren't going to be scared. If you're thinking about putting yourself out there, you are going to be scared and you are going to think what if all the things, so this is what I suggest you do.

 

 

And if you are in my world, you know, I talk about this a lot. Write down everything that you think might go wrong like I will fall over when I get on stage, I'll forget my words. And then write down what would you do about it if you did? Like, if I fell over, what would I do? I'd be really embarrassed, but I'd get up and go, well, that was an entrance.

 

 

You know what I mean? Like I would just make some joke of it. So would these sorts of things is always a case of just getting on with it and trying to get over that fear. So if you're sat there thinking, yeah, I'd quite like to give this a go, I've got a couple of steps for you. The first thing I want you to do is to pick two subject areas that you can talk about because not everyone will want the one subject area, the one talk that you've put together.

 

 

So you could probably do it like two or maybe three different things. So, and it can just be different angles on stuff. So it could be like, How to grow your following on Instagram or how to get sales using Instagram or whatever is your subject areas. So pick two subjects and then think of some small groups that you can speak at, like, you know, think about who you know, who has a small group or a networking group and ask them if you can do that little...

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Sarah Marie Anderson who is an email strategist and copywriter who helps entrepreneurs create lasting relationships with email subscribers through engaging welcome sequences. We talk all about email onboarding processes and how to do them, the types of emails you can send and when, the Fibonacci sequence, the mistakes people make when onboarding and how to sell to your list and what to do when they are not buying!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

• Onboarding is a sequence of emails you send to a new person who joins your list – this often walks them through what you do and what you offer creating connection and engaging them.
• Onboarding can also give you an opportunity to get to know your audience more.
• Welcome sequences should be around 5-8 emails.
• When delivering a freebie – make sure you tell them how to get it and then set expectations for the next email.
• End your email with a teaser as to what is coming next – this will get them prepared for your next email and want to open it!
• Subsequent emails in your welcome sequence – intro email to you and your business (your story and your why), give value such as blog posts, podcast episodes, freebies etc, talk about your offer so they can understand how you can help them and how they can buy it.
• Ideally you should wait until subscribers have finished your welcome sequence before sending your main newsletters.
• If someone opts into multiple lead magnets at once – try to get all your welcome sequences to feed into one sequence after the freebie has been delivered.
• Don’t overwhelm your subscribers with too much information at once! Try to separate things out into multiple emails instead.
• How to use the Fibonacci Sequence for emails
• Don’t come on too strong when your subscribers have just met you – keep selling soft and explain more about what you do and how you help instead.
• Look at your email stats often – Are people opening them? Are they clicking your links?
• Go back and review the emails that have had higher stats – what did you do differently?
• Try sending a round up email with various links they can click.
• Do some research and get to know your subscribers more – give them a tag when they click so you can personalise more.
• Re-engagement email – click here if you are here still around!
• Ask questions in your subject lines.
• Two magic words to use in subject lines – “That” and “You”

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

Don’t sell too much too soon – your email subscribers need warming up!

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

• An introduction to Sarah Marie 05:15
• Onboarding your email subscribers 9:03
• Onboarding mistakes that turn your subscribers off 22:36
• How often should you email your list? 29:06
• What to do if your email subscribers are not buying 32:20
• How to increase email engagement 36:37
• Writing a successful subject line 41:34

 

CHECK SARAH MARIE OUT:

 

Website

Instagram

Facebook

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 

2022 half day planning and goal setting session

 

Transcript:

 

Hello and really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are things? So this week I have a really, really good interview for you. In fact, I've done loads of batching of interviews.

There are some absolute gold coming up. Like I've been finding some amazing people, some different voices, and I'm really excited for you to hear some of the episodes that are coming up so, so much good stuff. But before we get started with the interview, I just want to remind you about my 2022 planning/goal setting/mastermind session that we're doing the workshop that we're doing. Uh, I told you about it last week. It's on December the 8th. It's going to be from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM UK time. And basically we're going to go through what you did last year as in this year. What year are we on 2021.

Also going to look at, uh, what you want to set goal wise for next year. And then I'm going to walk you through a number of planning exercises, which is going to get you really sorted on exactly what you need to do next year in order to try and achieve those goals. It's really important thing to do.

It's great to carve that time out. Come and join me and some other amazing business owners. And let's work all this together and get your plan starters that you can go into 2022 feeling so happy and confident in the right mindset to ensure you're set up for success. So come along for that, that's going to be a really, really good session.

If you want to find out more and sign up it's teresaheathwareing.com/2022planning okay. So that's that first off. And then next off, I just thought, as we're getting nearer the season of jolly and happy and giving and loving and that sort of stuff, I'd ask nicely if you haven't yet given me a review on your favorite app or iTunes, I would really appreciate it.

If you could, if you could go along and give me five lovely stars. Tell everyone what you like about the podcast and share it. That would be absolutely amazing. I would appreciate that. No end. Okay. So today's podcast interview is with Sarah Marie Anderson. She's an email strategist and copywriter who helps entrepreneurs create lasting relationships with email subscribers through engaging welcome sequences.

After learning a, after earning, not learning a BA in English writing, Sarah has continued to sharpen her skills and writing for clients all over the world. Since 2015, she has helped hundreds of small business owners create authentic connections with their audiences through email. So, you know, I love talking my emails and this is great because one thing I tell myself and I'm, you know, I'm going to say, it's a story I'm telling myself and it's not true and I'm going to change it is that I don't enjoy writing.

So it was really great to chat with Sarah Marie about all things when you're writing emails. So we went through onboarding process. What one was, what you should do, how you should do it, her kind of view in terms of the types of emails you could send and when. She also talked about the Fibonacci sequence and how that fits into sending emails, that was interesting.

The mistakes that people make when doing the onboarding. And then really excellently. We looked at how to sell to your list or what to do if they're not buying. And then we finished off with her critiquing some of my subject lines, which I was more than happy with. I kind of volunteered it because I think it's really interesting and it just proves that we all need to kind of think about this things. We need to go back to these things all the time. So it's a great episode loads to take from it. I think you're really going to enjoy it. So without further ado here is Sarah Marie Anderson.

Teresa: Okay. I am really looking forward to welcoming to the podcast Sarah Marie Anderson.

Teresa: Sarah, how are you doing?

Sarah: I am doing so great. I'm really excited to talk to you today Teresa.

Teresa: I'm excited because we get to talk emails and you may or may not know this about me, Sarah, but I am obsessed with people building email lists. So I haven't talk about building an email list. I talk constantly about building an email list.

Teresa: I speak on stages about building an email list. I, my focus tends to be at the beginning stage. i.e. you need one and how to get one. And what I'm really looking forward to with this episode is we're going to dive a bit more into sending those emails and how that might look and how we can manage some of those.

Teresa: But as I always do, I start by asking you to introduce yourself to my audience and just explain how you got to do what you do today.

Sarah: Yeah. So I'm really excited to be here. Thank you for having me. My name is Sarah Marie Anderson, as you've already introduced me and I am a copywriter and email marketing strategists.

Sarah: So I started originally doing kind of general copywriting and ended up niching down to email because I saw how powerful it was both like for my business personally. And I also just really love writing emails. You know, they're short, they're snappy, you know, compared to like a long sales page that can be like thousands and thousands of words.

Sarah: I love doing emails and sequences to where you kind of take that big, long sales message. It could break it out into little chunks that are like fun and easy for someone to digest. Um, I work with a lot of professional service providers, coaches, online course creators, all those kinds of people creating welcome sequences for them to kind of help.

Sarah: Get to know, kinda connect with those new subscribers that are join our list, excited to hear from them and helping them, you know, share their message with their new audience.

Teresa: I love it. So have you always been in this kind of space? Is this like, obviously you've done copywriting and various things. So was it always from an email point of view or was it other things?

Sarah: Well, so the first, my first adventure actually into this online business phase was I had an Etsy shop for a while. Like I started with a handmade shop. I was actually selling hand dyed yarns. I love to knit. I've been knitting since I was a kid.

Sarah: And so that was like my first sort of try and through that is how I learned all about online marketing, because I was like, okay, I gotta figure this out. Like. So like shares some of your traffic, but like, you've got to find out how to market outside of it. And that's why I actually started email list and I could see where I would send an email, I would get sales.

Sarah: So it was like really powerful, even with a very small list. I only had like a couple hundred people at that time, but I could also like, see the benefit of doing this and connecting with the people that had bought from you in the past, the people that were interested in what you were doing. So that's kinda how I got into it.

Sarah: And I fell in love with the online marketing side of business and especially copywriting. Uh, I have a background, uh, I was an English major in college, so I was like, oh my gosh, I can write and do all this like, cool stuff with this online marketing. Like one of my favorite parts of copywriting is the research part.

Sarah: So every project, I get to like dive into a new kind of radical and learn more about like a new type of business, new type of niche, new type of market. So that really felt like a great fit. And I started doing general copy, web copy sales pages, all that stuff, and really honed it on email as they went, because it just was the most fun for me, actually.

Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. And I think so the, one of the reasons I'm so passionate about everyone having an email list is one, it belongs to you, which is a key thing, especially like the other week where Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, went down. You know, that doesn't help when you're trying to run a business through some of these places. And two, because it's that way of like, connecting with your audience.

Teresa: I love nothing more than them emailing me back. Like, and I encourage it massively. And my team know that if there's an email from my email list that has come in as a reply, they leave it alone. And I reply. And whether it takes me a couple of hours or a couple of days, I always replied. But why wants to get, because I think there's a misconception, right?

Teresa: Okay. We can build a really nice email list. We can create a lead magnet that speaks to a perfect customer, and then we get them on the list. And then what happens or what if like the engagement isn't very good. As, if not more important at that point, because you've gone to the effort of getting them so now let's make sure that they're good people.

Teresa: So let's talk about the onboarding process first. So when, when the fact that you explain to my audience, what you mean by onboarding.

Sarah: Yeah. We'll talk about onboarding, you know, sometimes I'll call it a welcome sequence or a nurture sequence. It's this like series of emails that you want to send to a new person that joins your list.

Sarah: And it's a really lovely way to kind of walk them through all the things you have to offer, introduce them to you, your world, what you're doing online, what you have that can help them and even do it in a way that is creating a lot of connection with them, engaging with them from the beginning, and really getting to know the people on your list also, because that is so important too.

Sarah: It can be a way to also learn about your audience, research your audience, and be able to create even more personalized stuff for them. And you're talking about replies. I love to ask for replies, especially in the sequence. A lot of times I'll do it in a welcome email. I'll ask people to replied, tell me how they found me.

Sarah: Tell me where they're at in the world. Even ask like a question, like, what are you wanting to learn about this topic that I cover? You can even do something fun. Like what's your favorite emoji hit me back. To get people engaging because one, you get to start these one-on-one conversations, which are so great and kind of the magic of email feels very one-to-one.

Teresa: Very personal.

Sarah: Yeah. It's super personal, even though you're sending it to thousands of people and then it also can help with your deliverability rates too. You know, people are applying to spam emails. So if you have a lot of people that are replying back. It's more likely than to end up in their main inbox, because it's something that they've engaged with and it's something that they're actually, you know, responding to.

Teresa: Yeah. So there's many differing thoughts and practices about an onboarding process and, you know, they all have merit. And, and for me, I guess when I teach it's about well try and if it works and brilliant. So what your thoughts. So let's say someone's opt in to one of my lead magnets and it's a lead magnet.

Teresa: I don't know. I'm just trying to think of the many different lead magnets out there. So I've got one about mindset in business, like in some of the mindset tricks and tools I use. So they've opted in, they get email number one, which for me is here's your thing, because that was the whole point they signed up. What, how many emails would you see in an ambit boarding process?

Teresa: And would you start, would you do anything else in that email zero almost, like, or would you just go, here's the thing and I'll see you in a couple of days.

Sarah: So usually when I work with clients, I typically find that the welcome sequences, those emails tend to be like five to eight emails, kind of, depending on what they're trying to do.

Sarah: And if we're doing any kind of segmenting or personalization stuff like that in that first email, I usually want to just like celebrate them a little bit like 'Yey you're here. I'm so excited for you. This is what you're going to get to learn from this thing you downloaded.' Delivering a freebie, make sure it's very easy for them to realize how they're going to get it.

Sarah: Uh, and then a lot of times I will either ask a question or I'll set an expectation that we'll be in a lookout for my next email on and kind of do a little bit of a teaser so that they're more interested in what you've got coming next. Like that is fun to do with a PS. I love doing, it's the covering in term is called like an open loop or.

Sarah: It's kind of like a cliffhanger of like a TV show, like you and the email was sort of a teaser of what's coming next and that can help your open rates as the sequence goes on, that people are like, 'Oh, what is this next new clip or trick or whatever I'm going to get from the next email.' And that's a fun way to kind of structure the sequence so that they're kind of like leaving a little breadcrumbs along the people like following up on.

Teresa: So we send the thing and then do you have a very specific. Like, is it number two as a introduce you, number three, is it, so what kind of things would they do in those subsequent emails.

Sarah: Yeah. There's a few different things that I recommend doing in your welcome sequence. You know, you could do it in, you make change around the order, but you definitely want to have an intro email, because when you think about this, this is probably, you know, one of the first times people are seeing you, maybe they've seen you on social.

Sarah: Maybe they've seen an ad. Maybe they've seen, you know, but they don't really know your full story. So I feel like, uh, an intro email, tell you a little bit about you, and then you can talk about either maybe how you got started. You can talk about maybe your why behind your business? Like what lights you up, why you keep doing this, talk about maybe your brand values, something like this, to help them have a little bit deeper connection with the name behind the email.

Sarah: I even like to do like a picture or something. That's just like, 'Hey, here's my face.' You know, this can kind of have that, that deeper connection. I also love to do an email. That's kind of giving them a little bit of extra value, so that could be something like another lead magnet or freebie you created that could also just be like sharing your best content.

Sarah: Like if you have like your top five blog posts or your, you know, if you do a podcast, like you, you know, your most popular episodes, things like that, that people that are new to your world have not seen all of the stuff that you've created. So you can kind of help them find that good stuff with these emails.

Teresa: And so let's say you've done different emails over the way, and you're adding in these various bits. Do you go straight into a sale? Like, and I get that, obviously it depends on the product, but if it's an online product or if it's a lower cost product, would you attempt to go straight into a sale or would you not bother?

Sarah: You know, I like to do cramps on soft sell opportunities throughout the sequence. Like maybe in the, about you email, you can be like, Hey, or, you know, about talking your language, like check out my, you know, what I offer...

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about setting goals for your business, the law of action and some of the dos and don’ts when it comes to goal setting.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

• Look at what you have achieved this year – review how the year has gone.
• What can you learn from the past year? Anything you would do differently?
• Ask yourself why – do you need to be still doing everything you have been doing?
• Set goals for the year ahead at the end of each year.
• Every goal we set, we need to set a plan of action – otherwise it won’t happen!
• “Every action we take is like a vote for the type of person we wish to become”
• “Focus on building a system or developing process rather than trying to achieve a goal”
• “Your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results”
• We are setting a goal but we don’t track the success of the goal, we track the actions that we take.
• Setting goals allows you to know where you are heading and to identify when you get there!

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…If you do nothing different, nothing will change.

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

• Reviewing the past year 02:10
• Goal setting for 2022 07:47
• The law of action 10:30

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 

2022 Planning, Goal Setting & Mastermind Live Workshop!

 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you? So at the time this episode goes out, we're like pretty much nearing the end of November, which man is scary. Like doesn't time just go so fast.

But I am one of those people that loves a new year, loves a fresh start, loves to review everything, always was. I really loved a new school year. I just love the stationary. Like start a new notebooks. Let you know when you're trying to your best handwriting and you think there's nobody that's going to be really neat.

