Episode 243: How To Make The Most Of Your Time On Clubhouse – with April Beach and Annabelle Bayhan

    Annabelle Bayhan SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Grab Annabelle’s FREE Clubhouse Productivity Planner!

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    This is a great show for entrepreneurs with limited time, who are looking to grow a warm audience with Clubhouse. 

    Summary:

    Clubhouse is an amazing platform to grow your audience, but most of our listeners have limited time and you want to be strategic about how you spend it. So, in this week’s episode, we dive in with Annabelle Bayhan, Clubhouse marketing expert, to clarify 3 strategic objectives that can save you time and make you money while using the app. We also pull back the curtains on our Clubhouse to Masterclass sales funnel, and tell you exactly how to increase sales with decreased time.

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Know the 3 money making activities on Clubhouse
    2. Know the 3 secondary strategies that will lead to money down the road
    3. See our complete Clubhouse sales funnel

    Resources Mentioned:

     


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    Full Show Transcript:

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, April Beach. Hi guys. And welcome back to the show. This is episode number 243, and I am April beach host here and founder of the Sweetlife company, where we help coaches, consultants and niche experts,

    launch and scale your company online through proven strategies with decades of business success. And here on this podcast, it’s our extension where you can get business trainings that you can bank on. So welcome to the show today. We’re talking about how to make the most of your time on clubhouse. Now, this is a really important topic because if you’ve been listening to the show for a while,

    you know that I am a big clubhouse fan. We dove in headfirst into clubhouse last December, and it’s been a really great special platform to build relationships. And for us to grow our list as a business, we’ve had multiple clubhouse episodes that we’ve recorded. You are welcome to search those on how to get started on clubhouse and how to grow your club.

    But today we’re talking about kind of the elephant in the room here in that is how to make the most of your time on clubhouse, because we like many people dove in to clubhouse, but we have also taken the last three months off of the app for the summertime for us to travel in. So have the majority of leaders that we moderate rooms with,

    they have taken time off the app as well, but as seasons change, everybody’s diving back into clubhouse. Now, as we go into September and October and the end of 2021. And so the real question is how do you make the most of your time? What are the activities that you can be doing in order to make money in a limited amount of time and be really strategic about what you’re doing on clubhouse in a way that really aligns with your business.

    And so this particular episode is great for those of you guys who do have a limited time, and you’re looking to grow your warm audience and increase sales using clubhouse. This is also great for you guys in any phase of my lifestyle, entrepreneur business roadmap, if you are not sure what phase of business you’re in, you can go take a little quiz and I’ll tell you exactly where you are and what stage of business and give you a checklist of what you should be focusing on to grow your business to the next profit stage.

    You can grab that anytime by going to sweet life co.com forward slash quiz. So now let’s go ahead and talk about what you can expect from hanging out with us here today. This is the deal, you know, clubhouse is an amazing platform to grow your audience, but most of you guys have really limited time and you want to be strategic about how you spend it.

    So in today’s episode, we’re going to dive in with Annabel by hand. Now she is a friend I met on clubhouse. She’s one of the many amazing business friends that I have met on the app. And she’s a clubhouse marketing expert in today’s show. We’re going to talk about three different strategic objectives that can save you time and make you money while using the app.

    We’re also talking about three other secondary activities that are also great to do on the app, based on your goals, that you are setting your strategic objectives for the time that you spend there. And then at the end of this show, I actually pull back the curtain and you can totally hack our funnel. I lay out our entire clubhouse list, growth to sales funnel into our,

    your signature offer masterclass, how we did it at the beginning of this year and how we’re actually about to start it again right now. So I just give you everything and I lay it out there for you, so you can see how we’re doing it because it works really well. And when things are working really well, we want you to be able to apply those strategies in your business too.

    So at the end of this episode, you’re going to know the three moneymaking activities to do on clubhouse. You’re going to know the three secondary strategies. You can also do that lead to money, just not immediate money in your pocket, but there are also good activities to do on the app. And you are going to understand and know our complete clubhouse sales funnel and that’s ours at the Sweetlife life company.

    So I frankly just give you all of that. I try to give you so much here on the show and just lay it all out there for you. So let’s talk about our expert and our guests. So first of all, I met Anabel on clubhouse. And when you spend any time on clubhouse, you can just tell the people you want to hang out with and the people that you want to get to know more.

    And she’s really one of those people where I had my eye on her in the beginning, and she kind of shares her story about how she has risen as a clubhouse marketing expert, which that in itself is a really amazing lesson about just diving in, even when people around you think that maybe that’s not such a great idea. And so you’ll get to hear her story.

    And she is the founder of clubhouse for bosses in the business and digital marketing strategists for coaches and consultants who want to increase their influence income and impact using clubhouse prior to becoming a business and marketing coach Annabel worked with digital marketing for over a decade. And you can learn more about Anabel by visiting Annabel bay han.com. And of course, we will go ahead and link to that in this show.

    She also gives you her whole entire clubhouse productivity strategy workbook. And so you’re really getting a ton out of this episode. So I hope you stick with us if you want to grow your business on clubhouse and you have very limited time. Like I do, like Annabelle does, like most of our clients do. Then this is a really important episode for you to listen to in order to get all of the loaded and free things that Annabel has for you and all the notes for this show,

    you can visit Sweetlife co.com simply click on the podcast button. And this is episode number 243, and Annabel will be live with us because we are just kicking off our wave makers, mastermind rooms again on Tuesday night after our three months off. We’re so excited. We had a room this evening in there and it was just so great to see so many faces and people we haven’t spoken to in a long time.

    So we hope that you join us Annabel. We’ll be live in clubhouse with us in the wave makers club, talking about the same things we’re talking about here on the podcast and taking your questions. So make sure you’re following Annabel. You’re following me at April beach on clubhouse so that we can connect with you and help you grow your business further through clubhouse and other proven online business strategies.

    Okay, let’s go ahead and dive by then. All right. Hi, you guys. We are so excited to be talking again today about clubhouse. Yes. My new favorite. I have my friend Annabel here with us today and I asked her to come because of the fact that she has really become the clubhouse guru when it comes to building your business on clubhouse.

    And whereas I totally went Mia and took three months off of clubhouse this summer. You have people like Anabel who have been consistently on this app, understanding the ins and the outs and the strategies of business, and really being faithful to watching this app grow and helping you grow in your business. So I’m so excited to invite Annabel today, to come and talk to us about the realities of how to use clubhouse as a strategy,

    but also for people like me and probably most of our listeners, how to actually fit this into your life and your time and your business. So welcome to this Wheatland entrepreneur podcast and about, we are so glad that you are here. Thank you for having me. I love your whole entire kind of transition into being the marketing guru, the business guru of clubhouse.

    Can you just briefly tell everybody a little bit about your business and how you help entrepreneurs? Yeah, So I am the founder of clubhouse for buses it’s to my knowledge, one of the very first business coaching programs using clubhouse. Before that I’ve worked behind the scenes with a lot of small businesses growing their businesses. Many of them being, you know, people who work on Instagram and they teach people how to use Instagram to grow their business.

    And so I was very familiar with the model and actually very interested in doing it for myself. And so when I noticed that clubhouse was something that’s up and coming there was nobody working like this in this space yet. I thought, okay, this is my chance to be a very early adopter of this app and teach people what I know about growing businesses from,

    you know, Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. It’s all very similar model with a different basically funnel head, I guess you could say, or a marketing positioning. And so I decided to just dive right in, like right when I had 300 followers, which was really intimidating and I would go into rooms and tell people that like I was a clubhouse for a business coach and they would laugh at me,

    but now seven months later that has worked really well because I positioned myself very well to be somebody that people turn to for this information. But like I said, I took like about 10 years of experience growing companies, whether corporate or small business, all in my overbroad company called scalability, marketing and coaching, where I’m now taking those principles and those concepts,

    but I’m making them applicable to clubhouse specifically. Well, I love that you dive right in. Okay. So let’s just take a pause for any of our listeners. Like this is the story of growth and success. You guys, it goes with diving in, even when other people might be like, oh, what is she doing? Or who does she think she is to do that?

    So like, this is a perfect example of how you only need to focus on your vision, what, you know, you’re supposed to be doing and just like race, horse blinders on and dive fully in. So take Annabel’s experience, apply it to wherever you are, if you are afraid to die fully into something, but you know, you should be and you want to be,

    go for it. So that’s a whole entire separate podcast episode. I love that you share that. So let’s go ahead and roll into what we’re going to talk about today. So here are the problems that we know entrepreneurs experience on the app definitely burn out for sure, from being on clubhouse in the middle of December, I think is when I joined clubhouse and fashion,

    I don’t even know how many of there, a couple of thousand, maybe at the most. And it was so exciting to be on there in the beginning. And I remember like we don’t fully in, and I loved having these amazing, authentic conversations. And I know that other entrepreneurs felt the same way because basically we had been so disconnected in the world with what has happened until we’re craving these amazing conversations.

    And then I discovered something that I know you’re going to talk about today, which is the goal of professional and personal development. And I was able to literally sit at the feet of people like Myron golden and go through total masterclasses on live virtual events with people like Barry and blue. I mean, and really be in these spaces with these leaders that I otherwise never could have had an opportunity to become connected with and now become,

    you know, business professional friends with. And so it was really amazing in the beginning. But then as a mom of three kids, I owned five companies. All of a sudden I really started feeling that fatigue as well, especially as we got into our summer travel season. And I know that so many other businesses feel that way. And so it’s so important what you teach and your expertise because I love clubhouse,

    you know, we’re back on it. Jose, I think I was telling you that behind the scenes, before we started recording we’re back on it tonight, launching our regular weekly wave makers mastermind room, which is so much fun. And I’ve really missed everybody, but man alive, we have to have a strategy behind this in order. It’s like not a sprint,

    it’s a marathon for sure. Can you talk about some of the things that you have noticed are problems with businesses in having a long-term strategy for this and maybe some of the stuff that you’ve even experienced yourself and being consistent on clubhouse. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m going to tell you three places. You could spend your time on clubhouse that won’t pay your bills.

    So let’s start with that. And one big mistake that I think people make right from the beginning is not being clear about why they’re on clubhouse, what they’re there to do and who they want to be known as on clubhouse. And this is the same for every single social media network, right? If you go on social media and your purpose, there is either.

    So here’s the first one, your own personal development, although it’s great. It won’t pay your bills unless you turn it into something else and give yourself that time to implement it, your own entertainment, right? You can go on Instagram all day and take talk and watch them all day long, but they won’t pay your bills. And the last one really is something that’s more of a long-term strategy,

    which is networking, right? It’s great to network with people, but if you aren’t getting yourself positioned and your brand position to actually convert people when you’re just meeting people, it’s all fluffy. It’s all nice. You might be developing. You might feel really good. But you know, when we think about burnout and we think about business owners is that it feels really good until it really doesn’t.

    And so you start asking yourself, like, I’ve actually invested a bunch of time on this app and all of a sudden, now I’m asking myself, why did I just do that? Like, it felt really good. I was lonely. I made some friends, but now, okay, I’m six months in and I spent 20 hours a week on an app.

    What does this actually mean for me and my future? And this is the point that I think a lot of clubhouse users are coming to. And a point that I want to maybe help people avoid if they’re just getting on the app or just building a strategy around how to use it, because it’s real, right? Because here’s the thing. Unlike Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn,

    really, where you could pay someone else to actually engage for you, get in front of your audiences, you can pay ads. You can’t do that on clubhouse. It’s you in a room talking to people. Now the power of it is that when you’re in a room, talking to people, you build relationships, you build networks, you get yourself in front of prospective clients,

    but if you’re not in the right place and you’re not talking and you’re not in the right positioning, and you’re not clear about what you want to do, all of that is literally just wasting time. And you have to decide, like, there are moments of my day where I want to scroll tech talk because it’s stress relief for me, it’s fun.

    But if I do that every day, I’m not going to reach my goals. So I think what it comes down to is like to avoid burnout in the first place. What do you really want in your life? What is that driving force? What is that life that, that you want to design? And then as we kind of like get behind that,

    we can then say, okay, how can we use clubhouse to create that? And that’s what I’m really passionate about. I think that, you know, something that a lot of people don’t know is that like underneath every single thing that I do it’s to empower women, to have more decision making power, because they’re able to create and monetize the lives that they love.

    Like every single thing that I do clubhouse is just the tool that I use to do that. And so for me, that’s why I drive that message so clear. And that’s the best way to avoid burnout is know what you want, if you know what you want. It’s so easy to say, like, is the action that I’m taking right now getting me what I want.

    And then when you say, no, it’s very easy to not do that thing. So yeah, that’s what I wanted to say, Writing down your quotes and like writing them down here and I’m going to go make these quotes and put them out on it. You are so, right, right. So like, understanding why are we doing this? How does this play a role in the bigger part of this?

    And that’s why I’m so excited to have you here on this show. Because as you know, like that’s everything we talk about, it’s reverse engineering, the lifestyle, and then we build the business to get you there. So love everything you’re saying, of course, which is why I love you. So let’s talk about the ways that do make you money on clubhouse.

    And let’s kind of hone in on those business trainings. There are three primary ways that you teach entrepreneurs and small businesses to interact into function on the clubhouse app. And so can you dive into, let’s start with number one, what is the first money-making way for somebody to spend their time on this app? So it’s awareness, right? It’s building visibility around who you are.

    If nobody knows you on the app, nobody’s coming to your room is going to be very hard to then take them down the rest of the journey. This is something that I actually see a lot of people getting in the awareness trap, right? It’s very addicting. Especially for entrepreneurs. We get a little bit mixed up with like, oh, I can grow here.

    And so we come to this point where we have to decide how much exposure do I actually want before I try to then take people along a journey to actually sell something to them. And that’s also a very personal question. How much time do you have, right? How much time does your business have before you need to drive leads before you need to turn this traffic into leads and what would best serve the people that you’re generating awareness around.

    Right? If you kind of like go on a clubhouse stage and you’re talking about something that people could really use more information on that they could use more of a transformational journey, and you’re not providing that, just be rest assured that your competition will, right, but you might be the person to like create the awareness around it. You might be the person to let those people know that they have their problem,

    right? Those are like kind of two things to really think about, like how much time do you want to spend as simply building your account, building up your social media profiles. That’s more of like an influencer strategy, but also every single brand, every single business needs people to know that they exist. And so the ways that you really do that on clubhouse is by either being on other people’s stages within other people’s clubs,

    opening up rooms within other people’s clubs. And of course, opening up your own rooms with other mud squads and you know, that type of thing. And the whole goal of this awareness strategy is really to get in front of as many new people as possible and have them remember you for what you do, right? So you want to make sure that your bio set up,

    you want to make sure that you have a clear introduction. You want to make sure that the rooms that you’re going to are going to make sense with, you know, the topics that you open up when you open up a room, you know, you don’t want to be like in a music room talking about how you like create business strategy, right?

    It probably would not make as much sense, but people literally do this. Like you want to be in a place where you can get in front of an audience that needs what you do. So the first question you want to yourself is, you know, from my ideal client, from the person that I want to be on clubhouse, whether or not you’re becoming it,

    you’re it, whatever it may be, where are the people that you could serve the most sitting on clubhouse right now and showing up in those places in the biggest way possible. That is what the awareness phase looks like is getting people to really know who you are, Where are the people that you can serve the most on clubhouse right now. And so for those people that are new and they haven’t actually dove into clubhouse,

    let’s give them a hack. How would they find those people? What are some of the ways they can use the app to actually find their people that they want to be in front of? Yeah. So something really cool is happening right now on clubhouse, where they’re using interests, that’s to tie in people and clubs together. So the first thing you can do is really make sure that your interests match the interests of the ideal client that you’re trying to actually attract.

