Your Dream Business

In this week’s podcast we will be talking all about using a challenge in your business! We will be covering a step by step guide on how to run a challenge in your business and how to make it as effective as possible.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• The price of my academy is going up, forever! Now is your last chance to join at this amazing price.
• It is very easy to get overwhelmed when you have your own business, especially when you are attending lots and lots of different courses and content.
• A challenge can really demonstrate a product or service at the end of it – it gives people a taste of what is to come!
• What are your customers struggling with that you can help them with? Try to think of something that needs more detail than a PDF or 5 minute video.
• Make sure you include actionable steps they can follow along every day.
• It is a good idea to have a private Facebook group for your challenge to help with accountability and understanding more about the people who take part.
• Go live in your Facebook group to check in with everyone – this adds a lot of value.
• You could add in some prizes along the way and pick winners who are getting on well.
• Your sales pitch will be on the final day – you could do it on a Facebook live.
• Encourage people to join your live with exclusive content.
• Try to have a limited time offer or a discount to encourage people to sign up straight away.
• Follow up your challenge with onboarding emails.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…If someone has come into your challenge, they are still going to need more information. By doing a challenge, you are giving them a taster but also leaving more for them to learn so they then buy from you!HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Everything you need to know about The Academy - 04:05
• Why do a challenge? - 11:51
• How to set up a challenge for your business - 13:58

Transcript below

 

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? It feels like I haven't recorded an episode for ages because I batched so much content and now it's time to do the next lot of rebatching. If you don't batch content, then I would highly recommend it because it really helps to keep you focused and get ahead of the game. So it's very unusual for me to have a podcast so close to when it's coming out. So I'm actually recording this the Tuesday before it's released on the Monday. But what is quite nice is it means I can talk about stuff that's happening at the moment or it seems really, really kind of up to the moment and on the minute type of an episode, which like I said, ordinarily they're not that close because I do batch and I get ahead, which helps me make sure that we've always got an episode for you.

And I am not causing my team to have an absolute nightmare trying to rush to get something done. So at point of recording this, we are still in a kind of semi lockdown situation. And it's really funny because my husband and I were talking just the other day about this and how we felt and basically about the fact of when it first all kicked off. We were fine, we were okay, we kind of cracked on and got on this stuff. And actually it's getting harder the longer that the time it goes on. Whereas actually I've spoken to some people who really struggled at the beginning and are actually now doing okay cause they're getting into a routine. But the problem is the things that my husband's and I are really pining for other things that are going to be the last to come. So our life, like I said, I worked from home so I didn't ever go out to an office so that there's no change.

But what we do in our life for fun is we go out for dinner and go to the pub and have a cocktail somewhere nice and we travel. Last year I flew an awful lot. I think it was about 26 flights in total. We went to some amazing places and this year it's May middle of May and I've been nowhere and and that does make me feel a bit sad because travelling is something that we just absolutely love. However, I try not to dwell too much on that situation and as we speak, my garden is being renovated. Is that the right word? Renovated landscape is probably the more appropriate word. So I am very looking forward to very much looking forward to having that finished and being able to enjoy the summit in the garden at home. It will be wonderful even if I can't go to some amazing and I'm so desperate to go back to the States. I can't tell you.

Anyway. So there's a couple of things I want to talk to you about today before we crack on with today's episode, which by the way is all about using a challenge in your business. And the reason I want to talk about this today is because I used one a few months ago and I am currently right in the middle of running another one. So I want to just talk you through how that might look in your business if you want to use a challenge cause they are very effective. But also I want to tell you about the Academy and about the fact that the price is going up. Now I know that there'll be some of you sat there listening who have been on the fence for a little while thinking I really do need to make a decision whether I'm going to do it one way or next.

 

Everything you need to know about The Academy

 

And I know about how that feels. I know about the facts of views of should I get there? Shouldn't I get this? Do I get it at a FOMO? Do I not get it? So let me just want to touch on that for a minute before I tell you about the price increase on the Academy. But one thing I've noticed since lockdown via Academy members and other people that I've been speaking to is that people have been doing lots of learning and taking in lots of information and that is really good. I am going to, you know, put it out there. This is a really good positive thing to do. And obviously if you are going to start something new, if you are going to learn how to promote your business, then that is nothing but a positive thing. However, her comes with a slight caveat that there is a point when I, I think that maybe you might be learning too much.

And actually that sounds like a complete oxymoron, if that's the right word, but it sounds completely wrong because how could you possibly learn too much and you can't in one way. But what I think I'm trying to say not very eloquently is that there comes a point where you're trying to put too much in your head and you're not actually doing anything really with it other than getting yourself into a bigger panic and overwhelm and we all know in our businesses that it's overwhelming at the best of times, let alone my, we're pouring more and more things than I had that all right, I Muslim had to do Facebook ads. I must learn my content isn't quite right, is my avatar right? Should I do a blog? Should I do a podcast? When can I start a podcast? How do I do it? Should I launch now?

Should I wait? How do I do a sales page? There's so many really important things that we can learn for our business, but the problem is is totally overwhelming and I am hearing more and more and more people going into this group joining this free challenge, joining this free thing, doing this course, buying another course, joining another membership and not obviously I have an online membership. I signed like a real hypocrite talking about this but as you well know I'm a very honest person and and I think as much as obviously I think they were amazing and I have built my business through attending these things myself. One thing that I think we need to be really careful is is high, thinly spread. We are, I'm much we are trying to take in and how much we're trying to do and whether we should just pull back a little bit or put more of your eggs in one basket.

So I had someone joined very recently who emailed me and said why am I doing it now? And she identified, you know, wonderfully before I said anything to her about the fact that she had been in this group and done this thing and adjoined this course and had done and she just wasn't moving forward and she decided that she was going to go all in on one thing. And very luckily for me and hopefully very luckily for her it's the Academy and it's with me because one thing that we do, a lot of which I think is so important is the coaching calls and the quarterly challenges and the lives around taking action are huge in my world. And I literally, I've just got off a coaching call today actually before I did this episode. And I literally have sat there and gone, have you got on with that thing?

Right here is your next action and it's baby steps and it's even smaller than for some people. And then it's big steps for other people depending on where they are in their business and what they're doing. But the important thing is it's about that accountability and a bait moving you forward. It's about ensuring that all this information you're taking in, that you're doing something with it and, and it's the right information you're taking in. Cause believe me, I've spent a lot of time taking information that isn't right for me or my business. And that's a learned that the long and hard way. So like I said, I wanted to mention that the price is going up, but I also wants to mention the fact of if you find yourself doing so much stuff, maybe now is the time to a think about how are you going to put that into place and be think about where you're going to put your focus and who's going to help you because we all need it.

I need it. I've been in groups, I am in some amazing groups and I have my coach and I have people who can hold me accountable and you need that too. And that's what the members get. So the price is going up from 39 to $49 per month or if you buy annually, it's going up from 390 to $490 for the year. I'm a just want to tell you what's in that also, you know, I love pretty things. If you've ever seen anything of mine, which I'm sure you have, you know, there was a particular look and style and feel of things and I've just done my new signup page for the Academy. I love it. I know that's so sad, but I actually love my own signup page, but I spent quite a long time making it look pretty and I do love it.

So first of all, I would definitely want you to go and have a look. So Teresa Heath wearing.com forward slash Academy that's where you go and you find out all about it and basically on there you're going to find everything. Need to know about the Academy. But let me just in brief tell you what's in there. So first off, the coaching calls. Now a lot of the members, when you ask them, they say that's worth the money in itself because you get to join me every two to three weeks on a group coaching call where you get to pick my brain and ask me questions. And I literally answer every single question. I don't come off until I have because I want to make sure that you're getting that help that you need. So like I said, every two to three weeks we have a coaching call.

We all jump on, we're all on screen, we all get to speak. And everyone gets to ask a question if they have on, if not, there are lots of people that just sit there and listen and take in what everybody else is saying and picking up ideas. We have training courses so I have lots of amazing courses in there but quite honestly are worth a lot of money on their own. So content creation for social media. Identifying your perfect customer profile, secrets to an effective sales page to hide to get started with Facebook ads hides to create the perfect lead magnet. That course is awesome. I love doing that one. I also loved in the sales page one as well, getting started with Instagram, get a complete guide to blogging, sales, webinars, Facebook overview, so many good courses in there. Then we do the quarterly goal setting, so every quarter everyone sets goals and actions and I keep people accountable.

Twice a month. There is a Facebook live, one by me and one by my lovely colleague Anne, who is super creative and can show you how to do amazing things on social media. And then we do things like social media updates and then there's the private Facebook group where basically you get to have access to me in the group and I answer your questions and the community is just amazing. I love them and I promise I'm not just saying that I genuinely do. It's one of my most favourite things. So when you get to be a member of the Academy, you get your question marks turned into action points. I help you get clear on what you need to do and support you to do it. So like I said, I didn't want to literally spend the whole podcast just telling you and selling the Academy to you.

But I wanted to let you know before that price goes up because on Friday the 29th of May at midnight, so this Friday coming, if you listened to this on Monday, the price is going up and it won't come down. I am adamant about that. And if you listen to anything I say, you'll know it's very important that you never come back down on your price. So the price will go up to $49 and $490 and will continue to rise from there. If you get in now at $39 or 390 it will never go up for as long as you stay a member. So you don't need to worry about any further price increases. Okay, so that's it. A sales pitch I've with, but to go check out my sales page because it really is beautiful. I love it. I love it. Okay, that's [inaudible] dot com foods, that Academy right now, I can focus on telling you some content.

 

Why do a challenge?

 

So I want to talk about a challenge because like I said, I've been doing one and they're really, really effective. So why would you do a challenge in the first place? Well, one of the beauties, well if you think about all the different ways in which someone can come across and find you and find your products and services and interact with you, you've got things like sales pages, you've got things like webinars, you've got other different things like if you're doing lives or if you're doing a private Facebook group or whatever it might be. But the beauty of a challenge is you get to almost teach them in real time and you get to have a, the community of the challenge, people come together for a short period of time where you are communicating with them regularly. So instead of just doing a one hour webinar where you just hit them for an hour and then you're gone.

The beauty of doing the challenge is especially with something like a five day challenge for five days, I am front and centre. So for me, I haven't really done one before and I did one a few months ago and I loved it because I love teaching and also for me, and this is what I want you to think about is it really demonstrates the product and the service at the end of it. So it really shows people that if they liked the challenge, if they liked the motivation that I give them, if they like my energy and inspiration, then they're really going to love joining the Academy. So that's why I do it. To almost give them a taste of what's to come if they join. And also the other really important thing of me to me about a challenge is that I move people forward because I don't know about you, but sometimes you do things and I've signed up for a lot of things as I'm sure you can imagine.

 

How to set up a challenge for your business

 

I basically am the queen of signing up for stuff because of the fact of I am very interested in what other people are doing. I like to see the funnel they use in the emails they use and all that. I know I need to get a hobby, but so I signed up for lots of things and there's nothing more disappointing than putting your, and I know it's just your email, but you've got to think about how I instil investing my time, which is the most valuable thing into something and it not being very good. So when I did my challenge, I was really adamant that it was going to be amazing and I was going to put a lot of time and effort into it. So let's think about how you could do a challenge for your business and how it works. Well, the first thing you're going to need to do is think about what is the challenge going to be about.

What is it that your customers are really struggling with that you could help them with? That might take a little bit more support than just doing a PDF or just doing a five minute video. What is something that you know that people are going to need help with, but they're going to have questions about? Because building your email list and I teach it and I'll tell you the steps I go through, but I teach it through lead magnets and doing that sort of thing. Building your email list is a big process. This is a big thing. This isn't a, Oh, you just go to this website, you put this thing in, and then it works. Not at all. You know, there are many steps to it and even a five day challenge cannot go into the sort of level of detail that we really need to get into.

However, it certainly will give them a way better understanding than if I just did a PDF or if I just did a five minute video. So for me it's about giving them something that they're asking for, but giving them in more detail with some actionable steps that they can make a decision on. That was really key. I didn't want them to come at the end of this thinking, well, I haven't done anything, because again, a challenge is something where they're working alongside with you. So rather than something like a webinar or a training or alive where they're just listening and they think, Oh that's a good idea. You want them to actually do the work. So this is great. If you're in the knowledge industry, this is great if you are a coach or some sort of trainer, this is also good if you are teaching people to bake or cook or flower range or yoga or whatever, you know you can do things where they follow along every single day.

So let me tell you how I planned my challenge and and what went into it cause it was a fair bit of work if I'm honest. So the first thing you're going to do is once you've decided yes I've got that subject is you're going to decide over the period, how long am I going to do it for? So I naturally had five steps to my process. So five days worked great. And the first one I did Monday to Friday. And I have to say, I can't really give you a, and I've talked about this on the podcast, what I can't give you a how successful it was because the Friday in which it finished was locked down and basically the world started to implode a little bit. So it was really hard to judge whether it was effective because it wasn't normal circumstances. So the challenge is five days, Monday to Friday.

This one I started on a Sunday because I wanted to see a finishing on a Thursday has any effect, and I'll let you know in the future, cause like I said, it hasn't finished yet. Once I decided that I got five things I was running over five days, I then had to think about what's the deliverable method, what do I want to do a, do I want to deliver this? So I decided that I wanted to deliver it through videos, alongside worksheets. So every day everyone in the challenge gets a link to a video. So I email them a link to a video and they watch that video. And on that page there's also a button to download the worksheet or the download, cause sometimes I just did a download of the information so they didn't have to keep rewatching the video, but they got the content that they needed that day through a video and a download.

And then what I did is they have one of them every single day and then I decided to do Facebook lives alongside it. So let me just talk you...

This week we have a very exciting interview with the lovely Kira Hug, who is the co-founder of The Copywriter Club and the co-host of The Copywriter Club Podcast! We are going to be talking all about copywriting, particularly focusing on how to get the balance between the right kind of copywriting whilst still being authentic.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Finding your voice/identity. Look at your brand – Personality, Values and Advantage.
• Be honest about your personality, embrace your quirks!
• Your values (What you care about, what you fight for/against, what you stand for) will reflect in your messaging.
• Think about your advantage, what is your superpower? Everyone has one, so you need to identify yours!
• Check out what your competitors are doing – Understand how you fit into the space.
• Stand out from the crowd by talking about your quirks, they are what makes you, you!
• Being honest will help to build trust in your community and with your audience, as well as building rapport.
• You don’t have to be perfect, to be successful.
• People connect with you for lots of different reasons – give them different sides of you to relate to.
• Tell a story using chatty language in your emails – this can be the first paragraph or two to show a little bit of who you are and build that connection.
• Oversharing – there is a fine line! Decide what is important to you and if it is important for people to know more? Set those boundaries for yourself.
• Aim to build a community of people who do want to know more about you.
• Make sure you send a mixture of emails talking about you and about your audience and their problems.
• It is important to put yourself out there and let people know more about you because your audience needs to identify with you. You are allowing them to see what they want in their life, in you.
• Your audience get to know your brand personality through you sharing more of who you are, and they can then relate to your brand on a deeper level.
• Every time you share something, it should feel a little uncomfortable!
• Check in with your customers/clients – have a conversation while providing some value.
• It is important to know where you are in your sale cycle to see how much personality you should share.
• Show your customers/clients that you can relate to them and you do understand.
• Use your first sentence to really grab your reader’s attention – this could be a piece of who you are or something they can relate to.
• Signing off your emails – Best opportunity to showcase your personality. Keep it fresh and fun!
• Add your friends to your email list to keep that friendly tone.
• Your copywriting is one of the most important parts of your marketing, if you don’t have the skills, invest in a copywriter!
• There are lots of different levels of copywriters out there, with different skill levels and price points.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Authenticity is key. Many of us are in crowded markets, so our personality is the only thing that can really stand out. If you are putting yourself out there and being authentic, you are going to attract people that you like, and they like you! Remember, if someone doesn’t like you, that’s cool, there are plenty of other products and services they can go and buy instead!HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• An Introduction to Kira Hug – 03:40
• Being Authentic – 09:03
• Embracing your quirks – 14:02
• The “Perfect” online space – 16:32
• Connecting with your audience via copywriting – 19:25
• Oversharing! – 23:33
• Putting yourself out there – 26:26
• How to get started with sharing more! – 32:20
• Converting your customers – 40:08
• Using a copywriter for your content – 50:50

Transcript below

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. This week we have an interview, and I was really excited about this one because, basically, one thing that I tell you I am not very good at is copywriting. It doesn't thrill me very much. However, one thing I am really keen on is an authentic voice. So how to get that balance between the right kind of copywriting and still be authentic, can be really, really tricky. Which is why I had Kira Hug come on to the podcast and talk about this. So let me explain who Kira is, so Kira is the co-founder of The Copywriter Club, and the co-host of The Copywriter Club podcast. She's also a conversion copywriter specialist, and has a proven driven launch copy.

So, basically, she's worked with the likes of James Wedmore and [Ritmore Reddy 00:01:25] and helped them write their copy for their launches. And as you know, I have been in some of James's programmes, and therefore, very possibly, read what Kira wrote. She helps small business owners package their weird, following her signature Weird Trifecta Framework. So what I really liked about her is that she talks about you talking in your authentic voice and showing your personality. So often, when you can think about a copywriter, it can sometimes sound and feel a little bit ... almost too perfect, or just like it's been copy written. And one thing that she embraces, is she works with people to help them find their weird, to help them find the thing that makes them different.

So in this episode, we talk about what makes you different and unique. And one thing that's really interesting, that I can't wait for you to listen to, is she talks about the good and the bad, and how the bad could be used for good. Sounds weird but promise it all makes sense. And then she talks about how we connect with our audience through those things, through showing our personality. The other thing Kira talks about, which is really helpful, is to get that confidence when sharing about us.