And then you start writing a few pages in and it's an absolute disgrace. Anyway, a little insight it's very old there. So yeah, I, I do really like a new year. I'm really like kind of fresh start on things. So this time of year is a really good one for me because I start reviewing everything and thinking about what do I want to achieve next year?

And that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about goal setting and some of the varying school of thoughts, some of the kind of do's and don'ts or how I find it. And my experience. Some of the things that people get wrong when they goal set and why things perhaps don't come to fruition the way that they'd like it to.

So basically, like I said, this time of year, this is when I start looking at what have I achieved this year. And sometimes that can be pretty triggering. Like you might sit there and think when I review the beginning of the year, I'm just going to beat myself around the head for all the things that I didn't do last year.

When I think about what have I achieved in 2020? Like I'm just going to basically be angry at myself or frustrated with myself. And that's not the reason we review never, ever is. So the reason you review and look back is because often you can't think of what you've done in a whole 12 months. And we forget our achievements so very flipping quickly, like we do something and then we move on to the next thing. And two weeks later we've forgotten that we achieved it. So sometimes purposely sitting there and looking back is really, really important. So that's definitely something I do first. That is like the first thing I do.

Obviously, like I said, I see what I can learn from it. I don't beat myself up about it. And I try and find the achievements in my year, whether I feel that there are any or not. The other thing I do is, and I did this exercise with the academy literally days ago, where we looked at how to become the CEO in your business and how you could.

And I'm always a bit funny saying stuff like that. Cause it always sounds a little bit like the kind of marketing speak I don't like, but it is about the fact of like, I talked to us a while back. It's like, when you say I'm not going to buy nice clothes until I lose weight. So what, you're happy to look an absolute state until then.

And what do you think is going to change when you lose weight? You think it's going to make you feel better and you think you'll look better and therefore you'll want to wear nice clothes and therefore you'll do it then. But why not make that change now? And it's the same with your business. So I asked my members, what would they do if they were, if they saw themselves as the CEO of the business that they dream of, what would they be doing?

And for me, and some of the others have the same example, it would be like, really need to get control of the finances. Like, I would know exactly what was coming in, going out how it works, like, cause I'm just, that's the one bet I buried my head. And it's like, so do you think if suddenly my business blew up tomorrow and was 2, 3, 10 times the size it is today that miraculously I will wake up and suddenly be able to know how to do all of the finance stuff?

No, of course I won't. So I need to do that now. I need to learn that now in readiness for that. So it's, like I said, it's like putting things off until the day that the thing happens, but the truth is. It won't change it. I still be rubbish at finance stuff. Even whether I earn 10 times what we are now.

So I need to start making those changes now. So like I said, that's, that's kinda my thoughts when it comes to kind of looking at the year, deciding how, when, and not beating myself up about it. So then let's talk about kind of goal setting and looking at next year. Now, the reason I bought this episode a couple of reasons, so first off I am doing a one-off goal setting, planning and mastermind workshop. It's a four-hour workshop with me. It's live it's on zoom. I will be walking you through the workshop. This is something that I do in my academy and with my students. And I am giving everyone the opportunity to come and join me to do this. And the reason I'm doing it is because when I goal set, I have people I go to to help me do that.

So I was very lucky a couple of years back that I was able to spend some time in Nashville in December. I'm going to Nashville again this December. And I did my goal setting while I was in Nashville with Mary and Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt, some other amazing entrepreneurs. And it's super helpful. Because not only did I absolutely carve out that space to goal set and to think about the year and think about what I want and how that might look and make a plan. But I did it in the presence of other people who were doing the same thing, and it's amazing that, and one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to the workshop is very much designed for us all to have a conversation.

So I will get people to volunteer to say what they think and what, you know, sort of things that they're planning for their next year and how they might do it. That's super helpful because of the fact that you then go, 'Oh yeah, that's a great idea. No, I shouldn't said that.' or 'I think that, oh, oh, I didn't think about doing it that way.'

So that's super helpful. So that's like I said, I always do it. I don't go set myself on my own. I always go to someone somewhere and we do it together as an activity. And that's why I'm putting on for you. So if you want to come and join me for this very special workshop, and I love you too, and it's great fun, honestly, this is stuff that I love.

It's going to be brilliant and you are going to thank me. When you come off the four hour session working solely on your business and you've made a plan and you feel calm and ease and structured and ready to take on next year, rather than flying into it by the seat of your pants. And then towards the end of next year, you're thinking, oh, well, I'll do it the next year.

No, no, do it, do it this year. Ready for next. Okay. So go to teresaheathwareing.com/2022planning. So 2 0, 2, 2 planning. If you go there, then you're going to go up to sign up for this amazing one off workshop. I'm very excited. I love this stuff. Okay. Anyway, so like I said, this is one of the reasons we're talking about this today to let you know about that, but also as to why it's so important that we, we do it properly.

Let's get back to the point of goal setting. So you've reviewed the year. You've looked at what happened, and this is a great time to like sit and review everything and ask yourself why, why am I doing that? So one of the questions I'm asking myself at this point is why am I on every social media platform?

Years ago I taught just social media, even though my background and experiences in full marketing. So I felt like I had to be on every single platform. Well, actually that's not the case anymore. I don't have to. So why am I like, could I not be on some platforms? So it's a really good center view of things. Also. I am looking at a rebrand right now.

We are going through it, which no doubt will come in kind of January time. And again, what's that rebrand going to say about me? Why do I want to do it? So, like I said, great point to kind of question everything. Yet you did that this year, but do you want to do that next year? Is that still important to you?

So once you've done all that, you start looking at the year going forward, and this is where you set goals. Now I am, I am huge fan of setting goals. There are some people that say it doesn't work. There were some people that say, so there's one school of thought that it's basically F the how for now. So you just set it and then it will come, which would be lovely. There's obviously the money manifesting, which, you know, I, I like a bit of manifesting. I don't mind it at all, but I think the key bit for me, the really important bit for me is the fact of, yes, I want you to dream big. I want you to sit and put some goals down that make you feel a little bit nervous because you are sat there thinking, holy moly, like, could I actually do this?

But the next key bit, which is what most people don't structure time to do. And really the key bit of the whole thing is what's the plan that I'm going to put in place to help me get that goal. See, when we go sit in the academy, we do two things. We, you set a goal and then you set an action attached to that goal.

So let's say I set a goal of, I want to get a million downloads on the podcast. Easy, done, just said it. I've just set a goal million downloads on the podcast. Brilliant. Now, if I do nothing different, how do I think I'm going to get a million downloads? And also I can't physically control that. Like. Unless it's a habit goal, which is I'm going to meditate everyday, which reminds me, I haven't done it this morning.

I went straight into my day and I, after I finished recording this, I'm going to crack on and do that meditation. That's a habit goal. That's fine. I have full control over that goal. A big goal. Like I want a million podcast downloads. I can't physically control that. Like I can't, you know, make people that I love my podcast.

I wish I could. But anyway, so. That will need some action. I will need to make a plan. So the key thing here is isn't just setting the goal. It's setting the action and when we get to, so let's say it's my goal for the whole year. So when I get to the end of the year, instead of beating myself up, if I haven't hit a million downloads, because that's the other thing, like, you don't want to set that big goal because you think, well, I feel like a failure when I don't get it.

And that's not the case at all. The reason we set the action goal or the action attached to the goal is because if you can say, okay, to get those million downloads, I am going to do this, or I am going to increase this, or I'm going to make sure on every single episode I say to you, if you enjoy this, which I hope you do, please tell two friends, please share it on your social media.

I would really, really appreciate it. And I'm, I am actually saying, please, thank you. But like, you know, If that's part of my action and I get to the end of the year and I haven't gotten million downloads. However, my downloads have increased because I hit that action every time. Or I did that action then yay me. High-five! Amazing. And also because we review things every quarter in the academy, also, as you're going through. If let's say I make that decision, that that's the thing I'm going to do to try and increase our podcast. And then I get to the end of quarter one and I go it doesn't seem to be increasing very much like that.

Just isn't working, then I can review it and change the action. The goal doesn't change, but my action changes, but at least I've done something so I can at least go I tried that thing. It didn't work therefore I'm going to try something different. So against every single goal we set, we need to make a plan of action.

We also need to be realistic about how would we get to that goal? Now, like I said, I am a wee bit into the manifesting thing. So some times I just chuck out the intention and go, I'd really like that. Thanks very much. And I don't worry about it too much, but sometimes getting intentional with your goals and kind of planning it out how it would work or how it would look.

So for instance, right, let's say you've got a financial goal. You want to hit a 100K this year. I want you to look at your current offering and products and services and work out actually, how many would I need to sell to hit that? Like how reasonable is that, do I have the breadth of product? Do I have the customer base?

But just thinking about actually, if I want to make that much money, this is the thing, this is how many of these I've got to sell. It just sent like sets in your head. Now the risk is you're going to go, oh, well that's just impossible. And that's obviously not what we'll do. That's where we make the plan.

That's where we set the action intention rather than just the goal intention. Obviously, like I said, I, I am, uh, I do like a bit of law of attraction and, you know the universe, like just places things in front of you, just the right time. Well, at the beginning of this week, I started listening. I was given a recommendation for a podcast, a Brené Brown podcast.

And it was with James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits. Now I'm sure I started Atomic Habits and I don't think I finished it. So I'm going to go back to it. But honestly, some of the stuff he said was like, mic drop moment after mic drop moment. So he was saying, right? So I'm going to just read out some things I wrote down about it.

He said, every action we take is like a vote for the type of person we wished to become. So for instance, like, let's say you have a goal to lose weight. It's a really easy one to talk about goal setting and thinks to losing weight because it's quite a good example. So every action that I might take, so an action might be okay instead of having my, you know, I dunno, three coffees in a day, which are those nice Nespresso ones with a lot of milk, I'm going to have just two.

And it's like, so every action you take is a vote. It's like your head, your brain, your body is saying, oh yeah, we're stepping towards that. So it's all about those little actions that we're taking. He also talks about and this is what I loved. And actually this is so inline with what I talk about with goal-setting focus on building a system or developing a process rather than trying to achieve a goal.

I heard that. And it was like, oh, that is music to my ears. And so well said, so rather than sitting there going my goal is this, my goal is this, my goal to this, you need to focus on building a system or developing a process. And this is what we do when we goal set. This is what I am teaching you in that workshop.

Like I said, I'm all for the big dreams, I'm all for the big stuff, but, and this last one kind of fits in perfectly his last thing he said that I wrote down, I haven't finished, listened to the podcast actually I need to get back to it. Your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results.

I just want to like, let that sink in. I'm going to say it again. Your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results. It's so true. It's the whole thing of, you know, do what you've always done and get what you've always got. Like how do we think they're setting a goal at the beginning of the year to do something and changing nothing is going to help us achieve that goal.

And don't get me wrong. Like I said, I love the law of attraction stuff. I love manifesting and you know, I am a believer in it, but I'm also a believer in the law of action that you can't just set an intention out there and say, I really want this my business without at least taking some steps to start getting to that point.

So I'm just looking at my notes that I wrote down. Yeah. So basically I think I've covered all my points, but I wanted to talk about this for, like I said, a couple of reasons, one to introduce the workshop that I'm doing, which is a one-off thing. It's really good. And I think you'll love it, but also to introduce the fact of goal setting isn't just about setting the big goals.

It's not just about throwing it out there, going, 'Yep, that's what I want this year.' And not doing anything else. You need to set a plan. Also breaking it down into that marketing activity. And again, this is something we'll cover. Okay. So if you want to earn X amount of money, you want to earn a 100 thousand and in order to do that, you've got to sell X amount of things. Well, how often are you going to launch those things? When are you going to do those sales? How does that look within your marketing? So, like I said, so many things to think about, but we do it in a structure and we do it well working through it.

And then what we do is, you know, you would take that information every quarter and you would look at it and go, is this moving the needle? And if it's not, do I need to tweak at what I'm trying. And then at the end of the year, whether you've hit your goal or not. And this is the other thing, like when we set a goal of a hundred thousand, so if you come in at 98 thousand and you're going to be gutted, are you? Know, of course you're not going to be gutted and people don't want to set goals because they get nervous about the fact of actually it might not come true or it might not happen and then I'll feel like a failure.

And that's why we do it the way we do it. We're not. We are setting a goal, but we're not tracking our success on that goal. We're tracking our success on the action we take. Okay. That was like a real quick and slightly. It wasn't ranted. Is it a ranted? It wasn't ranted.

I just think it was like come on now we need to do this. Like I said, I am a huge fan of goal setting. It has done a huge amount for me in my business. If you haven't got that goal or that plan, how do know that basically you're going in the right direction. And how do you know if you've hit it? So there are a million reasons, and I didn't want to go over all the reasons you need to set goals in this session, but in this podcast episode, I wanted to make sure that you understand that when I talk about goal setting,...

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Melitta Campbell who is a business coach with over 25 years of marketing and entrepreneurial experience. Melitta helps women confidently build and grow a profitable business that gives fulfillment and flexibility. We talk all about niching – why it is important to have one, how soon you should niche and how you can get clear on what you offer to your target customers/clients.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

• Niching is getting more specific about who you help and the impact you can have.
• Take a step back – look at your vision, values and what is important to you in order to build this into your business. Do this for your clients too – this is where you can start to build your marketing and messages.
• Selling to your target audience should just feel like the natural next step. You understand them – you are on the mission with them.
• You need to know who your target customer is so you can really speak to them in your marketing.
• What are your target audience trying to achieve? What is standing in their way? What challenges are they facing?
• You can market to their challenges – shows you have insight and understanding.
• What are your clients going to get after working with you?
• Imagine your client on a Friday night after a tipple or two – what are they fed up of or venting about? Start there!
• Ask your clients “If I could wave a magic wand what would we do” – this will help you to understand where they want to be.
• Understand the conversation going on in your clients mind and join that conversation.
• You need to communicate clearly how you are going to help them and make their vision possible.
• If you start your business by working with everyone, you will be working way too hard for way too little results and not get anywhere so you should start with some sort of niche.
• Where you start is never where you will end up – it will evolve over time.
• Start broad then get narrower - Start, learn, grow, evolve.
• People want connection, they want to be understood.

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

A niche doesn’t necessarily mean you only serve a very small amount of people, it can be about being your authentic/relatable self and attracting your own tribe.

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

• An introduction to Melitta 07:08
• Being a woman in business 10:43
• What is a niche and why do you need one? 18:43
• Finding your niche 23:04
• How to start understanding your target audience 30:10
• When should you niche? 38:04

 

CHECK MELITTA OUT:

 

Website

Dream clients blueprint

Instagram

Facebook

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 

Drop me a dm and let me know if you would be interested in the half day planning session

 

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So I just looked at when this is airing. Cause as you know, I batch and I did a couple of weeks back quite a few weeks back and by the time this comes out, I did a whole week focusing on batching and what was good and what was bad.

And I talked about one of the things that is quite difficult is, well, first of you really have to know what's happening in your business and planning ahead and second off, sometimes you can feel a little bit disjointed from what's come out live at the time, because obviously I'm recording this. I'm actually recording this on the 18th of October.

And according to my plan, this is coming out on the 15th of November. So. Like, yeah, there's really. There's good and bads of batching, and that's one of the things I can feel a little bit disjointed from my content. Anyway. So as you're listening to this it's November, which feels a little bit scary because that's 2021 nearly over which in some ways we will be very pleased about.