    So for business owners, when they’re setting up their clubhouse profile, I recommend that you try to show up in the places where your ideal customer is going to be. And then you can add in a couple of your own interests, but for now I think that’s very smart to make sure that that’s niche down to your category. So that clubhouse begins to recommend you in the places that matter most.

    So clubhouse did not use to recommend people based off their interests, but they’re about to, so I want everybody to set up their interests. The next is to make sure that you show up in keyword search for your industry. So whatever that ideal client might be searching for, make sure that you show up in your bio and your entire clubhouse bio is searchable.

    So just make sure that those keywords and you can use a lot of them are all there, but also reverse engineer that right? If we know that people are putting keywords in their profiles, we can also go out and find the community leaders, the thought leaders, the people that might want in our network, the people we might want to be on stages with the people who have already collected the community.

    We can go through and follow some of those people so that we start to see their rooms in our hallway. And then the last way is really using that keyword search in a similar way, but for clubs and I think clubs, they work very much like Facebook groups. There’s something that we’re all, you know, intuitively aware of, but maybe not everybody is as strategic about it.

    When they first joined, they probably think, what clubs do I want to be in. But then we’re always asking the question, which club does my ICA most likely spend time in. Right? And so those are the things that you want to ask yourself, because what this is going to do is basically open up the content and the communities that are already being created with your ideal client already in it.

    It’s going to accelerate your growth because when you show up in those places, when you’re like, okay, I want to become aware of there’s a room of like 100 to 200 people that are all within my ICA set. I’m going to get up. I’m going to talk, I’m going to build awareness. It becomes very easy, but all we have to do is make sure that we’re showing up in the right places.

    And the best way to do that is really through keyword search to start from there though, what’s really cool about clubhouse. And I don’t know if this level of visibility is going to always be available, but if you find somebody that’s a thought leader in your space, you find somebody that maybe is serving your ICA. Maybe they’re complimentary to you. You can go through their entire network.

    You can go through every club that they’re in, you can everything. So if you want to take this to the next level, the next thing to do is once you have your clubs set up, is that you go in and you see if there’s anything that you maybe didn’t think about that somebody else did. And so that’s what I would do. I think that’s the most strategic approach to really set yourself up for maximum awareness.

    Oh my gosh. That is so great. Thank you so much for all of that wisdom. Quick question. Before we go into money-making strategy, number two, because I have been off clubhouse for the last two, three months traveling, and I know this is always something we were trying to figure out before, but I’m wondering if it’s become clearer. Are there now proven better times here for those of us in the USA,

    when certain audiences are on the app, are we starting to see that like the business people are usually primarily using the app during the daytime? Are we starting to really have been on this app now for now a year, almost a year, it’s starting to see those flows in those trends and when are people active on that? Is that becoming clearer? Yeah.

    Yeah, it is. So most people are on in the morning. And the reason why is because you have, you know, India in the evening, you have Europe, you have us up. And so maximum times are really at the top and bottom of our time zone. So I’m in Pacific standard time zone. And so was clubhouse HQ. So it tends to be like anything like 8:00 AM and before,

    and like 5:00 PM. And after there seems to be a lot of people on the app. But if you think about your ideal audience, right? When are they on the app, if it’s an entrepreneur or maybe it’s during work day of your hours, the trend that I’m seeing is that, or the trend that clubhouse has talked about is that all the rooms are going to start getting bigger because fewer people are creating more people are listening.

    So I would say like the number one thing to worry about would be when is the best time for you and your business, right? So that you could do this sustainably over time in the future. And this was a big question I had for myself. Okay. What is the absolute best time that I can do this for a long time? So I had to ask myself that question,

    but on top of that, what you can do is you can go in the app and you can see how many members are on the app and in certain clubs at every single hour. And you can start to think, okay, you know, I have two different time slots I could do on a Tuesday. Let me see which one of those might have the maximum potential.

    Let me also see who is doing regular rooms during that time slot. So I can see what if I have a competitive advantage or a competitive, you know, situation here where there might be other rooms that are pulling people in the same direction for the same topic. So I think that that is a little bit individualistic, but I will say that there’s more people on the app in a global sense in the mornings and at night,

    but that might not matter for everybody. For instance, I coach people mostly in the U S right. So I’m okay with hitting people in the U S but just know that as people go back to work, you want to set yourself up for success for thinking, you know, when our people that my ideal client, if it’s somebody that’s working, when will they most likely be on a social media app?

    So those are the questions we want to ask them. Great advice. Great advice. Yeah. And that’s exactly what you were saying. So we picked Tuesday night for our wave makers mastermind room, because I know I’m usually not on an airplane. I know that sounds silly, but like, when I’m traveling to see my kids, I’m on an airplane,

    like Friday to Monday, right. I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to be there every single Tuesday night. So as we roll back into the fall, I never have to wonder about a Tuesday night because I’m always there. And so I love that you said that, and then I have so many questions for you clearly.

    Hopefully all of our listeners are getting value out of the questions. I’m asking you as well for our Australia participants. Are we starting to see more of a growth in Australian participation on clubhouse than we were in the beginning? Yeah. Yeah, we are. And I think it had to do with like more lockdowns, more like of the pandemic actually grew the user base.

    So we do think that there’s more people from Australia. I’m meeting them. They’re a little bit of an opposite time zone for me. So I don’t meet as many of them, but there’s growth in that side of the world has accelerated a lot, like all the way from India to Asia, to Australia. Europe has also grown a lot too. I think that us kind of had a strong user base before you left,

    but that side of the world, I mean, they’re, they’re creating communities and the app just continues to grow. Like it really only has like a few million people on, like the growth potential is still in the billions for the app. So it’s something to really think about. It’s still a baby. Yeah. You guys are all a drop in the bucket.

    So this is why we love clubhouse so much. You know what Annabel was saying? Like, she’s an early adopter, even you who would be on this app now would be an early adopter. So you are not late on the upswing on that at all. Thank you so much. And those were kind of very specific questions, but these are questions.

    I knew that our clients and our audience is asking, we have a huge client base in Australia and yes, it’s like three to five o’clock, you know, in the afternoon here in mountain time. When, when, when it is there tomorrow morning. And so there are some, some different times in there. Okay. So way to build your business and be productive with your time is number one awareness and everything we just talked about can fit kind of into that awareness category.

    What is the second way to make money off of clubhouse and be strategic about your time? Yeah. And these next two, I think, are things that I told you, a lot of people are getting in the awareness trap. They’re just building awareness, building awareness, building awareness. Okay. Let’s think about the human beings, right? That we’re meeting,

    we’re building relationships with and the fact that we’re going to see them again, because here’s the thing on clubhouse. We’re all clustered together. Everybody that’s interested in business development. We are in a cluster. As people follow more people in your social graph, you are going to be more visible to them, especially now. So going back to what you said,

    where this is a great time for people to be an early adopter. Yeah. Because discoverability just started right before the rest of us were kind of like, I hope you see me over here. You can’t really find me by my keywords unless you’re being super strategic, like that doesn’t exist anymore. So here’s the thing is that if you are setting yourself up to get to know people really well,

    you’re treating them well. You’re giving them a ton of value in that awareness phase. They’re going to like and want to maybe see you again. But as we know with the business buying cycle, people don’t necessarily buy from you the first day they meet from you. So I think what a lot of people need to do is nurture their audience, right?

    You are literally building a community on the app. There’s something called clubs on the app, which we talked about a little bit, but you could have your own, right? Most people when you’ve been active for like maybe a week, you could start your own club if it’s aligned with your brand even better, but that’s basically your hub, right? You can take people also,

    I just want to put this out there into a community of your own. Like maybe you have a Facebook group, something like that. You can take people, but the level of readiness for them to take that journey with you is going to depend on how you treat them and how you bring them into your world. So, one thing that I think is really important to do is through that awareness phase,

    bring people onto your email list so that they can see even more value from you. See if you can get them to take the journey over to Instagram and follow you there so that you have more touch points. These touch points are so important in like developing that trust. When you see somebody on video and you also heard their voice, you’re going to trust them a lot more.

    And also what this also informs is that I know that there’s people who are aware of me, but they don’t know me that well. And my content, I need to nurture them on clubhouse, right? I need to create rooms that maybe are not the big, bold, like huge rooms where everybody sees me that are nurturing people in specific needs. So if somebody comes up in a clubhouse room and they ask a specific question,

    I may create a room about that specific question to best serve them. If I think it’s going to, you know, serve the community that I have, because I want to nurture that community and help them with their needs and give them a chance to get to know me in a smaller setting. And so that’s really nurture is like kind of moving people along,

    getting them to like you more, giving them more resources, maybe engaging with them on social media. So you can hit them in more ways. It just depends on how robust you want to be. But at the very minimum form, it’s, you know, you might meet me in a room with other people on a stage. You might like me,

    you might follow me. Now, I’m going to take you into a container where you can really learn from me specifically, have an incredibly clear idea about who I am and know my style, know what I have to offer. And so that’s, the second part is nurture. I love that level of that. Okay. And then number three, the third way to make money,

    grow your business and be very productive and strategic of your time on clubhouse. Yeah. This is the one that almost nobody is doing and it’s conversion. It’s converting straight from the stage. So what I’ve noticed is that people can sell anything from an SLO or a very low ticket offer all the way up to something that’s a few thousand dollars. Sometimes even more from the stage,

    like you don’t even have to like get them into a fancy funnel, but if you have one, it does help support you, but it’s having those rooms and being in that position where you are literally by yourself, hosting a room. And the whole intent is to get your super fans into the room. The people who are the hottest that know you the most and basically drive them down a sales sequence.

    So that content might look like why you need an email list to build your business. Then you would sell to them like some sort of email list building service at the end of the day. But having something that’s like very coherent with the room to what you are selling and selling it directly from the stage. And in order to do that in the way that has the highest integrity,

    in my opinion is to really be the only moderator to not have any conflict between offers and to have that be a very small niche down room that, you know, like, okay, somebody came into a clubhouse room and awareness phase. They asked the question, I did a nurture room on that. And then, you know, maybe, you know,

    as I’ve, I’ve warmed them up, I’ve gotten to know them on socials. I’m now going to sell them something that answers that. But it’s me as part of the solution. And so bringing people down those journeys on clubhouse, it’s really, really working well, but people have to do it. They have to be okay with being in a room with one or two people that said,

    heck yes to them. And sometimes it’s more than that. Right. I noticed that as you grow, it’s more than that. But this conversion content is really, I think what makes or breaks businesses as being okay, sitting there and saying like, by myself, do you like me? Do you like what I have to offer? Are you interested in taking a further journey and then offering that to them in a way that’s like,

    of course of service. And so those are the three types of content to grow your business on club. Yes. Okay. So I want to give an example of that. I always try to pull the curtain back on what we do in our business. So this is a strategy that we’ve used on clubhouse since the beginning of January. So let me reverse engineer for you guys,

    because some of you guys have actually been in this strategy who are listening and we’re about to do it again. Okay. So I’m going to tell you here on the podcast, and then you will be able to go and watch us do this. Okay. So we have a masterclass. So we only hold a couple of times a year called your signature offer.

    Right? So where we teach everybody how to build out their industry, leading signature online course and program mastermind coaching program. So that is starting here in October. We were talking about that behind the scenes, right? So before that we have a challenge like creating your industry, leading offer challenge, right? What we do is we host clubhouse rooms for three weeks leading up to that on the B primary questions that are answered in the beginning parts of our masterclass and in our challenge.

    So the rooms are going to be like how to create your leading signature framework or method, you know, how to choose a signature offer. That’s right. For you, you know, is launching a course, right? For you, like all of those questions that people are asking. So that’s, I’m just telling you guys exactly how we do it,

    and you’re going to see us doing it on clubhouse here over the next couple of weeks towards the end of September and October, because that’s leading that up. And that’s exactly like Annabel was showing you that when you do this, that conversions are incredible because you’ve been able to have conversations with people. They know that, you know, what the heck you’re talking about.

    They know that you actually can, that you are proven to give them the results they’re looking for. They know that you understand their frustrations and their pain points, and you are like the golden arrow to the problem they’ve been probably trying to solve for a very long time. It’s full of integrity. It’s very straightforward. There’s nothing hidden or tricky about it.

    It just goes from a conversation to a smaller solution to our masterclass and those people that want it, they totally want it, right. They’re like, yes, please let me do this. I need this industry leading and signature program. And so that’s just sharing with you guys and just laying it all out there on the table. Exactly how we do this strategy.

    And, you know, it’s interesting that you said something in there, you know, as long as you’re okay, being on being on stage and being like the one. Totally. And I think that makes people scared. Right? I think the reason why some people get scared of that is because they aren’t so sure about their solution about their signature program and offer.

    If you aren’t sure about your solution, then, then that’s a problem we need to solve for you. Right. But I think that they are not so sure about themselves. And so that’s how they, you know, don’t want to do that. Some people that are just shy, what we have seen people do in the past is bringing in. So instead of it just being them on the stage,

    bringing in affiliates and friends or clients who have actually experienced their services, and I will have some people ask a question, I’m like, Hey, you know what, that’s a better question for, you know, Nicole or somebody else to answer it because Nicole has actually been in our class and we’re always very upfront. We sell the solution to this. We’re never,

    you know, like cryptic about it. We’re like we actually sell the solution to this. And so I just wanted to share that with you guys, as we’re talking about it. So as Annabel’s teaching you the structure of it, that you will also have like set example of it in action as well. And it does work really well. And I’m really surprised that you say that more people aren’t necessarily doing that.

    Why do you think that they aren’t doing that so much? Yeah. You know, I think it’s because they don’t have a business. Like they don’t have an offer exactly what you’re saying. They got on the app. Now they have all the awareness. They know people like them. They know they like their ideas. They probably know the problems they could solve,

    but at the end of the day, they don’t really have either that confidence or that flow. So there’s some people that like, maybe they start with, okay, you can get on a discovery call with me and I’ll try to sell you coaching. Right? Like that’s probably the level that they’re at with their funnel, but they don’t really realize that you could do a masterclass or you could have like freebies to build your email list or you could have some sort of launch sequence.

    And so I think that all of that’s really important, but at the end of the day, you have to know what it is that you’re offering people so that you can then back that up and say, okay, what’s the bridge between you knowing who I am in a clubhouse room, me actually make an offer to you and you actually buying the thing.

    Right. So people kind of need to know that bridge. And so I think that it’s a little bit like a happy surprise for many people that they grew group, they got all this awareness. They have all these people that like the thing is about a clubhouse is if people are interested in you, they’re going to come to your inbox and say, can I work with you?

    And then if you don’t have an offer, you’re like, Hmm, yes, you can. Let me just like, create something for you right now. Like, let me just, if you want that, yes, I’ll do it. But we want to get people into a model that’s really scalable, right. Something that they could do over and over again,

    just like you are like, you know, that it works, you’ve measured. It, you practice it. You know, that like if people go from clubhouse room to masterclass to challenge, they’re going to buy the product. Right. And so that’s kind of the thing that we want to build for everyone is just knowing that that conversion content will always work for you on a consistent basis because your offer matters.