Now, obviously you're going to share what you're comfortable with, so she's not going to sit there and say, "You have to do this and a have to do that." However, as business owners, and as lots of you listening are solopreneurs, you are your business. So getting comfortable with showing who you are is really, really important. So, that's really helpful as well. I found it really interesting. Like I said, I am not a copywriter. It's not something I'm brilliant at. But one thing I am really passionate about is that authenticity. So, anyway, give it a listen. Let me know what you think, tag us in, I can't wait to hear what you think. So, here we go, here is Kira.

 

An Introduction to Kira Hug

 

So I am really excited today to welcome to the podcast the very lovely Kira Hug. Kira, welcome!

Hey, Teresa. Thank you for having me.

No problem. Not at all. It's really good to have you here. So, Kira, in case my audience don't know you and they've not heard of you before, tell me a bit about how you got to do what you're doing today, because it's a really fascinating subject and I'm really excited to dive in, but just tell us how you got to do what you do today.

Okay, all right. Today, I write personality-driven copy that converts. How did I get into that? I came from a marketing background, so I had worked at various startups and nonprofits, running their marketing team, promoting memberships, promoting events, and writing a lot of copy, plus doing a lot of other things. And secretly trying to start this side hustle, like many of us do, and pursuing all the interests. I started a blog about being tall, because I'm tall and I thought that could be something that stuck. But there are only so many things you can say about being tall. During that time, I got married and so I hated the wedding process. And so I started a podcast and a blog called Bridal Rebellion, and that was like a side hobby/possible business that I turned into a service and had offerings. But these ideas didn't really have the legs along the way, but it was still fun and allowed me to tap into this online world back in 2008.

And so, along the way, as I was working these marketing jobs, writing copy for my colleagues and even writing copy for people who were kind of contractors working with my startup, I had one of my friends say to me, "Why are you doing all these side hustle jobs that don't actually pay money? Why don't you just write copy? Because you're a copywriter." And she had already hired me to write her website copy, other colleagues had have hired me to write their website copy, but it's like I couldn't see it because I was just in it, until she came to me and said, "You're a copywriter, this is your business. You're making money. Do it."

And so from there, it was like that was the light bulb moment and I just went all in. I still continued to work at this marketing startup and kind of just eased out, I didn't take the leap, necessarily. I took a couple of months to scale down and then rev up the copywriting business that just continued to take off. And that was back in 2015, when I started, and then I went full time in April of 2016. And then, ever since then, it's just been growing that business, working on various launches, but all of it has been grounded in, "How can we write copy that reflects your personality and it stands out?" And even since then, I started a second business which is The Copywriter Club, where I get to work with other copywriters and help them embrace their personality and build businesses. So I kind of have these two different worlds that overlap, but allow me to just really kind of allow people to be more of who they are and show that in their business.

That's awesome. I have to ask a question, though, because you said it. You said you wrote a blog because you're tall, how tall are you?

I am 5'10. I said I was 5'11 the other day, and my mom seemed offended. She's like "You're not 5'11, I'm 5'11!" So I guess I'm 5'10, I'll stick with that.

Okay, cool. So, tall-ish. Yeah, I guess-

I'm tall-ish. Tall enough to start a blog about that, but I remember talking to ... Danielle LaPorte, at the time, had these coaching sessions and I had hired her to have as a coach, one-off coaching session to talk about my tall blog. And I remember her saying to me, she was like, "I think you're going to run out of things to talk about." And she was so nice about it! [inaudible 00:07:27] "Yeah, you're right." And she was right, I ran out of things to talk about.

I love it. And also, I love the fact that you did that, then you did the wedding thing, and then you did something else, then you did something else. I feel like there are different entrepreneurs and creators in this world. Where like, for me, I literally was a really good employee and then, suddenly one day, my brain went ... and then, without even knowing, I ended up having my own business and thinking, "What the hell am I doing?"

And then some people like you, who are just like, "I want to do this, and there's this opportunity here, and there's this thing here, and shall I do this?" And to just kind of have those things on the go. I don't remember doing anything when I worked. Didn't have a blog, didn't have a podcast, didn't have anything. So it was obviously kind of inbuilt in you, in terms of this was your thing.

I think so. And I think there was just my ... My jobs weren't satisfying that creative need I had inside, they just weren't. I wasn't satiated, which forced me to keep jumping and taking these side digs, which, looking back, that was good but at the time it was also frustrating, being in a couple ... even a couple corporate jobs where I was like, "Oh, do I really want to be here? Do I want to grow here? This isn't where I see myself."

 

Being Authentic

 

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I love what you talk about, because one of the things I talk about all the time is being authentic and being yourself. And one thing that's happened in lots of industries, and it's happened in mine, is people see something that's working ... So someone comes into the industry with a quirk or with a style or with a something, and they see it working and then everybody jumps on that bandwagon. And what they don't realise is it's working for that person because it's totally authentic as to who they are and they eat, sleep, breathe the way they're being. And the others aren't like that and therefore it's not that it's ... It's not the thing that people like, it's the authenticity that people like.

So I love the way that you talk about celebrating things authentic and how you have kind of addressed that in authentic copies. So tell us ... Explain that, how do I ... ? Because, one, I don't like writing. So probably not a great start. But how do I get that out? How do I get that personality out? If I'm sat, listening, just thinking, "I don't think people know who I am."

Well, it's funny that you don't like writing because I love your headline on your About page-

Okay.

... about, "I love tea. And by tea, I mean gin." I was like, "Well written." Yeah, I help people figure out what makes them weird, because this is such a big struggle for all of us, and this isn't even easy for me. I oftentimes get assistance about what makes me weird too. So I've worked through this process because I've gone through an identity crisis that forced me to ask those questions like, "What am I doing? How can I show up at home and how can I show up in business?" So I've kind of worked through that personally and business-wise, but I think it really starts off with looking at three core areas of your brand and I call it your Weird Trifecta Framework.

And so these three core areas are based in your personality, your personality is a huge piece of that. And within your personality is your voice, how you talk. How you write is all about how you talk. That's where your quirks show up, what makes you unique, what makes you different, the good and the bad. And so personality isn't just the positive things, which I think we often think it is. It's like, "These are the best qualities of my personality." Also, these are the darker qualities of your personality, these can be some of the aspects of your personality that maybe you aren't excited about, maybe you're working on them.

So I think that's where your honesty comes in, and you had mentioned earlier, you like to be honest. And so being being honest about your personality is key, and that's where most of us kind of mess up. We don't get really honest about who we are. The other two areas, one is values. So your values reflect your messaging, what you care about, what you fight for, what you fight against, what you stand for. And those really strong viewpoints, basically, it's like your why behind everything you do.

So it's personality, values. And then the third area that I focus on in the Weird Trifecta is your advantage. What is your genius? You could call it superpower, secret sauce, whatever you want to call that, but what is that for you, because everyone has it. It's really hard to see it when you do it naturally, so this is oftentimes where I focus the most time working with clients, to figure that out. And also, part of that is looking at your competition. Because sometimes you don't see your advantage until you do check out your competitors, which I'm always surprised that more business owners I talked to don't really do that well or don't pay attention to it because we want to get in our bubble. But looking at the space to understand how you fit into it, is key.

So those are the three core areas, personality, values, advantage, that we work through. And part of that process is just asking questions that pull that information out. Questions are the most powerful part of that exercise to get that information.

Let me touch on that for a little bit, because I think this is really interesting, because I love the way you talk about weird and yet ... I should imagine there's some people out there going, "Well, I'm not weird," and if they do think something's weird they're like that, "I'm not showing that! Because I don't want anyone to see that I'm weird." I think that's really interesting, and I think what you started off by saying, in terms of personality, in terms of the voice, and those quirks, the good and bad. Honestly, I just think, "Who would want to show the bad stuff and why? Why would I want to show up some of my bad things?" And you have a great line on your site that says something like, "Even if you're a jerk and people still buy off jerks," or something like that, which I just thought was fascinating. Tell me a bit ... how do you mean? How does that work?

Yeah. I mean, there are definitely some qualities in your personality or in your life that might not be ... might be a bit darker, that maybe you don't want to lead with. So there could be some ... If you're like, "I have visions of stabbing people in the back!"

Probably don't do that!

 

Embracing your quirks

 

I mean, that could be a really ... Through the email copy, because I would read that email, but maybe you don't lead with that. But the reason to do it is because it makes you, again, real authentic standing. You'll stand out because most people don't talk about this stuff. We honestly don't trust so good, fast way to build trust with your community and your audience. It also is a great way to build rapport because people will relate to that, because people will ... They understand their darker side and those traits in them, and if they see it in you, that builds a connection. And maybe they don't feel connected to everything in your personality, but if you can share more of your personality, they'll start to connect to bits and pieces of it, rather than if you just share one facet of your personality that you feel like you should be sharing. Maybe it's like, "Oh, I'm so creative! I'm going to just show my creative side."

Sure, you'll attract creative people but there's so many other facets to who you are, that you could connect with more people and kind of grow your community that way. So I would look at things that are more relatable, that aren't as dark. Like for me and my business partner, we often joke that I'm super sensitive and he has no feelings, and when we talk a lot about that in our marketing messages. And you could say either one is negative. Being too sensitive, I don't necessarily feel proud of that, and I don't think he feels proud about like, "He has no feelings!"

He ha no feelings.

But we joke about it and we turn it in, and we talk a lot about those sides to us because that's how we connect with our audience, by sharing those pieces. And all of that has its upside and downside. Being super sensitive has a downside, it can immobilise you, especially in my audience, a lot of copywriters can relate to that so I talk about it often. But it also has a superpower, it allows you to build empathy and to see things other people don't see. So I think if you find other qualities that maybe you think you're not proud of or maybe you're like, "I don't like that about myself all the time," you can find the upside in everything and that becomes your advantage. Like if you told me three of your top weaknesses, I bet we could figure out how each of those three weaknesses actually has an advantage for you.

 

The “Perfect” online space

 

And do you think that's a lot to do with this perfect online space that we're in? That we are so tired of seeing the perfectness in the world, and the beautifully quaffed hair and the lovely

In this week’s podcast, we are going to be talking all about hashtags! We will be covering: what they are, why you use them, how you can use them to find new followers, how you can use them to attract followers, which ones you shouldn’t use, where you should put them and how many you should use!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• A hashtag is a word you use to collect together people who have a common interest or theme.
• Hashtags are great for events because it groups together all the content from everyone who has attended.
• Hashtags can be used on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
• You can have up to 30 hashtags on Instagram – try to use between 20 and 30.
• It is recommended you use up to 2 hashtags on Twitter and up to 5 hashtags on LinkedIn.
• You can put your hashtags in your caption or in the first comment.
• Try to leave a space between your caption and the hashtags using a hard return or dots.
• Create groups of hashtags for different categories (eg. Travel, family, fun times, books).
• Save your groups of hashtags to your notes to use again.
• You need to use relevant hashtags and not the same ones over and over.
• Use around 5-10 hashtags that are very relevant to your image, then use 20 more general hashtags.
• Don’t use many hashtags that are too big or too small/niche – people won’t find you. Try to use hashtags that are over 1,000 but under 1 million.
• Research hashtags on Instagram by using the search function – start to type in a word and it will come up with suggestions and how many people have used that hashtag.
• Try to think about the hashtags your ideal clients or customers will search for.
• Look at what hashtags your competitors are using.
• When coming up with your own hashtag – try to keep it really simple and easy. Check to see if other people are using that hashtag – check it hasn’t been used inappropriately or being used actively all the time.
• When a hashtag starts to get really popular, you then get spammers who use that hashtag for posts that have no relevance at all. At this point, Instagram then makes the decision to dumb down that hashtag and the effect decreases.
• Try to avoid using banned hashtags.
• On an Instagram story, you can use up to 10 hashtags.
• You can hide your hashtags on Instagram stories by shrinking it down or changing the colour to the background.
• You can use hashtags to search for content.
• Follow a hashtag if it is something you are interested in or something your customers might be using.
• Hashtags are linked so if you click a hashtag it will bring up more content surrounding that topic.
• Look at your Instagram insights – it will tell you how many impressions you have got through your hashtags! You may be surprised.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Hashtags can be really useful for not only finding new followers, but also to find out what your followers are using and looking at.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• What is a hashtag? - 01:39
• Where do you use hashtags? - 02:15
• How many hashtags? - 02:45
• Using hashtags - 04:12
• What to hashtag - 07:18
• Hashtag research - 11:38
• Using your own hashtag - 16:05
• Banned hashtags - 17:14
• Using hashtags on Instagram stories - 18:51
• Other ways to use hashtags - 22:08

Transcript below

 

Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? How are things? I hope you're having a good start to your week. If it's Monday, of course. If it's not, then I hope you have a good day. Uh, okay, so today I'm just going to jump straight in with some content and tell you what this week's episode is going to be all about. Now quite a few weeks ago. Probably way more than I'd like to admit. I talked about hashtags on a podcast and said, I'll do an episode about it. And then one of my Academy members obviously listened to that episode and went, where's that episode about hashtags? I can't find it. I was like, Oh, that's because I haven't done it. So today I'm doing you an episode all about hashtags. I'm going to explain what they are, why you use them, how you can use them, find new followers, how you can use them to attract followers, which ones you shouldn't use, where you should put them, how many you should use.

 

What is a hashtag?

 

So we are going to cover off everything to do with hashtags. So let's get going. Okay, first off, what is a hashtag? So basically a hashtag is a word that you use to collect together, people who have a common interest or theme. So for instance, a really good use of our hashtag is at an event. So if you're going to an event, they sometimes have a hashtag for that particular event and therefore you can see what other people are posting about the event. When you post, you could use that hashtag, but basically all it's doing is bringing together people would that common interest. So there's nothing more confusing about it than that. It's just a word you use to find other people who like the same thing as you do.

 

Where do you use hashtags?

 

So where do you use them? Well, I'm going to be specifically be talking about Instagram a lot in this episode.

However, they can also be used in Twitter and LinkedIn. I tend not to bother on Facebook. Oh, and you can actually use them on Pinterest. I know I didn't talk about Pinterest a whole lot, but you can use them there as well. So for me, we're really going to be talking about, like I said, Instagram mainly, but some of these things will also be applicable to Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

How many hashtags?

 

So let me start by telling you how many hashtags you're allowed to have. Well on Instagram you can have up to 30 hashtags on a post. If you're using Twitter, they recommend that you use no more than two hashtags and obviously a lot of the reason for that is that you just don't have many characters so you're not going to want to use it up with all the hashtags and LinkedIn. There is no maximum, but their suggestion is no more than five.

I think for me, I only tend to use sort of one or two on Twitter but not every time and then I tend to use one or two on LinkedIn, but I do use as close to 30 as I can on Instagram because it has been proven. The more you use the better. Like I said, you can't go over 30 but they do encourage you to use at least 20 hashtags and don't worry. We're going to explain to you how you can do that without having to type out all these words all the time. So let's have some key pointers. So I'm going to split it up into different ways. I'm going to split it up into using hashtags, I. E. On your own staff. And then I'm going to look at how you can use hashtags to find people and search on them and that sort of thing.

By the way, I know I'm going to have to say the word hashtag a lot in this episode and already I've said it wrong about four times, so this could take me quite some time to record this episode.

 

Using hashtags

 

Okay, so let's have a look at using them in your own posts. So like I said, mainly I'm talking about Instagram, but this does kind of a um, or some of these things do apply to the other platforms as well. So as I mentioned, you're laid up to 30 hashtags in one post, and I'm talking about the post in your feed, not Instagram stories. So let's talk about, first off, where do you put them in the post? This is a contentious subject, so you can either put them in your caption, I, when you're writing about your picture, you could put some hashtags there or you can put it into comment number one.

Now, I would say a while back, if you used quite a lot of hashtags, it looked a bit spammy and I wouldn't say that's the case anymore. I think with Instagram coming out saying use the hashtags, they're actually encouraging you to do it and therefore it doesn't look as spammy. So like I said, I would use as close to 30 as possible and I put mine in the captions. The only reason I put them in the captions is because it's less of a hassle. So if you're going to put them in comment number one, I used to basically have the post ready to go. I would then save my hashtags, I E copied them from somewhere or however I was going to do it. The minute I posted, I'd go straight into comment number one and I'd post those hashtags. Whereas I don't have to do that.

If it goes in the caption, the one thing I do do is I do some hard returns and some dots to bring it down the page just so there's a space between the caption itself and the hashtags. So let me explain how I do that. So often people struggled to get spaces and the Instagram caption. Now there is an app you can use called space on. I think that's on iPhone. I don't do that. I tend to do what I call a hard return. So what it is is once you've got to the end of the line and you want a return in that space, make sure there is no space after the end word because if there's a space it does something odd and it won't put the return in and you won't notice that until you post the actual caption or post the post.

So what I do is the minute I finish, I don't do a space. I just hit return and hit return. Again. If you're going to put a full stop in, did knock it, sort of push it down the page as it were, you literally get to the end of your sentence, you the last character, whether it be a full stop or just the word you do an immediate return. Don't let there be a space afterwards and then do a full stop. No space after the full stop, immediate return, no space after the full stop, immediate return. So I do that a few times and then I start putting my hashtags in. But like I said, that's that laziness cause I can't be bothered to put it in comment one. It doesn't make any difference really at all in terms of where you're putting them and where they're picked up from.