And in another way, it's just, wow another year's gone by, which makes me feel terribly old, but that is a thing, I guess now I am early forties. So there, those are words that I would be saying, and maybe I do say old things now, so it's a thing. Anyway. I would like to ask you a favor. I am thinking about doing a kind of half day online.

I don't know about you but I am tired to the online thing, but there are lots of advantages. One, you are listening to this from wherever in the world, and it can be open to you. Two, it's like a lot less logistical stuff. And three it's a lot cheaper. I'm running an online, I'm running an in-person event at the beginning of December, which I'm very excited about and it's super luxury.

Super high-end. It's really nice. In fact, that reminds me, I was listening to podcasts the other day. And in fact, she's coming on this podcast and she talked about the fact that she was Chanel, not Target. Now, obviously if you're American, you will know those references. Well, if you're UK British now, and you might probably know Target, and I just thought, you know what, that's me like when I think about my values and my brand values and what I offer to my audience.

I offered them the nicest stuff and the best stuff and the highest quality stuff. And that's my aim that me and my brands, I shall now not target. Anyway, that was a side. So the favor I have to ask of you is I'm thinking about doing this half day online, I wouldn't say in person again, then session around planning your 2022.

I know lots of people jump on this thing and it's a thing. And you know, there are lots of options out there to do planning sessions. However, this is something I do all the time and this is something I do in the academy, in my membership. And I was just wondering if I was to put something on externally, would you fancy that?

Would you come along? Is it something you're interested in? So if you can drop me a DM or an email or carry a pigeon fax. Those might not arrive in time, but if you can drop me some kind of communication and let me know whether you fancy this idea, then we could always do like a half day planning session, which, like I said, we do SOAR and it's a lot around that and they love it.

And we do things like we reviewed the year before we do some mindset stuff. We make a plan, we do some like strategy stuff. So it's cool. It's really cool. Anyway, let me know if you like it or like the idea of it.

Anyway on today's podcast today, I am interviewing Melitta Campbell. And Melitta is a business coach who uses her 25+ years of marketing and entrepreneurial, that's such a hard word to say, entrepreneurial experience to help women confidently build and grow profitable business that gives fulfillment and flexibility. She's the host of the Driven Female Entrepreneur Podcast. And a best-selling author and international speaker, she's originally from the UK and now lives in Switzerland and works with women from around the world.

The reason Melitta came onto the podcast is because I wanted her to talk about niching. Now when I booked her on and sent her, her thing to say, I'd like to talk about this because I don't know if you know the process of the podcast people applied to come on the podcast, the application form says what can you offer my audience?

What can you talk to them about? And one of the things on her list was niching. And I was like, do you know what we haven't had people talk about niching very much, in fact, at all, really. And therefore it would be good to have that focus on today's episode. Anyway. So I said to her I went niching and I was really interested in it because I've always said, or for a long time, I said, I don't have a niche.

Now I realize I do have a niche it's to do with me, my personality and what people can expect from me and the type of people I attract. Anyway, I discovered this a little while back, but so while I wasn't sure what Melitta was going to talk about and what I was really pleased about was she talked about the fact of the niche isn't necessarily about, oh, I only worked with farmers age 26 and above that lower than 34. Like she didn't talk about that as a niche or I only work with social media managers, or I only work with coaches who deal with this particular thing. She talked about the niche being around your values.

And I really liked it. She gave me lots of great takeaways and I think you're really going to enjoy today's episode, especially if you're trying to get clear on what you offer to your particular customers. Okay. I will leave you to the episode with Melitta. Here you go.

Teresa: So it is my pleasure today to welcome to the podcast Melitta Campbell. Melitta welcome to the podcast. How you doing?

Melitta: Yeah, I'm great. Thanks.

Teresa: Yeah, it's good. I've just realized your surname is Campbell and what some people may or may not know is that's actually my surname. When I started my business. Well, I was still married to my ex-husband and this Heath-Wareing was my surname.

Teresa: And now I'm married to my new husband who is lovely. Our surname is Campbell, but of course I had to stick with my existing name because you typed it into Google and you find me anywhere. So yeah, he finds it very frustrating that no one uses my actual surnames so yeah we share the same name.

Melitta: Yeah so we could be cousins. And some former.

Teresa: At be we are related, you know, what is it 12 degrees of separation or something. That'd be something in it. Anyway, we didn't get you to talk about it. We always start the same way by you introducing yourself to my audience. Please let them know who you are and how you got to do what you're doing today.

Melitta: Thanks uh, Teresa. So I'm, Melitta Campbell as you introduced, and I'm a business coach. I'm originally from the UK, as you can tell from my accent that today I live in Switzerland with my, my husband and daughters and life is quite different. So I never really saw myself as being a business owner. I worked in corporate in, in marketing communications, but then I moved to Switzerland and I did have a job when I moved here first.

Melitta: But when I had children, I suddenly realized, oh, you know, there's, there's no part time working. There was, I had no support network. I didn't have any family nearby. So it was either be a full-time mom or try and do something for myself as well. And so I still that as being a nice way to keep my hand in.

Melitta: Cause if I'm honest, when I very first started, I fully expected that one day I would be going back into the business into a corporate role full time, but it's, so it just started as a little part-time thing just to keep my brain from going, not going to mummy and mushy in the process, but actually I loved it.

Melitta: And I had such a great time as started as communication consultant for large businesses. That was something that was quite easy for me to do. And they had a network in that area. So it was, it was kind of the most logical first step where there with a five month old baby and I was kind of quite swamped.

Melitta: So I didn't want to do anything too pushing outside too far out of my comfort zone. What I really wanted to be doing however was continuing the work I'd been doing in my corporate career when I reached senior management and they wanted to use that as an opportunity to inspire more women, to create their own career path.

Melitta: So I started a women's network there working in Switzerland in private banking was a little bit like. Well, I saw my father's office being like in London, in the seventies. So there was a lot of scopes or a lot more diversity and I loved that work. So that was always in the back of my mind. And so I built the communication consultancy.

Melitta: It was going great, but it was, it was just lacking something, you know, it was bringing in income, but it wasn't fulfilling me personally. And so I started to do networking and I was trying to find other business owners. And when I found them, particularly the other women, they were really struggling to communicate their value and build a business that was a business and not an expensive hobby and bit by bit when I explained my background and what I'd been doing, then women started to ask me, 'Well, could you help me build my business?'

Melitta: And for a long time I said 'No. I couldn't do that.' And then they'd be like, please. Well, over one woman was like, 'But you're the only one that can help me.' And was I, 'Okay, well, let me look into this.' And I saw that what was missing was women often had some kind of plan that they maybe worked on with their husband, but it wasn't a plan and a goal and a vision that they really believed in.

Melitta: And so they weren't taking those consistent steps with enough intention to make a difference. They were really struggling to communicate their value. And part of the reason of that was because they just saw themselves as being able to help everyone. And of course that makes it really, really difficult to stand out and communicate what you do.

Melitta: And the third part was that they didn't have the right mindset. They weren't really putting processes in place. They weren't expecting their time. And so those were three key things. I thought that's exactly what I can help them with. So I created my dream clients blueprint to really help them in those three areas.

Melitta: And that was, I launched that four years ago now. And it's been amazing ever since. So that's how I got to where I am today.

Teresa: Yeah, that's so awesome. Was it always a case of you wanted to work just as women or was it that you resonated all, you find it more enjoyable? or those more of a need there. What was the kind of driver behind it?

Melitta: Great question. So I do work with a handful of men, but what I saw from the women's network that I ran for the bank was that when women learn so well from other women. And when you can create a positive network and a positive kind of group of women together who just really work together to support each other, then anything becomes possible.

Melitta: And so I really wanted to recreate that. So my dream clients blueprint is a small group business program and that I restrict to about maximum 12 women at a time so that we really have that nice community in there and everyone inspires and encourages each other. And they learn so much from each other alongside the program and my coaching as well.

Melitta: It's really a wonderful experience. But on a one-to-one basis, I do work with men as well because they have exactly the same problems. There isn't really anything different. And yeah, even now often that the men are the ones that are working flexibly around the kids as well. So there's not even the family pressure necessarily.

Melitta: Uh, but I, I felt for the group keeping that as female only was important. And also in this area, I said, there is no part-time working. And so a lot of women are struggling to find work, particularly I live abroad and there's a big ex-part network here. And so a lot of the women, they don't know the language, they don't have a local network.

Melitta: They don't know how to even begin finding a job where they can use their talents in a way that they want to. So starting a businesses is a perfect opportunity for them to, to continue. And that's very much echoes my own experience. So it's that, that was really my motivation behind setting the group up just for women.

Teresa: You know, it's interesting. When I first started my, on my own business, I had to come from corporate. I come from very male orientated roles. So, you know, the car industry where I was literally the only female. I was in banking a very long time ago. And again, very heavy male. When I remember there was like a couple of women only networking.

Teresa: And I remember being almost quite anti women only networking. And I miss them a little bit like. Well, if you can't work with men, then you've literally harmed you, you know, 50% of your tent type thing.

Melitta: But the team. Because I worked in IT, I worked in a property. I worked in real estate, same thing, isn't it. I worked in shipping and Marine engineering really male dominated, and I was just the same. I really avoided women's networks for a long time because I was like 'I, I don't feel held back by being a woman.' And they never had been. I had amazing mentors who were men and really, really supportive. So, but it was only when I came here where I saw that women had been told one time too many, 'You can't do that, you're a girl.' And they'd started to believe it. And there was a real problem here. And there so the first time I thought. I, kind of felt immune to it because that wasn't my experience. That wasn't my belief system. So I could, I felt that it was something that I could gift that the other women in the network, across the company, by having this network and bringing them together.

Melitta: And it was just the most incredible experience. So now I'm a big fan of women's networks, the right ones.

Teresa: Exactly. And you know now I am. And I think you're right, there is something about having all women in a in a group that they are very supportive. They do cheer each other on. They are, if it's the right group of people, obviously that's not always the case, but, but I do think there's something about it.

Teresa: And also one thing I find, cause in my, in my membership predominantly it's women, there are men in there and it's not just for women, but I attract majority women. And in my next level of membership there are all but one that women. And I think, you know, creating a space where they can talk about things that are honest and things that only, and this is going to sound so I've got, you know, I'm so careful on it.

Teresa: I don't want these things, cause it sounds so sexist. It's like only women can deal with, but the role of being a parent is traditionally different if you're a woman. You know, one of my members in particular, if that's a couple of my members, they have their own businesses, their partners have full-time jobs, there businesses, and yet they're still responsible for the children and the cooking and the, you know, and that just blows my mind.

Teresa: And I'm very well, I don't even want to say the word lucky because it's not, it shouldn't be lucky. There should be the case that my husband does as much as I do. In fact, he probably does more than I do because we have helped with cooking now. But it shouldn't be that even if you've got your own business, that still sits on your

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about scaling up – what it looks like and what the challenges are to hopefully help anyone who is wanting to scale their business.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

• When you first start your business, it may just be you but as you scale you will need to manage a team.
• You need to be able to manage and trust your team.
• When you manage people, even if they are doing work for you, you need to still oversee what they are doing.
• Before you start working with a team, you have to come up with the process and brief them before they can do it.
• You NEED to have systems and processes in your business in order to scale.
• Start putting processes into your business, even if it is just you.
• You will be juggling lots of different things when you start to scale, focusing on different areas all the time.
• You have to be organised if you want to scale and plan out your days/weeks/years.
• It is really important to keep reviewing what you and your team are doing.
• Use systems such as Slack and Trello to help you stay organised.
• You invest a lot of the money you make back into you and your business.
• You should be coached by people you look up to and are ahead of you.
• It is sometimes easy to look at someone else’s membership or business income and compare – but what you can’t see is their outgoings.
• The more you make, the more you spend.
• When you do scale and get more well known, it is harder to celebrate the wins and be proud of what you have done.
• No matter what level, you will still look at your competitors and compare!
• Please leave me a podcast review!

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…No matter what level you are, you may still get imposter syndrome!

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

• Managing people in your business 07:14
• Processes and systems for your business 10:23
• Juggling everything as a business owner 11:29
• Getting organised 12:25
• Investing more in your business 13:30
• Things that won’t change 16:15

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 

My 90 Day Program

 

Transcript:

 

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. This is the third podcast I've recorded in a space of a very short amount of time, like literally an hour or two because the others were interviews and I'd already done the interview.

So they don't take long. Anyway, I am so sick at the beginning. I can't tell you, like, I just wish I could come up with something different. Well, should I just not even say hello and welcome. Should I just like, just start talking that you really vicious. I hate it. Honestly, it raises we're headed anyway. So I've already started like a redone this one twice because I've messed up.

But anyway, uh, and I didn't, I don't mess up very often. Well, I'm going to take that back. I do mess up, but I don't delete the recordings very often because you need to know that people are human and I am human and I think you might disagree. Let me know that you quite liked the fact that I am human and this isn't super polished, and this is not scripted at all.

Like seriously, it's not scripted. In fact, if you could see what was in front of me now, it's literally 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 bullet points of things that I need to, or want to touch on as I'm talking to you today. And you have to remember, I've been doing this for 215 episodes. So like, without, I'm supposed to say so I'm good at this, but I hate blow my own trumpet.

Although I was listening to something the other day, I was listening to a podcast where they talked about, you need to, I'm going to have to check this actually. Uh, I'm literally going to check what she said as I'm talking to you, basically, she was saying that that's it, lots of people are really good at showing authenticity posts, which I think I'm very good at the authenticity thing, but we need to be showing more authority posts.

And not that this is what I was going to talk about today, but actually I'm kind of glad this came up because this is something that I struggle with and something that I'm working on. Because my husband will say to me a lot that he doesn't understand. And neither do I sometimes why the people I coach have bigger memberships than I do.

And I asked them on the other day, uh, Someone who was interviewing me, but I happen to know. They were in and another membership. And, and yet they know me and I've worked with them and I said, 'Why did you choose that membership? And not mine, I'm just interested.' And I said to this person, she told me the reasons why she chose that membership.

And at the time, I don't think she really knew me at that point. But anyway, And then I said, so you do know I coach them. And she was like, 'Well.' And I said, 'yeah.' And then she mentioned some other names to me who were in the similar industry and I went, 'Yeah, I've coached them too.' And it's starting to very slowly dawn on me that I should be talking about this more, that the experts that you might be a memberships for, obviously I'm making a very sweeping statement there.

Are people that come to me for help. And I think I've got to get comfortable in saying, why would you go to other people when they come to me? Why not just come straight to me? Now, obviously there are many reasons why people choose different people in different memberships. And I get that totally. But it's just interesting that one thing I'm probably not very good at is saying I've been in marketing for 16 years. I've been employed. I've worked with humongous companies, like heading up marketing for Landrover. I've worked with Teeny Tiny companies where I had to do everything. And I started off my life as marketing, fax marketing, like literally sending faxes.

It was a thing and yeah, and I know what I'm talking about and I hang around with some pretty cool people in my space. I know I'm doing it. So yeah, it's hard. It's super, super hard. I think. I need to get better at in a nice way, showing off in a, and that's not necessarily what I want to do, but in saying actually I am, I am good at this stuff.

And I'm so good that other coaches come to me or other experts come to me to find out how to do things. I just need to get that across a bit more. But anyway, that's not what I was coming here to talk about. But I just find it really interesting that, like I said, this lady was on about authority posts as well as authenticity posts.

And I think I've been doing a lot of authenticity posts and a lot of like, you know, like I joke all the time. I'm not very professional on the podcast. I, you know, I am good, fun. I like to make things light. But maybe people don't take my credibility in, in the way that they need to take it because of those things.