    It’s something that people want. It’s something that they will take that journey on with you. And so that’s why I think it is, is that a lot of people are disliked kind of like in that development phase. And it’s totally okay. I think that’s awesome. Yeah. And we have actually had multiple clients come to us for that exact reason. Like,

    I don’t have an offer. I don’t know what I’m selling any of my signature offer. I help them out. So totally. Yeah. A hundred percent. All right. So today we talked about how to be really wise on your time, but we actually didn’t talk about the numbers of time in itself, but I know everybody’s different. So before there’s my children calling in my emergency breakthrough listeners,

    there’s another child podcast listeners calling for more lunch money, probably for our listeners that are really kind of wondering how much time do I actually need to spend on this in order for it to actually be worth my while. Is there at least a minimum time or is it a cadence or a consistency that you recommend? Yeah. Okay. So I would say that like,

    you’re probably not going to move the needle a lot if you’re not willing to spend at least four hours a week on an app and at least one of those hours being you having your own room. So I think that that’s something that’s really important. It’s a time intensive app, but here’s the other side is that the sky’s the limit with influence awareness and all of that.

    So to me, the real question is what do you actually want? Do you want to build something that’s more evergreen? When we talk about the offer, when we talk about the funnel, do you want to build something where it’s like, you can be on the, in the conversations? Do you enjoy them? Does clubhouse let you up? There’s a lot of people that are like,

    I love it. I just love it here. I just want to spend all day every day. Okay, great. Let’s build the model that lets you do that and be profitable. So that’s kind of like the question that goes to my mind. But at the same time, there’s people like Janet who does Pinterest marketing and she’s made a ton of money on the app.

    And she does her two regular rooms every single week. And in her free time outside of her business, she goes into other rooms and she creates awareness around who she is. And her funnel is really strong, but it’s a service based funnel, right? She has coaching. She has her courses. She has a little bit of a mix. She’s made a lot of money on the app to spending around four hours a week.

    So the sky’s the limit for you. If you’re somebody that has the desire to build your personal brand and build your social media, and maybe you are starting at zero and you have a lot of time use the time to grow that, build that. I think it will serve you for years to come. If you’re somebody that’s super busy, you have a great funnel already in place.

    Maybe you have a Facebook funnel or something that’s already existing. Maybe you want to add a little bit more. You want to actually use clubhouse to nurture your community or get in front of some new eyeballs or be an expert guests. That’s great position yourself for that. I really think that anytime, but I would say the minimum is around four a week.

    And I think most people could probably figure out four hours a week. Right. And it’s worth it. We love being on the app. I love the app so much and I get to meet amazing people like you. So thank you so much for being on the show. So you actually have a guide that you’re going to give to our listeners, a clubhouse productivity guide,

    just share what is in that. And then we’re going to make sure it’s in the show notes of this episode so everybody can grab it for free. Yeah. Yeah. So this guide really came out of the question of so many people say like is clubhouse worth my time. And so it’s literally your answer to that. So we go over the six different places where you can show up on clubhouse effectively.

    But then we also asked the very hard question is like, what is your ideal life and week actually like, right. Take the time to actually do the worksheet in order. I tell you my winning formula, how to use awareness, how to use, you know, nurture how to use, you know, conversion. You can do all of that,

    but none of that matters to me unless it fits into your ideal day and week. And that is going to help you to decide, okay, what are the hours that I might spend on clubhouse? Why is it worth it to me? Because I want you to define what you want. Right? What makes it worth your time to show up in a clubhouse room,

    do the scary thing, add some value, get in front of people, build your brand, do the work around clarity. Like what is it that gets you to actually do that? And then once you do that, then it’s like, okay, so what time am I going to do it like that? That’s where I want to get you. And that’s how I designed the guy Love.

    That sounds so awesome. I know our listeners really appreciate it. And I really appreciate you sharing that with everybody. This is episode number 243, and all of our listeners can find you and how to connect with you@theshownotesatsweetlifeco.com, just click on the podcast button. It’s episode number 243. But before we go, what is your clubhouse handled? So everybody can follow you.

    Yeah. At Annabel, by Han. And then if you went to follow my club, it’s now the club under clubhouse mastermind. And so you could follow me in both places and that will get you right into the content that you want to see. It has mastermind. I love that. Okay. Well we’ll for sure be jumping in your rooms from your club too.

    I appreciate your expertise and your time so much. Thank you so much. And Thank you for having me.

    Episode 239: Systems To Scale Your Online Coaching Business, Part 2 with April Beach and Rachel Cook

    Rachel Cook SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Discover your business growth phase by taking the SweetLife Entrepreneur Self Assessment

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    This is for those of you who’ve nailed your first offers and you want to scale.

    Summary:

    Predictable systems are what makes the work flow. Systems to scale, systems to grow your team, systems to manage your marketing, client facing systems, and more… 
     
    This 2-part show with systems scaling queen Racheal Cook makes understanding how, why and when to create systems within your business, simple. There was so much business IQ delivered that we broke this show up into 2 parts, so be sure to tune in to both for the full effect in your profit. In detail we discuss, scaling versus growth, the 3 systems every business needs and why you don’t need to try to do everything to create a profitable online service or consulting practice.

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Learn the difference between growth and scaling
    2. Understand why the best sales start with subtraction
    3. Gain confidence that you really don’t have to be everywhere online to be profitable

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     
     
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business, mental and entrepreneur activator, April Beach. You guys welcome back to two of the systems that scale show here on the Sweetlife entrepreneurial business podcast, we have a very special guest Rachel Cook. And if you missed episode number 238, please just pause it here.

    You can come back to this right after you listened to episode number 238, because I want to make sure you don’t miss any foundational parts of what we’re talking about today. I want to make sure you leave with a whole entire clear business picture on the systems that you need to scale your business. Today’s guest is our returning expert. Racheal Cook. She’s an award-winning business strategist who believes entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be so complicated.

    And over the last decade, she’s helped thousands of women entrepreneurs designed predictably profitable businesses without the hustle and burnout. And Rachel’s work has been featured in places like fast company, us chamber of commerce and other resources online. And she is an Amazon, Amazon bestselling author of the fire and up and focused challenge in your business sweet spot. And when you tune into last week’s episode,

    you’ll hear that I have been a huge fan of Rachel Cokes for a very long time. So this is a very special treat for me personally, to be able to bring her on today’s show so that you can learn her amazing simplified strategies to scale your business. In today’s show, we’re going to talk about the importance of following systems and creating systems for your business,

    including marketing systems, sales systems, and customer-facing user experience systems for coaches, consultants and service-based online businesses. So if you are at the point where you are trying to scale, you’re struggling to scale and you know that the systems part of it is the missing piece. Then this is the episode that you need to be paying attention to of course, partnering with last week’s episode,

    number 238 and all of the show notes and everything we’re talking about today can be found by visiting sweet life co.com and simply click on the podcast as well as all the places where you can connect with Rachel tap into Rachel’s amazing challenges. The ones that initially connected me to her over eight years ago in so many other places where you can learn from Rachel directly.

    All right, so let’s go ahead and dive into today’s show. Now let’s jump to the next area of systems that companies need to have in place to scale. Yeah, we had talked, I the earlier about, you know, each time you add a new offer to your business, you have to make sure you have a marketing system, a sales system,

    and a customer experience or a delivery system for each offer. So you almost need to do an audit of your business and figure out what are the things that you’re doing in each of those that are working and what aren’t working. Because often I find that we’re doing things because we feel like we should do them or that’s because how everyone else does it or how the industry says to do it.

    But if we pop the hood and take a look under there, we realize, oh, maybe this actually doesn’t work that great for me. So thinking about marketing, I’m always thinking through the framework I mentioned before the marketing pieces attract, engage, nurture, so attract getting it in front of brand new people. Who’ve never heard about, you don’t know who you are,

    what you do, what your brand is about. Engage is getting those people to kind of raise their hand and go, oh, I’m interested in learning a little bit more. I want to connect with you and learn more about what you talk about, what you have to offer. And then nurture is actually building the relationship and helping them to build that know like,

    and trust so that they are like, oh yeah, April is the person I want to learn from. Or April’s the person who’s going to solve this problem for me. And then I’m ready to have a conversation about what the thing is that I’m buying from you. If you don’t have a clear idea of what your strategy for each one of those is going to be,

    it tends to be throw spaghetti at the wall marketing, right? And that is the biggest waste of time. And this is where I see so many people burning themselves out. They create these ideas of all the things they think they need to do all the places they think they need to be, but nothing works together and pulls people in a singular direction.

    So for example, in my business, my number one attract strategy is doing interviews on podcasts. See, And you guys are all gonna follow her after this and eat up everything she puts Out. So interviews on podcast is my number one strategy. How did I realize it was my number one strategy? I actually went back, looked at my last 10 or 25 or a hundred clients.

    I pay attention to where they came from. And if 80% are coming from podcast interviews, then I’m going to do more podcast interviews. And I intentionally designed systems around it. And when I was able to, I hired someone whose whole role in my business is to pitch me for podcast interviews, because we know that it drives results. So we’re putting a system in place we’re tracking it.

    We’re adjusting when we realized this one thing is working really well. Once I do a podcast interview, what happens? Well, I’ve already mentioned the fired up and focused challenge, which one is one of my best performing engaged pieces of content I’ve ever created. So it’s free value where people can come get into my ecosystem and learn more about me and how I operate once they do that.

    We’re nurturing them with our podcast, promote yourself, CEO. And every week they’re getting more content along the same types of topics as the fired up and focused challenge and what we’re talking about now. So it’s all very congruent. It’s keeping people on a similar learning path. So everything is mostly audio because we know if they like podcasts and they like podcast interviews,

    and we want to make it really congruent for people to access all the content that I’m sharing. It’s all designed to travel with them. And that system is just rinse and repeat for us rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat you. Won’t see me add much complexity to that. I might do experiments here and there. We’re going to drag you on clubhouse.

    Well, And that’ll be a fun experiment. Like I am. I’m always open for experiments. When I have the bandwidth to play around with them. I find that there are certain things I could take away from my business and it would not impact the bottom line. I could go silent on Instagram and it would not change the revenue I bring into my business.

    But if I go silent on my podcast, it will absolutely change the revenue I bring into my business. Right. So you have to know what actually works for you and be able to track so that you can make those smarter decisions. And it follows that 1, 1, 1 rule, like you just need one thing in each thing and make sure it makes sense for your people.

    So that’s kind of a marketing system is what is your attract strategy? Where are you sending them? How are you engaging with them? And then what’s your nurture strategy? How can you make sure that all of those things are very symbiotic. They’re all working together in this really easy to manage ecosystem. Now, as the CEO, it doesn’t mean you have to be doing all of those things a hundred percent by yourself.

    Your goal should be to have other people who are helping you deliver those things, because the most important thing for any business is consistent marketing. If you turn off the marketing, it’s like driving your gas tank down to empty, and then hoping you’re going to go somewhere. You’re just not. So if you’re starting to feel like you’re on a content hamster wheel and you’re exhausted and you feel like I don’t have time for this stuff,

    then you had to hire some help and have team to help you with that. So I have team that helps me with every part of that. Literally the biggest part of my role in all of it is to sit right here in this chair with this big microphone and talk, everybody else handles all the other moving parts of that. All I have to do is sit down and talk,

    which makes it sustainable. So if you can answer those three things, you will have a marketing strategy that becomes scalable. And if you’re willing to keep it simple and instead focus on the quality of what you’re putting out there, instead of the quantity of places you are on, you will see amazing results. Hmm. I love that. And I think that’s important for our listeners to hear as well,

    you know, especially with so much push to, to be everywhere and do all the things. And I really, it’s just so important in, in fundamentally proven and Just think about everybody points back to, we talked about Gary V and how he’s like be everywhere. Do all the things. If you follow him long enough, you’ll realize he has a team of about 15 to 20 people who all they do is follow him around all day,

    record everything coming out of his mouth and then repurpose that into tons of content. So he is not doing that on his own. He has a massive team that is producing at that volume. And his play is as an influencer. He has to be everywhere because that is his approach is widespread messaging. That’s not everybody’s approach. So if your approach is you have a very specific topic,

    a very specific niche, a very specific person you’re trying to talk to go deep. You don’t have to be shallow and playing on the surface level, trying to reach as many people as possible. You can go deep with a smaller group. Well, And I love that you said that too. And I think that this will resonate quite a bit with our audience as well.

    Is it? You said something. I think I wrote it down here, somewhere in my, in my notes, but you said that you’d rather be, you know, incredibly significant for a smaller group of people than superficial and barely making an impact to thousands and millions. And I think that that is really an important differentiator because it is a different business model.

    And I think that maybe even starting there, if you guys are listening to this and you’re like, oh, you know, which, which approach do I really take? Listen to what Rachel said and think about what aligns with what you want to do, your significance, your impact, and frankly, your, your business model in your, your life.

    I mean, listen to the show, you guys know me, we’re always talking about building, you know, really the life we build the business, you build life. Like, what do you, what do you really want? And so building a profitable business with a small audience is done all the time again and again and again and again. And so I think that that is maybe the first step as our listeners are thinking through what you said for you guys to think about,

    you know, how does this really fit into, you know, really what I want my big picture to be, who do I really want to be in this space? And how does that align with how I see myself in my significance? And so I really appreciate that. You said that. So we talked about scaling with teams. We talked about scaling with marketing.

    I really, your simple marketing three-step system is amazing. And then the third area that you were going to share with us today is scaling through your customer experience. Yeah, yeah. That I love this too, because I feel like no one talks about customer experience. Everybody is so focused on the brand new people coming in the front door that they forget about all their clients are losing out the back door.

    And the reality is most strong, successful, sustainable businesses. It’s not about the one-time sale. It’s about the repeating sale. It’s about the lifetime customer value. And these are things that I feel like no one talks about these days. But if you look at any traditional business model, which is the world I come from, they’re always looking at who is their customer and how are they getting those people to continue,

    right. Customers. So retaining them as customers getting repeat business from them, getting rave reviews from them, getting referrals from them and just having those people continuously engage with them. And if we change it, our perspective there, instead of putting all of our effort on the front end and into putting it behind the scenes and how we take care of our clients,

    it gets a customer for life versus a customer that’s one time. And I think this is a huge differentiator for a lot of people. If you think about the research shows that it’s seven times easier to keep an existing customer than to go out there and buy a new one. Well, we know right now that there’s more noise than ever before. Ad costs are going up.

    It’s harder to break through than ever before. Our industries are becoming more saturated. They’re becoming more sophisticated. Taking care of your people is one of the simplest things that will help you to stand out. And it does not mean that it needs to be complicated or it needs to be expensive. It just needs to be thoughtful. So a huge piece of this is actually thinking through the delivery of what you’re doing.

    And this is like the bare minimum, the delivery of your promise and your product program or service needs to be thoughtfully done and not just thrown together at the last minute. And I’ve seen this happen so many times, especially in this online world where people are so focused on how big the launch is that they forget that on the back end of those launches is upwards of a 10 to 20% default or refund rate.

    And the reason that is so high across the industry is because the customer experience is terrible because there’s no follow up with those clients because they buy something. And then it’s like, thanks for your purchase. And they never hear from that person again, there’s no personal attention given. So this is one thing where we want to scale deliverability in a way that brings back the human touch to business.

    And I think we’ve gone so far in the direction of automation that it’s been to our own detriment. Like the idea of everything should be evergreen. Everything should be automated. It’s left a whole lot of people right now who are saying things like, I don’t want to buy another course, right? I didn’t open this course. I didn’t complete this course.