 

What to hashtag

 

So I just put them in my captions. So the next thing that you want to think about is what are you actually hashtagging? What are the words that you're actually putting in as your hashtags and how are you going to do that if you need to do 30 so the way that I do it is I have groups of hashtags that I use based on the similar themes and categories of my Instagram. So if you've listened to me before, you might've heard me talk about the fact that I do what Jasmine starters, which is to use categories. So I have categories that are about travel. I have categories that are about my family, coffee, fun times, books, and therefore because I know that I post similar ish things, I can have groups of hashtags which I can then save in my notes file on my phone or if you're can do it on a desktop, obviously you can schedule now to Instagram.

So I basically have groups of different hashtags and in all honesty, I probably need to refresh them because I've had them a bit too long. So for instance, if I'm travelling to speak, which obviously while I'm recording this, I'm still in lockdown so I'm not at the moment, but when I am, I have a group of hashtags that talk about travel and business travel and being a speaker. If I am doing a book, I have a group of hashtags that talk about reading and business books and motivational books and whatever it might be. So I tend to have a bait 20 to 25 in each group depending on what categories you've got. Because one of the really important things about the hashtags and especially on Instagram is that you're using relevant hashtags are not the same ones over and over. So that's why I don't just have groups of 30 hashtags each.

So what I tend to do is let's say I'm posting a picture about a book that I've just read, I will use sort of five to 10 hashtags that are very relevant to the Petro I'm putting up. So I will hashtag the author hashtag the name of the book, I'll hashtag the theme of the book if I've put something else in the image or if it inspires something or if it's got a theme. Generally I'll use those hashtags and then I might bring in 20 of my main kind of book hashtags that I've got saved somewhere. So I do a bit of a mix of both. Now, in an ideal world, you would do your 30 hashtags completely relevant to that post and you wouldn't save groups of hashtags anywhere. However, I'm very realistic. That takes a lot of time and efforts and you might not see that time and effort rewarded back to you.

Whereas spending probably a few minutes putting in some relevant words and then putting in some general more sort of generic hashtags that you've saved or not generic, but you know, hashtags that you've put in your notes file I think is fine and a nice kind of balance. Now in terms of the hashtags themselves, you don't want to go too big or too small. My people often like to hashtag big hashtags so they'll see something like, so in my world using the hashtag entrepreneur is ridiculous cause it's so big, it's so massive and you so much that the chances of I'm doing it for reach. If I am doing it for people to find my canes, the chances of them ever finding my account off that hashtag are slim to none because it's just a way too big. The same way is if I am hashtagging something that is so small and niche.

Again, if I'm doing it so that people find my posts, they're not going to find it because it's too small and neat. So I tend to look at hashtags that are under a million and over a thousand and try and fit in the sort of balance there. Now you do want, you know, it's not that you shouldn't use any hashtags over a million to use one or two, two or three in a 30 is absolutely fine. But just be aware that you're not necessarily going to reach out to people who are searching for that hashtag because it's so competitive.

 

Hashtag research

 

So you need to find these hashtags. You need to find these words that you can use that are appropriate to the thing that you're posting. And he needs to know how big that hashtag is. So one of the ways in which you can do your hashtag research that you could see whether this is relevant to you or not.

And obviously I'm looking at my phone as of when am I recording this? It's April towards the end of April, 2020 and I'm on an iPhone. So obviously this may not be still correct when you're listening to this or if you're listening in the future. So just to be aware that it stands as I speak at the moment. So if I go into my Instagram app and I look at the bottom menu bar, there's a magnifying glass and if I click on that, that's the discover tab. And at the top of that discover tab, you've got a search bar. So you tap in the search bar. Now you could either just underneath the search bar, it says top canes tags, places. So you could just tap on tags and that's instantly looking for hashtags. And you start typing in a word. So I'm going to start typing in the word mum printer.

Okay. So for instance, as I start typing it in, it's going to show me the hashtag and how many people have posted using that hashtag. So for instance, mompreneur 7.3 million posts are up to do with that hashtag. So for me, that's too big. However, underneath there's mum preneur life and therefore that has less, which is 385,000 posts. And I therefore would probably rather use that one. The other great thing about this is let's say your customers are mompreneurs and that's who you want to go for. Then you can see some other suggestions. So there's obviously mompreneur knife mom problems. Obviously I need to continue to write mum to get some other examples. So if I just continue typing that in, then it's got mum per life lifestyle. It's got mum prunus spelled wrong because honestly like it's a really hard word to spell. So there's varying degrees of spelling of it and some of these wrongly spelled ones, I've got like 400,000 posts or 600,000 posts.

I don't dismiss the fact that it's a spelling wrong. Um, mompreneur diaries. So you might find that actually looking at a hashtag that you think I would like to use that if it's too big, just look at the suggestions that Instagram are making to you because they're going to be giving you some other suggestions that might fit what you're trying to do and still be your perfect customer. So that's one place you can look for your hashtags. The other place you can look is you can look at what competitors are doing, but one thing actually I should have said straight away that's just reminded me saying that is that people often make the mistake of using the hashtags that they are. Okay, so let me give you an example. If I'm an accountant and I'm putting a post up and I use the hashtag accountant or accountant life, the only people looking at that hashtag or searching for that hashtag are acquaintance.

Your ideal customer who might be a small business owner is not using the hashtag accountants or accounting life or acquaintance life. So often the mistake lots of people make is they have to take their own stuff. They hashtag the thing that they rather than what their customers do. However, let's take the business of, if you're a gin company, obviously one of my favourite subjects, but if you're a gin company and you are trying to sell or get your gin in front of people who drink gin and tonic, then consumers will use the hashtag gin and tonic or I love Jen or whatever it might be. So you've got to just be aware of what you're searching for. Like I said, in that case, taking in your own product was fine because people would still use that. Whereas in the Keynesian case, no one is going to be hashtagging came to see apart from a cane sense.

So I want you to think about who is my ideal customer and go and have a look at what they're hashtagging. So if you are targeting business women who potentially have children, then you might want to hashtag mum things or you might want to hashtag words that relate to working from home or anything that kind of might fall into that category of business mums or whatever it is. So and like I said, one of the great ways in which you can do that is go and find your perfect customer. Find someone that is already a customer and see what they're hashtagging.

 

Using your own hashtag

 

So let's talk for a minute about using your own hashtag. Now as I said, if you're an event, perfect, great. If you are trying to get the people together or keep an eye on the contents, then having a hashtag is perfect. So if you're doing an event, if you're doing a competition, if you're doing a challenge and the thing like that, if you're doing those things, then it's going to be really, really beneficial to have your own type of hashtag to come up with your hashtag.

Try and keep it simple. Try and keep it easy so that it's not big long words that you can't spell or people might make errors, obviously type it into various platforms. So put it into Twitter, put it into Instagram and see if other people are using that hashtag they finding a hashtag that no one has used is slim to none. However, you don't want to pick a hashtag but is something inappropriate or something that is basically being used loads. You want to try and pick something that is, you know, it's fine if someone's used it already, but as long as it's not inappropriate and that it's not being actively used all the time.

 

Banned hashtags

 

So another thing to note is that there are banned hashtags may, this is a moving feast. Even if I did list a load of the band...

This week’s podcast is an interview with the amazing Mark Schaefer. Mark is a globally recognised author, speaker, podcaster and business consultant who blogs at Grow – one of the top FIVE marketing blogs in the world! At the time of the interview, Mark had actually been diagnosed with coronavirus 17 days prior. We are going to be talking about how it affected him, but also his content and how he is adjusting in this time we are in.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• We have to reframe our business and our strategy based on what is going on right now.
• Are you relevant in this moment?
• Pivot your content – some content you may have had planned may now seem irrelevant.
• The world needs you to teach something different right now.
• Make sure your content is meaningful and helpful.
• We constantly have to reassess what we are posting and read the room. Make sure you keep thinking about how your audience is feeling and what they are going through right now.
• Ask yourself, what do your customers need RIGHT NOW.
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – many of our customers are likely to be at the bottom level right now.
• If your product or service is aspirational, this may not be the right time to be selling, but you can still keep marketing your brand.
• At this time, your brand is more than the short-term sales.
• People will remember what you do during this time.
• It’s all about survival right now and what we can do to help.
• People who are “known” means having the reputation, the authority and the presence to get your job done.
• If you are “known”, you have a permanent and sustainable competitive advantage.
• If you have some down time right now, you need to be working on this concept of being more “known” and building your personal brand.
• Never take your audience for granted, you need to continue to be a leader.
• Think about what your purpose is right now, be brave and use this as an opportunity.
• Inspire your audience, and help them in a positive way.
• Be gentle on yourself. Just because we have the time and the space, doesn’t mean we emotionally feel like doing it.
• The biggest goal we can have right now is to arrive and be there in one piece when this is over.
• We need to focus on the little things such as staying healthy, taking care of relationships and comforting and nurturing our children.
• We don’t have to be remarkable right now.
• This is a period in our life where it is not like it’s ever been before, so we can’t be hard on ourselves!
• Reframe this time as a complete reset.
• We are not that far away from the world exploding with joy! We will appreciate all those little things we once took for granted.
• It takes time, work and patience to build your personal brand.
• Manage your expectations, you can’t build a business overnight!
• There is no magic button to success – consistency is key.
• You need to become a habit in people’s lives so they look forward to what you produce.
• Consistency is more important than genius.
• We are all in industries where it is competitive, so we have to keep going!
• Just because someone is doing it one way, doesn’t mean it’s a particular style that really works, they have just found what their ‘tribe’ likes to see. You will find what your ‘tribe’ likes too.
• You don’t necessarily need to be an expert in something to be known.
• Show your journey to your audience, no one starts out as an expert but we can all learn!
• We have an opportunity right now to really work on our brand and become a legendary. We could do something in this crisis that people will never forget.
• We have an opportunity to do something that can create loyalty that lasts forever.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…We can continue to show up during this time to our customers and our audience, by being helpful and relevant through our content. The best way is always to be authentic, although it may take longer, it is definitely the way to go.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• An introduction to Mark - 01:58
• Mark’s coronavirus experience - 05:58
• Adjusting your marketing strategy - 10:35
• Meeting the needs of your customer - 14:09
• Your brand over sales - 16:39
• Being in the public eye during this time - 21:09
• Being gentle on yourself right now - 27:20
• The positives of this situation - 31:06
• Playing the long game - 33:38
• Building your brand - 36:54
• Your competition - 38:35
• Becoming “known” - 41:35
• Becoming a legend - 43:10

Transcript below

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? Okay, I think I told you last week that it was going to be a solo-episode this week and to be honest, it feels a little bit like we're flying by the seat of our pants because basically what happens if you don't know how the podcast works or how I do it, I batch content, so especially with interviews because obviously I need to make sure I know we've got interviews coming, who we've got in. Sometimes if I've got someone amazing coming on, I have to wait awhile for them to find a space in their diary. So what I try and do is I'll say I plan out quite far ahead in advance, but the recent coronavirus thing has really kind of had an impact on the podcast because as I'm interviewing some people, they are talking a lot about it and therefore it doesn't make sense to put the podcast date later, sort of in the month or in the next few months.

So I've been moving things around, so I apologise if one week you listen and I say next week we're going to do this. And it changes because my poor team are literally having to tweak and change as I need them to. Because like I said, I just feel like some episodes are worth bringing closer to the front. Some can wait a little bit.

 

An introduction to Mark

 

So today's is an example of that and it's actually a really good example of why I needed to bring it so close, because today's interview is with the very amazing Mark Schaefer. So if you don't know Mark, let me just give you a little bit about who he is and what he does. So Mark is a globally recognised author, speaker, podcaster and business consultant who blogs at Grow. That's what his blogs called, which is one of the top five marketing blogs of the world.

He teaches graduate marketing classes to Rutgers University and has written no less than eight best selling books. Mark's new book Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins is an essential new view of business and a manifesto, the human centred marketing and it hit number one in both the marketing and advertising categories on Amazon. He's worked with loads of global clients including the likes of Cisco and Dell and Adidas. He's also been a keynote speaker for a lot of huge events and I personally saw him speak a few times actually at Social Media Marketing World and he's also appeared as a guest on channels such as CNN, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CBS. So to say this guy knows what he's talking about is a bit of an understatement. And some of the books that Mark has written are books that I have read and love.

So the one that I really kind of thinking about, which actually isn't his latest book, although that's wonderful as well, but the one that really stuck with me is Known and it's all about the power of becoming known and how that helps you. And not the power of becoming famous and not being Insta famous, but being known as an expert in your industry. It's a great book, I can highly recommend it and I've linked up to it in the show notes. But the reason I wanted to bring Mark on so soon, I literally interviewed him a day or two ago. Well, it won't be a day or two by the time you listen to it, it's probably like a week or two, but the reason I wanted to bring it on so quickly was because I interviewed Mark during a time where he has coronavirus.

Mark got diagnosed the coronavirus 17 days prior to when we did the interview and coming out of it, and he was obviously feeling much better by that point, but he'd been quite poorly and coming out of it, he was obviously talking about it quite a lot and I was very interested to hear how he'd got on and how that affected him, but also how it's affecting the content that he's putting out right now and how he is shifting and changing for this time we're in. So that's why I wanted to get this out to you because I think it'd be really valuable to hear what he has to say. And I was very honoured, I was his first interview since being diagnosed with coronavirus and as he was coming out of it, so I was very honoured that he gave me his time. We kept it short or kind of bang on the 45 minutes as much as possible, just so that we could not take up too much of his valuable time and his energy.

Because as you can understand, he was still quite weak. So I really hope you enjoy today's episode. Like I said, the interesting thing was when I initially wanted Mark on, it was very much to talk about his books and we didn't get a chance to talk about them a whole lot. So I do highly recommend you go check them out because they are amazing. Like I said, Known is one of my favourites and I do encourage you to look and read it, what he has to do because from a marketing standpoint he really resonates with me. He's very much about loving your audience, he's about the consistency and tenacity of creating regular content that isn't some quick magic button that we can press to become known. So I highly recommend you go check them out. But I hope you enjoy today's episode. Here's Mark.

So it's with my greatest pleasure and honour that today I get to introduce to you, the very lovely Mark Schaefer. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I'm glad you think I'm lovely.

I've seen you speak. I can clarify, that's exactly what I think.

Awesome, thank you.

 

Mark’s coronavirus experience

 

And I'm super honoured that you're here because we've just been discussing that Mark is coming out of the end hopefully soon of having the coronavirus, which I can't imagine, must have rocked your world.

Well, it did. And it's unnerving in a lot of ways as you can imagine. There's a 98% recovery rate for the people that get it. So the odds were in my favour for sure. However, I am in a vulnerable age group and I am in a vulnerable group because I have a history of respiratory ailments. So this was not a thing to take lightly and my wife had it before me and it took her three weeks to get through it. And as you and I are speaking here today, this is my day 17, so I'm starting to feel a little better, but it was a rough going. And it's amazing when you read the accounts, it hits people in so many different ways. Ranging from, I didn't even know I had it to of course the most serious things and I was probably somewhere in between.

Yeah. And I think it's funny because there's obviously this thing going on in the world that you're hearing about and it's constantly in our faces, but actually when we sit down and go, who do you know that's had it or who have you actually seen that's had it? So you're probably the first person I've spoken to that's actually experienced it and like you said, your wife had it. And whereas it can sometimes feel like, yes, this is scary, but it's still far enough away from me. Whereas being told that you've got it, because you went and got tested, didn't you?

Yes, yes. My wife picked it up on a ski trip and came home and was sick and we didn't even think that she had the virus at first because she didn't have some of the classic symptoms, but then she developed a fever and had a fever for four or five days in a row. And we said, okay, you need to be tested. So she tested positive and then thank goodness she recovered. It took her three weeks, but she recovered before I got sick, which is remarkable considering how highly contagious it is and I was in the highly contagious environment for three weeks and didn't get sick. And then I started getting a fever and I started getting pressure in my chest.

So where we live, we actually had drive through testing. So I never even got out of my car. And just a shout out to all the brave medical workers out there. I mean, there were five people standing out there under a tent testing highly contagious people. And so I got my results back in just 24 hours and basically the strategy is to let it roll through you. There's no cure, there's no vaccine. You just have to let it take its course and go through you. And I had 14 or 15 straight days of fever and there's just nothing you can do, but just let it roll and stay quiet and drink lots of fluids and rest and just let it take its course. So I think I'm toward the end of it now. Let's hope.

Yeah. Well I'm keeping my fingers very crossed for you. And like you said, it's not just the illness, it's the mental impact on it. It's the fear, because I think the getting that result going, I've got it, must have been pretty terrifying.

Well, I kind of waver. I mean, you have to have focus on what you know and focus on the moment. But there were a couple of times that were sort of scary where I thought wow, is this going the wrong way and am I going to end up being in a hospital and then you get a little bit better and then you get a little worse again. So it is both a physical and a mental roller coaster for sure.

 

Adjusting your marketing strategy

 

Yeah. I can imagine. The other thing that's interesting is, so obviously you've come on the podcast today because I want to talk to you about your books and the stuff that you normally talk about. And do you feel like sometimes it feels a bit frivolous? Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean? It's like when you're dealing with something so big it seems almost frivolous to go, oh, tell me about your marketing strategy. Do you know what I mean?

Well, in some ways. I mean, I think what we have to do right now is sort of reframe our business and our strategy based on what's going on right now. Are you relevant in this moment? And I've done that. I mean, I've pivoted my content five or six weeks ago, knowing that some of the things that I ... Well, not some of my things, all of the content I had planned seemed irrelevant. And I sort of had to like take a couple of days to regroup and think, well, look, what do I do? I'm a writer and I'm a speaker and I'm a consultant, but the overarching thing in all I do is I'm a teacher and I'm still a teacher, but the world needed me to teach something different. And I do have a background in psychology and counselling and coaching. So I pivoted my content to explore topics like how do you deal with uncertainty and how do you sell in an environment where people are grieving?