So anyway, I feel like this is turning into a strategy session for my brand, which it's not, but yeah, like, anyway, it was just really interesting. So it made me think, and I don't know where that ridiculousness has just made you think. And are you doing enough of it? Are you telling people how amazing you are?

Because I know I'm not, I'm not doing it enough, so it's something I need to work on. Okay. That, isn't what today's episode about fyi. So today's episode actually is about scaling up. Obviously I've had my business in total seven years. I've had the online business for about I always forget. I should probably check the facts one day 4-5 years, maybe four years, three years.

I don't know. Anyway. And obviously during that time, things have scaled up. My brand is scaled. My awareness is scaled. My team is scaled. What we do has scaled, and I just wanted to do a podcast episode on what scaling up, looks like, and what some of the challenges are, because I don't know about you, but when I started, I thought if I could just get past this bit, if I could just do this bit, then everything will feel so much better.

I'll feel so much more confident, so much more organized. I won't be as busy. I won't feel as stressed. And I'm so sorry to tell you that it isn't quite as simple as that. It just, and I've talked about this before in the podcast, it doesn't get easier. It just gets different. And I just want to give you an idea of what scaling up looks like, and actually some of the things that you might want to consider when you're scaling up.

So, and there are some very different challenges. Now, just want to kind of show you what some of those challenges are. Do not get me wrong when I swapped this, not in a million years. I flippin love for, I do. I just want to let you know what some of those challenges might be. Okay. So the very first one is managing people.

Now, obviously when you just start and it's just, you, you don't have to manage anybody. I've obviously managed people in my past life. I've managed lots of people. I've managed huge teams of people. It is different now managing them within my business. And also I manage freelancers. All of my team, even the full-time ones are freelance.

Basically worked for me on a freelance basis. None of them are physically employed by me. That was just a decision that I chose to go with. I think probably from an admin point of view, I just couldn't bear the thought of actually employing somebody full-time in the business, which I know is going to be the next scale up and I will have to, but at this point I manage freelancers.

So obviously when you're starting off, you don't have people to manage and that can be tricky. So for instance, today, I am recording some podcasts and I'm recording some videos because one of my team who do the editing, Phil, who does the editing is going off on a holiday. So that obviously has an impact on me and my priorities and stuff, which is perfectly understandable.

Now allowed in holidays. I mean, they like to take them. I'm not keen. I'm joking. But yeah. So, you know, that's one thing, another thing is managing people how they work. So some people I've worked with have not been great. They've not given me stuff when I wanted it, or they'd been a bit slow in giving me stuff or it's not been at the quality I needed. And it's managing that and managing the fact of you're bringing them on and bringing them part of your team, trusting you, trusting you, trusting them that I'm trusting you for, you know, fair enough. There's lots of aspects and that, that is obviously different and causes new and different challenges.

The other thing that's interesting is I find that alongside juggling, sorry, managing people, I juggle a lot. So when you're managing people, they are doing work for you, which is lovely and wonderful. However, you need sight over all that work. So obviously I've got the team, but I know kind of hopefully at any one point what they're all dealing with and what they're working with.

And obviously some team members, I need to make sure that they have work because if they don't, I'll be paying them for nothing, which in some cases, I don't mind that, but obviously in an ideal world, you want to make sure that you're paying people, you know, for work they've done, but it relies on me.

Secondly, Like some processes I will do so much and then they will take the rest. But it doesn't mean I can forget about that process. I might have to pick something up at the end or I might have to remember something. So I find that now we got lots of lovely people working for me and I adore my team. I think they're amazing.

I'm also juggling a lot more things in my brain because it's like, I was just doing a lot of brainstorm yesterday about some things I want to organize. And I know that obviously I'm going to have to organize the first bit. I'm going to have to come up with the structure. I'm going to have to come up with the process, but then once I have someone else takes over, but it doesn't mean that that disappears off my brain altogether.

Obviously a thing about scaling up is you need processes. And I was very reluctant, not for any reason, just rubbish at this stuff. So my first team member, Katie tried, tried, tried so hard to get me focused and to use systems and put things in place. And I was just rubbish. And then it got to the point where I got another team member and another team member, and then a full-time team member.

And I have to bring these things in place. It just couldn't work, but I'm still learning. This is not done by any stretch of imagination. I am still bringing in processes all the time. So again, that's super important that when we talk about you kind of putting in some processes, even when it's just you, if you can, you're going to save yourself so much time later.

Whereas I didn't and therefore I was just well, I just have to now do all the processes. I'm just going through my list. I'm trying to put them in some vague order. We'll see. So I've put you spend your time doing different things. So the same way as you're juggling a lot, we do many different things now.

So whereas before at the beginning, it might've been very simple because we didn't do that much. And therefore, my focus is only on like the podcast, a bit of social media and the academy. Now, we will be juggling lots of other things. And therefore my focus is on other things and I'm doing different things.

Also, when I say, in fact, I know what I meant by that note as well though, is that I spend my time focusing on different areas in the sense of like said, I might not do the process, but I have to focus on what that process looks like and why we do it and what the need of it is and all of that sort of good stuff.

So I will focus on and spend time looking at a bigger picture and thinking a bit wider. Obviously just thought over the next few weeks or months. And now I think year ahead, I've put, you have to become really organized, which kind of goes along with the processes and the team. I've got to be organized because like I said, if I didn't get these things done fulfilled, go on holiday.

The podcast wouldn't come out. Well, it would, I'd have to edit it though, and I'd put more work on my plate and I wouldn't be as good, all those other reasons. So you do have to be organized and that's hard. Like when you're juggling a lot of things, that's not always easy, but what I always find is I bring myself back to center all the time.

So I will often sit. Well, as you know, I plan my days, and I plan my week, but I will often do a very quick like notes of everything that's going on in my world. And then like just quickly review where I am with everything. Also becoming a more organized thing means things like using Trello or slack or those kinds of systems that help you to stay organized. So at any one time we can see where we are with the podcast, or I can see where we are with booking guests for next year, for the academy to do training. Okay. What else do I got on my list? So the next thing I've got is you invest more. So I find that actually my other point that's staying here is you spend as much as you make.

Now. I'm not saying that's the case for everybody, but I have found that the people I go to, as I was talking about at the beginning of this, that lots of, you know, the people in the UK, I guess I've had some of the coaches come to me. I go to huge people and they cost money. And the reason I go and get training or support or coaching or mentorship through those people is because they are ahead of me, way ahead of me, where I want to be. And they are great connections. So I've had to invest more in that side of it. That's something that I've done the entire way through my business.

You should be with people that you look up to that you want to work with that inspire you, that motivate you, that you like, and you should define those people and work with them. And sometimes working with them looks like you're spending money with them. I'm the same Jasmine Star. I've bought her stuff. I remember social curator, Amy Porterfield, all those many years ago, I bought her course.

I've been in James Wedmore's next level. I've been in lots of different things. Sorry. I keep almost keep going to yawn, which is really bad, but it's about seven o'clock here. I've had a very busy day recording stuff. So I'm trying so hard to stay fully awake, and I don't want to keep pausing and stopping because it really affects like the flow and my flow.

Anyway, I'm going to like take a deep breath. And ignore the fact that I don't even say the word. So, yeah. So you do find yourself investing or I did investing more in bigger things. I have people who are ready to move to the next stage who'd come and join the 90 day program because that's a great way to get them to the next stage.

And when I see you spend as much as you make. I want you to remember that sometimes it's super easy to look at someone and think, gosh, look how much they must be making. I always do the math. I love that. Find a membership, find out how much it charges and then do the math. And then you go wowses. However, what you're not paying attention to there is their outgoings and my outgoings have gone up considerably as I've scaled my team, my systems, software, processes, like my, um, investing in other people, like all of that means that, you know, ads. I do ads. I pay for my sales pages to be created for me. All of that adds to the fact that you're spending more.

So even though you're making more, I have found that I spent more trying to start for that yawn again. If you're listening to this in the first in the morning, you're gonna think this is bad because it's the end of the day for me. And I'm a bit tired. Let me just check if I've said everything on my list.

Isn't. Yeah. Okay. So a couple of things that don't change, you don't stop having imposter syndrome. I am so very sorry to tell you, but you don't, you still feel every single stage who the hell am I? Someone's going to find me out. What am I thinking? Who did I think that I could do this? Every stage.

And I know people much higher stage than me who still think the same. So I think that, you need to realize that that might still be there. The other thing that I, that is kind of a problem and I guess still stays, but actually gets harder as it gets harder to say I'm a big deal. So when your, when I was like, just starting off and I was speaking locally, and then I would get picked up sort of nationally and then picked up internationally, it was, it was easier than to go.

Wow, look, look at this. I've been invited to do and look how people see me and view me and how brilliant is this. And that actually gets much harder to do now. It gets really hard to go. Yeah, it's a not a big deal. I hate it. But you know what I mean? Like, it gets harder to go. I'm good at what I do and come and learn with me or work with me or whatever.

And the other thing that doesn't change you still look at your competitors. You still look at other people. And I try very hard not to do this. And in fact, I have worked really hard at not looking at my phone because it's so true when it talks about the morning routine and that you get up. And the very first thing you do is look at your phone.

Then you see something on social that piss you off and you're like, 'Oh, how did they get to do that? Or why are they doing that? Or how are they looking so organised...

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Rich Brooks who is a digital marketing expert, author, podcast host, and public speaker who helps entrepreneurs and business owners reach more of their ideal customers online. We talk all about how to stand out and find out what is remarkable about your business.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

• You don’t have to post on every single social media platform – quality over quantity!
• Public speaking is really important for business owners and can have a huge positive impact on your business.
• The ability to stand up on stage and present is really important and great for your visibility.
• It is really hard to market your business if there is nothing remarkable about it!
• 4 lenses – find, focus, fashion and frame. Use them to get a better understanding of your business.
• Remarkability is in the eye of the beholder – the people you wish to serve
• Find – why do people choose you? Look at your reviews, feedback and look at everything you are already doing. What are you doing differently to your competitors?
• Is there a smaller audience you could serve? You could tailor one of your products to different industries – this helps you to understand their needs even further.
• If you want to become remarkable – one way to do this is to niche down.
• Retaining your clients is so much more important than always gaining new ones.
• Spend more time and attention on your current client base and they won’t go anywhere!
• Fashion – creating something intrinsic to your offering that is in line with your vision, mission and values.
• Frame – reframe the conversation so people appreciate what you are doing is remarkable.
• Once you have figured out your remarkability – you need to get this message out to your audience in a consistent way. Identify who will care about it and speak to them.

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

Find what it is that makes you different and get that out there!

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

• An introduction to Rich 05:09
• Public speaking for business 10:50
• The remarkability formula 15:57
• How to find your remarkability 21:07
• Do I have to niche? 29:45
• How to market your remarkability 38:45

 

CHECK RICH OUT:

 

Website

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Agents of Change Podcast

 

Transcript:

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So I've got an interview this week and I just want to like dive straight in. I just thinking, have I got anything else to tell you before I get going?

 

No, I don't think it's like any bulletins. Any news, anybody want to share on a thing? No, we can crack on. So this week I am interviewing the very lovely. And I know, I say everyone's lovely, but you really is Rich Brooks. Now I was originally on Rich's podcast. You know, when you just hit it off with someone like straight away that when he talks about coming on mine, I was like, yeah, absolutely.

 

A hundred percent. He is very smart. He's been in marketing for some crazy amount of years and he really knows what he's talking about. And him and I are very similar on some of our thoughts and opinions. And it's just really nice to have a conversation with someone who, who is so in line with what I teach and how I want to be, and that sort of thing.

 

And it is nice when I speak to someone when I don't know anything. Cause then I get to learn brand new things and I did learn stuff from Rich. It's just really nice when someone is like really on your level. So it was great fun, and he's a very, uh, charming and funny guy. I think you're really going to like him.

 

Okay. So I just pause, not that you do, because obviously you just hear the stream of normalness to get Rich's bio so I could read it to you. And I'm already laughing to myself because this is what I mean. That is quite funny. Quite funny. No, he's very funny. Rich has written his bio on his website and I'm reading it. So it said Rich started b1 communications–now flyte new media–in his living room in 1997. His design skill, project management, and the ability to understand the most basic accounting concepts have required him to hire much smarter and more talented people than himself.

 

Regardless, Rich seems to think a lot of himself, he calls himself an “Internet Marketing Expert.” Apparently, he likes to talk about himself in the third person as well. Like if that doesn't give you an idea of like you know, this episode and how funny he is. I don't know what does. Going to continue in this bio cause it's very funny. Rich loves to hear the sound of his own voice.

 

So you can often hear him speaking in front of both local and national audiences on web design and internet marketing. He founded The Agents of Change Podcast, which is the one I went on at the weekly internet radio show where he interviews marketing experts from around the world. He also started The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference, an annual conference that takes place in Portland, Maine and is streamed worldwide.

 

Rich is also the "tech expert" on 207. I don't know what that means. Oh, hang on an evening news program. And on the NBC affiliates here in Maine, he creates most of the content here at flyte contributing to our web marketing blog, our YouTube channel and Facebook business page.

 

He is an Expert Blogger at FastCompany.com and contributes regularly to Social Media Examiner, the world’s second most popular blogs on social media. Rich's also active in social media and you can follow him on Twitter friend him on Facebook or can get LinkedIn with him and you'll find a dozen other sites as well. He welcomes your questions and looks forward to discussing your website. Honestly, that is funny, man.

 

He, this just sums up like what he was like. He was so much fun to interview. That I just don't think I've got anything else to say. I probably should tell you what we talk about. We talk about how to make you stand out in your business and how to find what's remarkable about your business. So I'm just going to leave it to him to explain the rest. Here's the lovely, Rich.

 

Okay. It's my absolute pleasure today to welcome to the podcast Rich Brooks. Rich, how are you doing?

 

Rich: Teresa, I'm doing great today. I've been looking forward to this conversation all day.

 

Teresa: And what time is it Rich? So is it like nine o'clock in the morning?

 

Rich: No, no, no. It's 12:30. I've had two meals already today.

 

Teresa: I love it. Well, you're actually my last podcast of the day. So I've had a day of interviewing and I thought I'd saved the best for the last.

 

Rich: Excellent. Appreciate it, kind words.

 

Teresa: My pleasure. So Rich, I'm really excited for today. We've already had a couple of chats already, which is lovely and it was good fun. So I'm excited that my audience gets to hear from you. And I always start off the same way, which is probably very dull for my audience, but we'll do it anyway.

 

Rich: Exciting for me.

 

Teresa: Exactly. It's all new for you. So it's fine. Can you introduce yourself and tell us how you got to do what you're doing now?

 

Rich: Sure. My name is Rich Brooks. And for the last 24 years, I've been the founder and president of Flyte New Media. We're a digital agency located in Portland, Maine, which is kind of the top right corner of the United States.

 

We do web design. Uh, we do development. We do search engine optimization, social media, email marketing, just about everything under the sun when it comes to digital. I also run a podcast and a conference under the brand Agents Of Change when there's not a global pandemic, we have an annual conference here in Portland, Maine, and then I do a weekly podcast that you've been a guest on and we'll come back again because we had so much fun doing it.

 

And those are kind of the big professional things going on in my life and happy to answer any other questions you might have about that.

 

Teresa: Love it. So, first off, I just need to address 24 years, like in the same company. You're doing all right then I guess.

 

Rich: Yeah, you can see it in my face. Right. Those 24 years just carved in there, like a scar.

 

Yeah, no, it's, I, I honestly thought that I'd have maybe two years when I first started this gig running my own business. I thought that either programmers would learn how to design or designers would learn how to program. And that would be the end of my job. And then I go find something else. I really just wanted to kind of do my own thing for a couple of years.