    I didn’t get as much value as I thought I’d get out of this. But if we do a few things differently, they would have a different opinion and a few simple, simple things. You can do one, you can continue doing the automated things like you should have some sort of email delivery reminding people to go in and use the thing. They just bought coaching them through it,

    answering questions, highlighting cool things going on in the community that is like the bare minimum that is highly scalable. But then do the things that don’t scale because the things that don’t scale or the things that are memorable Heights, this is one huge thing. We forget that some of the most amazing businesses in the world will still pick out a few people to send amazing experiences to they’re still upgrade people’s experiences.

    And that’s how we end up with these customers for life. So one of the things that we do, I mean, these are just little things. One is we actually track our clients progress through our programs. And if we see in our coaching platform that we use that they’re getting stuck, or they’re not moving forward in their plan that we’re tracking with them.

    If they’re not responding, if they’re hiding, we proactively reach out and we’re like, Hey, what’s going on? Right? And half the time they’re surprised. They’re like, hold on. How’d you know, and it’s like, well, we can tell that you haven’t logged into anything. We haven’t seen you on any calls. And so we’re concerned,

    are you okay? How can we help? And to some people, that’s all they need. They just need that little nudge. And sometimes it opens up a whole like, oh, I’m stuck or I’m having a hard time and we can get them back on track and deliver the promise of our offer. But if we let them default into overwhelm or I don’t know what to do,

    then they’ll fall off. And there’s another customer who feels less than happy about the experience they had with us, as opposed to a customer. Who’s like, oh my gosh, they actually reached out and checked in on me. Right. It’s just bringing that human approach. Right. And, you know, and even small things like you were saying, writing like a handwritten card and dropping it in the mail.

    And we were talking about this. And one of our programs is where identifying where that places, where people can, whether it’s the hardest work in the program or the part that’s not fun and doing that phone call then. And, and I think that, so it’s really interesting. Again, there’s a certain need to have a, a higher level perspective on the evolution of online business to have this conversation about,

    you know, being in this space for a good deal of time. So I actually speak about this often on the show, but just for our listeners that haven’t heard that yet. There’s an evolution of like courses like the, we’re talking about where we used to do these like huge courses and set it and forget it. And evergreen, huge launches and people ate him up and he was amazing.

    And then like 2015 came along, 17 came along and now we’re to the point where only 6% of people are completing online courses. And I love what you said, it’s doing the things that don’t scale. It’s doing the things that actually matter. Like, okay, if I’m a teacher and I’m actually trying to teach people and not just sell them into my big launch,

    what do they really need from me? And I love that you share that you guys do that because you, that those are the things that separate the oil from the water. When we’re talking about businesses that really, really delivering a transformation to their clients and their students. Yeah. And this is important if you’re delivering a transformation, you just have to know that the industry has shifted away from the automation,

    the evergreen, I know that’s what everybody’s selling right now because they made their money on it five years ago. But right now, what is getting those clients stick around. And like, we had a 90% renewal rate of our program this past year, 90% of the people who took it last year, renewed again this year. Okay. And you guys,

    Rachel has a year-long CEO program. We’re going to make sure you know about, so this isn’t like joining us for, these are people that have worked with her for a year. 90% of them are like, I want to stay with you. They want to continue. And they’re either continuing in the same program or they’re upleveling to work with my team in a higher level one-on-one way.

    And when you start looking at it from that different lens, it’s like, does it make sense for us to send a handwritten note? Yeah. Does it make sense for us to say, Hey, do you want to come to Richmond for just a small peer mastermind day? Here’s some people who live in the area, let’s just send them a quick invite.

    Heck yet, does, does it make sense that we ship out books and print planners and all these things that five years ago, people thought I was crazy when I was mailing out little bundles to my clients. And I’m like, but you don’t understand. These are the tools that I think will help them and they get it. And they’re like, it feels like Christmas because no one gets that stuff.

    So it’s not about sending a gift. That’s just like a fun thing. It’s about how can you make this experience thoughtful? How can you show people that you’re really committed to the result that you’ve promised them? Does it mean that if you see somebody struggling, you offer to jump on a quick 15 minute call. Yeah. I mean, this past year we have gone through new babies.

    We have gone through miscarriages. We have gone through divorces. We’ve gone through weddings. We have gone through movies across the country. We’ve gone through spouses, losing jobs. We went through the global pandemic. We went through a crazy election cycle. We went through all sorts of things. And at the end of the day, it’s the commitment to saying,

    you know what? As a team, it doesn’t take us a ton of extra time each week to sit down and go, Hey, who could use a little extra love and check in with our team of mentors, check in with who’s running our communities and say, who could use a little extra something from us? Do they need a little email? I’ll send video emails out to people.

    Do they need a little extra love? Do they need a reminder? Hey, we’re here for you. Those are the things that stand out compared to just feeling like another number on a list that paid, you know, a couple of thousand dollars for a program. And that program designer, celebrity, entrepreneur doesn’t know who you are, right? It’s a whole different experience.

    Does that mean every business needs to be as high touch in their approach as I am at this point, no, you don’t have to be at all. You can definitely scale up lower price point things and have a more hands-off delivery of it. But I think this is where you have to know your purpose and the work that you’re doing in the world and how you want to do it.

    There’s no right or wrong. I’m just giving a different perspective of, I would rather work in a really meaningful way. Go really deep with people have clients who work with me for a few years at a time. And then they come around and tell me the things they’ve been able to do. You know, like my husband quit his job and is working with me full time.

    I was able to take two months off this summer and the business kept making money. I was able to hire people in my team to deliver my course. And all I have to do is show up a couple times a month. Like those types of things are really exciting to me because it does give them back the freedom and the life that they really want.

    And I love how you design businesses. And that’s why I’ve followed you for so many years. All of these really, I don’t want to say common sense because they, they aren’t common unless you’ve gone through the process of seeing what else is out there. But fundamentally we’re teachers, we’re, we’re coaches, you know, we’re we’re teachers. And especially if we just compare it to like how our kids,

    third grade teachers are to them, you know, they’re doing these things are trying to figure out all the ways like to make them laugh and make them happy and make them, you know, do all these things. And granted it’s totally different situation, but as teachers and as people that people pay us money and they trust us to help them. Yeah.

    I love the way you engineer your programs. And I love the way that you explained that customer experience. So we talked about a lot, totally to break this episode up into two episodes. This might be a, two-parter Going to be a two-parter. You guys are recording it Now, not a plan, but this will be a two-parter if you know,

    I think that what is so important, what I want people to take away. In addition to all the things you should see, all the Rachel Cook quotes. I have that written down on this paper. You guys, you’re a scale is about adding and it’s not, no scale is not about adding it’s about subtracting. I can’t even read my own writing.

    What comes easiest to you is most often your greatest asset. I mean that you are gold. You’re like just gold or gold. I have like five quotes in my chicken, scratch written here on my paper. You know what I want you guys, listeners, you know, every, every show we want to give you proven processes, trainings, tactics,

    and strategies that you guys can take to the bank, but it doesn’t mean you should take every one of them, right? We have shows and all these different topics, but why I’m so excited to have Rachel here is because of the fact that if you are designing a, like, Rachel does, like I do, you know, family, how frequently we work,

    how often we work, the capacity in which we work simple is always better. And it doesn’t mean that it’s the right way for everybody, but it is very, very profitable. And it’s very tempting to make things really complex. It’s really tempting to make things complex. So I really want you guys just to like, take a deep breath as you’re listening to these now,

    two shows and put them on repeat, make sure you’re following Rachel. And the first and the first episode, I, you know, we, we sent you to go do the fire up and focus challenge. So hopefully you did that. If you’re listening to part two of this, go back and listen to part one, take a deep breath and just,

    and just be like, this is doable. This is smart business. This is taking what you were saying, traditional business and applying it to the online landscape, which not very many people do. Looking at those metrics, referrals in, you know, lifetime customer value, things that are very important to look at that again are oftentimes missed and not discussed in the shiny world of the online coaching space.

    Go back and listen to this episode of repeat, just absorb. And then we really want you guys to reflect in what aspects of what Rachel talked about today, that you could be implementing into your business because it’s not about adding it’s about taking away in the simplification in order to scale in getting away from the grind, the more, and really coming back to the key factors that are going to increase profit and decrease time and capacity is such an important,

    there’s so many lessons in gold that, that you share today. Rachel. And so I appreciate you being here so much. We’ve talked about a lot. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. You know, tell everybody, you know, in the end of this episode, day time that we’re spending together, what do you think that you know about yourself as a leader,

    through this process of what you’ve done? What do you, what do you feel like that you really love of how you grown as a CEO in this space over, you know, over how long have you been in business over a decade? For sure. Right. I mean, Yeah. I think I started my business in April of 2008. So it’s been awhile.

    It’s been awhile. I would say, you know, the biggest thing I’ve come to love about myself as a leader is that I’m continuously willing to be uncomfortable. I think as a leader, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable and to be able to sit in discomfort, which does not make leadership sound too appealing. But what happens when you’re willing to sit in the discomfort,

    when you’re willing to sit in the discomfort of coming up against your own inner critic, coming up against your own imposter syndrome, coming up against your own resistance, being willing to look at the different sides of yourself that maybe you really don’t want to look at. That’s where the leadership growth has been for me has been when I’m willing to sit in that discomfort and lean into it and push myself through it.

    Because often for me, the leadership parts that have been the hardest have been the one about the parts about surrender and letting go of control and getting out of the way and trusting that I am hiring amazing, amazing, smart, brilliant women who also have a gift. And who also have things that they’re here to leave the world with. And I’m providing them an amazing opportunity to make an impact within the scope of this container called my business.

    And if I’m just willing to continue leading into my own discomfort and stop trying to control the heck out of everything and let other people do great work, too, we’re going to do amazing things together and it’s going to be incredible, but I can only do that if I’m willing to push myself out of my own comfort zone. And right now that comfort zone is learning how to rest.

    It’s tracking my sleep. It’s taking intentional time off and not feeling like the urge to jump in and start a new, a new thing because what I really need right now is rest. And I really need time off. And sometimes as an entrepreneur and as a leader, it’s hard to really fiercely protect that thinking time, that recovery time, but it’s so true.

    The more higher up you get in your career and your journey as a leader, the more you need to protect that so that you can come back to your team and really give them everything you’ve got. Everybody’s just kind of gone nodding their head listening. Yep, yep. Exactly. Free to aware. Can besides we said it in what will now be the first part of this episode?

    I really highly encourage all of our listeners to follow you. I, like I said, I’ve done it for years. I have my team follow your stuff. You’re very, very smart. And the way you teach is very understandable. And so I appreciate you consistently showing that you have consistently shown up. And that says a lot, that says a lot.

    So, so we appreciate that. Where can people find you The best place to find me is going to be on my podcast, promote yourself to CEO. We have an episode going out every week, all about how to scale a sustainable business without the hustle and burnout. So I’d love to see you over there. And of course, we talked about the fired up and focused challenge.

    You can get the full 10 days@firedupandfocused.com it’s available on demand and absolutely gratis. So go dive in. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for all your time and, and making this a two-parter cause there was so many things. I just, anytime you, anytime you’re talking, I’m like writing it down. If I know our listeners so much appreciated getting to know you,

    if they don’t know you already as well. And so all of the show notes will be available for you guys@sweetlifeco.com, click on the podcast. We’ll have everything there, all the resources that Rachel said and how you guys can continue to follow her as well. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. I really appreciate finally getting to meet you face to face after all that you have poured into our company from your knowledge and wisdom over the years.

    Well, thank you so very much for having me. It was such a pleasure. Okay. Thank you so much for sticking with us. That was amazing. Rachel is one of my favorite people and now you know why, again, don’t hesitate to follow Rachel, reach out to her and connect with her. And of course, Rachel and I are also connecting on clubhouse live in all the places that you can find her and tap into the solution she provides can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com,

    simply click on the podcast. And thank you so much for listening to this show. It’s because of you guys that we’ve been named the top 50 moms in podcasting, and this show is going on our fifth year. Really, really appreciate you guys and appreciate you sharing the show with your friends. Have an awesome day and I’ll talk to you next week.

    Episode 238: Systems To Scale Your Online Coaching Business, Part 1 with April Beach and Racheal Cook

    Rachel Cook SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Discover your business growth phase by taking the SweetLife Entrepreneur Self Assessment

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    This is for those of you who’ve nailed your first offers and you want to scale.

    Summary:

    Predictable systems are what makes the work flow. Systems to scale, systems to grow your team, systems to manage your marketing, client facing systems, and more… 
     
    This 2-part show with systems scaling queen Racheal Cook makes understanding how, why and when to create systems within your business, simple. There was so much business IQ delivered that we broke this show up into 2 parts, so be sure to tune in to both for the full effect in your profit. In detail we discuss, scaling versus growth, the 3 systems every business needs and why you don’t need to try to do everything to create a profitable online service or consulting practice.

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Learn the difference between growth and scaling
    2. Understand why the best sales start with subtraction
    3. Gain confidence that you really don’t have to be everywhere online to be profitable

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     
     
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator a probate Back to the show and welcome to a very special two-part episode here on the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast, episodes, number 2 38 and 2 39 coming straight at you. As a matter of fact, these episodes are so good.

    I didn’t actually set out to take the value today’s guests offers and break it up into two shows, but it was so great. There was so much information and I want to make sure you have an opportunity to absorb and implement it, that we did break it into two shows for you. So welcome. If you are a new listener here, I’m April beach,

    founder of the Sweetlife company host here of the Sweetlife entrepreneurial podcast and everything we do is to help entrepreneurs design, launch and scale their business online since 2006. And we are so glad that you are here in tuning into today’s show. Today’s guest is somebody, let me be really honest that I have totally fan girl over four years. And if you know me,

    I don’t fan girl often like ever actually it takes a lot to impress me, but I totally fell hard for this one woman because of her scaling systems. When I first found her back in 2013, and I have followed learned from it admired her ever since this is Rachel Cook MBA. If you do not know her, I am super excited to be the one to be able to introduce you to her.

    She is literally a systems genius and all the way back in 2013, 14, her lead magnet guys lead magnet, it was called fired up and focused was so good that I put my entire team through her lead magnet. So let me give you a formal introduction into who Rachel is. She’s an award-winning business strategists who believes entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be so complicated over the last decade.

    She’s helped thousands of women, entrepreneurs, design, predictably, profitable businesses without the hustle in burnout. She’s the author of Amazon bestselling books fired up and focused and your business sweet spot and hosts a weekly podcast promote yourself to CEO. She’s a sought after speaker on entrepreneurship, marketing productivity, productivity. Look, I can’t even flow through that word because Rachel is so amazing.

    She’s just going to make everything so much more productive on this show. And her work has been featured by the us chamber of commerce Ford’s coaches, council, fast company, and more, and we are going to dive right into today’s because I want to give you an opportunity to truly focus in on what we’re talking about, implemented in your business and walk away on the other side,

    changed and transformed by what you applied from, what you learned today. At the end of this episode, you’re going to learn the difference between growth and scaling. You’re going to understand why the best sales starts with subtraction little puzzle there. You’re totally going to understand what I’m talking about at the end of the show. And you’re going to gain confidence that you really don’t have to be everywhere,

    online to be profitable. So all of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com. And let’s go ahead and dive in to episode number 238. All right, you guys, I am super excited to be joined by this very, very special guest. And you need to know a little bit about why this woman is so special to me. First of all,

    maybe eight years later, she never knew how special she was to me and how powerful she was to our business Intel. Like right now, this is the one person I can say that I have probably fan girl over for almost a decade in this space. And so here’s a story why, okay? She said here, I’m telling embarrassing her behind the scenes,

    but here’s the story why you guys know I’ve been in all my business for a very long time, since 2006, but inherently, I am not somebody that thrives by creating systems. And so 2013 was coming around and although we had our online offers, we didn’t have the systems in place that we really needed to scale. And I came across this amazing woman who’s here today and literally her lead magnet back in 2013 was so amazing.