And then I started a series of Facebook live videos where I would tackle some of these topics and then I would take questions to try to help people. And then these videos are also available on YouTube. So my content and my strategy certainly did seem frivolous, but I quickly pivoted to something that was meaningful and helpful. And I think we constantly have to re-establish that and kind of read the room and think where is the world right now? Where are our customers right now? They're suffering, they're scared and they're suffering, they're losing their jobs, they're losing their security. They're under tremendous strain. Maybe they're strains in their relationships. Maybe they don't even have enough food right now.

So we just have to look at everything in this moment and now that I'm starting to get better, my mind is starting to think about, okay, well what happens when this is over? How am I going to be relevant when this is over? What's the world going to look like? Are we still going to have conferences? Are people still going to buy my books. So it's a constant ... Right now we have to be in constant reassessment and evaluation of where we all are in terms of our businesses.

 

Meeting the needs of your customer

 

And it's interesting, when this first started I was like great, this is going to be great for batching content for those people who can't go and do their day job, they can do all this. And the truth is I can't batch content right now because it's a moving feast every single day. So in terms of doing things like interviews and getting guests on, it's a case of literally trying to do it and put it out as quickly as possible because of the fact that we don't know where we are. But what I really love about this is what you're effectively doing is kind of along the lines of what you teach in terms of you are delivering something for the customer instead of sitting there going, but this is my message and I'm just going to keep throwing it out and throwing it out, and throwing it out.

You are looking at the person on the other end, then going, what do they need right now? And whether that sells you perks or whether that gets you speaking gigs or whether that sells someone's product. And this is funnily enough conversation I've been having a lot with lots of people where I've been talking to the business owners in my academy and I've been saying to them, but what do your customers need right now? And I know that might not be the thing that you currently sell or did sell or the thing that you currently serve, but what can you do to them?

Well, I think that's a vitally important point and it's so difficult to comprehend, especially for smaller business owners who might be facing insolvency even. But the way I've described this in my writing, on my blog, is really aligning yourself with the good old Maslow's hierarchy of needs that we learned in psych 101. So this was an idea that it was a pyramid. And at the bottom of the pyramid are your foundational human needs, like shelter and food and air and water. And then above that would be sort of things like money and relationships. Am I lonely? Am I loved? And at the very top of the pyramid are aspirational goals like, should I buy a boat?

 

Your brand over sales

 

Now, most of the world right now is at the bottom of the pyramid. So if your business is serving that bottom of the pyramid, you need to double down on your marketing, right? You need to just ... You're relevant, you're in tune with the needs of the day. If you're delivering food, if you're in the medical industry, if you're delivering some sort of online entertainment, then that is certainly where people are today. But if you're selling something that's aspirational, then you need to think about how do we protect our brand in this environment? Because in the longterm, in this period that we're in right now, the brand is more important than the short term sales. And I know that is hard to understand. It's hard to think about. But let me give you a brief example.

So one of the industries that's hard hit right now is real estate. Some of the houses are closing that were under contract for the last couple of weeks, but people are locked in so they're not going to open houses. They may have financial insecurity and so in many respects, traditional real estate as an aspirational goal. We have a real estate agent in our community who has now pivoted her business and she's created this community group to make protective masks for our hospital workers. Okay. So you think, okay, what's that got to do with real estate? But in the...

On this week’s podcast I am interviewing the lovely Steve Dotto, who is a well-known speaker in the social media space. Steve is the business owner of Dotto Tech, but his career actually started in television. Steve creates a crazy amount of content, so I thought he would be the best person to talk to us about video content creation.

 

Key Takeaways Covered In The Podcast

• Creating content is about creating a conversation.
• Our audiences are getting far more sophisticated and demanding.
• People want intimacy with a content creator – feels more personal.
• Your audience want access to you, so they feel more connected.
• Your audience doesn’t judge you, they want you to succeed.
• Not everything has to be polished and perfect.
• Give yourself the same grace you would give others – we all get imposter syndrome sometimes!
• Listen to what your audience asks for and be guided by them.
• You want to create content for an appreciative audience.
• Creator burnout is a big issue – Don’t over-do It, make sure you give yourself a break if you need one.
• There are lots of different platforms and types of video content you can put out – Audio Podcasts, Video Podcasts, Live Streaming on YouTube/Instagram/LinkedIn, Webinars, Recorded Videos.
• When people watch your video on YouTube, they are watching with intent.
• People who click your video on YouTube are interested in hearing what you have to say, this is your chance to start building a relationship!
• Recognising which platform you are creating your video for is key.
• If you are going to live stream, you have to create an intent for people to come and view it.
• Video is not just “putting it out” – it needs thought behind it.
• Think of YouTube as a search engine.
• You don’t have to put your video on every single platform, just the platform it is most suitable for and will be most received.
• When we create content, we create it for search, not for subscribers.
• You could use your extra time right now to start creating some video content for your community.
• You could start with a video call to some of your loyal customers/clients.
• If you’re not engaged in a conversation with your audience, you won’t become a craftsman.
• Sharing your insight via video will allow your passion to come through and help to tell a story.
• You need to keep posting and being consistent.
• Success may not come straight away but don’t give up, keep going and putting your videos out there.
• Consistency is the key to building your audience, you have to keep showing up.
• Don’t compare your metrics to other people.
• We all have our own community, it doesn’t matter what the size. They are turning to you.
• Create videos that will help your community with their needs.
• Take it right back to basics.
• Advice from Steve – You CAN do it! Embrace failure, take a chance, if it doesn’t work, learn from it and move on!

The one thing you need to remember above all else…When we start anything, we are always going to be the worst we can be, which means we can only get better from there! So try it, get started and then improve as you go along.Highlights You Simply Can’t Miss

• An introduction to Steve - 03:01
• Understanding your audience - 12:35
• “Perfect” content - 15:15
• Tired of creating so much content? - 20:00
• Which platform for what content - 26:25
• Live streaming - 30:33
• Influencers - 34:15
• Getting started with video content for your business - 37:45
• Building an audience - 43:25
• Creating videos for your community - 48:41
• Advice from Steve - 51:18

 

Transcript below

 

Hello there, and a super warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing on this very fine ... Hopefully fine Monday morning, or afternoon, the following day, whenever you're listening to this. I'm just going to jump straight into this episode today, because it's an interview, and it's such a good one. Now, I say this all the time, but I do genuinely mean that. This one was so cool, because basically this week I'm interviewing a very lovely guy called Steve Dotto.

Now, Steve, if you're in the social media space you will probably know from Social Media Marketing World. He speaks a lot, he's very well known in this space. But Steve and I were both meant to be speaking at this year's Atomicon, which was an in person event happening in Newcastle. Of course as we all know, all in person events have been cancelled for the time being, or were at the point of recording this. So Steve and I weren't meeting in person, which was a real shame. We have met before actually, very briefly. But we ended up doing, or will end up doing the event online, so we're still doing the event for Atomicon, which I'm very much looking forward to, but it's not going to be an in person event. Anyway.

So I wanted Steve on the podcast, because like I said, I've seen him around for a bit. I know he's very good. Steve creates a crazy amount of content, and I'm really conscious that actually, there are lots of people out there at the moment who maybe are using their time at home, or have used their time at home, to focus on creating content for their business. Now granted, you might be doing this now because of the situation, but this is actually an ongoing, you should always be doing this thing. I thought Steve would be brilliant.

The other thing that I need to tell you about this interview was, I was doing it quite late in the day, as I often do on interviews in the States. I was tired, it's really ... During this time I've felt very very tired, and I got on this podcast, and I just loved it. I genuinely laughed my head off at some of the things that Steve said, and just even thinking about the interview really makes me smile. He is such a nice guy, and I love this bit about the podcast. I love the fact that I get to meet and speak to people who are not only smart, and tell me things that make me think, which he did, and things that I don't know. But also, just genuinely are nice people, and I really enjoy having a conversation with them.

 

An introduction to Steve

 

So I'm really hoping you're going to enjoy this one, because he is a super smart guy. Before we jump into the interview, let me tell you a little bit about Steve. Steve would describe himself as a tech geek, and is the business owner of Dotto Tech. But Steve actually started his career, and he'll tell you about this in the interview, back in TV. I think you can see it. When you watch some of his YouTube videos, he's a very good presenter, a very good storyteller. But basically what Steve does, is he creates videos on how to use tech. The chances are, you might have seen one of Steve's videos when you were looking at how to use Zoom, or Evernote, or some other tech system that you're trying to use.

He also has a podcast, he has his YouTube channel which has loads and loads of subscribers. In fact, let me just check. Currently he has 272,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. Steve has also brought out a fairly new podcast called Grey Matters. This is a podcast that's aimed at what he calls the grey zone, which are mainly baby boomers and Gen X. His aim is to teach them how to use the digital world, social media, online communities. Because this maybe isn't something that they're entirely used to.

Honestly, Steve is just such a nice guy, and has an awful lot to teach us about content creation, as he puts out two videos a week on YouTube, and has his weekly podcast. Honestly, my hat goes off to him, because that is a lot of content to create. Anyway, I am going to leave it there, I'm going to hand it straight over to the interview. I really hope you enjoy it. Please do come and say hi to Steve and I, and let us know that you enjoyed this episode, and I look forward to hearing what you think.

Okay. I am very excited today to welcome the very lovely Steve to the podcast. Steve, how are you doing?

I'm just great, thanks for having me.

Good. It's my pleasure, my pleasure. For those of my audience that don't know you, first off, you need to check Steve out because I was just looking at his YouTube prior to this as a quick reminder, and it blows my mind, the amount of content you've got on there. But do me a favour. Just introduce us, Steve, and let my audience know how you are and how you've got to do what you're doing now.

Well, Steve Dotto, Dotto Tech is our channel. My YouTube channel is really an outgrowth of my previous career. I started doing the YouTube about 10 years ago or so, but before that I had a nationally syndicated TV show and radio show in Canada on how to use technology. I had a background in teaching technology, et cetera, and in media. We were on the air for nearly 15 years. Actually, more than 15 years, with the television show.

When we stopped doing that, and started to move over to YouTube, I already had a pretty good facility to create video. I was good at doing demonstrations and showcasing products, so YouTube came very very naturally to me. The result that you see a lot of content is just because I'm used to creating a lot of content, and I got good at it. I had nearly 20 years of training before anybody else was doing anything on YouTube, and doing videos that would be perfect for YouTube. That's why we do so much, and we create so much content.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Have you always been into tech? Was it a particular type of tech, or was it always this type of tech?

Well, that's going way back. But in the '90s, I used to talk about the technical impact, or the social impact that technology had on us. My TV show was always just trying to teach people how to embrace technology in their lives. I think it was just opportunity. It wasn't that I was into tech, I don't actually love tech all that much. But I was a good ... My kind of, you know, they talk about your superpower or whatever. It's explaining things. It's taking difficult concepts and making them easy to understand.

I needed a job, and these new computer things were all over the place. They were going into schools and offices, and people didn't know how to use them. I could figure it out, I didn't think it was that difficult. I could explain it. So we just ... Kind of one thing led to the other, and I kind of found a career as opposed to planning it out. I enjoyed working in television. I enjoyed the theatre, and I enjoy the teamwork and the camaraderie, so I did ... That was great.

That's the thing I miss most about now doing YouTube, that I miss from when I did television. Is I miss my crew. All these individuals I used to work with have been replaced by USB ports, and I really miss them. I find it a little bit of a lonely experience, actually. But for me, though, it just blew my mind when I started doing YouTube how all of a sudden I could create video for the people that were watching. You know, when you do television, you're creating video for the advertising agencies and for the network executives, and for everybody except the people who are watching.

But all of a sudden with YouTube, you can create for the people who are watching, and you don't have these gatekeepers standing in front of you. These programme managers saying, "We're going to move you from Saturday to Sunday," and disenfranchise you from your audience. We've now got this platform that we can build our own audience based on our own values, you know. What people value, not the fact that we've managed to go get Microsoft or Apple to give us X number of dollars so that we would showcase their product on television.

Yeah, yeah.

Now we can do what we really want, and what really moves us, and what really we find value in. To me, it's a very exciting space to be working in.

Yeah. It is, but it's interesting, a few things you said there. One, great, that you get to control the content you do and the stuff that you look at and you talk about. But the fact that it is a really lonely experience. You know, and I think sometimes people look at the amount of content you put out, and because they're on the receiving end of it ... The same with the podcast. When you're listening to this and it's in your ears, it feels very personable. But when you're sat recording it on your own, it's a very different experience. That in itself, Steve, doing that as a skill to actually get that across is massive. Because that is a skill, to make it feel like you're not in a room on your own, talking to yourself.

I don't think people recognise ... Content creators do recognise it. But when you're starting and you're just getting into content creation, you don't realise what a vacuum and what an energy suck the empty space is.

Yeah.

You know, when you're giving a presentation in a room, you get energy back from individuals. When you're teaching somebody in a classroom, you get energy back from the room that you're in. When you're recording a video or recording a podcast ... It's not as bad when you do an interview like this. But when you're doing a solo podcast, or a solo video, you're not getting anything back, so you're just pouring energy in and it's just dissipating. I don't know about you, but when I view my content after it's been edited, or I listen to it, I always go, "Oh, that's way better than I thought it was." Because at the moment, you just ... You're not getting any back pressure on the energy you're putting in, and so consequently ... I always come out of ...

Even now. I've been doing this longer than, well, certainly ... I've been recording screen casts and doing product demos since the early '90s. But back in the day, I would do it in a studio, and I've have cameramen and producers and get feedback, and so I always knew if it was good or not and I had people telling me. But once I started doing it on my own, I still end up recording a video, stopping the video, going, "Should I do that again?" I just have to ... It's laziness that cuts me off, and I just say, no, I'm going to ... I don't do my editing myself anymore. I do a rough cut, I cut it for time, and then I send it actually to just near you. Liz Azyan, who is in London, she does all of our editing. Liz will do it, but I'm always surprised when it comes back. I go, "Wow, Liz, you're a miracle worker. I sounded intelligent." Because I didn't feel that intelligent when I actually created the content.

That's so funny. You're right, because the one question I ask my editor all the time, who edits the podcast, is if it's a solo one and I've done it and I sent it, I always go, "You sure that was all right?" Because I've always [crosstalk 00:11:33].

Yeah, yeah. You do, yeah.

As to whether it was any good or not. Because you just go ahead and do it. What's also interesting about your world is that you have ... Content creation is not new for you. You have been a content creator for a long time, whereas because my background's marketing, content creation for me is a fairly new concept. Really in the last few years, anyway. Lots of businesses are still, I think, not fully aware of the benefit of creating content. Do you think?

You are ... Probably you have the classic issue. Marketers think that you have to give a message. Content creators realise you have to have a conversation.

Yeah.

 

Understanding your audience

 

You know, being on brand, being on point. You hear all those things that are so important. When you're in a marketing space, I understand the importance of it. But the world is changing. How we do things is changing. What it takes for success is changing. The audience is getting far more sophisticated and far more demanding. You talked about something right off the top of our talk today. You talked about when you're listening to it, I think you said it was a very personal experience. Listening to podcasts.

The term that I prefer to use is intimate. People want intimacy. They want a relationship with the content creators, with the people who they're viewing. Because we don't recognise ... We come and we think we're doing television, to a certain extent, when we do a video or something. But we're not. When you're doing television, there's a distance. There's no chance for you to have interaction with the person that you're watching on television. You typically do it sitting in a room, and with family members or something. But there's this distance between you.

The video that we do today increasingly is being consumed on a smart phone. Or at the very least, on a desktop computer, where it's like arm's length. I could reach out and touch you right now. If you're viewing somebody on a phone, you're cradling them in your hands. How much more intimate can it ... People are listening to our podcast in the bathroom right now. I mean, how much more intimate do we have to be? Really? At this point here?

Just wash your hands, wash your hands.

Yes, indeed. But at this point here we're pretty much besties, are we not?

Yeah, yeah.

But people desire that additional connection. They aren't looking for the message, they're looking for the relationship.

Yeah. I think you're right. I think lots of people don't get that, do they? And they think, when they're creating content ... It's taken me a good few years to start to see the benefit of the relationship, because when you're creating content you're thinking, right, where's the learning, where's the value, where's the message, where's the sales? But actually, the stuff that has gone the absolute best for me ... When we hit episode 100 of the podcast, I had my husband on, and we did an interview, my husband and I. Someone came in and interviewed us. To celebrate it, and to sort of carry on the excitement of it, we did a live together. We did this live from my office, where you see me now, and we both sat on a Friday night with a gin, because that's our choice of drink, and we did live with gin with Teresa and Paul.

And people loved it. There was no particular value for them, there was no particular kind of trying to get a particular message. I wasn't selling anything, I wasn't promoting anything. We literally just went on, and we chatted, and we answered questions, and we had a bit of fun, and we loved it.

 

“Perfect” content

 

Yeah. Yeah, people want a relationship. They want a little bit of access. That's why I set up my office, when I set up this new office, that I set up the set. Which obviously pod people on the podcast can't see. But I used to do everything on a green screen, and people were always saying, "Your stuff looks so great," because I would green screen all my demos over top. There was a certain sterile aspect to it. My personality came through, of course. But now, with the background, what's happened is my dog has become the star of half of my videos and my lives and my webinars.

I love that.

Because Farley is a jackass, and he's always doing something in the background. He's grooming himself in the most inappropriate ways, or knocking things over. But people want that, in even ... We don't let it get in the way of the message, but it does enhance the message because they know it's coming from a real place. They know it's coming ... It's not polished, it's not pre ... It is prepared, but it's not polished, and it's not sanitised before people get access to it.

If I do a video on the YouTube channel,...