 

And then here we are, 24 years later. Because I discovered you can hire people who are much more talented and focused than you are. And so that's where I find myself that I have surrounded myself by some very talented driven by, and I'm happy to say ethical people who work here at Flyte.

 

Teresa: So I've been in marketing 16 ish years.

 

And the world that I've seen in marketing has changed beyond almost recognition. You know, 24 years ago, it would have been a case of like, what's a website. Do I need a website? That's surely.

 

Rich: Yeah, there were definitely early on. I'd have to convince people. And to be honest, one of my first paying clients was my dad.

 

And you know, he's like, he's a psychologist and he's a well-known psychologist. He travels all over the world. He's written a lot of books, but he's like, what is the psychology? This was back when he was still seeing patients. What does the psychologist need for with a website I'm like, 'Dad just it's either that you are going to move home because everyone want it.'

 

So he said 'Absolutely Rich. I totally believe in you here's some money build me a website.' which actually led to a bunch of jobs after that. But yeah, back then the customer journey was not online as we like to say. So the idea of having a website was kind of a strange thing. And then once I started, I just found it really fascinating.

 

I was doing sales for medical supply company at the time. And when my boss wasn't looking, I just figured out how to build a website. And I, the company was called Ultra Care Services. I found the guy who owned ultracare.com. I asked him if I could buy the domain off of him, he actually worked for like some giant corporation, like Procter and Gamble here in the States.

 

And he was like, 'Yeah, we're not using it.' And he just gave it to me. And so I built a site, I showed it to him and my boss was so happy. He took me off the road, put me in the office and that was pretty close to the end of my time there. Cause I didn't want to be in the office, but, uh, but yeah, so that's kinda how I got started.

 

It was a lot of trying to convince people that this was going to be a big thing and turned out to us.

 

Teresa: Yeah. And then, because, like I said, I remember having some of the conversations of why people need a website and then the whole conversation of what's this social media thing. And why do I need that? Like, you know, just basically has everything news come in.

 

You've probably had to battle with people to convince them why it's worth them putting that time and effort into it.

 

Rich: Sometimes. Absolutely. I mean, I was definitely an early adopter for social media. I just happened to be lucky that I got involved with some people who are big bloggers at the time. They got me to speak at an event called the BlogWorld out in Vegas.

 

And from going to that, I started, people were talking about Twitter and Facebook and I couldn't even understand or fathom how that had anything to do with business. But I paid attention. I came home, I started trying things. And then all of a sudden I was giving presentations on how do you use Twitter for business?

 

How do you social media for business? And there was a, there was, you know, the, the foreigners in their businesses said like, this seems important. And so I started working with them and then time grow on. And then everybody's, you know, doing social media, everybody's doing email marketing, everybody's got a blog or a podcast.

 

What have you, these days, actually, more of my conversations are like, you know what, maybe you don't need a big presence on Facebook. You're a B2B company. You're selling to a very segmented group. They're not on Facebook for business. So let's find you a better solution. So these days I feel almost like a curator of digital marketing on what's really? Where is your audience hanging out? Where can you perform well? How are you going to generate leads and sales? And let's develop a plan around that. So it's definitely shifted.

 

Teresa: It's almost come full circle. Hasn't it? Back to. Like everyone had to do it. Now actually, no, not so much because there's so much out there.

 

Rich: Now it's definitely more quality over quantity, where there was a time when it's just the more blog posts you put out, the more emails you put out, the more successful you'll be. And now if you remember, when they used to tell us, you had to post to Facebook five times a day. I'm like, holy cow, what bad advice that turned out to be.

 

Teresa: Like what absolute trash would have been put it out.

 

Rich: Right. Well, there were less people then. So five posts a day. You probably could get some good visibility with that, but that's just not the case anymore.

 

Teresa: I'm interested. How much do you think your early speaking career had a benefit to your business? Like do you credit?

 

Rich: 1 million %

 

Teresa: Yeah.

 

Rich: For a few reasons. One is, I really do think that public speaking is one of the most important skills in entrepreneur. And I wasn't always comfortable standing in front of the stage now or standing on a stage now I love it. And I can not. I've actually got my first in-person speaking event coming up the beginning of next month and I could not be more excited.

 

Yeah, it's awesome. But I think that that's one of those unheralded, but critical skills that entrepreneurs should learn. And yes, you can do stuff on zoom and zoom will never go away. Or some version of zoom will never go away. But the, the ability to stand up on stage and present is critically important.

 

And for me personally, like I remember when the guys who were on this blogging group with me said, 'Oh, who wants to speak at Vegas?' And I'm like, 'Who am I to speak at Vegas?' In Vegas to a group of bloggers. Like I run a tiny little shop with three employees. I have nothing to share, but I decided to roll the dice. I went out there and quite honestly, I sucked.

 

It was not, I was forced to do the topic.

 

Teresa: Someone recorded that?

 

Rich: Probably. Oh, maybe not back then, but yeah was like I was forced to do a topic I knew nothing about. I did it. It was mildly okay. And probably the saving graces friends of mine there put me on a blogging panel because they, somebody had dropped out. That actually was great. And then they asked me back the next year and I started kind of pushing for the topics I was comfortable doing.

 

And it really just got my name out there. It also connected me with people. And when I started doing my own conference here in Portland, Maine, I made all these people. I got these really big names to come to a State. They had never been to a tiny little place in America, or at least from a population standpoint.

 

And so all of those things were critically important to the growth of my company. And these days, and I'm sure you do this too. You take a look at well, where is my business coming from? Where are the leads coming from? And our biggest and best projects right now, almost all of them either listen to the podcast or more likely saw me speak, or it came from somebody who saw me speak.

 

So it's always comes back to that, getting up on stage, even though we're a digital agency, you would think that inbound would be our bread and butter, but because it's so competitive, We've actually found that where we go and there's less competition and we can have more intelligent conversations with our ideal customers. That's where we get this.

 

Teresa: I think you're right. I think over lockdown don't get me wrong. I've done a lot of online stuff. Lots of conferences and some conferences. The one I did was stringed something like 104 countries and translated into some obscene amount of languages and was out something like 500,000 people.

 

Now, this got any chance I could have that in an in-person event, but actually one thing I've really noticed is my visibility has really reduced as, as people are getting more tired with the online world. There's people who like I've done all the millions of online conferences, and I am desperate for the in-person stuff again, to start bringing that back.

 

And also that you said that you know, when we were on your phone, cause we were talking about Amy Poterfield and the only reason I have a relationship with her is because I met her in person and because we had coffee together and then we have mutual friends and like that stuff is so important for building those relationships.

 

Hence why she was one of the first guests on my podcast like that I couldn't have got, if it hadn't been for being out there and speaking and, and the same with Pat Flynn, I spoke on the same stage as him. Hence, why he was able to come onto the podcast. So I think you're right. I think for me, it's a big business thing and I feel like not I'm suffering at the moment, but I feel like it's definitely had an impact, that I haven't been able to go out there and do it like you. I just flippin love it.

 

Rich: Right. Well, and it's funny because both Amy and I, both Amy and Pat, I got to know because live events, it was Jaime Masters who was in our group with Pat and I met Jaime flying for me. And one of the only other digital marketers I...

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about selling, getting some more sales/clients for your business and using social media to do this!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

• It has been really hard for small businesses recently
• Your worth and your knowledge is not measured by how many customers/clients you have and how much they pay you
• Our brain tells us horrible things when sales are low and it makes you panic!
• When we come from a place of fear we may offer to do something we wouldn’t normally do or offer a lower price
• When you think about doing something – pause and think would I be saying yes if I had the money and clients I needed?
• Quick wins:
• Follow up with past proposals who didn’t buy from you
• Go to your existing customers – simply ask them for a testimonial/case study, ask if they would like more from you or tell them your price is increasing, ask them if they know anyone who would like your product/service
• Go to past customers – ask if they need anything else and if they know anyone who does. “I have a space available”
• Tell people today what you do and how you can help them
• Don’t sell on social media all day every day! But do tell people how they can buy from you
• Tell people what you do, how you do it and how they can work with you/buy from you
• Long term:
• Make it easy for people to buy from you by simplifying the user process on social media – eg. Click here to do this.
• Check your sales pages/landing pages – are they convincing the customer to buy and triggering their needs?
• Could you offer training or an online course? Any other revenue streams?

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

“What if this is exactly where I need to be right now?”

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

• What to do when sales are low 03:52
• What can you do to boost sales and clients? 12:51

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 

Check out my reels on Instagram!

My Podcast Assistant

How to create a highly converting sales page FREE download

My webinar blueprint FREE download

 

Transcript:

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are things? We are what in the middle of no, nearly at the end of October. Oh my goodness. Is it really old of me to say that doesn't time fly?

I think, I think that definitely stuff that I would have heard my parents say. So, um, I probably won't be saying that again, but it does though. Doesn't it? It just goes so fast. So so fast. But we won't linger on that for any longer. And talking of feeling old I decided now I decided by the time you listened to this, hopefully I'd have done a few by then.

I've decided I've got to do reels, now I really didn't want to do reels. I really don't want to look stupid. And I know the pointy things really help. And I know the lip sync and stuff are very entertaining. And I do think sometimes I can be quite funny, but I just really didn't want to do reels. But I've changed my mind.

I think I've got to, and I'm really interested in future weeks to talk about this and talk about how I've done them, what I think of them, because it's really important to me to make it authentic. I don't know about you but I've seen people do reels and I thought, oh, well, one it's made me feel a bit funny until I thought that's not you that's, that's not what you would do.

So I had some training with a very lovely lady and who does reels and we talked about it and I said, I want it to be authentic. I want it to look like me and what I would do. And what I then did was kind of come up with some, these are things that I would say or behave or my thoughts and we then thought that how could we turn them into reels rather than looking at the reels and going, how can I make that work for my business?

So I'm kind of like semi excited, semi nervous, semi cringing about the fact that I'm doing reels, but it's a thing I'm now doing reels. We'll see how it goes. I mean, by the time this episode comes out, I might given up already. You just don't know. So if you don't follow me on the Insta, do come and follow me and come and see how cringe I could look. There is going to be a pointing one.

I know there is, I've got to, I've got to do it and I will hate myself for every point at point but we're going to do it anyway. Anyway, enough of me pointing reels, we're going to be talking today about selling and about getting some more sales and getting more customers and clients. And how we should use social media in order to do that.

Now, the reason I wanted to do this episode was because running after sort of schools went back and summer was really hard on a lot of small businesses. They've really struggled with getting sales. And I think generally because the world is a little bit mad at times I don't know any better or grown-up way to describe it.

I just think it's, it's mean that for business, it's been really hard. And although I am very much into, let me motivate you and inspire you and like, you know, gee, you are up. I'm also very real in the sense of it's been hard and I'm not going to be like, 'Yeah, but nevermind pat yourself on the back get going.' like, because it's not always as easy as that.

So I just want to acknowledge it and recognize it. But what I want us to do is look at what we can do to take action. Now, the first thing I want to talk about when it comes to struggling and needing sales or customers or clients. Now we're not, we don't ever not need them. We always want them, but you know, those times where you're like, 'Holy moly, I think I'm going to be sick because there is literally no money coming through the door or that clients just decided they're finishing, or these customers aren't buying a fitness thing out there and no one's buying.' it's horrible. It is. It's really bad from so many reasons. The stuff our brain tells us is not nice. It starts saying stuff like, 'Well who the hell did you think you were to do that thing? Because obviously you weren't going to be successful at that.'

And it tells you that you're stupid and you don't know what you're talking about. And people pretend to like you and they don't really like you, and they're not going to buy your stuff from you. And everyone's going to laugh at you and your friends and your family are going to be like, 'No stupid so and so thinking she could do this.' and then you decide that your worth and your knowledge is directly attached to how much someone pays you or if they pay you.

So then what happens is, and I've had this with students at the 90 day program is when they are struggling to get clients or customers they're like, 'Well I'm obviously no good.' Well, are you though? Like I, are you good at what you do? Because if you're relying on someone else waiting to validate that, then that's no good, is it? Like we can't, we can't only think we're good when someone buys from us and then think we're dreadful when they don't.

So our brain kicks us while we're down and tells us all these horrible things and all these things, then you panic about the money. Like I'm not even going to pretend that that is not real panic and not valid. Like you need money. We all need money and therefore not having it is a serious, serious worry.

Now, obviously I am not a money expert. And if you do have issues then, you know, maybe I'm not the person to be giving you advice on this, and then you might want to take proper advice from a real money expert. But I'm just saying that, you know, from a business point of view, when you're struggling to get clients and sales, I know what it's like, and I know how it can feel and how horrible it is.

So, what I want to do today is I want to talk some practical ways about how can we try and get some more sales and customers and using social media and that sort of thing. But before I talk about that, I actually want to address the fact that our brain is doing that thing. And this is only because I've been through this and I've worked through this that I feel like I can talk about it.

So when you're in that moment of holy crap I need a client or the inquiries have dried up or people aren't walking through the door, you go into panic. And like I said, I am not saying that is not a reasonable response because it absolutely is. However, what happens when we're in panic. And when we're in fear is that we make really bad decisions and we make decisions that we would never make if we weren't in that position.

So. What I want us to first think about is the fact of when we're panicking, we might do things that we ordinarily wouldn't do. And I have done these things. So I have taken on someone that I didn't want to take on, doing a thing I didn't want to do. Now, if I wasn't in a position of, I needed that money at that point, I would never have done that.

Now did it workout? No, of course it didn't work out it bit me on the backside hard because I should never have taking, taking it. But I was coming from fear. I was coming from panic, going, 'Oh my word, I am a single parent and I run a house and I pay the mortgage and there is no one else earning money in this house, but me, and if I don't bring home money, I literally don't have a house my daughter and I to live in, let alone thinking about the food situation.'

So at that point, you know, you panic and you do things. So that's what I did. I took on a client that I didn't want. And I said, I could do something that I don't normally do. And I regretted it immensely. Or you do things like you say, you go back and you instantly change your pricing and you lower it, or you decide that that price that you increased a few months ago, obviously isn't working and you drop it.

Basically we just make really bad decisions when we're coming from a place of fear. When we're coming from place of fear, we don't think straight. And we just panic. I've had members that have offered a service to their list that they don't do, and they don't want to do. But they did because they suddenly thought I need the money coming through the door.

I've had people think that they need to go down a different route or pivot or whatever. And I've had people think that they need to get a job and totally understand that fear. I really do. I couldn't imagine. Like, oh couldn't imagine if I had to get a job. I know literally my stomach, I just had a very visceral reaction to the thought of ever having to actually get a job, but I get it.

But if we're coming from fear we don't make good decisions. So the first thing I want you to think about is like, can we not be in panic mode? Now I know that's not easy. It's like, 'Oh, yeah, sure Teresa, I'll just turn that off. Thanks very much.' I know that. But panicking isn't changing anything. Being scared, isn't changing anything. All it's doing is making you feel really uncomfortable and making this whole situation a lot harder. It doesn't change the fact that you've got no clients or you've not got as many sales coming in. It just literally makes you feel rubbish. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is when you think about doing something, because you're thinking I need to get clients, I want you to try and pause and go.

If I had the clients, I needed all the money I needed, would I be doing this thing right now? Like, would I be saying yes to working with someone I don't want to work with and doing a job that I don't want to do? No, of course I wouldn't be saying yes. And at that point, hopefully you might go 'I know I'm scared and I know I'm nervous and I know I'm worried, but can I just hold off and ride this storm a little bit longer? Because I know ultimately making that decision is not going to be the right decision to make.' So that's the other thing. Now if you want to go a little bit room but I have to say this is really helped me many, many, many times is you tell yourself, what am I, what if I am exactly where I need to be right now?