    I put my entire team through it and it completely got our business organized and in place. So that’s the intro. This is literally very surreal for me to be here with this woman that I have found, because what she teaches has literally changed our business. And I know it will change your suit. Welcome to this. And we live podcast, Rachel Cook.

    I’m so glad that you, Oh my gosh, April. I think I need that little intro to just come with me for every interview and every talk that I give from now on. Thank you for having me. This is going to be a fun conversation. You are amazing. Okay. So tell everybody let’s like take it back. Was it 2013?

    Is that how long ago was, yeah, It was end of 2013, beginning of 2014 when I created the fired up and focused challenge. And it’s still around today. Yeah. Everybody, what that was and the situation, the circumstances in which you created it, because that’s what makes it even more bad-ass than it already is. Oh gosh. So the circumstances for me creating the fired up and focused challenge is I was at that point,

    it was actually going into new year’s 2014. And I had already planned this very fancy online marketing launch for my, at the time signature course, I had hired a videographer. We had done the three-part video series. I had a makeup artist, I got my hair done, all the things. And about a week before I was set to release that very professional,

    fancy looking launch, I was just getting this feeling like this. Isn’t what I want to talk about. I don’t think this is as relevant to my community right now. So I sent out an email. It was like that quiet week between Christmas and new year’s. And I was like, Hey, I’m just curious as I’m creating content for the new year,

    what is your biggest challenge when it comes to getting things done in your business? And I sent that little quick email out. I said, just hit reply. I did not realize that within a day I would have hundreds of replies. And I went through all of the responses and just saw that there were these themes coming up. And what I realized was,

    you know what? Entrepreneurs have no shortage of great ideas. We have no shortage of creativity. What we tend to have a shortage of though is follow through is the sticktuitiveness to actually implement those big ideas and to get to the other side so that we can see these goals become reality. And that’s when I decided I was going to create the fired up and focus challenge,

    because I realized where a lot of people were getting stuck wasn’t that they didn’t understand the opportunities in front of them or ideas for how they wanted to grow their business. They were simply running out of time and didn’t know how to manage your time and didn’t know how to structure their schedule. They didn’t know how to structure their team. They didn’t know how to structure much in their business.

    And unfortunately, when you hand a bunch of creative people, no structure, not much gets accomplished of really good at starting things, not so good at finishing them. So we created the fired up and focused challenge. I remember my son who was born earlier that year was a baby, which means I was up probably to one or two every morning. I was only a couple of days ahead of recording the challenge and releasing it at the time.

    It was 28 days. It’s now 10, but it became such a huge pivotal piece of work that I’ve created because it was a moment for me where I realized things that I had learned and had intuitively or, you know, implemented in my life and my business that I took for granted for how I was approaching my work and how I was approaching my business.

    Other people didn’t know those. And I think it comes back to what comes easiest to you is often your best asset, because it comes easy to you because you have mastered it. You have a level of mastery over it. And that is something a lot of times other people want and need is someone who has that level of mastery to show them how,

    or to help them do things at that level. So, yeah, so we created this challenge. It skyrocketed my business. It totally took me on a different path because up until that point, I hadn’t really been talking as much about systems and productivity and the operations and internal structure of businesses. I had been talking a lot more about just marketing and sales and I realized that marketing and sales is what draws often a lot of people in,

    because let’s face it. It’s very sexy to talk about marketing and sales, but when you have the operations in place, that’s when you actually have a scalable, sustainable business. Right. And that’s a perfect flow into what we’re going to talk about today. And really that challenge. I went through all 28 days, all of my team went through the 28 days,

    like I said, and we ate up every single bit of it. And it was amazing. And that’s exactly what we needed at that point of time as a company. Yes, we had, you know, we had the marketing down, we have the offers down, but there’s this middle place. And I can’t wait to talk about it today where,

    you know, everybody says, they want to scale. Scale is sexy, right. You know, scale is what we do. But, you know, without these things in place, it’s going to be a bottleneck for your business. And oftentimes companies fail. And like the word that you use behind the scenes that we were recording was like, they implode on themselves.

    So now this is something I’m so glad that you’re here on the show, because I don’t think that you’re saying that yeah, the marketing brings people in the marketing and the sales is what everybody wants to talk about, but what really people struggle with or the systems, the actual systems to scale. So first of all, did you ever watch that thing?

    I don’t even remember. I just was so into the fired up and focused challenge, what did you do with your, did you still want your signature program? Yeah, it was actually our best lunch ever. It was my first six-figure launch after that very first time running the challenge. But you know, it’s interesting is fast-forward I turned that challenge into a book,

    into a podcast and two signature talks it’s turned into multiple other things. The challenge continues to be one of my biggest assets and I give it away pretty freely just because I know it’s so valuable to people. Yeah. Let’s tell everybody where they can find that before we move on because listen, you guys seriously. It is absolutely amazing. Amazing. It really is.

    It’s very clear, very precise, very like pinpointed to what people need to do. So how can they Find that fired up and focused.com? You can go there and get access to the full 10 day version of the challenge and it’s available on demand. So you can go get that at any time. You guys totally go get that, especially for those of you,

    for our listeners. If you’re in phase one or two of our business growth system, if you’re a listener to, you know, our different phases. So it’s really planning really the launch or you’re in that launch phase, moving on to scale, you guys need this. So I think that’s a great asset and resource. Okay. So we have a problem.

    We globally here, you know, we have a problem. The problem is systems systems to scale systems to grow the teams systems, to manage the marketing, all of the systems that really make a well-oiled machine, whether you know, our listeners have just themselves on their team or they have a team of eight or they have a team of 80 systems are still necessary.

    So what do you feel like right now? And we’re going to dive into your most important systems to scale here. What are you seeing? It’s 20, 21. There’s a lot more online businesses now than there were, you know, back in 2013, what are you seeing now are like the biggest bottlenecks that your students are experiencing when it comes to growing their business?

    Yeah. Well, one thing when it comes to systems at scale is remembering that scale does not equal growth. They’re not words that you can just transpose and think they mean the same thing in business growth can happen where it takes just as much effort to achieve each level of growth. So you can bring in more revenue in your business by just working harder,

    putting in more hours, bringing in more and more team scale comes from economy of scale, where you’re actually having less resources produce higher results. So that’s where you’re getting to the point where the growth is more exponential with less resources, less time, less energy, less money, less team going into achieving that higher level of revenue. And I think that’s a really important discernment because oftentimes I find people think that scaling their business just means working harder,

    just means throwing more at it. And those two things couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s not about working harder. In fact, if you start talking to CEOs of businesses that are making multiple 6, 7, 8 figures, you will find that they get to the point where they prioritize their thinking time, just as much as they prioritize time that they’re in their office,

    because they know how important that time away is in order for them to show up and lead and be creative and be strategic. So it’s not about more time and energy and efforting. That’s not what scale is about. It’s also not about just throwing more at it. Scale is not about adding it’s about subtracting scale is about taking away all the excess. And this is something that I think when we’re in earlier stages of business,

    we have to try out a lot of things to find out what works. Because with each thing that we’re offering, we have to have a marketing system, a sales system, and a customer delivery and experience system in place. So for each offer, you have, it doesn’t matter if it’s working one-on-one or having an online course or having a product, you have to market it,

    sell it and then deliver it. So when you add more and more and more offers, which is often what happens for a lot of people, they they’re like, oh, I have an idea for another program. I’ll have another thing for this next thing. And what happens is each time they’re adding a new thing, they’re not adding one thing, they’re adding three.

    So they’re adding layers of complexity. And when you add layers of complexity to your business, it makes it harder for it to run efficiently. It makes it harder for you to reach economies of scale in any area. And it also makes it harder for your team because your team never knows what’s the priority. What are we focused on? Where should my time and energy be?

    What is the goal right now? Because there’s too many things going on behind the scenes in the business, cause it’s too complex. So if you want to scale, if you want economies of scale, the key really is to do less, to hone in and look at your metrics, look at your numbers, figure out what’s actually working and double down on what works and strip away anything that is extraneous to that we don’t need to just keep adding more and more and more.

    So I often see this happening in, like, let’s say in marketing, there’s always something new happening in the world of marketing, right? And so what you’ll start to see is people who, and this is one that’s easy to see what’s happening just because it’s very obvious when people are trying out lots of things, right? We see them suddenly. They’re not only on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn,

    but now they’re on Tik TOK and they’re on clubhouse and they’re doing all of these other channels. And if you try to do too many things and spread yourself too thin, it is very, very difficult to do any of them. Well. But what if you find one that you started as just an experiment like April, you found clubhouse is working really well for your business.

    Well, if clubhouse is working great, but you’re getting nothing really off of Instagram and Facebook. Yeah. Then the scalable approach would be okay. The channel that works best for us is live audio. So I’m going to strip away anything that is not aligned with live audio. And I’m going to take that time and energy and resources and apply it towards the marketing channel that is working for us instead of saying,

    oh, clubhouse is working, let’s go do Tik TOK and this and that. You know, I really, I love that you said that because one of the things that is really being spoken about so much as Omni presence of needing to be everywhere and all the channels, and it’s this old, you know, Gary V approach to crushing it. And it’s really,

    really tempting. And it does make entrepreneurs and small business owners feel like they need to be everywhere and they need to be doing everything. And so I just think that this is, so this is so fundamental to building profitable companies. And I love that. I love that you’re sharing this. I also love that you showed the difference between growth and scaling.

    We talked about that a couple of weeks ago on the podcast and actually did a clubhouse room on this. Nobody I asked when I started the room, like, do you understand the difference between growth and scaling? Not one person could define that. And so it was really interesting. So when we’re in clubhouse together talking about this episode, we should talk about that because it’s,

    it’s really, really important in that. Have you heard of the rule Of ones? The rule of ones? Yeah. So I, I didn’t come up with this. I, I heard this Program, one client, one marketing tool, one sales strategy. Yeah. That’s pretty much the approach I take is I have one core, one core strategy for each area of my business.

    And I use a framework that I teach a lot, which aligns your marketing and sales with the customer journey, where we have one attract strategy, one engaged strategy, one nurture strategy, one invite strategy, and one delight strategy. And once we, once we figure out what our primary one in each of those are, I just doubled down on those and try to avoid anything that is taking too much effort away from each of those.

    Yeah. The rule of one, I haven’t heard it that way in a long time. Yeah. All that. It’s super old and that’s why it’s like old is good, but you know, and yeah. I was wondering that. Yeah. And so, and I think, I mean, we’re not old, but when, I guess when we think about online business,

    we’ve been an online business for like we’re old on my business. People we’ve been online business for a long time. And so yeah, as you were saying that, I was like, oh yeah, this is like that rule of lens. This is really great. And it’s so smart. So when we’re talking about scaling and we’re really talking about these systems and thank you so much for sharing your method,

    if you guys should pause this episode, rewind it 20 seconds. And listen to Rachel’s method. I have her like five or six steps of whatever that was. I was genius. Let’s talk about these scaling team, scaling, marketing, you know, scaling client experience. Let’s jam on each one of those a little bit. Can you dive in and help our listeners understand when we’re talking about scaling with teams?

    What does that mean? And where can they start in this process of doing this and what are the problems I’ve shared this before on the show? My greatest weakness is delegation. I have been a terrible person to work for for years, and I have amazing people that work for me. Not because I don’t honor a value them, but because I don’t stop and think about what I’m doing to best communicate and to empower them.

    And about seven years ago, I had an amazing woman working for me who loved me enough to say, Hey, listen, I don’t want to quit. Cause I love you. But you know, you’re not good at this. You’re a terrible boss. And I knew it. I knew it, but I didn’t know. I guess it was more than seven years ago.

    Cause it was before I found the fired up. It was like 2010, 2011. And so I say this to say that I think are a lot of leaders like me who struggle in this area. At least I’m conscious about it now. And I work really, really hard at that, but it does not something that comes naturally To me. It is not something that comes naturally.

    And I think, again, as entrepreneurs, we have a lot of those double edged sword parts to our personality and our kind of mindset. It’s like, we’re really great at what we do because of this. But it’s also the thing that holds us back. So being raised by entrepreneurs as I was, I had a built-in mentor in my dad and he told me the most important lessons in leadership that I could’ve ever learned.

    And he said, your job as a business owner is to fire yourself from every job in the company. It’s to fire yourself as quickly as you can. And some people are like, well, what do you mean if I fire myself, then what am I doing? You’re being the CEO and the business owner. You’re not being the marketing director and the project manager and the assistant and the bookkeeper.

    You’re not doing all those things, but this is really hard for entrepreneurs to embrace because especially for those of us who are building our businesses from the ground up, our businesses are built on our experience and expertise and our intellectual property, our passion, the thing we care about the most, it can be so hard for us to pull ourselves out of our business.

    And when we are really bad at it, what tends to happen is we get in everyone’s way, every person who we try to hire on the team, we end up getting in their way. And that’s where they’re emailing you finally and being like, can you just get the hell out of the inbox? Because I am trying to do my job here.

    And can you just let me do my job, right? So you have to learn how to fire yourself. And this is one of the most important lessons when it comes to scaling your business is every time you bring someone new into your business, it is changing your job description as the CEO, because you’re no longer the CEO and whatever their role is that you just brought in.

    You’re eliminating again, you’re taking things off, you’re taking things off your plate. So one of the exercises I always have people do that are working with me inside of the CEO. Collective is whenever they’re bringing new people into their business, I make them rewrite their job description as CEO. Now this is an exercise that most people have never done because we go out there and rewrite job descriptions for everybody that we’re bringing on the team.

    But we never sit down and say, what is my role as the CEO of this company? What are the most important things for me to be focused on? And each person is going to be a little bit different because we all have our own different strengths as the CEO of our business, right? We all have something a little bit different to bring to the table,

    but you have to get really clear on what your role as CEO is. And when you hire people in, you have to reevaluate, okay, what is most important? So for me and the CEO of my business, my top three tasks that drive results, that I only allow myself to focus on content. So my business is built around my intellectual property.

    So I’m either creating content free or paid my clients really diving in and understanding who they are, what their needs are, what their challenges are, having a deep understanding and connection to my clients. And then connection, connection drives my business. I am not here to be an influencer and make a small impact in lots of people’s lives. I’m here to be someone who makes a big impact in fewer people’s lives.

    So I know that that connection is what drives my business. And so each time I bring somebody on my team, I’m like, okay, those tests are off my plate. What do I need to stay focused on? Is it related to these three things? If it’s not related to these three things, then it should not be where I’m spending my time and my energy.

    And that has prevented me from doing things like getting into the inbox or making graphics in Canva or editing podcasts or, you know, any of those things that we start to do when we are like itchy to get our hands back in the day-to-day of our business, you’ve got to get used to pulling yourself out of it. And a huge part of that when it comes to bringing on your team is just knowing that you have to be constantly firing yourself.

    And re-evaluating your role. And even as you reevaluate your role, you will have to be constantly asking yourself, what is my zone of genius versus my zone of excellence? Because for a lot of us, we’ve had to get really good at lots of things, but it doesn’t mean it’s what we’re best at. Like I can put together a really great slide deck.