This week’s podcast is all about taking your business online. I thought this would be a good topic for two reasons; Firstly, where we are right now during this pandemic means a lot of people can’t do their everyday business. Secondly, I think a lot of people are realising that they need a bigger presence online, whether they sell online or not. We will be covering the key things you need to be doing to have an online business. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• If you can take your business online, it is a good way to keep income coming in during this time.
• If you can’t take your business online, can you teach it?
• Even if you can’t make money from your business right now, you can still create content.
• Keep people engaged on your social media platforms and stay on their radar.
• Give people something that they need right now through your marketing.
• You need to set up an online presence where people can find you (If you don’t already).
• There are lots of options for creating an online presence, including social media, website, landing page, sales page or a checkout page.
• You need to be consistent with your content.
• If you have the energy, use this time to get the things you never normally get chance to done or have been putting off.
• Content ideas – Blog Posts, Social Media Posts, Record Podcasts/Videos.
• Your customers/clients will come back when this is all over but they do need your help doing it themselves right now.
• Giving free advice/hints and tips will keep you in front of your audience ready for when you are up and running again.
• You need to be building your email list from today! Check out my previous episodes on building your email list using a lead magnet.
• You will need some kind of system to help you deliver your online business.
• If you offer something that can make a difference or solve a problem to your customers/clients and charged for it before then of course you should be charging for it during this time.
• Giving something away for free doesn’t always do you or the person receiving it a massive favour – when there is no investment, they are not invested.
• If you give someone something for free, they will never want to pay for it!
• You can tweak and change your offer during this time – such as a discounted rate or a shortened time offer.
• Think about coming from serving, not selling. If you have something out there that can make a difference and solve a problem, it is not wrong to try to sell it.
• We need to keep the economy moving right now.
• Ideas of how to make money right now - Sell tickets to a raffle for your services when things are back to normal, start a waitlist for your clients – ask for a deposit to secure your place, sell a product.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Just because you can’t work in your business as normal right now, does not mean you need to stop marketing and earning an income. This isn’t going to last forever, so we just need to adapt the best we can right now to do what is best for our businesses and come out the other side of all of this!HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Can you take your offline business online? - 03:00
• Ideas for businesses that can’t be taken online - 05:16
• Setting up your online presence - 07:58
• Content Ideas - 09:04
• Building your email list - 11:55
• Technology - 13:30
• Should I sell right now? - 15:29
• Ideas of things you can do to make money right now - 22:21

Transcript below

 

Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? How are you managing still during this time? So as I'm recording this, we have been in lockdown about four, this is our fourth week and I have to say like I started off absolutely fine because I worked from home all the time. I'm very used to being in the house a lot. As I've said before and on previous episodes I would like go days and days and not leave the house and not even realise. But I think there's something obviously very different. And if you didn't catch last week's episode, episode 113 do go check that out with Mary Hyatt cause we talk about how to manage during these times. But I think there's something very, very different about having everybody else here. And yesterday I think it was the first day that I really felt like I needed to get out of the house.

I needed to get some of my own space because it was just getting all a little bit too much. So, but other than that I, I'm doing all right. I think I'm doing fine. I'm still cracking on with work, got lots to do in fact feel busier than ever, which is kind of odd but enjoying it all, which is good. So, uh, happy I've got that. Keep me focused, which is nice. So this week I wanted to share with you an episode about taking your business online because last week I did two live masterclasses, lots and lots of people attended. It was really good fun and basically talked through, Hey, you could take your business online now this is coming from kind of two places. Place. Number one is very much to do with where we are right now in the world during this virus and the fact that we're locked down and people can't do that everyday business and place number two is the fact of, actually for me, I love my online business.

I love the fact that I have this online business. So I think what's happening in the world right now is people are readdressing whether they can continue with their business or not, should they be going online? Should they be do something else or should they just have a bigger presence whether they sell online or not, should they just have a bigger presence in that part of the world and make sure they're making the most of it.

 

Can you take your offline business online?

 

So that's what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about how to get your business online if it's not already and the key things you need to be doing to have an online business. Okay. So let's start with the very thing. Now, if you are going to be taking a business online, I am assuming you have one of a couple of things.

Either you have a product and service or service that you currently sell offline or you have been doing in person or selling virus shop or high street shops, something like that. So that you want to take that business online or you have a business idea that you are at the stage of, could I do this online? So I'm assuming you're in one of those two places. So the first thing I ask you is if you're sat there listening to this going, I need to make money right now, I need to do something straight away. I want to ask you if you took your offline business, the thing that you can no longer do at this time, can you just do it online? So I'm talking about things like if you offer yoga in a studio, can you do yoga from a video call into people's homes?

If you are a coach and you normally coach in person, can you coach via zoom or video call and have a great example of a lady that is in my Academy and she teaches or she holds classes, sort of play activity classes for children and babies and normally she gets them all in a room together and they do yoga and they do a sign language and they sing and they play with instruments. And obviously when all this started she had to stop doing the in person stuff. And I have to say, she blows me away. I watch her social media and she's onscreen with all these babies in their own homes and they've obviously um, you know, got it sorted so they can watch what she's doing and she can see them and she is projecting the energy that she would have in person through the TV.

 

Ideas for businesses that can’t be taken online

 

And from what I can see on her social media, she's doing an amazing job and all these moms and parents that signed up to do these classes are still continuing to do them. And she's still continuing to bring in money during this time. Even though you think you would take a look at what she does and think there's no way on this earth that she can do that online and maybe she won't want to continue that when all this is over. And that's absolutely fine. It's just a case of if you can, can you take it online to continue to keep bringing in money. So if you can't take it online, so let's say you're sat there and you are a Airbnb or something where actually it's impossible for you to take that business online. So for instance, another example is having my nails done or having my hair done.

You can't take that business online. So my next question for you is, can you teach it? Now you might not want to teach it, that might not be the thing that you want to do, but right now if you're sat there thinking, I need to make money, then maybe that is the thing you need to do, whether it's a moneymaking exercise or whether it's just a content keeping in touch. And I just want to touch on that for a minute actually. So I'm a big fan of still trying to make money through this time because quite honestly my mortgage supplier is a big fan of being paid and so is the electricity and so is all the other things you pay for. So these bills are still coming out of my account so I need to still keep adding money. So I will touch on whether you should be selling it this time or how you could deal with that at this time later on.

However, right now I just want to touch on the fact of even if you can't make money doing the thing you do and you don't want to suddenly try and teach online because you know you don't want to have to sort the payment processor stuff out and all that and you have no intention of carrying it on when this is finished and the money thing isn't a massive, massive issue. There's nothing wrong with you still creating content. So let me go back to my nail example. A very lovely girl in the girl that sends a bit patronising lady, although she's much younger than me in the Academy. She does nails and obviously she can't do them while she's off or while this is happening. So one of the things that she did was we talked about the fact that I have these nails, acrylic nails, that I going to need to take them off at some point soon and I don't know how to or I have never done it because I don't have to cause I'd go and they do it.

So it was very much a case of, well, what can you do to help me right now as in not actually me but your audience. So she actually put together a video about how to take the nails off. Now you might be sat there going, well why would I teach people that? Or why do I need to give them that? But the point is she still in people's feeds, she's still adding value. She's still showing up and during this time, even though that one thing wasn't necessarily going to make her money, the fact is you don't want to fall out of their feeds. You don't want to fall off their radar. You want them to keep that engagement with you and by giving them something they need like now is super, super helpful.

 

Setting up your online presence

 

Okay, so let's go onto number two. If you're going to be having an online business now, I'm assuming, again, you have some kind of presence online, whether that be a website.

If it's not amazing, then that's fine. It doesn't matter. You know, as long as you've got something and you can make some really quick fixes, fairly simply unsure. It could just be social media accounts, it could just be some online presence somewhere. But obviously you're going to need somewhere for people to find you. So in a very quick fix way. There are obviously lots of sites out there where you can throw up a website like Wix or Squarespace. There's also things like Kajabi that obviously I use and I'll put a link to it in the show notes where you can create a website through them within seriously probably number of hours. Also they do things like landing pages. So even if you don't have a full website or you don't have the energy to think like creating a full website, you could just create a landing page or a sales page or a checkout page.

 

 

Content Ideas

 

So there's lots of options for something like Kajabi. There's loads of other different ones out there as well. But like I said, this is the one that I use and I'm a big fan of. So like I said, you're going to need some presence somewhere. The next thing you're going to need is you're going to need some consistent content and I know you're going to think, geez, tracer, like honestly, yawn, yawn, yawn. You say this all the time. But I mean it. You absolutely do need consistent content. And if you've been sat there previously thinking, I'll get around to that when I'm not so busy, I'll get rained. So that when I get time, and you're sat there now with the time and the inclination, because let's be honest, just because you've got the time doesn't mean right now that we necessarily feel like going all eye on, you know, doing lives or, or showing up every single day because it is a funny atmosphere at the moment.

However, if you do have some energy, write those blog posts, create those social media posts. I've been batching podcasts, I've been interviewing people and I'm, I'm tired. You know, I am tired doing it. And it is exhausting. But it's important because when things get you know busy in a different way, they're still very busy right now. But when I am back on the road and I'm back speaking, then I'm not going to have the time to sit and do this sort of thing. So I want you to think about that consistent content and I want you to think about putting out content that helps people. Right now, like I said, the amazing Becky putting out a video showing her customers and anybody else who wanted to see it, how to take their nails off such a brilliant idea. If you're a hairdresser, why don't you put out a blog post of the top five products you think you know someone can use during this time or how to colour your own hair from home or whatever.

Now I know that you might be sat there thinking, yeah, but aren't I just giving away people how I do the thing I do? Yeah, you are effectively, but you know what? I don't want to take off my own nails and sort them out. I don't want to do my own hair. I will still, when this all finishes, go back and do the things I normally do with people. So for instance, I go for a massage every few weeks and reflexology, well, I am desperate to go and have that done, but if she emailed the hate saying, here are five ways that you can relax at home or five things to help you know, or the best massages out there that you can buy for under 20 pounds or something, then I would be interested in seeing that content because actually right now I need that help.

However, the minute this all changes, I'll be going back to her. So for those of you who can't do your thing and can't do it online, I want you to think about the types of content you can use and the types of things you can put out that will help your customers. Right now this is where they need help and this is the kind of thing that is going to keep you in front of them. And that's super, super important.

 

Building your email list

 

The next thing that you need to be doing if you have an online business is you need to be building that email list. And again, I've talked about it lots now. I did a five day email challenge or quite a few weeks ago now and it was great and it works really well and I'm thinking about doing it again and if you want to get on the wait list for that, if you head to teresaheathwareing.com/5day and then you can sign up there for the next one because that was really, really good.

Anyway, side note. So yeah, you need to be building that email list because some of you might be sat there now go in. Oh man, why didn't I do this six months ago? Because honestly, who could have predicted we'd be here right now, no one. But if this is enough to make you go, I should have done it and I'm going to jump on and do it now then. Brilliant, great. Because really the best day to start an email list or the best day to start consistent content was like a long time ago. However, if you can't go back in time, which most of us can't, um, most of us, probably all of us. Um, if you can't go back in time, then you really need to be doing it today. So start thinking about how to build that email list. And as you know, and I've done lots of different episodes on it, building an email list using a lead magnet.

In fact, I did an episode not that long ago. I'll link to it in the show notes is a perfect way to get people on your list. So again, think about that content. Think about the support you can be giving them right now and the stuff that they might want to know right now. And think about putting that in a lead magnet or a download that you can offer people.

 

Technology

 

Okay, next thing you're going to need some tech. Now we're not talking crazy tech. We're not talking stuff that you need to have been massive, huge brain and a huge IQ to deal with. We're talking sort of fairly simple and intuitive tech but you are going to need something because obviously if you're online you're going to need somehow to take a payment or send an email or have a little bit of automation and although this might scare you half to death, honestly it you need to do it whether you do it, whether you get someone else to do it, whether you get some support that's entirely up to you, but you are going to need some kind of system that helps you deliver this.

Now I've already mentioned Kajabi and this one I'm going to mention it again just because of the fact that they do everything you're going to need them to do. There are other systems out there. There are other things I've used in the past, but in all honesty, if you are getting going and you are thinking I'm going to be selling online going forward, then for me you want to pick a system like Kajabi cause it just does everything, but let's say you're just starting out and you just want to build your email list. Then you might want to look at things like MailChimp or MailerLite. Both of these are free. Both of them have the option to get people to opt in as in a form and both are fairly good at what they do. Now. They're nowhere near as good as some of the bigger and better ones like convert kit or active campaign or infusion soft or Kajabi.

However, they are a great place to start. So if you are starting out then definitely go and check that out and literally go onto YouTube and Google or Google search for how to set up an email list in MailChimp or MailerLite because there'll be that many videos showing you that you really should be able to do everything you need to do online. Okay. And then the final one that I want to just bring up to you guys today, this has been a fairly short and sweet one.

 

Should I sell right now?

 

Okay. The last thing I want to look at is the question, should I sell right now? We all know there's been a lot of content out there, a lot of stuff that has come for free. So, for instance, my daughter is listening to David Williams audio books, which he has given for free. Amazing. We've got Joe Wicks doing the exercise every morning.

I'm not doing it by the way. Uh, and neither is my daughter. I just know that he's doing it every morning and he's been offering these exercises for children for free. And therefore I think it's left a big question around business owners about should...

This week we are welcoming back to the podcast, my wonderful friend Mary Hyatt. For those of you who don’t know, Mary is my coach and she has also become one of my closest friends. We are going to be talking about what we can all do during this crisis, to hopefully bring you some comfort and support. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• We are all experiencing something collectively – Everything feels very “off”.
• Our batteries are being drained – emotionally and mentally.
• We respond to stress in lots of different ways – Denial, Over-eating, Over-drinking. This is all about distracting ourselves from what is really going on.
• There are also other ways we respond to stress which can be highly emotional – Hyper Sensitivity, Anxiety, Depression.
• We are processing so much more information right now, it is understandably draining!
• Don’t expect as much from yourself during this time.
• Comparative suffering is adding shame and judgement whilst thinking about what you are feeling.
• We are all allowed to feel how we feel during this – This could be emotions such as Overwhelm, Exhaustion, Anxiety, Grief.
• We can only extend to others, what we are giving ourselves.
• There is not any “right way” to go through this.
• You get to choose what you do during this time, no one else.
• Be gentle and compassionate with yourself.
• We need to continue to bring in income the best we can right now.
• Think about how you can meet needs that are there and add value to people.
• You need to connect with people on a deeper level right now.
• Value yourself, you have skills that can make others thrive. Recognise that you have information that other people wish they had.
• Find meaning and purpose in the midst of all of this.
• You are in control of how your mind interprets this. Try to think “What can this make possible?”
• Look for the good things in every day. Be grateful for absolutely everything you have.
• Shifting the focus on what we have, multiplies it.
• Journaling – Write it down and then flip it so it comes from love instead of anger.
• Get out all of your feelings on paper – You can just throw it away or burn it if you want to.
• Utilise these free tools!
• Give yourself permission to rest, nurture yourself and ask yourself “what do I need?”

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Be gentle on yourself during this time, don’t put pressure on yourself to be achieving things just because you are being told you need to, whether that’s because other people are saying it or you may be telling yourself. You are allowed to feel anxious, angry, depressed, frustrated right now and it is okay if you can’t quite function how you normally would. But remember, this will not last forever.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• An introduction to Mary Hyatt – 04:38
• The impact of the pandemic – 07:53
• Comparative Suffering – 21:05
• Expectations – 25:55
• Selling during this time – 33:43
• Tools that can help you – 45:15

Transcript below

 

Hello, and welcome to today's episode of the podcast. How are things going? You know what? I so genuinely mean that, because this time is so crazy tough for us ll, for lots of different reasons. I'm going to jump straight into today's episode, because today I decided to bring back a previous guest. Now, I thought this was the first time I had done this, but it actually turns out that Biz Paul has been on twice. Although technically, the second time he came on, he interviewed Paul and I for episode 100.

I think this is technically the first time I've had someone in that I've interviewed twice. So, I would like to welcome back to the podcast, my very beautiful, wonderful and smart friend, Mary Hyatt. As you know, Mary Hyatt is my coach, and has been my coach for some time, and I am very lucky that I now get to call Mary my friend, and we get to spend time with her in Nashville, or we did before all this happened, and she's been over here in the UK to see me.

Honestly, my husband and I love her and Bentley dearly. The fact that, A, she's a friend is one thing, two, she's my coach is another, but three, she honestly is so very smart when it comes to dealing with times that are tough. Mary has helped me through more things than I care to remember during the time that we've worked together. So, there was no one better to have on to talk to you guys to help you through this time.

Obviously, I've done a few different episodes. I did the motivation one, and I did the one that was kind of the special one just to say I am acknowledging it. But, today I wanted to bring Mary on, because actually if anybody can help me through these tough times with some good practical advice, and some gentle love, then she is the woman for the job. That's why I've brought her on. I'm going to not go on any longer. You know who Mary is. I'm going to link up to her in the show notes. She's truly wonderful. You need to check her out. I hope you enjoy today's episode, and I hope it brings you some comfort and some support.

Please do come and tag us both in, because I want Mary to see the difference she makes not only in my world, but everybody else's. I hope you enjoy today's episode.

I am very excited about today's episode. Because, although I've had this amazing lady on before, I am still super excited to bring her back to you. Welcome back to the podcast, Mary Hyatt.

Woot woot! It's like round two. Second season.

I know. Ching ching! Do you know what-

I'm so happy to be here.

What was funny was, I was telling Biz Paul, before we recorded that I was getting you back on and I was recording an episode. I said, "She's the only person who's ever been on the podcast twice." I was like, "Oh no, hang on Biz Paul, you have." Because of course he came on and did an episode, and then he came on and did the 100th episode where he interviewed Paul and I.