What if there is a very good reason for this at this point? I'm not saying there is, okay. I'm not saying, and I'm not trying to belittle it. I'm not trying to go and be like, you know, oh no, this is a good thing that you've got no money and you've got to feed your kids. I'm definitely not saying that. But what I'm saying is if you thought about that and thought, you know, what, if this was a good thing, what if I was where I meant need to be?

What if I needed to lose those clients because another amazing one's going to come along. What if I need to lose those clients to suddenly then free me up and this is actually what happened to me, free me up to work more my online business. And then ultimately I can move to my online business. What if, what if, like, I just want you just to like, play that story in your head.

What if I haven't got these clients, but now I've got some free time, yet granted the money is very important, but you know, is there a reason for it. Now, whether we think there is, or whether we think we don't, it might just make us feel better and ultimately isn't that much nicer. Like, again, it doesn't change anything.

It doesn't change the fact of how things are, but just changing our mindset about it might just make us feel better and make us not make stupid decisions. So that was the first thing I wanted to talk about. And like I said, that's a really hard subject and it's really hard for me to say that with the, I don't know the kind of like understanding that I'm not belittling the situation because I've been there.

If you're on my email list, you know, I sent an email a while back now, actually about the fact of when I was starting the online business, I got to one Christmas and I thought, well, I thought that was it. I thought that. Oh, well, I didn't think I didn't have the money to pay my credit card. My credit card needed paying and I didn't have the money.

I didn't have anything coming in and I was fearful. Oh. And my credit card was like at the point where it was maxed. So it's not like I had any money on the credit card and I couldn't bring, I couldn't find the money to do the minimum payment. Now I have a very lovely husband and we live in a nice house and he has you know, good money for what he does.

However, I was very proud because I started this on my own and I stand on my own two feet and I wasn't willing to speak to my husband and say, holy moly, man, I need some help. So I really panicked and thank goodness I have some amazing business friends and people around me that were able to talk me off the ledge and give me that space and go, what if, and talk to me about this thing.

So, and it worked out great and fine, but I didn't know that at the time. And I was literally having a heart attack, you know? So like I said, I'm not belittling this, but I'm just trying to, if I help you think about it differently and it just makes you feel a bit better, then surely that's got to be a good thing.

Okay. Let's go on with some practical stuff now we've talked about like the mindset and the thoughts and the woo woo stuff. Let's talk about what can you actually do because that's the most important thing. Okay. Let's fix the mindset if we can, but then let's take some real action to actually try and get some customers through the door.

So the first thing I want you to think about is doing some quick wins that you can. So some of the quick things that you can do is you can follow up with past proposals or past people that didn't buy from you, even if they chose to go with someone else, even if they decided that your thing, wasn't there thing. Why not follow up with them and say, 'Just want to check how you got on, were you happy with that? Is there anything else you needed?'

Because what if they'd gone with someone else to do a service and actually they were rubbish and then they'd completely forgotten about you or thought you know, you just go out of their radar and then you come back at the right time. So follow up on people that haven't bought from you, about inquired about buying from you.

The next thing I want you to do is I want you to go to your existing customers. So people you are working with right now, and there's a number of things that you can do with those people. You can very simply asked them for a testimonial or a case study or a video or something. In fact, I've just recorded one, not that long ago for the amazing Phil who edits the podcast from my podcast assistant it's, uh, I will make sure and I will make sure he puts it in the shownotes cause he doesn't do the show notes. The lovely Becci does the show notes. So she will put a link to his site so you can go check him out. But ask them for, so by the way, hang on. I need to clarify, I didn't do a testimonial because Phil is like panic and he's got no sales. I just realized that the way I said that, like my saying like that, he just asked me.

And in fact, he asked ages ago and typical Teresa I take a while to do these things. But yes, he was right to ask me for a testimonial because he is amazing. So let me just clarify that he's probably going to edit this whole section out. I'm joking anyway. So dig yourself out of the holder either that you've just somehow dug yourself.

So yeah. So testimonials go and ask them for testimonials and next thing you can do, and you might not want to do all these things. You might want to pick one of them or two of them. The next thing you could do is go and say to them, 'Are you happy with what we're doing and would you like more?' like if you bought that one thing, would you like to buy another thing?

Or if you have this service, can I add on this service? Can we do a review? You might want to consider putting prices up for them? Like I have to say there are lots of people out there who would say yes, you must every so often I was not comfortable doing that, especially in the early days because some of my clients in the early days, they flipped and saved my bacon.

Like if they hadn't come on board and had me as providing a service for them. I literally wouldn't have a roof over my head. One of my clients paid me six months in advance. I'm really sorry, but I'm not the type of person that would go. 'That's great. Now I'm thankful for you, thanks so much.' So that's not funny.

I'm not saying don't do it. You could absolutely do it. Good thing to do with your existing customers is go to them and say, 'Is there anybody that you could refer me to? Is there anybody that, you know, that would like my product or service that you could go and refer me to?' And then the other thing that you could do is go to past customers and do similar stuff.

So say to them, do they need anything else? Can they do a testimonial? Do they know anybody that knows your products and services or need your products and services? If you do something like I've got some people in my world who do web design, I've got people who do coaching programs, like one-to-one stuff. And often, like just saying a place has come available because often these...

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with the amazing Stu McLaren who a membership expert and the owner of TRIBE – a course that teaches business owners all about memberships and generating a recurring revenue. We talk all about memberships - how you can get started with your own and build it for success.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

• Memberships are not guaranteed to succeed - It takes some tweaking and figuring things out!
• Key components for a webinar:
• Get people to register
• Ensure people show up
• Make an offer
• Any type of business can be turned into a success when you understand which piece of the puzzle needs you to spend energy on
• It is really important to get clear on what matters right now
• Don’t get overwhelmed by all the things then take no action
• How can I get started in the most simple way possible?
• The noise does not matter!
• Founding member launch
• Communicate with an audience on social media or via your email list and let them know about your idea
• Cast the vision for where you see the idea going
• Invite them to come and join you as a founding member
• Follow up – send them how they can join
• Just get going and begin
• Once you have momentum on your side, everything else becomes easier
• If no one is interested in your founding idea – you have saved a lot of time!
• Your membership should give your members solutions to ongoing problems or new skills
• When you are outlining your membership, you want to create contrasts between now and the future – the journey to where they want to be.
• Use 1 and 3-word phrases to describe how your audience feels right now and then to describe where they will be.

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

Don’t give up! Ask the right questions and work it through.

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

• An introduction to Stu 06:33
• Making your business/membership a success 09:45
• Getting started with a membership 13:09
• Your membership roadmap 23:05

 

CHECK STU OUT:

 

Website

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

 

Tribe

 

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week I have an interview and I am very honored and lucky that Stu McLaren was able to give me some of his time and come and talk to me about memberships. As you know, I'm sure I don't need to tell you, well, you maybe new here today as if you are new.

I have a membership. I really liked my membership and therefore it was very nice to talk to Stu about memberships. However, before we get on with today's interview, I want to ask you a favor. Now I love doing the podcast. It's one of my favorite things. And I love getting lovely messages from people who said they've listened to it and they enjoyed it.

And maybe I made them laugh sometimes you never know. And I'm asking a lovely favor that if you wouldn't mind sharing this with one other of your business friends, family, Whatever, whatever, like if you're happy to share it, I would be so very grateful. If you enjoy any of the episodes, if you just want to DM them, post it on social media, whatever you want to do, I would honestly be so crazy grateful for that. You know, you know, and I know that marketing is hard and, you know constantly trying to keep yourself out there is work.

It takes work. So I would really very much appreciate that support from you as one of my lovely listeners. So thank you for that little advert over. So let's get to today's episode and interview. So hopefully, you know who Stu McLaren is. He is the guy who talks about memberships. He has a course called Tribe where he teaches people to do memberships.

Now I've had my membership for years. I help other people launch memberships and talk about them and know about them. And I never bought Tribe, never, not for any particular reason, but just didn't. And then I was working with someone who did my 90 day program and they bought it and they raved and raved and raved about it.

And I hate to say it. I got FOMO. I seriously thought I need to see this stuff. I need to go in there and look at this stuff. And I'd always liked Stu, had seen him years and years ago, uh, trafficking conversion conference. And I knew I liked his approach. So I thought, 'You know what, I'm just going to buy it to see how he manages it and what he does and what his system looks like.'

And I am like an open book when it comes to anybody else's stuff. I constantly want to see what's happening, what they're doing. Like, how they do things. So I bought Tribe and I wasn't disappointed. Now, obviously I would like to think that I know a bit more than the average person about memberships and running memberships and marketing them.

However, there was still definitely stuff that I learned because you always can learn new stuff. I don't think anybody should ever and will ever be at the point where there's not something to learn. And it was great. And one thing I loved about Stu when, because I'm not very good at like getting involved, this sounds really weird, but I'm not great in Facebook groups.

Like I struggled enough with my own and it's mine and it's part of my academy, but I am, I wouldn't even say I avoid it, I just don't. I, I just miss stuff all the time and I don't, I don't use them the way people should use them. So anyway, but I watched a bit of Stu stuff and I saw obviously when people were launching and I watched him on a couple of videos and what I loved about him was he talked about people and he celebrated launch.

Launches and openings with like, 'Oh my God, they've got 10 members. That's amazing.' And it was so refreshing because I think there's too many people out there who talk about and show examples of people who have made hundreds and thousands and millions from things that they've done. And they only use those examples.

They only use the examples of so, and so did this thing and it was phenomenal when actually when you look at the small print often says, this is not a typical result. So I love the fact that Stu was like, oh my gosh, they've launched, they've got ten members, high five. So I think he's really genuinely a nice guy.

Also, you may recognize the surname McLaren cause I had his lovely wife, Amy a few weeks ago who is also a very lovely human. So I should imagine they are just very nice, genuine people from what I have had experience of. I'm going to leave you to listen to the lovely Stu and I can't wait to see what you think.

Okay. I am very excited to welcome a very special guest today to the podcast. Welcome the amazing Stu McLaren.

Stu: Ah, I, I, that, that just feels good to be called the amazing Stu McLaren. If my kids would walk in, say, it's my amazing dad. That would be, you know, that'd be epic.

Teresa: To be honest, tapping your children a bit younger than my daughter.

She's 11. If I could walk in a room without ever even looking at me, like I was, I don't know what then that would be amazing.

Stu: So nowadays I get, 'Oh dad, you're so embarrassing.' You know, like, I, I will, I gotta tell you one, uh, one dad, when so I was in the car and I'm always trying to encourage my kids to like sing along with me in the car.

My daughter's always like, no, it's too embarrassing. But one day I was like driving, uh, her and her friends and I put on like Taylor Swift, shake it off. And Marla's friends, they were just like singing at the top of the lungs with me. And I was just like belting down and Marla, my daughter, she was like, 'oh, like maybe this is fun.'

And it was like a turning point. So like now, now she sings karaoke with me all the time. So fun.

Teresa: I love it. Honestly, you and I both I am the embarrassing mum, cause I think I'm really cool. And like, they just look at me. I have stepchildren.

Stu: We are cool, they haven't realized that yet.

Teresa: As parents. We're super cool, but like I've got 18 year old stepson and he just like, he's like, 'Yeah T. Yeah, you try it, you try and I'm alright, thanks.' Stu I am confident you do not need any introduction, but if someone has been under a rock somewhere, please tell my audience who you are and what you do.

Stu: So I help business owners create more recurring revenue in their business with membership sites, and they could be all kinds of different types of membership sites, um, from product based memberships, service-based memberships, knowledge based memberships.

Uh, but the point of the matter is, is that I help business owners generate recurring revenue. Now, how I got to this point was because I had a business myself where I was limited in how I could grow. It was a consulting business and it was really great and successful. But the point of the matter is, is that something had to give, because, uh, I got to the point where I could, the only way to grow the business was to give more time and I didn't have any more time to give.

And so I was just like, how do I fix this? Because I don't like being limited like that. And one of my friends and mentors, this was back in 2008, he suggested that I create a membership. I knew nothing about memberships, but once I dug into it, I was kinda, I was getting tripped up with all the technology. And I was dealing with things like HT access files and server settings.

And it was just way over my head. And so I was moaning and groaning to a friend of mine about this. And he said, well, why don't you just create your own solution? And I looked at him like, 'Dude!' Like, 'Are you not hearing what I'm saying?'

Teresa: I can't do the other stuff.

Stu: I can't program something like that's the whole reason I'm struggling.

And he said, well, why don't we team up together? Because he had a programmer that he was working with to create a solution. We did, a month later, we had the beta version of what then became known as wishlist member. And then a month after that, October 22nd, 2008, we started selling it and it took off. And before I know it, we had the software company that was powering tens of thousands of membership sites all around the world.

And that's where I learn. Behind the scenes of like what works and what doesn't as it relates to growing a membership, because there was a small group of membership site owners that we were serving that were growing year over year, over year. Whereas everybody else, they kind of just like would flat line. And so I was like, what, what is that small group doing?

It's growing year over year, differently than everybody else. And that's when I started to discover that there are best practices that ensure that year over year growth versus what everybody else is typically doing. And so since that, uh, I have begun teaching that and for the last five years, uh, we've been teaching it serving tens of thousands of people, uh, in helping them launch successful membership sites.

Teresa: Amazing. That feels like such a great place to learn from. That you've got these people and you're looking, going, hang on a minute, because I think this is maybe this is kind of one of the myths that frustrate me a little bit, that every membership is just going to fly and be amazing. And that just isn't necessarily the case. Is it?

Stu: No, sometimes you just got, you got to figure stuff out, but like, You know, saddens me is when something doesn't go right for somebody. And then they throw the baby out with the bath water and they say to themselves, 'Oh see, see, it was just, it just wasn't meant to be like, it's not gonna work in my market or nobody's going to buy it from me or who would want to listen to me.'

Like they throw all this future and potential possibility out the window because something didn't go according to the plan. But here's the reality, like in any business endeavor, regardless of whether it's memberships or not, but in any business endeavor, it's going to take some tweaking and a dial-in and figuring things out.

And you just got to ask yourself questions like, okay, 'Was everything a complete failure?' Well, 9 times out of 10, you're going to see no, not everything was, but what part of it was, uh, you know, uh, you know, uh, things fall through the cracks and what you might discover is that like you fix that one thing and everything else changes.

I'll give you a quick example. A client of mine, Lisa, she had come for a one-on-one private consultation. So I reserved one day a month to work one-on-one with clients. So she flew in with her husband and, uh, you know, during those days we typically tackle, you know, one specific area of the business. Um, so then at the end of the day, they, the client is walking away with like a specific plan for that.

So in her case, she said to me, she said, 'Stu, I just, I really suck at webinars.' And she said, my, 'I just can't, I can't sell.' And I said, 'Well, is that like a whole truth?' This is again like I'm asking, 'Is that a whole truth?' I said, 'Let's look at your numbers. Let's look at your webinar process. Now in her case, essentially, there's a few key components to a webinar.

Like one we need get registered people register, two, we then need to ensure that people show up for the webinar and then three, we then make an offer on the webinar. So we have these three points that we can look at. And she was assuming that she sucked at sales, but when we looked at the numbers, that was not the case.

She was actually really good at the sales. The problem was that not enough people were showing up to the webinar. So once we realized that it's just like, 'Oh easy-peasy.' Now we strategize about how to fix that one component. We fixed that one component, everything else takes care of itself. And so this is where I, you know, sometimes just wanna, you know, give, you know, entrepreneurs will kick in a butt like when they, you know, are going and they're giving up on themselves, I'm like, don't give up on yourself.