    Is it what I am best at? No. Is that the highest and best use of my time? Absolutely not. If I am bored and I don’t know what else to do with myself, will I sit down and start getting into Canva? Absolutely. That’s my favorite way to procrastinate doing the real work that I’m supposed to be doing is to be getting into Canva And say,

    Canva black hole mine. It is, It totally is. But if I talk to my team, they’re like, well, why did you do that? Why didn’t you record something new? Why didn’t you go take some time off so that you can have that thinking space. We know that you need, why didn’t you write the first chapter of the book that you’ve been putting off for six months,

    because the canvas is easy and right there, and I’m pretty good at it. That’s why. So we have to be aware of that and really get into, as you’re growing your business, you’re pushing up against your growth edge as a CEO in your own leadership. And it is uncomfortable and it’s not always easy to sit down and do the higher level things that we know will move our business forward.

    Like sitting down and writing my book is more likely to move my business forward, then making another slide deck in Canva. But I’m more comfortable making the slide deck in canvas than I am sitting down and figuring out what do I want to say right now? Right? And when you do say it, I want to be on that team. So make sure whatever,

    whatever you put out there, I’m waiting. And I think that’s important to know too. So let’s talk about it from my perspective, everything you said is so, and you guys now know why leverage heal so much, right? And like, yes, that is exactly what is happening in my mind right now. I’m thinking the exact same thing. I do the exact same thing,

    but then they put me on perspective as somebody who’s learned from you, I need your content. And I think that, that is like sometimes I think that helps me as a CEO to think like, I’m the only one that can do this. Right. And I know that there’s somebody out there that literally needs to hear what I’m going to say, whether your books about whatever,

    raising kids or systems or whatever you write about, I don’t care because I’m going to read it because I, I appreciate everything that you say and I resonate with it. And so I think that that has been a driver for me to push through that. And I feel that there is, it’s almost like walking up a river, like upstream, like your thigh deep,

    and you’re walking up upstream and you really want to just go to the side and sit on a rock and work on canvas because it’s fun. But instead you need to get back out in the middle of that river and walk upstream in think like my husband always says, she’s like the hardest work that we do as entrepreneurs is, is that thinking it is for sure.

    Absolutely. And so I, I appreciate everything that you just said. And because I, I literally, that is me you’re is resonating and with our listeners too. I know. So this team aspect of it, where we’re talking about scaling with teams, let me ask you, how is it, how many people do you have on your team if you’re willing to share that?

    I think we’ve got about 15 right now. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we have seven, eight now and I mean, I honestly, it’s like a shared, like, that’s hard for me to help each one of them, Brad, just because of who I am as a leader. How do you pick people for your team? Like how do you know they’re the right people?

    I know we could do a whole, I think I just did an episode with this on it and somebody else, but I love asking these questions because I think it’s very important when we talk about scaling. I know that the selection of team members is a bottleneck for leaders. How do you navigate That? It is because you have to be able to not just outsource and delegate,

    you have to be able to give ownership and that’s a whole different level. And this is one of things. It does prevent a lot of people from scaling because they will hire someone to delegate the marketing or to delegate the launch process or to delegate all the onboarding their new clients. But they always end up in a bottleneck because if all you’re doing is delegating,

    it means those people are going to be coming back to you to ask questions and for decisions to be made. And if you are the only person in your organization that has clarity about where the business is going, that understands the values that you have and your purpose, and that understands your kind of internal framework for making decisions. Then you will always be the bottleneck because you will always have people coming back to you to ask a thousand things.

    They will always need things from you. So building a self managing team is like a whole nother level. Another show about that. I mean, it is, it’s a whole nother thing, but for me, when it comes time to hiring people, I mean, I have people on my team. Who’ve been with me for over 10 years now and they’ve grown with me.

    And the biggest reason why I think I’ve had so many people, I mean, I hear all the time people saying, I can’t find a great assistant. I can’t find a great project manager. I can’t find this. I can’t find that. And they’re like churning through people. And I’m like, do you have clarity on what your purpose is and your business and who you’re really trying to help and how you really want to show up and what your business stands for.

    Because if you don’t have clarity on any of those things, it doesn’t matter who you try to bring in. Because at the end of the day, you can train anybody to do just about anything from a tactical practical perspective, but you can’t train people to care about your business or about your clients or about why at any of it matters. So when it comes to hiring great people for your team,

    it takes time and you just have to know, it’s just like dating the first person you’d go out on a date with might not be the love of your life. You might have to kiss a few frogs and eventually you find the right person. And maybe sometimes you end up with somebody who’s great for a while, but then you kind of grow apart and you need to go find somebody else.

    Like it’s a relationship. So like any other relationship you have to spend time having clarity about who you are showing up as and who the ideal person is. Who’s going to be that good compliment for you in the role that you’re looking for and take your time and finding that person, just know that it’s, it might not be the first person you talk to,

    or the first person you hire. You might have to try a few different times, but if it’s a fit and you’re willing to invest in the person and in the relationship, then the delegation part of it becomes easy because they understand who you are, what you stand for and how you would make a decision about something. So they can take ownership over that.

    Thank you so much for sharing your, your perspective on that. I know our listeners are already thinking about that. The processes we’re talking about delegating the team. So I think that that was really, really helpful to share that All right. You guys, that was an amazing show. I know we cut it off there in the middle. And as I said,

    we didn’t start out this interview to actually break the show up into two episodes. But Rachel was so generous with her expertise and she delivered so many tangible things you can take right now and apply to your business. I really wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to actually do that. So make sure you tune in with us next week on episode number 239 to catch the second half of systems to scale your business.

    And again, all of the show notes, all of the resources and all of the ways that you can connect with Rachel directly can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com and simply click on the package. All right, guys, talk to you next week. Bye bye. For now.

    Episode 237: How To Grow An Online Empire Without Paid Ads – with April Beach and Lorraine Dallmeier

    Lorraine Dallmeier SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Discover your business growth phase by taking the SweetLife Entrepreneur Self Assessment

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    This is a great show for those of you who want to build a global brand or international empire without paid ads.

    Summary:

    Today we’re diving into the actual, step by step, proven process of building a global empire organically without paid ads.  Following Lorraine Dallmeier’s proven process, you’ll not only be inspired but  leave this show with tactical marketing you can apply to your brand right now, even if you have no marketing team or little marketing experience. 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Know the 6 steps to create a global empire
    2. Be inspired that little marketing skills are required to grow a loyal following 
    3. Understand the power of brand protection and how to apply this to your company
    4. Learn about “edu-tainment” and how to apply this to your content marketing 
    5. Have yet another confirmation that consistency is king

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     
     
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

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    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. Hi guys, and welcome to episode number 237. Here it is the end of July, 2021. And we are so glad you’re listening to this episode. I’m April beach host here at the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast and founder and CEO of the Sweetlife company,

    where we help entrepreneurs did not design launch and scale a business for high profit, deep impact lifestyle. Freedom today’s episode is really special. You’re going to love this guest. She is an absolute delight, and we’re talking about the actual proven step-by-step process to build a global empire. This woman did it starting only 11 years ago with a baby on her hip.

    And she is breaking down her exact formulation for how she did it without running high cost ads and really in a way that creates brand consistency and gets her message across. And so I’m very excited to introduce you to our guests today, and if you’re new to the show and you have never listened, thank you so much for tuning in. There are a lot of really amazing podcast episodes out there from different hosts all over the world.

    And I’m so appreciative that you are here hanging out with us today. All of the show notes, everything we do as a company, to help you design, launch and scale your coaching business, your consulting business, or your expert focused business can be found by visiting us@sweetlifeco.com as well as all of the show notes and all of the resources we have available for you.

    Let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode. I am pleased to introduce you to Lorraine doll Meyer. She is absolutely literally an amazing woman. You’re going to be so inspired. She’s an award-winning CEO of formula. Botanica the organic cosmetic formulation and business school, which has trained over 13,000 organic cosmetic formulators and ND beauty entrepreneurs in 177 countries. And probably counting.

    She’s voted the most influential person in natural beauty for 2020 and awarded the digital achiever of the year for the cosmetics industry by Google. Lorraine is on a mission to teach the world to formulate and in this process and you’ll hear her story. It is so cool. She’s going to break down what it was like moving from an employee role, becoming a mother,

    realizing that that isn’t what she wanted and that she just had so much more that she wanted to do. And you are going to leave this episode, understanding the exact six pieces. I should say, being six steps to her formulation. She breaks it down very, very clearly her six step formula on how she created this global empire. So the end of this episode,

    you’re going to know her exact six step formula. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the beauty industry or whatever you’re in. If you were in the education industry, if you were a coach or consultant, this is the level of business that you want to design. You’re going to walk away knowing her step-by-step process. And you’re also going to realize that you can absolutely do this yourself.

    So I’m so excited to dive in today’s episode. It is episode number 237. So all of the show notes, everything we’re talking about can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com simply click on the podcast. And this is episode number 2, 3 7. All right, let’s dive into the show. Hi everybody. I am so excited to be joined by my new friend,

    Lorraine Domar and she is going to blow your mind. You are literally going to be inspired just by the little chat that we have done behind the scenes here to get ready for what she is going to teach on this show. I am taking crazy notes and you are going to absolutely love this woman and be incredibly inspired and learn so much from this show today.

    Lorraine, welcome to the show. Can you give everybody an introduction, share who you are, how you started out and all about this amazing online empire that you have built. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me on the show April. It is amazing to be here and I can’t wait for our chat. So I’m Lorraine. I run formula Botanica,

    I’m a biologist, I’m a chartered environmentalist and I am on a mission to teach the world to formulate. So I run formula Botanica the online organic cosmetic formulation at school, and we train people how to make their own natural skincare and haircare using botanical ingredients are we are taking the world by storm with what we’re doing at the moment. It has been phenomenal.

    So I’ve been running the school for almost eight years now, I guess. And I have 40 staff. We have over 13,000 students and graduates for in 177 countries. It has been a roller coaster to get here, but it wasn’t always like that. So just to give you a short intro into how I got here, I was on maternity leave with my eldest son who will be 11 in a few weeks.

    And I decided that I couldn’t go back to my day job anymore. I had to work for myself. You know, I’d had really good jobs, but I just couldn’t handle working for other people anymore. And having listened to a few podcasts with you now, April, I think you probably heard that vaping quite well. So I decided I was going to start my own business.

    I was watching the BBC’s apprentice. I was sitting there on the sofa with breastfeeding, my son. And I like, if these idiots can do it then, so can I, so that’s, I guess where it started. And then by the time I was on my second maternity leave, I had my business up and running. I was teaching people online already.

    I had an app, I was teaching people how to make simple beauty products. And then I had the chance to actually buy formula Botanica in its infancy. It was a one woman side hustle. At that point I was, as I said, I had my second baby with me at that point. And I thought, you know what? This could be a fun hobby project.

    And then I went back from attentively for a second time and my employer has ghosted me entirely. And so I thought I got to make this work and I have, so that’s like a potted history of, of how I got to where I am today. I guess You said something to me before we were recording. You know, you said I went from being this,

    you know, mom would just a baby on my hip to having this global empire in 117, a hundred. How many different countries? It’s insane. Saudi 777 different countries, friends. Okay. This amazing woman has done this. And you literally have a formula just like you teach people how to formulate natural beauty products on their own. And I want to,

    I want you to share your mission because I think that’s incredibly important. But what you’re going to share today on the podcast is the act is the actual formula from how you went from a mom with the baby on your hip, to where you are right now. But I think it’s important to know that for people to know, like, why are you doing this?

    You shared this a bit with me before. Why are you so particularly passionate about what you teach women to do? Well, I love formulation because it takes us right back to our roots. It’s a skill that we’ve lost, that we’ve forgotten. And yet everyone used to do it. Like they’ve even found like fossilized face creams from Roman times. You know,

    this is not something new and we can all formulate. Cause formulation is fun. It’s easy, it’s empowering. And most importantly, it disrupts the mainstream beauty industry because they want you to go and buy that product for 150 years. They’ve been telling us we’re not good enough. We don’t look right. We don’t smell right. We don’t conform to that.

    Blonde stick thin what teeth person that they put, all the adverts, you know, everyone is different and we can embrace our own beauty by reclaiming that power from the beauty industry and learning how to formulate ourselves. And that is so incredibly empowering because then not only can you make your own skincare and haircare and even makeup whenever you need it. But it’s also more sustainable because the beauty industry produces over 120 billion units of packaging a year with that is just staggering.

    And most of that ends up in landfill or in our oceans. And we can do better than that. And we can do that by learning how to formulate for ourselves and making things as in when we need them. So I am on a mission to make formulation as commonplace cookery and the entire world had to do it. And thankfully the world is very receptive,

    which is a good thing. And you’re doing a very Good job out of that. You are doing an incredible job. And so thank you for sharing that. So before we even go into these six steps to how you have built this online empire in hearing these six steps, and I know our listeners after they hear them are going to be like, wow,

    I can absolutely do this as well. I want to point something out. You are so incredibly deeply fiercely fire, really passionate about what you do. And you are very clearly leading with that determination. It’s not leading with the money because you want to build an empire to take over the world. You want to change and you want to create a transformation for women and disrupt an industry that needs to be disrupted.

    So I say that. So as our listeners are listening to understand that underneath all of these things that we’re going to talk about in content marketing and all the other strategies to build literally a global empire with your online courses and your education business, that under that all is a fierce passion and conviction for what you are doing. And I think that in order to be successful,

    frankly, anything, unless you just want to make a lot of money and not have a deeply purposeful company. I believe that that’s a requirement. And so I just wanted to point that out to our listeners and our listeners and pick up on that anyway, they’d be like, wow, this, you know, this, this woman’s amazing. She loves what she does diving into,

    you know, history and, and the history of what she’s doing. So let’s transition. Let’s dive into that a little bit. How on earth did you go from this mom who was kind of working kind of decided she wanted to stay home, had an app, bought a company, having another baby to where you are now. You literally have a formula for this as well Through it.

    Well, first of all, thank you for all those lovely things you said as well. I mean, yes, you have to drive forward with that passion, but then there are various steps that as you say, anyone can do. And the first one for me and I live in a brief there, so I absolutely love this is content marketing. Now I have been a prolific content creator since I was 15 years old.

    And I badgered my parents to get the internet at the home. We were one of the first adopters of the internet where I lived. Everyone was like, why do you have the internet? I didn’t know what to write to, you know, web pages that really had anything of use for me. But I started blogging when I was 15. I started designing websites then,

    and that has stuck with me ever since. So a big, big part of what we do is putting out content and I call it edutainment, which is a slightly pretentious word. I mean, you’re mixing education entertainment, but it says what it does on the 10 basically. And so we write, we film, we record content every single week that our followers want to read,

    want to listen to what to watch. And a lot of people say to me, well, how’d, you know what to record? And I’m like, well, I go to ask people, you know, because they tell me what they want to know. And we put that content out there and that has been so, so successful for us because by showing up every week,

    it doesn’t matter if it’s raining. It doesn’t matter if I’m on holiday, it doesn’t matter. What’s happening. That content will go out. And that means that our followers become dependent on it. They want to read it. And actually as a result of that, we’ve become like a publication as well as an online school. And we get more visitors now than the many of the sort of mainstream publications in,

    on niche as well, which has been phenomenal. So let me ask you, where do you distribute the majority of your content? I know our listeners are thinking, okay, well, they’re doing this content. What are your, I know every industry is different. What are your primary social channels or content distribution channels that seem to have worked for you?

    Well, social does well for us, but I have to say the main channel has been email. I mean, it’s all in the list, right? And I’m sure everyone listening who wants to do this understands you have to have a list. And I started off at 300 people on my list. I now have 125,000 and we clean that list rigorously.