That was such a great episode.

He's great. He is, honestly. This is his job. He should totally be an interviewer type, presenter type thing. He loves it.

Oh, yeah. And I also secretly want him to be my best friend, so if you could kind of just give him the nudge that if he's looking for more friendships.

That is so funny. Honestly, you're going to think I'm making this up, but right before this I said, "Listen, Mary's coming into the group to do some stuff. Do you want to come in the group? I'll let you in to come and see what Mary's doing." "I love Mary," he said. He loves you.

I just adore him.

It's like a little romance.

He's so funny.

 

An introduction to Mary Hyatt

 

I'm so glad to bring the two of you together. He is funny. He is funny. And he's our sense of humour. Anyway, these people are listening to this going, "Get on with it, people." As you know, and as I've just said, I have had the lovely Mary on before. But I'm just going to get Mary to introduce herself a little bit, in case you happened to miss the episode, which I will link up to the show notes. Then we will get on with today's episode. Mary, go ahead and tell everybody who you are, and why you're so wonderful.

Thank you. I am a life and mindset coach, and my favourite people to work with are high achieving entrepreneurs who are looking to find ways to bring some flow back into their hustle game. Because I think oftentimes we think we have to grind it out, work ourselves to the point of burnout and exhaustion. That's usually at the point where my clients find me is they're going, "Okay, my business is taking off, but my life is in shambles, or I'm just totally at the end of my rope. My relationships aren't that great. How do I get back to that place of really thriving in all areas of my life?

That's when I come in and go, "Okay, let's take a look at some of this mindset stuff. Let's take a look at what is controlling the show behind the scenes," and help people really get to a place of living fully alive connected to their emotions, connected to their bodies, connected to their intuition, and really create just a powerful presence in their own life. I have a podcast that comes out every week, where we get into a lot of this mindset work. I also offer guided meditations to help people just create a new sense of awareness and consciousness that just aids in this ability to live fully alive, present for your life. Kind of a few little different hats, but all around consciousness and mindset.

Perfect. What was interesting is when I started off with Mary, I knew I needed something. I didn't know what it was. Even when Mary was like, "Yeah, I can do this. I can help," I still didn't actually know what, or where or how. I didn't get the details. The funny thing is, now I look back and think I didn't have to get the details. I didn't need to know those things. The stuff you taught me, and the stuff that we worked through, and looked at, and the way you made me think, which was probably the biggest change in everything has changed and affected everything going forward.

The reason I wanted Mary on today's podcast, and why I was so keen to hurry up and do this as quickly as possible is because since, and we're recording this at the time, I've been on lockdown for like two weeks, I think. I'm in my second week. You've been on lockdown for about two weeks as well, haven't you?

Yeah.

Because of the Coronavirus, and everything that's going on with that. What's interesting is like I have been fine. I've been happy, and fairly calm, and relaxed about it all. The only thing I can put it down to is all this work I've done with Mary. All this self-development work, all these tools she's given me. All these kind of strategies that I've got. I wanted Mary to come on and talk about some of the things that why we're being affected, if we are being affected. Then, some of the cool tools and some of the strategies that you can do and you can try in order to help you manage the situation.

 

The impact of the pandemic

 

Let's start by talking about the fact of this situation, and some of the impact that you had seen that it's had on people in both personal and business.

Yeah. It really is such a heavy topic, because what I've noticed is people that are showing up personally are having a real mental crisis, emotional crisis. I think that, yes, we have the threat of the virus, and there's that part of it that's going on, but there is this energy in the air, and it's palpable. Like, you can feel it. I've had a lot of people, I think Theresa we've even talked about this. Of, nothing's really changed for us. We work from home. We're kind of used to doing Zoom and things online, and so it's not a big learning curve for us. However, there is this exhaustion that is present.

I feel more tired than I typically do. I feel like my bandwidth isn't quite what it normally is. I'm needing to sleep more often. I am having emotions show up that feel like they're coming out of nowhere. Yet it's like, oh my gosh, if you look at what's happening it makes total sense. But there is a collective energy. I think that what's important to understand about right now is that we're experiencing something collectively. All of us have an energy about us. If you think about back in the days when we got to see each other in person.

Remember these days.

Yeah, remember those days when you like hugged somebody?

Oh my God. You're crazy.

But, like everybody has a frequency to them. For example, if you walk into a room and you're talking to somebody and you're like, "Oh, the vibe's off in here, or that's like a wonky weird vibe. The energy's off in here." These are things that we say. Different environments kind of have different energies. If you walk into a corporate office, there's a different energy, if you walk into a coffee shop, there's a different kind of energy there, or a restaurant. If you walked into a funeral versus a wedding. There's different energy.

Yeah.

But what's happening right now is collectively, the entire world is vibrating with one frequency. If you're sensitive at all, if you're an empath, if you're somebody who kind of just notices that, it's almost like our batteries are being drained. There's this collective energy of fear, of panic, of desperation. I think that there's varying forms of that, or degrees of that. I think even grief is a big one that I feel like is showing up right now, loneliness. But there is a collective energy that whether we are practising some kind of mindfulness or consciousness kind of practise, I think the average Joe can feel something's off here. Something is exhausting right now.

So, we are experiencing, my clients, my family, myself, a drain on our batteries, our mental and emotional batteries that no matter where we are in our station of life, I think everybody can agree that's happening.

Yeah. Sometimes I get this pit, this thing in my stomach that's like something's off, and you know like when something awful happens, and that awful feeling. Then, you'll wake up and you'll remember it, and it's back there, and you're like ... It's almost like a very mild version of that where you're like, "Oh, something's not quite right here, and I don't really know what it is," although you do, but you know what I mean? It's like why would that affect me like that? It's weird, isn't it?

I think that everybody listening, we are functioning adults. It's like we have our own businesses, we pay our bills, we make sure that we eat. We have a pretty great life, in the sense of our needs are met and things like that. To be shaken, to have something affect us in a certain way, it's kind of like this is not my norm. I'm typically able to handle myself and get through the day, and this is ... We were joking on our Instagram. Unprecedented. That word is so overused. But it is.

None of us have been through this, and what it's kicking up for everyone is our old habituated stress response or trauma response. When I say old and habituated, what I mean by that is that every single one of us has been through things that are challenging, things that are hard. We have gone through traumatic situations. That could be a little-t trauma, or a big-T trauma.

Meaning, something that we might not even categorise as trauma, like something from childhood that we interpreted as traumatic, or that was hard emotionally for ourselves. And then some of us have actually been through the big T kind of really big losses, really traumatic events. Abuse, or loss, or death or something like that. And, we have a way that we have sort of on autopilot handled these situations. It's like rehearsed. It is a pattern. It is historical.

A lot of times, for us, when we experience something like what we're doing now, we're going to go into that autopilot stress response, trauma response, and that can show up in a bunch of different ways. It can show up like control. I'm going to go into hyper control. I'm going to make sure that I consume all the news. I know exactly what's happening. I know what's coming. That sort of hyper alert state, obsessive thinking. That's one way that we respond to stress.

Another way would be denial. This is not happening. I'm not going to look at it. I'm not going to look at any news. I'm going to go about business as normal and totally be in denial. It could look like specific coping mechanisms. So, overeating, over drinking. It's really interesting to see some of the stuff that's coming out, even as a joke, or even as like memes about the drinking. It's like, "Oh, there's a coping mechanism of drinking."

It could look like, there's a lot of conversation around getting in shape right now. I'm going to use this time to get in shape. That's a coping mechanism, having control in our bodies. It could be binge watching Netflix. There's all different ways that we try to disassociate, distract ourselves from the intensity, from the pain that's showing up, and so we use something secondary that kind of numbs out the fear, numbs out the anxiety.

Or, we go into a hyper emotional response, which is like total hysteria, panic attacks, anxiety attacks, difficulty sleeping. We could go into depression. These are just a couple ways that we have a habituated old, past trauma or stress response. I think, Teresa, what you were mentioning was you were picking up on that in the body. Like you were feeling that pit in the stomach. For those of us who are body aware, then oftentimes we'll feel that tightness in our chest, tightness in our shoulders. These are all ways that our body is responding, habitually responding to this heightened place of stress.

What's interesting as well is ... One, as you're going through the different ways to respond to this, I can see the different responses in different people. You know my husband Paul really well. Paul is going into fact, information, news overdrive. So he wants to watch the news, he watches the updates, he reads the things. He's getting all the reports. He wants to know it all. I'm going into the kind of, I do want to know but I don't want to get involved. So, it's like I will keep myself relatively informed, and then I just shut the door on it and I carry on and do what I'm doing.

But also, I have the default of I want to get in bed and drink a bottle of wine right now, and just wake me up when all this is done, because I don't want to have to deal with it. That's the most fascinating bit to me, and we were chatting very briefly and then we stopped, because we wanted to talk about this on here. I spoke to the group, to the academy, and I said, "How's everybody doing?" About a week ago. There was a generic kind of conversation going on about the people that work from home, the likes of me and you and a few of the academy members, where technically nothing has changed.

Actually for me in my world, I didn't lose many academy members. I have lost a couple, because obviously their business has been affected. There's a client on the agency side that had to stop because it was an event. But from a kind of income and a business point of view, and an amount of work I have to do point of view, that hasn't really changed either. So, technically I should be doing exactly what I'm doing, every single day.

Yet, we all agreed, to a greater or lesser extent, that for some reason we don't want to do it. Or, the motivation's not there. Or, our head is not in the right mindset. Even though I can tell myself, and this has come from all the work I've done with you, I can only control what I can control. I can only control my own mood. I can't affect the virus. I can't affect the news. I can't affect social media. So focus fully in on what I can control. There's still that thing that, God, any excuse just to go and like let's start another gin and tonic at three o'clock in the afternoon. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's weird. What do you think that is? Why is that affecting us?

I think it goes back to the battery analogy of really draining our batteries, and the collective energy. Because we're processing so much more information, especially if you're in a service-based industry where you are dealing with clients and customers who are all going through the same thing. You're having to hear the challenges and the struggles of what people are going through all day every day. It's like every time I get on the coaching call, for example, people are talking about it. If you are outside, like here we're going on...

This week we’re going to be talking about how we can motivate ourselves during these times to make sure we are still being as productive as we can. We are going to be focusing on personal development, and I am going to put together all the things I have learnt from various books (because I read A LOT!) and put them all together to give you all some tips on how you can manage your time better, and stay motivated!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Write your goals down for this quarter – Be realistic considering the situation we are in, but do push yourself. Aim for 3-5 goals.
• Don’t use this situation as an excuse!
• We need to work smarter and harder during this time.
• What will you do each month for the next 3 months to help you achieve those goals? Be specific!
• Join my academy – Members are all benefitting right now from weekly coaching calls and the support we all give each other.
• Get out of bed – Set a time for every day.
• Get yourself ready every day as if you are going into the office or out to work.
• Have a structured morning routine that you stick to every day.
• Plan your day – What are you going to do? What 3 main things do you want to achieve in that day?
• Start on the hardest thing first – Once you’ve done it, it’s done!
• If you are not accountable, it is so hard to motivate yourself. Decide who is going to hold you accountable (Friend, Colleague, The Academy etc..)
• Think about who are you doing this for? When you lose motivation, think of them!
• Journaling can help get everything out of our head so you can get on with what you need to do.
• Imagine exactly what your day is going to look like before it has started.
• Time yourself – Set a timer for each task.
• Watch, listen or read something that motivates you.
• If something resonates with you, print it out or put it as your screensaver!
• Give yourself a reward. Have something to look forward to when you have finished your tasks! (A bath, a nice dinner, a film etc..)

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…This is not going to go on forever. We have two choices, to either fall into it or try and make the best of a bad situation! Let’s use this time to the absolute fullest!HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Setting your goals – 04:01
• The Academy – 09:25
• Practical things you can do every day – 11:24
• Journaling – 20:01
• Meditation – 22:45
• Time yourself – 24:21
• Watch, Listen or Read – 25:11
• Have a reward – 26:46

Transcript below

 

Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How have you been? How's your past week been? And you know what, I'm always interested but I am really genuinely interested to see how you're getting on because I'm actually recording this a week before it's coming out to you guys. So today is Monday the 30th of March and this is due out next Monday. And honestly everybody I've spoken to today is really struggling and they're finding it really difficult to get the motivation to do the work, which is really I guess really is an unsurprising in one way. Obviously if you're listening to this out of time, we are right in the midst of a lockdown so we'd been told you've got to stay in our houses because obviously the coronaviruses is around and we having to be in our houses all the time, which actually for me is not that different because I work from home.

I spend a huge amount of my time here and I guess I thought it would feel no different at all, but I guess the problem is one, my daughter's not with me currently, she's at her dad's. We're going to do every two weeks to make sure that if there are any symptoms that we can see them before we hand her back over two, I like to go out on a weekend and in fact on a weekend we don't cook. We pretty much eat out most meals. We, sometimes do a Sunday roast sort of dinner on the Sunday, but most often we are out and we really enjoy going to restaurants and eating out and doing nice things. So I've definitely missed that this last weekend. And I do think that sometimes when you do nothing you feel even worse for it. So if you're busy doing stuff and you're going in and out and you've got things to do, then it can make you feel better.

But what's really odd is, like I said, everybody today is feeling like I am done in and I am seriously lacking motivation. So this obviously is the same for me. I feel the same as you guys. Like I said, I am really missing having that time out of the house even though I don't have a lot of it out so today I decided after kicking myself firmly up the backside to get my own work done and to get my own motivation back. I decided that I'm going to do an episode on exactly that, on how you can motivate yourself to make sure that during these times we are still being as productive as we can. Now I know I talked about things that you could do in a few episodes ago when uh, it was a bit of a special episode cause that came out on a Thursday, but basically I wanted to specifically talk about the motivation side of it rather than you can look at your website, you can create a lead magnet, that sort of thing.

I definitely want to look at maybe more the personal development side that goes into it because you know what, I read and consume books on audible like you wouldn't believe and I have read a lot of books. I've listened to a lot of books. I consume a lot of content about the stuff because I want to be as good as I can possibly be in terms of managing my own time and getting work done. And therefore I thought I'm going to take some of those key learnings that I've learned and I'm literally going to throw them all together in a big jumbled up podcast episodes. I apologise if that's how it comes across, but I'm just going to go through all the things that have helped me and continue to help me to this day to stay motivated. Cause right now I feel like we need it.

 

Setting your goals

 

So I really hope that that works for you guys today cause that's what we're talking about. Okay. So the other reason it's really good to talk about this now is because we've just started the beginning of April and the beginning of April is the beginning of quarter two. Now when we set our goals at the beginning of the year. I don't think anybody could see this coming. And therefore what's happened in the world may or may not have affected your goals and the ability to get them and to achieve them. So the one thing that I would urge you to do at the beginning of this quarter is write your goals for this quarter. Now we might not be able to write them for the year. We might not be able to think, think far enough ahead, but if the government are correcting what they're saying, we could be indoors for quite some time. So bear that in mind when you're writing those goals because there's no point sitting there writing some goals that are completely unrealistic given the situation we're in.

Now, I'm always one for stretching. I'm always one for thinking, okay, let's sort of scare ourselves a bit with a big hairy, scary goal. However, I am also very realistic and understand that this world and what is happening currently is going to obviously have an impact on staff. So first task. First thing I want you to do is I want you to write three to five goals down for the next quarter and I want you to be realistic, like I said, realistic, but push yourself because bearing in mind, one thing I want you to think about is that this is completely unusual. This is different. You are doing things that you're not expecting to do. You're perhaps trying to homeschool the children. You've got your partners there. Seriously, I adore my husband more than anything in the world, but I'm not used to having him here all the time and you know it's different and my nighttime routine and my morning routine with him here gets a little bit mixed up.

So you know it is, it's having an impact on everything. So I know that first off, this is not normal situation. Secondly, I want you to be gentle with yourself. Now I'm going to give you some tough love here. That's not to say I want you to be lazy and use the situation as an excuse. And the reason I'm saying this and I, I'm sending it with all the love in the world is because I would do the same because I would sit there and think, wow, the kind of world's imploding a little bit and no one's going to miss it what I do on the podcast this week. There's just no way I can do that. There's no way I would allow myself to do that six months, 12 months ago maybe I would have done, maybe I would have used this as a perfect excuse to just shelve it all think, well, you know, this is a terrible time. I'll just wait three months, but absolutely don't do this. So please don't use this as an excuse to go well and being so easy on myself. I'm just not gonna do anything. Cause it does mean we're going to have to work a bit smarter and in some cases maybe a little bit harder to still keep going, but we really, really, really must. We must just shelve everything.

Okay, well you can decide whether you want a business at the end of it, isn't it? Cause I know I couldn't shelf stuff and then think to come back to a business that was where it is today. So, so set those three to five goals and then once you've written them down and you must write them down, I'm honestly, I can't be more firm with you today because I know, like I said, we need a bit of tough love occasionally.

And you know, my love is, is very much, you know, I want to help you guys, but also sometimes I know for myself I need a bit of a kick so I'm gently giving you one of them as well today. So then once you've written down your three to five goals, I then want you to work out what you're going to do each month for the next three months to help achieve those goal. So let me give you an example. Let's say one of your goals, which would be a brilliant goal to do at this time by the way, is to build your email list. I have just come off the back of a five week, five week, what am I on eBay. It'd be one hell of a challenge, but it's five weeks, five day challenge on this building and it was brilliant. So let's say you're thinking, I want to build my email list.