Like, no, it's just a matter of asking the right questions and, and thinking it through and working it through. Um, what I can tell you is like virtually any type of business, you can 100% turn it into a success when you start asking the right questions and identifying the right pieces of the puzzle that you need to spend energy on.

Teresa: Yes. It's such a good point. Cause like you said, and coming back to those facts and stats and like actually working out and you're right, you know, How many people did you get sign up? How many people did actually turn out? Then how many people converted? Because often when you do do the thing, if you're passionate and you're good and you're, you're going to convert them, it's going to convert because people can't help themselves.

In my experience anyway, you know, I do some bootcamps occasionally. And when I do a whole week with a bootcamp, like they get to the end and they're like, 'Yeah, yeah, what's next?' Like, but it's getting those numbers in the first place. Isn't it? And working out that startegy.

Stu: So, yeah. And like, and I would say to that, sorry to cut you off.

But I would say, I would say it's like, it's really important to just get clear on like what matters right now, you know, so often, like, you know, uh, for example, this week I was talking to a friend of mine, a high school friend of mine, who I hadn't talked to in more than 15 years. Reached out and, uh, the reason is because she left her, uh, you know, corporate job and now she's looking to start her entrepreneurial business.

And she had her knickers in a twist, worried about all kinds of things that quite frankly did not matter at this point. And what, when we chatted, I said, 'Look Michelle, the only thing that you need to worry about right now are these three things.' Which is for her which is beginning to build a teeny tiny audience.

She didn't need to get worried about like what shopping cart to use and this and all of that, blah, blah, blah. That's like down the road. Right now her focus just needed to be, I need to, uh, begin creating, uh, building my audience and building my email list. And in order to do that, I'm going to do this activity on a consistent basis.

All the other stuff it's not necessary right now. And my thing that I would encourage everybody is just like what matters most where for you, where you are right now, everything else you can just like, press pause on the worry for all that stuff. Just focus on the few things that matter to you right now. When you focus on that everything else begins to fall into place and you build momentum. And the clarity comes from being able to take action, but too often, people get overwhelmed by all the things, and then they never take action on any one thing. And then they're just like sitting there, like, uh, uh, you know, standing still type thing.

Teresa: I had someone in my membership talk to me about they wants to launch group coaching program, ongoing kind of membership thing. And they were like, for weeks they kept coming to me and going, well, what's the system like, and is this system going and how do I have you tried this on? And what's this like, and in the end I got to go and talk to her and like 'Okay.' So. We've talked about all the systems. You've looked at them all, what do you actually need to serve them today? Like if I said, start today, what do you actually... She was like, 'Well I'd need maybe a Facebook group, zoom, emails.' And I was like 'So you don't need a system then.' I said, so 'Can we just start? Like, can you just offer it?'

And she said, because she was telling me I've got people waiting for it. But why are you, you know the amount of changes? And you must see this all the time and especially in your own business as well. Like the membership, how I started on day one and how it looks today is so different. Like, cause I've learned so much stuff.

Stu: Yes. Yeah. And the question that I encourage everybody to write down is how can I get started in the most simple way possible? How can I get started in the most simple way possible? Because when you start asking yourself those questions, All of the noise you quickly realize does not matter.

At the end of the day like what matters is that you put it out there, like, I'll give you an example. So one of the things that we, uh, teach, uh, our clients and customers, our audiences to do what we call a founding member launch. And a founding member launch, you don't have to have all the bells and whistles and all the things set up.

In fact, it's involves five simple steps. So the first step is like you just communicate either on a Facebook post or if you do have an email list, create an email list, or if you, uh, if it's an Instagram channel or YouTube, wherever you are communicating with your audience. Right. And so the first step is that you communicate with this idea came that you are, uh,...

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

Start with a content brainstorm – think about what you know and what would be helpful to your audience.

Need content ideas? Start by googling keywords related to your service/product and look at www.answerthepublic.com. You could also ask your customers directly what they would like to see or a Facebook group with your ideal customers in – see what they are asking.

My social media plan – set out week-by-week, focus area, what lead magnet can be promoted, and which podcast episode is going live.

You don’t have to be on every single social media platform.

If you have a podcast, try to match what you are talking about on social media with the topic that week.

Your emails can also match what you are talking about on social media.

How many times do you see an advert before you time to buy something? Usually, it’s not just once!

It takes 15 minutes for your brain to move from one type of activity to another – this is why it is best to batch your content.

Batching your content can sometimes make you feel a little disconnected from what you are doing as you have done it so far in advance.

If you are batching, you need to know all your key events for the rest of the year to make sure you are including all the promo you need.

Don’t compare your social media to someone else’s – you may be at a completely different stage to them.

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

Don’t worry about posting similar content on each of your platforms – no one sees everything you post!

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

My content creating process 03:41

Batching your content 17:50

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 

My week-by-week social media plan:

 

 

Transcript:

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? How's your week been? Good, I hope. Okay. So these last few weeks have been madness. Like basically I think for months now, I've been saying if I can just get to this point, if I can just finish that thing, if I can just do this, then life's going to calm down and it hasn't, it's just been crazy busy.

And as you know, as you listened to the podcast, not long ago, the Academy was open. Before that we did loads of other things. We have Build My List and lots of lovely, cool things going on. But it just means that like I'm constantly on the go doing stuff. So this week has been all about kind of regrouping and taking a minute. And I think it's so, so important to do that for all of us and everyone I'm talking to in the academy, all the customers I'm talking to, they're all saying the same thing.

They're all saying they're just so done in. They're so tired. They're so overwhelmed. And that just the bit done at the moment. So for me, I am taking quarter three as a reset. I am looking at my processes, looking at the team, looking at lead magnets and websites and landing pages and all the good stuff that we have out there that we just keep adding to and adding to and adding to, but we haven't stopped to look and see how it is and what we think of it.

So that's where my focus is going to be on quarter three. The other thing I'm focusing on which is leading into what we're talking about today on the podcast is getting ahead. Like, I don't know about you, but how many times have you said 'I just need to get ahead. If I could just like have a week that no one else knows about where I could just like batch and do stuff for a few weeks in advance, it would all be sorted.' But basically it's come up that I really, really do need to start getting very organized.

Now we're pretty good. I have to say like, you know, I batch things. I do things in advance, you know that, but we want to be really good in terms of like looking at things ahead and getting ready for it. So we're not last minute. So today I want to talk to you about content creation and how I do it and how I batch it, how I come up with ideas. Because when I sat down to think, right, I want to think about the content for the rest of the year and what I'm going to talk about every week on the podcast and all that good stuff.

My mind went blank and it happens so much. Like, I don't know about you but we know our businesses inside and out. But for some unknown reason, every so often when you think you need to post something or write a blog or do a podcast, you suddenly go, 'Well, I've got nothing to talk about. Literally no subjects in the world.' And it's ridiculous because we know we've got so many. So this week in my emails.

So if you're not on my email list, make sure you go and get on there. And also on the podcast, we're looking at how I go through the process of coming up with content and ideas so that I can plan the rest of the year. And it was really helpful because I was doing the process as I was writing about it and as I'm recording about it.

So it was actually really, really good. So the very first thing I do is I do an old fashioned brainstorm. I literally write down every idea around everything. So for me, and there's a really cool picture that I've sent in today's email of my very messy handwriting and probably loads of spelling mistakes. So please don't judge. But basically like, I put up content ideas in the middle. And then I literally go, what do I know? So it's things like social media. Well, what do I know about social media? While we can talk about platforms? We can talk about advertising. We can talk about posts, videos, reels, stories. Uh, we could talk about getting engagement, then I could go list building.

Okay. What can I talk about with list building while I can talk about landing pages and systems and onboarding emails and how to create consistent content emailing and all these amazing things. That's the very first thing I do. I literally brainstorm all the ideas and there are websites that can help.

There are things that you can do. Like you can just go to Google and type in your keyword of the thing that you need help with. So I could put, you know, list building and it might come up with some suggestions of what people have searched for. Also, you could go and have a look at answerthepublic.com. I've talked about them before.

They're excellent. Again, you put your keyword in and they give you ideas of what people are looking for. And basically just have a bit of a think. So that's the first thing I do. I write down all the ideas. Then I go to my Facebook group for my membership and my coaching calls. The other places you could go, if you don't have a membership or Facebook group is you could go to your customers.

You could go to other people's Facebook groups that you might be in where your possible customers are in there. Or you could go and find a Facebook group that has your customers in there. And look at what people are asking. Look at the questions that they're asking you. So I literally went and scanned back a few coaching calls and when we record the coaching calls, we upload them into the Academy.

And we timestamp when people have asked questions and roughly what my responses literally a few lines to give someone an idea of whether they think or when they rewatch that bit. So I literally looked down the recordings of like, what did that question? And what was that question? What was that question? What was that question?

And I just wrote down all these different questions. I looked at the Facebook group wrote down a loaded questions. So like I said, you could do that in your own stuff. You can do that in other people's. Because you're not going in and answering and saying, I've got this thing over here. You're just using it as content ideas.

The other thing that you can do is you can go and look in books. So if there's a book about coaching or I don't know, whatever you might do, whatever your servers and product is about social media or whatever, then go and have a look at the contents, go and have a look at the, you know, what is in each chapter.

I could have said episode then, um, I couldn't think the word is taking ages to come to me. Yeah. So what's in each chapter. So go through and see how they like put together the, the different bits of content for the book. So there's loads and loads and loads of places that you can find stuff. So once I've done that brainstorm and I've got it all down. Now, the way I plan stuff, and this isn't necessarily what I would suggest for everybody else, just because it took me all these years to get to this point.

So if you're not at that stage, then that's fine. Don't think, 'Oh my goodness, I can't do this. That's so much work.' I obviously have a team that helped me now. I'm just kind of saying it with a kind of like caveat of don't think, oh, this is what I'm meant to do as well. Cause that isn't necessarily the case.

But what I then did next is we have a spreadsheet called social media planning and I don't know what it's called social media planning because it actually has all the plan for the emails and the themes and the podcast and everything on that. But basically week by week, we have this plan and we have each day listed out and the date on the left hand side, then we have focus area.

And basically that's the, what are we going to be talking about this week? Because if you may or may not know every single week I pick a theme and I talk around that theme for the week. Then I have a section for, is there a lead magnet or a call to action that we want specifically for this? And actually, because I've decided to kind of just get my head down and do some internal work for the next few months, the chances are there may not be lead magnets for it, and that's fine.

Then I have the podcast. So who is on the podcast that week? Or what am I talking about that week? Then I have Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I, I put all them together. My most favorite platform is Instagram. So I make sure that I have specifics for Instagram, but in terms of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, I just put per posts there to have a presence. Because I have to be on those platforms because of what I do.

I don't suggest if you're not in this world marketing or social media. I wouldn't be on every platform. So then I have Instagram stories, Instagram posts, and then image ideas. And then in the next block, I have a list of sort of row for email one, row for email two, row for email three, and then the last block notes. I'm actually going to screenshot this so you can see it and put it in the show notes.

So either, um, I don't know if you'll be able to see it on the app you're looking at, you might have to go to teresaheathwareing.com/211 but basically what I do is in that section, I then write at the beginning on the focus area, what are we going to talk about? So I have my big brainstorming ideas.

I looked at all the ideas and then I picked some themes. The other thing I did cause I have a podcast is I looked at what interviews were coming up or what order I could put some of those interviews in and tried to pick a theme that sat well with that podcast episode. Now I've only just started doing this.

Up until now it hasn't been that orchestrated. It hasn't been that organized, but now I'm starting to do that because I've taken a step back and I'm looking a bit wider. So for instance, as I record this next week's episode is actually going to be Stu McLaren, which is a cool episode. I really enjoyed that one.

So that particular week. I put my focus as memberships, because I've got Stu on the podcast and we talk about memberships. The week after that is another solo one. And I've already decided because I looked at my ideas and thought, okay, I could talk about that, that week, that, that week. So the week after we talk about selling on social and how to get more clients or customers.

So that's what I've done. I've picked a theme for every single week and I've chose that that's what I'm going to talk about. So the next thing I do is obviously I try and hook it up with the podcast, which is easy at the moment, especially on solo episodes, because it's only me talking and obviously I record those podcasts.

So at the point I'm talking to you, I've already decided what theme we're going to have every week until December the 12th. So I haven't done anything like right to the end of December. I might not do a theme cause we're so close to Christmas, then that it almost feels like maybe I just do Christmas stuff rather than like teach or, you know, talk about a subject.

So I've picked one theme for each week until then. Then what I've done is I've gone through my podcasts and I've worked out who would sit well with that if it's an interview or otherwise, what am I likely to talk about on the podcast. Now I am batch recording three podcasts. So for the next three weeks.

So this one, the Stu one and the one after. And what I then do is I write and I have already actually I've written the emails for each of those weeks. So I write three emails a week. I'm only doing the three at the moment because I only ever do more when there's something that I'm promoting or talking about.

So each of those emails, so for instance, this week, I've got obviously contents and systems so this is what I'm talking about. So my emails this week are, how do I do it, I talk about batching and then actually have a bit of random email on Friday. Cause I'm talking about something that I'm doing with Bonjoro.

Cause they asked me to do some training and I'm sending you an invite. So. I've already planned what those emails are going to be. The week after I've already planned those emails. So the first email is going to talk about have you ever thought about a membership? The second email is going to talk about membership versus courses.

And then the third email is going to talk about how to get started if you want a membership. So can you see how I'm taking that theme? And I'm pulling it over to the podcast and talking about it here, then I'm splitting it out into three. And I'm doing three different emails and then not the same. So what I'm talking about here is never exactly the same as what I talk about on the emails, because things that I can write and demonstrate in an email can be very different from what I can talk about.

So. They complement, but then not copying because otherwise, why would you listen to this? And then why would you go and read the emails? So they are always different, but they're around the same theme. And then once I've got those three emails, that's when we create our social media posts. So we look at the subject.

So for instance, and I haven't done this yet, so I'm literally doing this on the fly as I talked to you. So the first email on that week when Stu's in, is have you ever thought about a membership. And I'm just trying to think about what I wrote in that email. Oh, I talked about how some of the myths that people think that membership is a get rich quick and all this sort thing.

And it definitely isn't. I am not rich and, uh, it hasn't gone quick. Um, so I might do a post that says the myths of having a membership. I might do a post. That is just a question that says. Have you ever thought about having a membership? So then the next one that's membership versus courses. Again, I can create a post that talks about membership versus courses.

I could write a question as a social media post that says, which do you prefer to be in a membership or to do a course? I could do a poll on Instagram maybe. And then I've got how to get started with memberships. And on that one I could talk about, I could list the ideas that I've got for people, or I could do a post round.

What's the one thing you should do if you want a membership. So can you see how I take the overall theme. I make sure it's linked to the podcast. I then pull it into three different emails and think about three different things I could talk about. And then when it comes to the social, I am using some of the content, not all of it, and it might be in a different way.

But I'm using some of the content and I'm putting that into the socials. Now I want address one thing about this, because you might be sat there listening, thinking, or basically for that week, whether you listen to my podcast, read my emails, look at my social. You're just going to hear the same thing. But someone once said to me, I used to really, I didn't like it.

Okay. So that was not the thing that I did. I liked different and unusual content everywhere. But someone once said to me, how many times do you see an advert before you decide to buy something? And like, okay. Sometimes I do get caught on the Instagram ads and things. 'Oh, I'll buy that.' And then I just buy it and I'm a fool. But a lot of times you do see things quite a few times and not everyone will listen to my podcast or even listen to it the week that it comes out.