    Let me boot people off all the time because they don’t open our emails. Otherwise we’d have hundreds of thousands of peoples out there. So that is the primary outlet for content because people then sign up and they know they’re going to receive value in that inbox every single week. And that is so powerful because it means they stay subscribed as well. So you guys send a weekly email.

    Yep, absolutely. We’re thinking of making that bi-weekly, but at the moment it’s just weekly and yet then the rest goes out on social. I mean our main channels, I suppose, are Instagram. I mean, we have, we’ll have over a hundred thousand followers by the time this episode ads, which quite exciting Facebook, we have big groups on Facebook.

    I have a big networking group there with 47,000 people, which is free. So those are the main channels ready, but email first and foremost. And then, and I suppose that’s 0.2 and the sort of six step process. It’s all about the SEO as well. And I’ve only recently hired someone for the first time to do that before that it was just me writing lots of really good content,

    then hiring people to write really good content. And I’ve always believed that rather than delving into what Google says about its algorithm, the best thing you can do is to just write top notch content, make sure it’s a good length and make sure people want to keep coming back to read it basically. So, you know, one of the things you said to me behind the scenes as well before we started recording this with that,

    and I think this is important for people to know that you have been consistently hitting the pavement with content and putting content out for seven years. I think that’s important for people to know that consistency is king here. And I’d love also how you say that you clean your list. And I think people are afraid to do that as well. You know, get people that have an open things off their list.

    I think people are really afraid to do that. And I love that you said that because we want a vibrant list of people that are actually absorbing your content in and really love what you’re doing rather than a dead list. And when people really don’t, who wants to talk to people that don’t want to listen. And so I love that you said that as well,

    but I feel like one of the important things to say here about this number two is that you were just out there posting, like you said, rain or shine for seven years, and this is organic growth. You guys, we aren’t buying a hundred thousand people to end up on the reins list. This is, you know, fully putting amazing content out there that people want to absorb and organic growth.

    And so I’m really admire how hard you’ve worked at doing this. And I just want to commend you for that. People want to shortcut all the time and it’s not that you can’t be successful fast, but there is, there’s much more to the iceberg underneath the water, for Sure. Absolutely. And I’ve seen so many people sort of try to shortcut or get bored of doing it.

    And then if it doesn’t work within three months, they’re like, oh, I’ll do something else. And so many of the entrepreneurs who started in my sort of year group, I suppose, when I got going, they’re all doing something different now and I’m sitting there going why? And they’re like, I’m really impressed. You kept going with like, well,

    yeah. And look at what I’ve achieved by just plugging away at the same thing every single day. It’s been amazing. Wow. Well that alone, what a great testimony and just a great amount of encouragement. That’s exactly right. And I think that we get so afraid that maybe we’re doing the right things, or we need a confirmation faster in that trust in what you’re doing and what you’re creating and the consistency in doing it.

    And that’s a whole podcast episode on itself. So I just want to highlight that. And I just think that’s incredibly powerful. So we talked about step number one and then step number two is just really being out there consistently posting SEO, you know, really diving into that. And then step number three is one of my favorites in people. It’s not that I think that entrepreneurs don’t want to do that.

    They all do, but I don’t necessarily believe that there are many entrepreneurs that fully understand how to fiercely protect their brand. So let’s talk about number three. Yeah. So three is all about the brand and I’ve created a really, really strong brand around formula Botanica. And when I look at a lot of digital marketers online, they often bypass that step.

    They just go straight for the ads, the shortcut, as we said, and actually building that strong brand is something that has made the company so unshakeable. So rock solid that if something terrible happened to us, we would weather it because the brand is so strong. And I protect that brand fiercely. Now I have brand guidelines. I make people read them all the time.

    I, I tweak little, you know, the very fact that I’m sat here in a green top, in a green office, it’s just all part of the brand. I live in every single components of it. And that comes down to how we speak the tone we use in the emails that go out, even in our help desk, the way we support people,

    the way the courses are put together, the way we show up for events, just literally every little detail is overlooked by that brand. And people often come to me and they’re like, can I say this? And I’ll go, ah, let’s rejig it slightly. So it looks like that. And this is the reason behind it. So I’m constantly trying to educate my team as well so that they can live and breathe that with me because no one can take that away from you.

    You know, if your ads bomb or if no one comes to a website, oh, you know, if something goes horribly wrong on social media, your brand is still there. And that is a thing of beauty that I think, yeah, as you said, lots of people overlooked, but yet it’s the core components to growing an online empire. Wow.

    That is so powerful as I have my, my wave mug and my, my way of wall. And it’s what we do. If you guys are watching behind the scenes in the video, you have to, you have to go to the YouTube channel. You have to see Lorraine behind the scenes and see all her great. It’s fabulous. And this is an example of that,

    but I also love what you said with the language and the tone and the brand personality. And I think that that is so incredibly important as well. So thank you for that. I love number three. So what’s number four. What was a fourth thing? What’s a fourth step in your formulation for building this online empire. So we’ve got the content,

    we’ve got the distribution, we’ve got the brand step. Number four is all about the community. I mean, it’s the people who sits at the heart of all of this in some respects, they should be step number one, but I thought let’s walk through all of them in sequential order. So I’ve built a really strong community around formula Botanica as has my team as well.

    And these are people who we know we love, even though we have over 13,000, almost 14,000 students and graduates. We know so many of them and we get really excited by them because we know what they’re doing. You know, I have, if you’re watching the video, I have all of that products behind me. I sit here with them on my desk.

    I’m always sort of holding them up, going, oh, this is so-and-so. She lives in Denmark. And this is so and so she lives in India and you know, the community is what makes us who we are. We wouldn’t be where we are without these incredible people. And I’ve met so many of them over the years. I know their stories.

    I’ve become friends with so many of them as well. And they inspire me to do better as well, because that constantly out there changing the world, being part of this global green beauty movement that we’re spearheading and yeah, they’re helping us drive it forward. So to do that, we’ve used social media. We use Facebook groups. It sounds really simple.

    And it is in a way, and in the beginning I would be in that and I would show up all the time for our students and graduates. And that was how we built this incredible heartwarming community where are really kind and generous to each other. And that still exist today. Even though we have, I think about 10,000 students in our online classroom,

    it’s got huge, but still that, that really heartwarming aspect is that. And if someone posts and says, I’m having a bad day, you know, there are hundreds of comments from people just going, we’ve got your back. And most of the people who go through our courses and launch a brand, go, I love the courses I learnt so much.

    I can formulate, you know, you’ve empowered me, but oh my goodness, the community, I wouldn’t have got to where I am without my, my sisterhood, basically, because as you can imagine, it is mostly women who go through our courses and that has just been heartwarming and incredible to watch. So that’s step number four. And Question about that.

    You have both a free, and so we’re talking, you know, we’re talking about business modeling, restructuring for our listeners. You have both a free and paid community, Correct? Yeah. We have a big free networking group as well, which has almost 50,000 members. And that’s incredible too. And now I have a community manager, but not just that.

    We also have a whole team of people around the world, our student mentors, so that we have 24 7 coverage in our groups because otherwise, you know, it is like a groups. You have to be there to sort of support, to help, to moderate sometimes as well. And so I have staff members literally around the globe so that there is always someone on and they have a rotor.

    So they’re going through the groups all the time. And that has been incredible actually. So the community is everything to her. I love that. I love that. And Facebook makes sense, you know, the global community Facebook makes sense. And, you know, it’s when we talk about structure and tech and enabling what you want to do and the experience that that does,

    you know, it’s really completely make sense. Okay. So then number five, what is the fifth step to your formulation to building a global empire? So stage, you’ve got your ducks in a row and now you have to start really putting yourself out into the world. And so step number five is very much that I’ve made sure that we are viewed as thought leaders in our space.

    And again, that can sound like quite a pretentious word. You know, what is a thought leader? It’s someone who has an opinion, the other people readily take on board and follow. And we have that. Now people follow us because we teach them all viewpoints and all sorts of what natural means and what green beauty means and what clean beauty means.

    You know, we’ve redefined a lot of these concepts and we’re regularly tagged in social media posts where people go, I listened to this podcast from formula Botanica and I now understand that the three or four shades of natural, and I’m going to show you have made my own little infographic. And I finally understand these concepts and I’ve learned them from these guides. And we do that thought leadership through,

    I have my own podcast as well called green beauty conversations, which is all about green and sustainable beauty and the science and indie beauty. But I’m also constantly on summits, on podcasts, giving interviews, speaking to journalists, you know, I out that all the time as is my team. And that means that people view us as the people to follow because we hold opinions on things.

    We share those opinions. I make sure that they’re always balanced. They fit with the brand. They’re very sort of rational and scientific and the heartwarming and friendly and natural and people buy into that. So you have to have opinions when you’re running a business. And I see a lot of people really struggle with this because they don’t want to put themselves out there,

    but it is. Yeah. Step number five, for reason, it’s been a huge part of our growth in becoming this global empire. It is so important. And I understand that. And I, I think that there is a, there is a fear about not having everybody agree with you, but that’s also part of the destruction and the part of leadership and,

    and most leaders don’t have, you know, everybody that loves them. I mean, that’s the way it is when we’re doing works. That work, that really matters. It means it’s work, that’s different. And to do work that’s different. It means that you’re probably going against the grain on the way that the commonplace has been. And so I really love that.

    You said that. And I think that that is, that’s just very encouraging for some of our listeners to hear. Okay. And then step number six, what is this final icing on the cake to bring it all together? So following on, from what I said about putting yourself out there, now you have to go and form a network. And that means getting to know people,

    big players, small players, any players, really people who also hold opinions and who are active in your world in your sector. And we now have partnerships with NBC brands, with our graduates, with bloggers, with influences, but also with the mainstream beauty industry. You know, I have stood on major stages in front of the big players, the L’Oreals,

    the Unilevers, the Proctor and gambles, but also the indie players at the same time. And I’m trying to bring people into our world so that they understand that we’re the bridge that brings everything together. So for instance, we are, we’re the formal NDBC partner for the world’s largest cosmetic ingredients exhibition. They have 12,000 visitors a year. You know, they tour around Europe.

    It’s like going into three aircraft hangers. You know, when you go and visit these trade shows and we’re there in DVC part in that. Now I have spoken at major industry events because of a lot of the work that we’ve done and the networking that we’ve done. And because of that, that’s opened the door whereby people don’t do formula Botanica as Lorraine’s little side hustle with her baby on their hip anymore.

    They view us as a big accredited award-winning online institution. And obviously that’s all part of the seven years of just showing up every week and just putting yourself at that. But you have to make a network and you have to invest in that network and be kind and really give back because it will come back to you tenfold every single time. And that’s certainly what I’ve found over the years.

    That’s Incredible. And so let’s recap these six steps, and then I have one last question for you. So Lorraine’s formula to build a global empire, but not just any global empower you guys that really matters. It’s really, really making a change in this space are your six steps. Okay? Step number one, content creation, educate and entertain your followers at the same time.

    Step to constantly promote that content, put it at that great SEO, social media outreach, but most importantly, your list, you need one step, number three, build a strong brand that you fiercely protect and build. And you’re constantly growing it. Step number four, create a thriving and happy community. Make sure that the people around you know, that you love them because they’re your biggest assets,

    your biggest fans, they’re everything. Step number five, be viewed as a thought leader, have opinions and put those opinions out there and make sure that people buy into those opinions and hear you. And step number six, build a network and build a strong network that you pour your love and heart into because it will come back to you. Tenfold, how I Love that.

    I love that. Thank you so much for sharing all this wisdom. This is an amazing lesson. You guys hear that you are hearing and I’m taking notes and listening right along, right along with you. And so I have one last question for you. And I don’t ask this. Isn’t like a set question. I ask all the guests. I just really,

    I would love to know this answer from you. What have you learned about yourself along the way through this process? What do you believe about your, I know I didn’t even prepare you for, this is such a tough question, right? Sorry. You know, like what, what do you know and believe about yourself that only could have come through your tenacity,

    your resilience, your consistency. What have you learned about yourself in this process? That is a great question. So before I took them formula Botanica I worked all over the world. I lived in multiple countries. I worked in high-powered jobs. You know, I ran all sorts of fantastic projects, but I kept coming up against this massive glass ceiling everywhere I went.

    You’re too young. You’re too inexperienced. Lorraine. It’s too scary, too outspoken too. In your face, you voice your opinions too much. I do that. And it got to the point that it started to chip away at me because you start to internalize a lot of what you hear. And when you’re constantly told you need to tone it down,

    you need to be less outspoken. Yeah. You need to put your opinions out there less. You start to do that. And I now know that the only way I think for women to achieve true gender equality in the workplace is by building something like this for themselves and driving it forward. And I know myself that I am more confident and more able,

    and I believe in myself more than I ever have before because of the work that I’ve done here over the last seven years. And no one can take that away from me and I will never walk into a workplace ever again, where someone will tell me I’m too scary because I will eat them alive. Thank you so much for everything that you have shared.

    I know our listeners just like Marriott, we just want to eat up everything you’re giving to us. So, you know, and just absorb from you. So this is, I’m just so honored to meet you. Thank you so much for applying to be on this show and wanting to come here and share your story with this audience. It’s incredibly powerful and proven and you know,

    that’s what we, that’s what we do. We bring in experts like you, that have created their expertise through resilience and, and determination. And, and I’m just so glad that you’re here. So how can people find you? How can they connect with you? All of you join your, your formulation school. If we have listeners that want to start doing their own thing and they haven’t done it yet,

    or go and follow you to learn and watch and observe how you are building and how you’re continuing to grow your empire, where can we find you? So wherever formula botanica.com, where we have a free online organic cosmetic formulation course that anyone can take Instagram is the biggest platform for formula Botanica as well. But I am also on Instagram and on Facebook where you can follow me.

    And I talk more about the business side of things, the sustainability side of things. Cause that’s my bag. And I just want to say, thank you so much April for having this amazing podcast and for welcoming me onto it, because it’s fantastic to talk to you. And it’s a real honor to be here. It’s such A pleasure and Lorraine and I will be live in clubhouse.

    You guys. So this is episode number 237. It will be episode number 237 when it drops. So Lorraine and I are going to be here to talk to you. And you guys get to come in, ask Lorraine all of your questions, whether it’s about formulations or how she went from baby on the hip to literal global empire creator through online business.

    These steps work. This process works with consistency. And so we’re going to be live in clubhouse on July 28th at 12 o’clock Eastern time. Please come join us there. We’ll make sure all of the links to where you can connect with us in clubhouse are found in the show notes of this episode@sweetlifeco.com. Ryan, thank you so much. We really, really appreciate it.

    Thank you. It’s been awesome.

    Episode 233: Create Videos People Watch, Engage With, and Buy From – with April Beach and McCall Jones

    McCall Jones SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    GET THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO ONLINE BUSINESS MODELS, OFFERS and LIFESTYLES

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    Experts who are ready to increase sales with video. 

    Summary:

    You’re an expert, and you’re pretty incredible at what you do, but sales from your online videos aren’t exactly reflecting just how amazing you are. This means there’s a disconnect between who you truly are and how you’re showing up on video. Or there could also be some bumpy roads between how you show compassion on video, establishing your authority, or entertaining viewers long enough to stay until the call to action. Does this sound like you? 
     