So April you might say, okay, April I'm going to come up with the lead magnet idea and I'm going to, and obviously we have lead magnets last week or the week before. Yes, episode 110 talking about what a lead magnet is. So you can go back and listen to that if you don't know what I'm talking about. And then you might choose what platform you're going to do this on i.e. Are you going to use MailChimp or active campaign or Kajabi? And I'm going to link up to them in the show notes for you as well. And then in may you might decide, okay, so I need to do that in April. Then in may I'm going to create the landing page. I'm going to create the actual lead magnet and I'm going to write the onboarding emails. And then in June you might launch it and market it.

So that's how specific I want you to be cause I want you to set yourself these goals because without goals we'll do nothing. So trying be motivated to get up to the desk every day and do stuff is going to be hard enough if we don't know where we're going. So that's first thing I want you to do, three to five goals for the quarter and for each one think right, what have I got to do each month so that I'm doing something so we're not getting to the end of quarter two go, Oh I'm done it then and you're trying to cram it in all to the last week. Okay. So it just wants to cover that off. Like I said, it's a great time.

 

The Academy

 

We're going to do another challenge in the Academy and we're going to be looking at what we're going to be doing and I'm going to be, in fact, I'm going to talk about the Academy for a minute.

I very rarely talk about it and sell it in a sense of buy my Academy. But honestly right now I think the members couldn't be more grateful for the fact they're in it. We're upping the number of coaching calls we do. I'm upping the support I give them and I'm upping their capability because right ne what they need is me to say, come on, we can do this. Keep going, keep going. So do you know what, I am going to softly all the Academy to you because it's brilliant and I swear the members are really, really benefiting from the support. We're all giving each other at this time. So I want you to go and check H receipts wearing.com forward slash Academy and it's $39 seriously, I'll pay more than that on a bottle of gin and I'm not going to throw with them. And cause I know money is a, you know, it's a tricky thing but all it means for me is I'm more careful where I'm giving it to.

I'm not sort of just cancelling everything kind of fear. I'm thinking what is going to help me move my business forward or what is that going to help me get through these few months? And that's what I'm considering. So I am actually really seriously urging you to go and have a look at it and come and join me and sign up. Because seriously, this is hard. It's hard enough running a business on your own. Anyway, this, this is going to break some people. This is going to break their business because this is a huge test to us all in terms of staying motivated and with all the stuff that's going on at the moment and obviously the financial and physical impact it's having on our businesses. Anyway, selling over. Like I said, I don't do it very often, but if I didn't think it was a brilliant and I didn't think it could make a difference, I honestly wouldn't even try and promote it.

 

Practical things you can do every day

 

So, okay, let me go back to now I've given you my little sales pitch. I'm going to go back to my motivation thing. So now I've got, that was kind of an overview as in you need set some goals, but now let's talk about real practical things that I do every day and remind myself every time I'm struggling. Okay. The first thing you need to do is you need to get up. No way to resist. Seriously get out of bed. That's, that's your motivation. I'm serious. You need to get up at set time. Now, bearing in mind there's no school run. My daughter's not currently with me at the moment. There is nothing making me get up early apart from me and I get up at 5:00 AM and I know you'll think I'm crazy and maybe I am a little bit, but I gave it 5:00 AM I meditate for the first 30 minutes.

I then spend, well not always, but I do some chigong occasionally for like 20 minutes. Then I will get ready and I get fully ready. Hair, makeup, everything. Every day I'm fully dressed like the weekend. That's when I have no makeup on and my hair just chucked up. But literally in the week I treat it as if I'm going out into the office, then I journal, then I do my gratitude, and then I plan my day. So that's my morning routine every single morning and I'm normally at my desk and ready to go by eight so I spend a few hours doing all that stuff. And the other thing is like if you do have children, my children aren't getting up at 5:00 AM depending on how old yours are, they might be getting up, but to get up and plum that day before they've even woke up, there's something so satisfying about that.

It doesn't mean you have to have a good bedtime routine and try and get to bed early. And I'm terrible at that. But I do want you to think about that morning routine. Like I said, it doesn't have to be the same as mine, but having that structure every day is going to really help motivate you the days, and don't get me wrong, I do at the days I get up late, like eight o'clock even, or nine o'clock I feel like I've wasted my entire day. And I am so unproductive. So that's the first one. Then I want you to plan your day. Like I said, this is totally something I do. I want you to think about what are you going to do for that day. I want you to write down any calls you've got. I want you to write your lunch down. I want you to write down when you might have to do something with the children.

I want you to write down when you're going to start prepping dinner and I want you to literally look at when you've got gaps and time where you can work on your stuff and then I want you to think about the three things that you are hoping to achieve that day. Now, I've totally stole this from Michael Hyatt stuff. This is what he does. I have his full focus planner and that's what you have to do. You pick your daily big three. So all I ever really give myself a three main things that I've got to do every day and as long as I do those three things, I can take them off and I can feel satisfied. Now the chances are I do more than that. But you, if you give yourself just three things to do, then you're not going to look at a massive long list.

You're going to pick the most important stuff first and you're going to make sure you get those things done because often as well, and I am absolute queen of this, you'll work all day and you're thinking, yeah, I've worked so hard today. I've done loads of work today and then you think, what have I done? And you actually have no idea. So you've been doing those bits and bits of nothing thing that actually does not move the needle with the business or does not go towards your goals. So that's the next thing I want you to do. Like I said, plan your day and pick three main things that you're going to get done each day and only three. Like I said, if you've got a list lower day and then absolutely fine but makes you got those three. Okay. The other thing I want you to do is eight of those three, I want you to do the hardest thing first.

Like is it called, there's a book called eat that frog. I think if I just made that up, I don't think I have. I'm sure it's called eat that frog. I've read it and it's exactly about that. It basically is what is the worst thing you've got to do. Do it first because once you've done it, it's done and you need. The other thing that's really interesting and I don't know whether you agree, but often when I put something off because for whatever reason in my head I'm thinking, Oh yeah, no, I'm not going to want to do this, but when I put something off and then I do it, I think that wasn't half as bad as I thought and it didn't take half as long as I thought. So actually I, you know, by doing those things first, again, you achieve that big horrible thing you don't want to do and if nothing else gets done, then at least you can be proud of yourself and give yourself a massive Pat on the back for that and that you've done that one thing.

Okay. A what's next on my list? I told you I've got loads of notes and scribbles and things. Okay, next one came. Stability. I've talked about this before. When I was employed, I was amazing. I was such a goody two shoes. I loved being patted on the head. I love being told, well done. You've done a good job, and therefore that was my accountability. I was always on time. In fact, I used to say, you know, give you a deadline and then I'd make sure I came in before it. I was annoyingly an irritatingly efficient and now not so much because of that came stability. So I have my own accountability. I have people that I obviously hold myself accountable to. I have Mary who's my coach, and obviously my husband and these sort of people, but who are we? Who's holding you accountable?

Again, coming back to the Academy, I swear this isn't just sell the Academy. That's one of the key things is that we're holding people accountable because if you're not...

This week we’re going to be talking about SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. And to help me (because I know nothing about SEO) I have TWO lovely guests with me! We have the lovely Sarah and Hannah, who are the hosts of SEO SAS. These girls have worked in this industry a long while and they love SEO, so I knew they would be the perfect people to come on and talk to you about this subject. And perhaps you may even be inspired to do something with your own SEO!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation – the process of increasing both the quality and quantity of traffic to your website, by increasing the visibility of the website or web pages to people via search engines such as google.
• Google has over 200 ranking factors. There are over 200 factors that google look at when they are ranking pages and websites.
• Most people when they think about SEO, they just think about keywords. It is now so much more sophisticated. You need to think about things such as page speed, user experience, technical aspects and accessibility.
• Making one change can make a huge difference, and that may be all you need to do for a couple of months. Simply changing a page title could increase traffic by 20%!
• SEO is NOT dead! It is still very important.
• There are two types of key words – Educational and Transactional.
• You can find out how people are finding you and what they are searching for by using free tools such as Google Search Console.
• Domain Authority is a score out of 100, based on the amount of back links to your website and how trustworthy your website is.
• You need to make sure everything linked to your website is relevant, trustworthy and natural. Otherwise it can be spammy.
• There are link specialists who can help you with your link building. If you are linking out, make sure it is natural and relevant. When getting links to your site, there are lots of different ways you can do this, such as, creating useful articles that can help others (guest post), give a quote about the latest news on another website and digital PR – fun ways to get people talking.
• Make sure your blog title is click worthy and answering something that people are going to search for or something that people don’t even know they want yet.
• You can research what people are looking for through Google AdWords.
• Make sure all your subheadings in your blog are optimised too!
• Is there some added value you can add to your blog compared to those that are already out there? Such as a video, more images, more information.
• Give people a reason to stay on your site longer and go to other areas after they have read your blog post, or even convert!
• Make sure your images are no bigger than 100kb as this can slow down your page speed.
• Name your image something relevant, add alt text (alternative text) that describes that image.
• Metadata is the information that displays in google – you can decide this! Make sure your title is 60-70 characters long, optimised with key words. Description 120-160 characters, use key words here too!
• CTR – click through rate. This will depend on the quality of your metadata.
• Test your title tags and metadata using Google Analytics.
• SEO for your podcast – show notes and transcripts for google to be able to understand. Work out what key words your podcast should rank for and optimise elements on that page.
• Schemer – code that tells google what that content is – Use Google Tag Manager.
• Share your podcast on other channels to promote it but also adds links.
• Sentiment – reviews – google takes this into account.
• Don’t delete products or pages without knowing the consequences! 404 error pages will occur (bad user experience).
• Optimise your URLs – think of keywords.
• Update your SEO as an ongoing task – google is always changing its algorithm.
• Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing.
• Test and measure what you are doing/using.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…You don’t have to be an SEO expert but there are a lot of things you can do and a lot of tools you can use in order to make a difference. Plus, you can always go over and listen to Sarah and Hannah’s podcast if you want to learn more about anything we have discussed today.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• An introduction to Sarah and Hannah – 07:10
• What is SEO – the basics – 12:27
• The myths of SEO – 18:25
• Educational vs Transactional keywords – 25:25
• Tools you can use to help you with SEO – 28:02
• Links – do I need them? – 37:08
• How to help your blog SEO – 46:14
• Adding images to your blog – 49:14
• Metadata – 51:46
• SEO for podcasts – 55:09
• What NOT to do – 1:01:08

Transcript below

 

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How's your week been? Okay. You know those jobs that you put off, all the time? And you think, I'm definitely going to get around to that, I'm definitely going to do that when I have more time? Well, today's episode might inspire you to get on and do one of those jobs, because today we are talking all about SEO. That's right, you heard correct, search engine optimization. I can't even say it, let alone teach you anything about it.

It is not going to be a surprise that today I have not one, but two lovely guests with me because, quite honestly, what I know about SEO would last about 30 more seconds. It's something that, for whatever reason, I put such a mental block on, and just A, I feel like I find it difficult, and B, it's something that doesn't interest me, which doesn't help it. Or, help me when I'm trying to learn it. Anyway, it's super important. I'm trying so hard not to put a downer on it, before these two amazing women come on. It's super important, and I know there are lots of you out there who do do some SEO stuff, and therefore it was really important for me to get someone on to talk about this, because I know I don't know anywhere near enough of what I need to know about it.

And if you're sat there thinking, I don't even know what SEO is, or search engine optimization is, then you will still want to listen to this episode, because I promise you there is something for everyone. We are talking at a fairly good level that most people should be able to take something away from this. If I can understand it, then believe me, you can absolutely understand it.

I really, really want you to enjoy today's episode, and like I said, maybe you will be inspired to do something with your own SEO. So today, I have the very lovely Hannah and Sarah, who are the hosts of the podcast SEO SAS. This is going to be a really difficult podcast, if I've got to keep saying stuff like that. These two girls have worked in this industry for a long while, they've been both agency side and in-house side, they've done lots of different industries, and they love SEO. Which A, is easy to tell from interviewing them, and speaking to them, because they're very passionate about it, but B, they wanted to get it across in a way that everyone can understand.

Because SEO is actually, traditionally, a very male industry, it's also very tech-y sounding, and people do get a bit overwhelmed by that. They wanted to bring it in a way that actually, it isn't as difficult as it sounds, and there are some things that everybody can do. Don't get me wrong, there's some very smart stuff that I'm sure is very difficult that these girls do, but for me, there is definitely stuff you can take away from this.

So, Hannah is a Chartered Institute of Marketing qualified marketer, with a decade of experience, and she has gained specialising in digital marketing, SEO in particular. Her favourite aspects of SEO are pretty much everything, from technical deep dives, to strategic content, and link building in-depth analysis. I don't know what on Earth I'm talking about, but they're going to help us find that out. She is one half of an SEO power couple, as Hannah's husband is also an SEO expert. When Hannah's not working, she likes to do nothing more than hiking and mountain climbing with Dom, very different from SEO.

Okay, Sarah is also a qualified Institute of Marketer, and she has around seven years experience in marketing, specialising in digital and SEO. Over the years, Sarah's worked both in-house and agency side, and has done loads of different campaigns. Sarah is a self confessed geek when it comes to SEO, and loves the challenges that comes with both industry, and as a whole, creating and implementing strategic SEO campaigns that drive traffic and conversion for her clients. Sarah works as an SEO specialist at LikeMind Media, and when she's not doing that, she likes to go on adventures with her girlfriend and her pooch, Millie the Jack Russel. And also, this is very interesting, she blows off steam playing roller derby, where she goes by the name Badass Bambi. I believe it, I believe every word.

Anyway, I think you're going to love these girls, they give such good advice around SEO. And, if you want to find out more, and want to go deeper, then their podcast is definitely the place to do it. Like I said, it's called SEO SAS. And, I just want to put a caveat, when we recorded this episode, which was probably quite a few weeks ago ... in fact, it was the beginning of Jan, I think, if I remember rightly, everything was correct at the time. But, as with social media, things can change fairly fast, so obviously if something has changed, then don't come shouting at us, because it was right as we recorded it. Anyway, I will leave you to listen to people who know way more about this than I do. Enjoy the episode.

So, it's with much pleasure that I welcome the very lovely Sarah McDowell and Hannah Bryce to the podcast. Welcome, ladies!

Hello!

Hello, hello.

Thank you for having us.

Yes, very excited to be on your podcast.

Ah no, I'm excited to have you on because, as I've already said in the intro, today we're talking about SEO, and I told people not to turn off. Because I know that they might go, "Oh, hang on a minute, I don't want to listen to this." I'm promising them this is going to be totally worth their while because I know very little about SEO, and I was just saying to the ladies, before we got on, that I love podcast episodes where I know nothing. Or, not nothing, but I know very little about it, because it means that A, I learn something, which is ace. And B, it means I can ask the stupid questions, and none of you listening can sit there thinking, oh thank God, she looks the fool, we don't have to by asking the stupid questions.

I'm really excited to get some kind of real basics, for everyone. So, if you've not come across SEO before, then you don't need to panic, this isn't going to be really, really high level, but I'm really excited to get those basics across.

 

An introduction to Sarah and Hannah

 

Before we get into it, let's just find out how you two got to do what you're doing right now, and become the SEO experts that you are?

Wow, okay. Hannah, do you want to start?

You can, you go first.

Okay. I'm getting the baton to start.

Basically, I fell into SEO. I studied dance at university, realised that I couldn't-

Natural progression people, dance into SEO, hand in hand.

I mean, it will happen, it will happen. Yeah, realised I couldn't really make a living in dancing, so basically, I went for a reception role at a SEO agency. They'd already filled that role, but what they were looking for was link builders that had no prior experience, so I pretty much fell into it, and started from the bottom. I was link building, content writing, and I was in that agency for a couple of years, and I progressed.

Then, I moved from agency to in-house, and then that's where I met Hannah, because we worked together at Sister's firm. And then we parted ways, and went other jobs in different industries and stuff. Then yes, we also do SEO SAS podcast as well, so that came about because me and Hannah, a couple of years ago, realised that the SEO industry was quite male dominated, especially with the speakers, and even the audience really. I mean, it's got better as the years have gone on, but I just saw an opportunity, we need a female led SEO podcast. We also wanted to make SEO fun.

Yes, I've had about seven years experience in SEO, working both in-house and in agency, so I've worked for different industries. Hannah?

Well, I started off as a marketing manager, so doing pretty much the whole marketing mix. Then, I did that for a few years, but realised ... Actually, I remember the exact moment that I thought, I could do this, when we had an SEO agency come in and pitch to us. I was like, "This looks really cool, I could definitely do this." Sorry to whoever that agency is, I just took your ideas and rolled with it. I actually found that, one, I was all right at it, and two, I really enjoyed it.

I moved on from that, tried out agency because wanted to get lots of experience, with lots of different industries. Then, from there, managed to get some really good opportunities in-house, where I could really, really focus on honing my skills in SEO, and getting into a bit more depth.

At the minute, I'm working at Gym Shark as part of an SEO team, which is amazing. Obviously, Sarah's part of my extended team, outside of work.

Cool. No, that's so good. Actually, you said a couple of things there that are really important. First off, it's a very male dominated industry, and has been for quite some time. Secondly, you said you wanted to make it a bit more fun, which I think is totally a brilliant way to go about it. To have the podcast, to have that medium that you can explain, and get your personalities across, and that sort of thing.

Tell us again, what that podcast is called? Because my idea for this episode is that if you're listening to this new thing, that's awesome, it's a great introduction, but actually I do want to know more, then these ladies have got the perfect podcast for you. So, what's it called, again?

The podcast is SEO SAS. It's called SAS because we want to be seen as your special answering service, so a bit of play on the combat, and army, and stuff.