Not everyone will see and follow me on every social media platform. Not everyone will be on my email list. My email list is considerably bigger than my downloads in my podcast. So. You know, there's obviously a huge amount of people who get my emails, who don't listen to the podcast. So I want, I want you to not worry about that.

I used to worry about that terribly, but I'm not going to worry about that anymore. So that's why I'm happy to tweak and change. Now, the reason I can do all this is because I have a team that helps me. So once I've written the emails, I just write them in a Google doc. And then the lovely Becci takes them out of the Google doc, puts them into Kajabi.

Checks them proofread them. Cause I'm terrible at spelling and schedules them. With the social media sometimes I will just literally write in the box. Let's talk about memberships versus courses and then Becci will go and look at what I wrote and take some content out there and use it. Even though sometimes some of the posts go out, I haven't physically put together.

It's always my tone of voice. It's always my thoughts, my ideas, because they came from the emails that I wrote. Now, in some cases like, well, this'll be a few weeks back now, but I did a week all about Q3 planning. A few weeks back. It hasn't in my world that hasn't even come out yet. But because obviously I'm trying to get ahead.

And those posts, I wrote all of them because I knew that it just, the email wouldn't translate into the post or by the time I thought about the post, I thought, 'oh no, I want to get that key point across.' So then what I do is I'll write the caption in the Google doc. And I will either tell Becci which image I wanted to use or I'll create one.

Now we're getting really ahead. I will use the very lovely Meryl who does my design work for me or some of the design work. And I will send her the caption and the, the kind of idea I've got for the post. Sometimes I like screenshot other posts and go, I want a post that talks about this. That looks like that.

Or this is a really good way to do this post. So, like I said, and with the podcast, obviously, you know, full well. The minute I've recorded this. I put it in a folder and magic happens that I don't have to get involved with. So the reason I want to talk about this or the reason I'm going through it is I'm trying to give you an insight as to how I do things.

I'm also trying to...

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

You need to separate your content into 4 components – Strategy brief, asset production, distribution and amplification.

Amplify what is already working and make it better – be good at market research and listening.

Think about what people are coming to you for – what do they know you for?

Ask your audience what they want to see – this will give you an idea of what to talk about.

Look at your analytics to see what is performing best.

Don’t try to do everything on social media, focus on the areas you want to amplify.

The algorithm wants to put good content in front of users so they spend more time on each platform.

The algorithm on every platform is exactly the same!

Give advice/tips on social media when you are selling and give sneak peeks/free samples.

Add links to comments rather than in posts.

3 How, 3 Why and 3 What – ads.

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

Amplify the stuff that already works!

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

An introduction to Dennis 02:29

How marketing has changed 03:49

Building a personal brand 08:28

How to analyse your content 13:47

How the algorithm works 21:03

How to sell on social media 29:15

Paid traffic 37:06

 

CHECK DENNIS OUT:

 

Website

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Steps you need to create a personal brand

 

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How's things? So this week I'm jumping straight in with the interview. Now I interviewed the lovely Dennis Yu on the podcast, and it was a great interview. We talked all about using sort of the analytics and your social media, what to look at, how to know what's a good post, what you should post, where you rank, how to build a personal brand.

There was so much good stuff. Now during the interview Dennis shared his screen with me and I'm laughing cause obviously it's podcast, uh, which was lovely and brilliant because it really helped me understand. So what I've done in the show notes is I've put a screenshot of one of the things he's talking about, which is actually really, really useful.

So he talks about the kind of steps that you need in order to create a personal brand. And one thing that was really interesting, and I think this would work generally with business. But one thing that was really interesting is he has content first. And the third thing he has is distribution, where often, I don't know about you.

But often we think of the distribution before the content. So we think about, 'oh, I need to do an Instagram story. What am I going to do?' Rather than thinking, 'I need to create some content, where am I going to put it?' So I thought that was really, really fascinating. He also did a critique of some of my stuff, which obviously, you know, it was really good for me on the, on the interview.

But he gave so much value and I know you're totally going to get so much good stuff out of this. So I don't want to delay anymore. I'm going to hand you over to the interview.

So I am really excited that today I get to bring to the podcast, the very lovely Dennis Yu. Dennis, how are you doing?

Dennis: Good, Teresa.

Teresa: My honor, honestly, I'm really, really excited to have you on.

So Dennis I'm sure my audience know who you are, but just in case they haven't heard of you before, would you mind telling them who you are and how you got to doing what you do today?

Dennis: I'm happy too Teresa. I'm Dennis Yu and I built the analytics at Yahoo search engine. 20 some years ago. And you know, from our friends, Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner, Amy Porterfield, we've done a lot of stuff in the world of social.

So I've gone from being a search engine engineer to being kind of a sales and marketing ish sort of person. And I bring a data-driven approach into driving relationships and sales and conversion and data and traffic and all that kind of stuff. So I'm like your friendly math guy that is able to get under the hood of your campaigns, of your website or your social media and figure out what exactly you need to do to be able to drive more traffic and sales and from more of a math algorithm, database guy to learning about personal branding.

So can you imagine someone who's an auto mechanic becoming an artist. That's sort of like my journey.

Teresa: Well, my husband is actually an aircraft engineer. So when I think when you're an engineer, you have a certain brain. You have one of these brains that you can just look at instructions or look at something and you can just figure it out.

And I, that to jump from doing what you did to doing kind of more the personal brand stuff is a really big jump. But how do you undergo about Yahoo doing the stuff then?

Dennis: Just over 20 years ago.

Teresa: Like when I think back 20 years, you know, that was like, so early on. The stuff that you must've been doing and learning about. And you know, you were right at the beginning or did it feel like that?

Dennis: Well, even 10 years before that I built some of my first websites. So I've been building websites for over 30 years, but the internet shifted because back then it was just websites. And now you have all these apps. Back then you didn't have, I mean, the phone was really just to make phone calls. The texting was only barely coming on.

You didn't have video, you didn't have apps. You didn't have all this mobile stuff going on back then. The phone was actually a phone for talking, or if you're lucky to have a mobile phone, it was a the Motorola one that's in the car. You know, the, the one that's like a suitcase. Oh like that, that's what mobile was.

And if someone had a mobile and they were carrying around this gigantic heavy luggage that had a phone, you thought they must've been a really important business person, right. To be able to use a phone. Nowadays phone is this thing here. We don't even use it to make phone calls. We've 90% of what we use it for is social media and texting, and games and things like that. So I've had to adapt my journey for any of us that I'm over 40, but any of us of my generation, we know that a lot of this stuff is not native to us. And thus doing videos on social media or even taking a selfie is kind of a foreign, almost awkward kind of thing.

So I've had to adapt and it's interesting working with other business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers like you on helping other people adapt to that.

Teresa: Yeah, and it is interesting because I often talk about when I started, I did my degree 16, 17 years ago, and back then, none of this stuff existed. Like you said, we didn't use phones for that.

We didn't have social media, we didn't have any of those things. And I used to work for big companies. I worked for Land Rover heading up their corporate marketing. And it was only businesses like that, that could afford to do marketing and suddenly and you must've seen this so closely given what you do.

You know, when we talk specifically about things like SEO, suddenly the world just started to open up to everybody. Did you see that?

Dennis: Yeah. The world of SEO was an engineering thing before because to rank on Google you had to have links, which means you have to have control over websites. So those people that control the ability to put links on websites that are linking to one another.

And so it was a technical challenge. So to even have a website back then was to easily be able to rank because there were only a few thousand websites and now they're literally a trillion web pages that are competing. And because everybody is now an influencer, because anybody can say something on Twitter and potentially go viral.

That creates a huge opportunity for us, but then we have to figure out what is it that we need to do to be able to track our audience so we can tap into the fact that there are now 4 billion people on the internet instead of just a couple hundred thousand.

Teresa: Yeah. And I think that's often where only half the picture shown.

So, you know, we'll talk about how amazing this is for smaller businesses for personal brands to get themselves out there because there's the social media and you don't need to be a huge, massive company or organization with a massive marketing budget. However, I think we almost make it sound like it's too easy.

And then when people try and put themselves out there and they don't get seen, and they're not being picked up by search engines or their ads aren't landing or whatever, they then start to think something's really wrong. But the truth is it's, it's really open, but it's also not as easy as that. Is it?

Dennis: Yeah, it's an oxymoron, isn't it?

Because there are people have the dreams, especially as young adults that all you have to do is do a tweet and all of a sudden your viral and you have Lamborghinis and success, right?

Teresa: Yeah. And I've got a 18 year old step son and an 11 year old daughter and they think that, you know, oh, 'Well I'll probably just be a YouTuber.'

And it's, it's really interesting. Cause I can sit there and go 'Yeah, you could be, get totally be a YouTuber'. But also it's having that conversation of, do you know how hard you have to work to do that? Like, it's not as easy as just literally posted on YouTube. So what I'd love to talk about today for my audience and because I'm a little bit selfish and I want to know about this stuff as well.

Is I want that talk around the kind of personal brand side of it and the kind of stuff in terms of. You, what can we do to, to one build a personal branding? And then how are we using these other things like SEO, like paid, like Facebook ads. Do you use nothing else? So I think let's just start generally around kind of like building a personal brand persona. Is it where?

Dennis: Yeah. Yeah. So let me show you something that I literally just actually enabled screen sharing. If you could.

Teresa: Yeah of course.

Dennis: And I'm going to show you something very special. Just half an hour ago, I did a presentation for five or head 2000 people registered. So I literally just got off that to spend time with you Teresa and all of our friends here.

So check this out and you see this screen here. Yeah. Content engine. So when we can divide our personal branding efforts into almost a factory line process, this is how we're going to win in spite of all these channels on TikTok and Snapchat and Twitter and all that, because those are distribution channels.

That's the tealish color here. And then the asset production is video. So the main thing is when you tons and tons of video, which I'll show you in just a moment and what to do with that, but even proceeding that we need to have a strategy, which is our why. Right assignments and it start with why, 'Why do I stand for?

What are my goals, content and targeting. Who's my audience. How do I resonate with them? What problem do I solve that I can document provably authoritatively so that other people then want to be able to buy products and services from me?' Most people who are solopreneurs as you, and I know where the smaller businesses, they don't really have clarity around that.

Therefore they can't produce assets in the red column that tied back to that strategy. And then they can't distribute that across the website and email and social media. And you know billboards, you know, whatever the different channels are that we want to distribute it. And then into the orange, when we want to amplify that.

So think of this as a progression, we call this the content engine where it's like taking raw material and then ending up with the finished product over here. So understanding our direction and the strategy, which is goals, content, and targeting to producing lots of video with our fans and our consumers and our friends and our clients and our employees and our partners and anyone in our community to then getting it out there.

Most people, they confuse the distribution channel, they'll say, 'Wow, YouTube shorts. Did you know that one minute vertical videos are killer on YouTube?' Yes. I know that's a distribution channel. 'Did you know that you can do these TikToks?' Yes. That's a distribution channel, but you need to have the content to put into the distribution channel, which is in the red.

And prior to that, you need to have a kind of theme and a strategy on what you're producing to then produce the content to then distribute it to then amplify it, which is on the ad site. And because people confuse all of these proponents, they mix all four of these components into one thing that it's like taking two things that you like, like maybe like chocolate milk and you like diet Coke or something like that.

And you pour them together. That's nasty. Yeah, right. But think about Teresa and everybody, when you separate out your content engine into these four components, then if you're producing video in that red column, and then all of a sudden this new social network pops up or this new tactic or new landing page or a new tool or whatever it is, pops up, you're in great shape because you can just take the content you have and then repurpose it.

So then it can live as eight second Snapchat videos, right? Yeah, you can reuse that you can take a webinar or podcast. Like w what you and I have right now and chop it up into articles. So we can start to rank on a website. Right. We can take a transcription of our conversation here and turn it into a series of articles.

We can pull out 15 second snippets and turn them into Instagram stories. Right?

Teresa: So can I ask you a question then? One thing. And it's so good that you've said this because it really sits with what I talk about. Right at the very beginning, your underneath a strategy brief, you've got goals, content and targeting.

So like you said, it's the, why it's the, who, what you're doing for them. So if they get that bit wrong, the rest is done for.

Dennis: Yeah it's an avalanche. Yeah.

Teresa: So what would you say if you had to sum up very quickly. Cause I get that this is a big section, but what is, what kind of the some of the things that you can suggest that we can do to ensure we're getting that bit right?

Dennis: That's a great question. You want to amplify what's already working and that means you have to be really good at market research. Really good at listening. So I'll show you. So now we are on your website teresaheathwareing.com right. Did you know that you ranked on 130 some keywords. You rank on your name, you rank on message marketing made simple. You rank on Dean Graziosi, fiancé, right? These are all these things that you rank on. A lot of the time it's going to be other people's names speaks of the podcast, but the membership guys you're promoting these guys. I can see me out a lot of friends that are in common, but if, you know, if at all you guys out there, you probably don't even know what your keywords are, but if you know, from your analytics.

So if I go to Google analytics, I go to my Facebook analytics, or going to be Twitter analytics or LinkedIn analytics. And I come in, I see what are the keywords we come over in the list one here, here, I'll show you I'll show you a big website to show you we're not just making stuff up. The risk of showing big websites is the small people will say, oh, I can't do that because I don't have 5 million people on my website.

Teresa: It's not about numbers per say, is it? It's about understanding the stats.

Dennis: Yeah. All right. So here's one of our sites and we, I like to go to the source medium report. I don't want to go too technical, but just, just know that we're looking inside Google analytics and we'll go back the last year. Let's just say, and we've driven two and a half million dollars in the last year selling gift trees.

So I'll just show you by the way, substitute your name, your brand, your products and services for here because this concept works universally. Don't think, oh, well this website sells gift trees. Where you plant the tree when a loved one dies. So it doesn't apply to me. It applies to every live. So just understand the principle, forget about what's actually being sold.

So in this case, right, plant the tree when a loved one dies, right? Give trees all different kinds of trees that you can order. Right. And most people will think, okay, well I want to sell more gift trees or I have a new product and I have a lemon tree. Right. I have other variations of this, but let's think a little bit deeper.

What is it that people are actually coming to me for. What I might think I know what they're thinking about. I might think I know better than them. I might want them to know me for something, but I have to start with what people actually know me for. What people actually, because I don't wanna amplify something that's already working.

So check this out. Let's go to my Twitter for example, and I'll, I'll move fluidly between Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Google analytics output. I'm going to show you it's the exact same principle. Yeah, right. In terms of personal branding and it is sort of an engineer's view of the world. So you'll just have to be kind to me on this.

Okay. So I know that I'm known for the dollar a day approach, which is taking a piece of content and putting a dollar a day on Twitter, a dollar a day on Facebook. So I live it and I breathe it. Right. And you can see that here's a tweet that I made a few days ago and you can see a few thousand people saw it.

People are engaging on it. Right. And I made, I've made a whole bunch of these little posts just minutes ago and I can see what what's resonating. Right? Simple little things like, 'Hey, can you help me get to 72,000 followers?' Or the different things I'm saying. And do you really know what it is? So you can literally ask your audience.

So here I asked them yesterday, what platform do you want to learn the most about? Well, they don't really want to know as much about Facebook anymore. Okay. Well, if I know that I know what I should be talking about and not talking about. People really seem to be talking about Twitter and TikTok right now, at least for my audience.

Then I can go a little bit further and go into my analytics and I can see of my top tweets. So here in the last 28 days, I've had 860,000 impressions. 40,000 people came to my profile. But what is it about my top tweets? Well, here's one. This is one where I'm saying congratulations to a friend that just launched her product.

Hmm. Okay. Well, that's cool. Here's my top follower. Let's look at the...