Basically, it came about because lots of people know about SEO, or know that they need to do it, but A, they don't really understand what they should be doing, or because people think it's a boring subject, people easily turn off. So, with the podcast, it is about educating, and we find relevant topics to talk about, maybe there's something that's happened in the industry, recently. Or, maybe there's just some myths, or anything, really. But, the main thing is to make it fun, because SEO isn't boring. If you get it, and you start trialling stuff on your website, or working on it, you can get some really good results. I think Hannah would agree?

Yeah, just on that point, as well as fun, because obviously we like to think it's a lot of fun. But, one of the other really main, important points is that it's accessible, because with SEO certain people think, oh, it's just a dark art, I don't understand it. It must be super technical, and really, really complicated.

We'd like to think that we're helping to make it a little bit less complicated, because it's not as complicated as everybody thinks it is.

No.

Okay, cool. Lots of people that listen to this podcast have their own business, they're doing their own marketing, and they can't go to a big agency for SEO, so this is why I wanted this episode, to actually give them those kind of helps, and helping hand, and tips and things, to do a bit themselves.

I'm going to start right at the beginning, and I'm going to literally ask you, what is SEO? When I ask you that, I also want you to explain what it stands for. So, who wants to take that one?

 

What is SEO – the basics

 

I'll take that one, if that's okay? SEO stands for search engine optimization. Basically, it's the process of increasing both the quality and quantity of traffic to your website, by increasing the visibility of a website, or web page, to people on search engines, such as Google. Yeah?

Okay, okay. Yeah, I'm searching something in Google, and SEO is going to help me come higher up in the rankings?

Yes, to get you that traffic to that page, or that website.

Now, when people talk about SEO, most people think about Google because, at the end of the day, Google is used by a lot of people, but there are other search engines, such as Bing, Safari. But, most people will talk about Google, and be optimising for Google.

Sorry. When we talk SEO, the stuff you're telling us today, is this only for Google, or is this for everything? And, it's all kind of much for muchness?

Well, I would say this is more gearing towards Google, but it still sort of works for other search engines, such as Bing. But, it's just different search engines have their own ways of ranking websites, but I would always stick to Google because that's the one that's most used by people.

What is important to know is that Google has over 200 ranking factors. So, what that means is there are over 200 factors that Google are looking at when they're looking at ranking pages and websites. Yes, that is quite a big number, but I see that as opportunities. Lots of different opportunities that you can optimise your website or web page.

There are three main ones, aren't there, out of those?

Okay, because I'm sat here, laughing to myself because I was going to go, "And we're going to go through every 200." But, no we're not, we are not doing that.

In all honesty, I think that's what scares people, because they're thinking, oh, I've given up already because if I've got to do 200 extra things on my website, you can forget that. I totally get why people think that it's this crazy, weird thing, and it's really hard. Sorry for interrupting, go on.

No. I would say that SEO falls into two main categories. So, you've got your on page stuff, and your offsite stuff.

On page refers to things that you actually do to a page to optimise it for search engines, such as Google. So, you've got meta descriptions. When you go into Google, and you search for a keyword like ... Give me a keyword, Hannah?

Red hat.

Red hat. So, you've got your listings of all your websites, your meta description is that description underneath the view link that you click. So, it's normally a couple of lines, so it's just a description of what that page is. Your title tags is what makes the clickable link in Google, you've got keywords on that page, you've got speed, you've got your headers.

So on a page, you have your main title, and you've got your subheadings, and it's getting a little bit technical. There's also things like metadata. You can use metadata, it's code, basically, that you put on your page, to help Google understand what that page is about, or what that content on that page is about. Then, offsite refers to things that you do externally from your site, so that's like building back links to your website.

I don't know if you want to chip in on this, but you generally have your two different categories of SEO, don't you? It's onsite, and offsite.

Yeah.

Yeah? One last thing that I would say on this point is, most people when they think about SEO, they just think it's about keywords, and they just think...

This week we’re going to be talking about one of my favourite topics - lead magnets. Although this is something that I have covered on the podcast before, it was an incredible 108 episodes ago and, in that time, things have definitely changed. Not only that but having just finished a list building challenge, I thought now would be the perfect time to revisit the topic with both new and existing listeners.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• A lead magnet is when you are offering something to ideal customer that they will want and in return, they will give you their email address.
• If you’re in the knowledge industry, you can give away guides, checklists, a video series, tool kits, reports, mini courses, digital downloads, e-books or free trials.
• If you’re in an industry that requires you to sell a product, you can give away offers, discounts and competitions. You may also want to consider using your knowledge in the industry in which you sell a product and instead, give that away instead. Whether it’s a how-to or a guide, you can give away valuable information you have learnt throughout your time in the industry.
• If you are running a competition, you need to think about how you’re going to make it only appeal to your ideal customer. After all, you don’t want people on your list is they’re not your customer.
• If you’re promoting to an audience that don’t know you well, you need to think about how likely they are going to invest time in you. Because of this, you should keep your lead magnet short and sweet when you’re first starting off.
• Your lead magnet needs to be low investment for those that download it.
• When you create your landing page, you need to keep the questions to a minimum. A name and email form are all you need.
• Your lead magnet needs to answer your customers pain point and needs to show that you’re an expert.
• Make sure what your offering is good. If it’s not, those that download your lead magnet will be disappointed and are unlikely going to become customers.
• If you have a podcast or a blog, you may want to consider offering content upgrades.
• Once you have created your lead magnet, you need to post it as many times as you can online. Post it on social media, put a banner on your website and write it in your email signature.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…One of the main reasons to use lead magnets is to get people to sign up to your email list, as it’s important you’re building this in any way that you can. On top of that, but it allows you to start building a relationship with a potential new customer.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• What Is A Lead Magnet and Why Should You Use Them? – 05:00
• What Should You Give Away as A Lead Magnet? - 09:00
• Promoting Your Lead Magnet - 14:18
• Things to Think About When Creating Your Lead Magnet – 16:40
• Content Upgrades – 20:19
• Getting People to Sign Up For Your Lead Magnet – 22:45

Transcript below

 

Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How is your Monday morning? If you're listening to this on Monday, which of course you may not be, so whatever day it is, I hope you have a good day. Okay, so this week we are going to be talking all about lead magnets. Now I know we've done an episode on this before. It was actually episode two and I urge you not to go and listen to it because I had a quick listen to it before I recorded this one because I wanted to see what I included in it and to see if I could come up with enough stuff to make it worthwhile doing again and I decided to because one things move on and change and new ideas and strategies come out and two, that episode was so short, it was like nine minutes and I swear sometimes my intros are longer than nine minutes and also the way it was recorded and please don't go back and listen to it if you haven't heard it is so different to how I record now.

And you know what's really interesting is it sounds a lot posher I think my voice has changed and I think I have relaxed and actually just generally in life. I think I probably used to be a bit posher than I am now. But the second thing is it just sounds a bit kind of, I don't know, what's the word? Stiff. That's the word I'm trying to think of because you can tell that I've stopped and started and stopped and started and I have to say pretty much all the podcasts I do now, I literally just talk at the microphone on my own, like a slightly crazy person and then I just send it over to Phil who edits it and he'll just literally take out a really bad sort of, Oh maybe. I don't think it takes a lot to be honest. I think if I really messed up I would delete it.

But he tends to just like love like the balance or you know that sort of more techy side stuff and then put intos and outros on and sews it altogether and that cool stuff. But we're very authentic as you know. So I just thought it was totally worth me reading this one again. The other reason I wanted to talk about this right now is because we have just come off the back of doing a list building challenge and in preparation for that list building challenge, I obviously put together lots of content. I was really proud of it if I'm honest. And it's not often we say that about our own work because we don't want to feel like a big head. But honestly I put a lot into that and I gave so much information away. In fact, one of my team members, in fact, not one, two of my team members contacted me before and during the challenge thing, Teresa, I think you've given away a bit too much. And I think my reason for that or my argument for that is I just want people to get something out of it. Don't you hate doing like a challenge or downloading a lead magnet or doing something where it's a complete and utter waste of your time or they teach you something and you're like, yeah, no way. I knew that. And granted I know, I know obviously a fair bit about my industry and I do love it when someone teaches me something I don't know cause that just blows my mind. I love it. But honestly, sometimes not even the level, but just the, just the amount of content themselves is just terrible. And right before I started that challenge or before I started planning the challenge, I actually took part in someone else's challenge.

Someone who's way bigger than me. And again, I, that's how I felt about it. And I am obviously not gonna tell you who, but I literally went through the five days and I was like, is that it? Is that all you're going to tell the audience? And I was thinking of it from a, I know nothing point of view. So it wasn't that I was thinking of it from my point of view. I literally sat there thinking, right, let's just see what you're teaching. Cause I was thinking more from a teaching point of view, but yeah. And I was really disappointed. I just thought, well that's such a shame because someone has just given over some time of bears, which is a big investment because let's face it, time is the only thing we can't make more of. And for me, wasted it, which I just find really disappointing. But anyway, so obviously doing the lessons and during that five day challenge that I was putting together, we talked about it or I talk about lead magnets in there and I want to talk about them together again cause I know I mentioned them a fair bit on the podcast, but it kind of not came to me how important it was. I know how important they are, but made me realise that I really need to devote a whole episode to this. Really.

 

What Is A Lead Magnet and Why Should You Use Them?

 

Okay. So I've just realised my computer is making noises so I'm just going to put do not disturb on. There we go. Uh, told. Totally very authentic. I don't delete this stuff out. Okay, so let's talk about lead magnets. Now if you don't know what one is, let's start there. Basically what a lead magnet is, is you are offering something to your ideal customer that hopefully they are going to want. And in return they're going to give you their email address and you're going to put them on your email list. So that in short and in very basic layman terms is what a lead magnet is. Obviously, I'm going to deep dive a bit further into it, but the other thing I want to say about the lead magnets is someone asked me on the challenge, is it absolutely necessary to offer someone something in order to get them on your list?

And I thought about it for a little bit and I basically came back and said, yeah, it is really, because people don't do things just for the fun of it. They don't do things just because they think, Oh, they might want me on my list or on their list and they're trying to List-Build so I tell you what, I'll help them out by getting on their list. People don't do that obviously because funnily enough, they're not thinking about us and our businesses selfish. They're thinking about their own lives and their own things and they need a reason to get on it. They need a reason to be motivated to want to go on your email list or to want to sort of see more of you and therefore for me, I really do think you need to be able to offer someone something. The other thing that I think about it is now I do get people just opting straight into my list from my website, which is really the only place they can do it.

And, and I'm always really pleasantly surprised and blown away every time someone does because there is no motivation or no incentive, that's the, there is no incentive to actually get on the list when they're just signing up for my email list. So like I said that always surprises me and that's only just started happening within the last, I don't know, six, 12 months after that. So on the whole, the way people get on my list is through lead magnet. So the reason I use lead magnets are two reasons, mainly reasonable. One, as I've told you to get people on my email list, it's a great way to do it. It's a great way to get people to sign up. The second reason, which you may not have thought about is what's so good about a lead magnet is I like to call it a handraiser. So you guys are listening to the podcast right now and unless you come and find me and DM me or share something on social media, which I love and you know I love and I would be very appreciative if you did that and I love seeing you because otherwise I don't know who you are.

I am talking to the abyss and you guys are sat there with your ear buds in or it playing in the car or whatever you're doing and I don't know who you are. And also I don't know of you guys listening who is likely to want to join the Academy or join a 90 day programme and there are going to be people out there who do, and I know that because I have people in the Academy who came from listening to the podcast, but how do I, how do I know that? How do I find that information? And basically by giving you a handraiser, by giving you a kind of incentive to basically say actually two, he said, no, I really am enjoying this. I want to know more than basically I'm getting you to come to me and show me who you are so that I can see you and then I can start to build a relationship with you.

What Should You Give Away as A Lead Magnet?

 

And if you then want to go on to purchase something from me, then great. Obviously it's not, you know, necessary, but that'd be nice. But anyway, the reason you you give this lead magnet is because you won't be able to put their hand up and go, yes I am. I am your customer. I like what you do and I want to know some more. So the legs are two reasons for the lead magnets. Okay. So in terms of the lead magnet, we tend to know them well through things like downloads and checklists and cheat sheets and all that sort of thing because the lead magnet tends to be used more often in the knowledge industry. And what I mean by the knowledge industry is someone like me or a nutritionist or a coach or basically someone who sells their brain for their business. Okay. So in the knowledge industry it's really, really easy because basically you are effectively just selling what you know.

And therefore in terms of a lead magnet, you could just give out what you know I E give someone some free content or some free ideas or tips or tools or strategies. If you have a product that can seem and feel a little bit more difficult because people don't always necessarily think of giving away knowledge when they have a product. So one thing I want to talk to you about is if you have got a product rather than you're in the knowledge industry, and I'm going to give you loads of ideas of lead magnets, but you might want to think just slightly differently. So first off, if you have a product, a couple of the ideas that you can use are things like offers, discount codes, competitions, that sort of thing. So they are classed as lead magnets as much as anything else. So if you're doing a competition and you need people to give you their email address, then that's a great lead magnet.

If you are saying to people, sign up to my list and you get 5% off, great lead magnet, but you might not always want to do that because you might not always want to give away something or cut a bit off your bottom line. So one thing that you should think about or could think by is the fact of using your knowledge in your industry where you sell your product. Okay. So for instance, I have a very lovely friend who makes jewellery. She's a very talented lady and makes rings and necklaces and things from scratch. Very clever. I don't know how she does it. And she might think that a lead magnet for her has to be a discount off a product. And her stuff is obviously not cheap cause it's all bespoken handmade. So you know that's, that's devaluing it maybe a little bit.

She's obviously not going to do a competition to win a ring or something. Cause again it's a really high value. And also who wouldn't want to win that? That's what I sort of want to touch on just with competitions briefly is if you've got an amazing product who wouldn't want to win it and therefore it doesn't say that they're your ideal customer. So you need to think really carefully about the kind of competition in order to make sure you're getting only your customers that, that want it. So like I said, just giving away free products isn't necessarily the best way to build your list. And you might think, well at least I built my list. But as you may or may not know, a lot of these systems that we use a really cool, but they charge per person on your list as it were or per thousand people or whatever. So you don't want people on there if they're not your customers. Also, it's going to affect your open rate and things like that. And it's going to make you feel pretty rubbish about your engagement when actually it's not your folks, they're not your customers. Okay. So like I said, you don't necessarily always want to do a competition or a Deschaine, so why don't you use your knowledge. So for instance, you've got, she obviously makes jewellery and she's very clever and she knows a lot about stones and that sort of thing. So why doesn't she do a lead magnet that talks about which stone you should use for which occasion or what stone means what? I wouldn't have the faintest idea. Obviously I don't make jewellery or no, a huge amount of AIDS or of them what I like. So she could do that or what the different cuts mean or uh, how to buy a perfect engagement ring or five things you need to consider when having an engagement ring made for you.

So she could still use a knowledge in terms of a download or some kind of lead magnet. That is a knowledge thing. It doesn't just have to be the product. Okay. Let me give you a few ideas of things that you could use. So checklists. I have checklists out there on how to be proactive and manage social media. You can do video series. A series is, I nearly said then, I don't think that's a word. Video series. James Wedmore every year does a something like an eight part video series, and I'm going to talk about this in a minute because there's something I want to explain to you about the level of the lead magnet challenges. Obviously I've not long done a challenge in fact, although that was a lead magnet in one sense it wasn't because it was a lot of my existing customers, so it was more about I guess focusing on who I'd got in my audience already. Discount codes, cheat sheets, swipe files, quizzes and surveys. They go down really well because people love to know about themselves. So if you've got a survey that makes them discover something about them, then great toolkits reports, free trials, that's a good one. If you've got an online service mini course download also, you could do an ebook as well. So there's lots of different ideas of the type of lead magnet that you can do.

 

Promoting Your Lead Magnet

 

So one thing I want you to think about when creating your lead magnet is if you are promoting this to a cold audience, an audience that may not know you or know you very well. Then even though they haven't got to pay for it, they've still got to invest their time in it. And sometimes people like to give away lead magnets that are massive, you know, a 50 page ebook or going back to that suggestion or that example I gave before James Wedmore with an eight part video series. What you need to think is if someone doesn't know you or hasn't engaged with you in the past or hasn't ever downloaded of yours before, the likelihood of them wanting to invest time and effort into a 50 page ebook is slim to none. Also, they might download it, but they don't read it.

And what's the point in that? Because you've not sort of given them the benefit of your knowledge and therefore you've not proved to them that you know what you're talking about. So for me, what I would do when you're first starting off is I would consider keeping that lead magnet short and sweet to the point, but gives them a quick win. So make sure it really does give them a good bit of information or some good strategy or tip or tool or whatever it is. You need to make sure that it's a real benefit to them. But like I said, don't make it massive. So let me explain to you how James does his and my, he can get away with the eight part video series. James basically has an a lead magnet prior to the eight part video series. So his lead magnet first is a quiz to find out what kind of entrepreneur you are.

And obviously, like I said, quizzes worked really well. That goes really well. And then from there he promotes his, what he calls biz flicks, which is his eight part video series. Now each of these videos are about 20 minutes long, but this is the preamble to his launch. And his launch is for a three and a half thousand dollar course. So you are very unlikely to invest that money if you can't invest the time in free videos. But for the people who have watched those videos, they are much more likely to want to invest that money. So for me, his lead magnet works really well for a, the fact that it's not his first one and it's often too the second part, and B, he's selling a really high ticket item at the end and therefore he wants you to buy and he wants you to invest the time and if you're not going to do that into a lead magnet, you're really unlikely to do that in his stuff and buy the thing.

 

Things to Think About When Creating Your Lead Magnet

 

So that's what I want you to think about. Like I said, it's short sweet to the point, quick win. Okay. Some other things I want you to think about when creating your lead magnet, it needs to be low...