    No worries my friend! McCall Jones, creator of Charisma Hacking, is here to break down her proven framework to “make strangers trust you and followers become aggressively devoted to you.” 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Know the F.A.C.E. Framework and how to apply this to your videos
    2. See the formula to pin-point your own areas of improvement
    3. Solve the disconnect between the great videos you already make, and your lack of sales

    Resources Mentioned:

     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

    You’re listening to the suede life entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, April Beach. Hey everybody. And welcome to episode number 200 in 33, we have a very special treat in store for you today. You’re Going to leave today’s episode with fully knowing how to look at your own videos,

    how you’re showing up in video and edit and change anything so that you can create an, a crazy devotion to you where people love you and increase your sales. So we’re going to dive into all of that in just a second with our guest expert today, McCall Jones, before we get started, first of all, welcome if you’ve never listened to this show before I’m April beach,

    founder of the Sweetlife company and host here at the sweet life entrepreneurial podcast. Thank you guys so much. I keep forgetting to share back with our audience. I’ve been trying to in the last couple of episodes that you guys have just voted me top 50 moms and podcasting, and I appreciate you so much that never would have happened without you turning in your votes and lifting this show up and lifting me up.

    And I appreciate it so much. So I just want to say thank you to you guys. We’ve been producing this show for about four and a half years, and if you’ve been a faithful listener here on the show, you know that the Sweetlife entrepreneurial podcast gives you business trainings from the trenches proven business trainings from decades and decades of proven frameworks systems pass and coaching to bring your business to the next level.

    We like to say that this is the podcast that other coaches would charge thousands for the information you hear on this show. And I just want to thank you so much personally, for being a listener. If you are not officially a subscribed yet, please click that subscribe button and take a screenshot and tag me in it. Take a screenshot tag at April beach life.

    And so I can know you. I can know who’s listening, and then I want to follow you back and I want to follow your business back, and then we can keep supporting you back on Instagram. So I would love to do that for you as well as if you haven’t connected with us yet. Every single week we host a live Sweetlife entrepreneur pot house podcast room on clubhouse at 12 o’clock Eastern time on Wednesdays.

    That is your time to come to me, come to our guests and ask your questions. We want to workshop with you based on the podcast trainings that we drop here on the show. So listen to the show as a drop some Monday, join us live in clubhouse on Wednesday at 12 o’clock Eastern time. And we’re there to workshop with you in order to find us on clubhouse.

    All you need to do is search my name. You can search at April beach and then click follow up and click the bell little bell next to it, to turn on notifications. And you will actually also see a schedule of rooms that I’m hosting, and you can even RSVP for those rooms to get a notification on your own calendar, as well as we always post the clubhouse calendar every single week to my Instagram,

    which is at April beach life. So lots of places for you to get connected and to get answers and to get support. We’re just not here talking to ourselves. Everything we do here is about giving you proven strategies and giving you support to take your business to the next level. And let’s go ahead and dive in and talk about what we’re talking about on this episode with our amazing,

    amazing guests. So who this episode is for first of all, if you don’t know what stage of business you’re in, just stop for a second. We actually have a self-assessment you can take, you can go to sweet life co.com forward slash quiz, and you can take a self-assessment and you can find out exactly what stage or phase of business you’re in as composed as compared,

    I should say to my lifestyle entrepreneur roadmap. And the reason why I say that is because every single one of our episodes here on the podcast are tagged to a stage of business, because I don’t want to just give you more content. We want to give you a transformation, but if you’re not ready for what we’re teaching you and talking about on today’s show,

    based on where you are in business, then go pick another episode to listen to this. That is, that means that, you know, you, aren’t in alignment with where your business is growing right now. And we want to make sure that you continually stay in alignment. So I say all of that to say that this episode is for those of you who are in phases two,

    three or four. So primarily you two and threes, but also some of you fours. So if you don’t know where you are, again, you can pause this and just open up a new window on your phone. Really quick, go to sweet life co.com forward slash quiz, or you can text the word quiz to the number 8 0 5 2 5 4 0 8 8 0. And we will send you a link to take that,

    to make sure that what you’re being taught, what we’re pouring out today aligns with something that is going to take your business to the next level, because you’re ready for it. Okay, let’s go ahead and dive in. This show is very important because you’re an expert and you’re probably really pretty incredible at what you do, but sales from your online videos.

    Aren’t maybe re exactly reflecting how incredible you are, how great your services are. This means there’s a disconnect between who you are and how you’re showing up a video. Or there could be some bumpy roads between how you show compassion on video, establishing your authority, or maybe making your videos a little bit more entertaining. So that’s what we’re solving today on the show.

    And my friend McCall Jones, creator of charisma hacking is here and she is breaking down her proven formula to solve these problems. So let me tell you whom a call is. She’s going to introduce herself a bit. So I’ll just read a little bit here to get you prepared. She’s a founder of charisma, hacky, and a set of business systems built from Hollywood tactics that make audiences notice you then obsess over you and then compulsively buy from you.

    And she goes in and she’ll share her whole entertainment story on this show. It’s fascinating. And the connection between her background in entrepreneur growth is this perfect superpower that she has is there. You’re really gonna love today’s show the secrets of charisma hacking success is in its systems and how they adapt to each entrepreneur’s personalities. McCall says we’ve cracked the code on how any entrepreneur can amplify the best parts of themselves to build a rabid fan base,

    regardless of whether they are as intense as Gary V nurturing his Bernay brown, energetic as Russell Bronson, or matter of fact is Dave Ramsey with charisma hacking clients have increased YouTube video watch times by up to 242% tripled their revenue, 20 X, their Facebook ad click-through rate, and more than anything else, finally, we’re able to connect with their audience and meaningful way and deliver their message in a way where they responded by being the best versions of themselves.

    That’s everything you get today on the show. And it is a little bit longer than most of our episodes. So I just wanted to prepare you for that. You are going to want to stay till the end. I promise you, you are those of you go getters that never leave before the end. You guys are so rad. We love you,

    but if you can’t stay too long, make sure you pause the episode and you come back to it. All right, let’s go ahead and dive in and all of the show notes and everything I mentioned previously, and everything that is going to be mentioned on the show can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com. And this is episode number 233. Let’s go Hey guys,

    welcome to episode number 233 here on the sweet left entrepreneur and business podcast. And I am joined by my new good friend. I say new good friends because yes, of course, all my listeners are laughing and be like, oh yeah, I bet you met her on clubhouse. Yes, you’re right. I’ve met McAllen clubhouse. By the way, side note,

    if you aren’t over there yet, you need to come over there and chat with us on clubhouse, because this is what it’s all about. Meeting amazing people that can pour into your business that can pour into my business and create these amazing dream teams, a business collaborations that bring us all to the next level. And I have had such a great time the last five months getting to know my friend McCall Jones.

    And I’m so excited. She’s here on the show today. So I’m so proud of be April. Yeah, guys, you got to get over to clubhouse is the place to be. We’re just making all new friends kind of hang out with us. Kim, hang out with us with that being said, one of the things that we know about clubhouses is it’s a great place to establish your superpower,

    your true superpower for how you get people results and your exact method and strategy. And you have risen to the top. It’s like the best rise to the top and clubhouse because of your very niche, amazingly charismatic, important like important superpower. So tell everybody who you are, what you do and how you got into doing what you do first. Let’s start there.

    Yeah, of course. So I own a company called charisma hacking. So with charisma hacking, we work with coaches to solve two problems in their business. Number one, people aren’t watching my videos and number two, people are watching my videos, but they are not buying. So we tap into your specific personality to make sure that you are being yourself so that you get higher value customers that stay forever.

    The way that I got into charisma have you, I’ll give you the short version. It’s a long story, but I grew up actually as a child performer. So I was performing in front of audiences of 25,000 when I was eight and 35,000 when I was 11. And I was performing on a very consistent basis, did a couple of movies in high school.

    I was in high school musical two a, which was really fun. But the whole time I have this incredible performance anxiety, that was pretty crippling. All of my worth in my mind was wrapped up in the fact that I was a performer and I had this recurring nightmare. That one day I would wake up and not be able to sing, not be able to act,

    not be able to perform and that nobody would love me anymore. And this nightmare started when I was a really little girl and it led me to, you know, long story short, it led me to creating these frameworks back then I called them checklists so that I could wake up and feel like I could teach myself how to do what I did the night before.

    I also started paying attention to what audiences paid attention to and what they cheered for louder, things like that. It all started with Donnie. Ozmen, it’s a long story, but basically I was watching him perform. He saying right before me at the Steve young benefit retirement cruise. And when I was having this panic attack backstage, basically I saw the audience interact with him in a way that I had never seen before.

    And I snuck over to the side of this room divider that they used as this backstage area. And I honestly got really envious and really jealous. And I thought to myself, I could do exactly what he’s doing. And I started to make a checklist of like, oh, what he’s doing with his hands, what he’s doing with his space, what he’s doing with his voice,

    who is he pointing at? How is he walking on the stage? And I started to log these things into this checklist. And then I realized that these checklists were going to lower my anxiety considerably. And I just made checklist for everything. After that, I realized that it’s more of a science and it led to creating checklists for acting, for dance for all different types of audiences and sizes.

    I used it for auditions. And then when I was 18, I was fired from an acting job for being too fat. They literally dismissed me from set because I had been wait between the audition and when we were actually filming, which it isn’t their right to do that. But it was very devastating to me. All of a sudden this fear of rejection became just rejection.

    And in that moment I vowed to never get on camera. Again. I knew that I never wanted to do that again. I, I didn’t want to feel the way that I was feeling in that moment. So I didn’t, and I stayed low for a couple of years. Then the really depressing thing about that. I went into this very deep depression.

    I had spent my whole life at this point, perfecting the art of being in front of people really perfecting it of, you know, all of these checklists of like, this works, this doesn’t in front of these audiences. You move this large and in front of these audiences, here’s what you’re supposed to do. And you know, an auditions. And then I wasn’t using the skills that I built over,

    you know, my entire life. And within a couple of years I had somebody come to me and asked me if I would help then with an audition. And I said, yes, under very strict circumstances, because I didn’t want to be the reason they succeeded or failed. And I told her that I would help her as long as we did it before after video.

    And if I could prove that I made a difference, then yes, we could do it again. I could take her money and we can move forward that way. And I just taught her some of the checklists that I had really never verbalized out or verbalized yet outside of, of my brain. And it worked in a very real way. The before after video was insane,

    which led to my whole first business, which was helping entertainers basically be better in front of people. And then about a year and a half ago now I went to funnel hacking live, which is a big internet marketing convention. And I just went to see my sister-in-law speak. She was speaking. I knew it was big deal for her, but I knew nothing about the internet marketing world.

    And as I looked around, I started taking notes of all these entrepreneurs that when they would come up to me, they would light up and share all of their solutions and the amazing things they were doing. And then we’d go five feet, you know, to the left or to the right. And they would be networking with other people and they would shut down and it would be a completely different person.

    And then I’d see them filming things for ads or joint ventures or logs. And they were just not great. They were not themselves. And I realized that nobody would ever hear their solutions. Nobody would ever listened to them. People on stage that I was just like, oh my gosh, they just had these techniques. I could help them. And as I looked around,

    I realized, you know, with entertainers my whole life, I had gone through, you know, the, that I’m going to change the world first as a performer was, I’m going to make people happy. Then as a coach of entertainers, I’m going to change the world by basically trying to help people be famous. And then as I sat there surrounded by people who had these incredible solutions that truly were going to change people’s lives.

    I realized that my impact on the world could be infinite because theirs was, if I empowered them to make people, listen to them, basically. So Prisma hacking it’s been going really well. And it’s really fun. All of the techniques that we use, like I said, have been proven. I’ve used them since I was eight years old. I have hundreds of before after videos proving their effectiveness.

    Yeah. That’s what brought us here. That’s I really, I don’t think I could do anything else. This is so much a part of my identity and everything that had been since I was a little girl. Wow. I have honestly, never heard that whole entire story. I never knew that that was your background actually in all the time we spent together on clubhouse.

    It’s really interesting what you say. So I don’t know if you knew this, but my middle son is a professional hip hop dancer. And so we have lived in Los Angeles before COVID a week, a month. He was there working. And interestingly enough, since COVID, and since he’s kind of not currently dancing right now, but in some of them,

    some of the, the wave that you were sharing, like about viewing yourself and how you show up. I see some of that. I’ve seen some of that in him and some of those same challenges actually. And so it is really, really fascinating to hear that. And just being like a mom in that industry, there is nothing like that industry.

    And how cool is that that absolutely a completely, perfectly positioned you to help other kinds of stars, people that have amazing solutions for businesses, but actually utilize what you know, from the entertainment space, because it’s like, what does that reminded me of gladiator of Russell Crowe when he’s like, are you not entertained? You know what I mean? I just think that’s such an amazing story and absolutely you’re the perfect person to give this solution to people.

    And you know, me being in the entrepreneur space, my whole life you’re right. I see so many people that have these amazing solutions, but yet it’s not getting out. There’s like a block of some kind and you have the gift to see that. So I’m so excited. You’re on the show today. We’re going to talk about your framework that you’ve developed,

    literally, since you were eight, this genius started following your framework that people need. And when we give people frameworks to build their own genius within that’s when we truly created something, that’s amazing. That’s going to, like you said, your one framework impacts literally a magnitude and a multitude of people. Let’s talk about what does this look like? Like,

    first of all, when people say, what is actual charisma hacking? Like what actually is the definition of charisma hacking? Let’s start there. Absolutely. So I defined charisma a little bit different and I will tell you why. The first thing that I feel like people define charisma as is like what the masses consider high energy. And they’re like, oh,

    they can command a room because they’re this very specific personality type. I do not define charisma that way with all the research that I’ve done with all the clients that I’ve worked with. And with my own experience, I defined charisma as making strangers trust you and making those who know you aggressively devoted to you, that does not matter. And it’s not dependent on your personality type.

    It only matters the level in which you communicate with people. So for me, you know, it’s exactly what you said with the entertainment industry. Everything is about rejection. You get so many more rejections than you actually get jobs, really. And you know, people who like you or dislike you and people are picking apart every single part of your personality.

    And for me, you know, growing up a lot of times, people wanted me to be something different. And because I was an actress, I could do that. I had a very specific skillset that any time somebody didn’t like a very specific part of my personality, I would change. And a lot of times they wanted me to be sexier or I was called step Ferdie.

    Once some people have told me that because I am bubbly, they thought I was stupid. Like, there’s so many different things that kind of built up this, what people want me to be, which I know a lot of times that’s how people define charisma. They say, what do people want me to be? What do they need me to be?

    And I will be that when I started charisma hacking, you know, remember I made this vow to myself that I would never get on camera again. And at funnel hacking live, I had this really interesting experience where the whole first day that I was planning, you know, creating this new business model, I was trying to figure out a way for me to do it behind the scenes.

    Cause without whole first business, I was, I was very much behind the scenes. I was pushing other people, you know, out in front of the spotlight on the stage on camera. I was the director, the producer, and I felt like I was happy and satisfied with that. So that’s what I tried to do the whole first day. I tried to figure out a way to not be on camera,

    to not be the face of my business. And I very quickly realized that that was not possible if I wanted to make the impact that I wanted to. And there was a wonderful woman who spoke at funnel hacking librarians, Heather Quizzle, she’s a friend of ours now. And I went up to compliment her on her speech and she stopped me and said,

    what do you do? And I tried on my new business title and my new business description. And she just told me it was like, she saw through me. She’s like, whatever you do, make sure the face of it, make sure that you are on every video, on every ad on everything. And it really struck me. I was like,

    oh my gosh, I’m being seen. So when I got home, I had to make this promise to myself that I made all of my clients also promise themselves that they have to be themselves 100% of the time. They cannot try to think, Hey, if I’m going to be charismatic, I need to be whatever people want me to be. Whatever people think I should be,

    whatever will attract the masses or satisfy the masses, whatever they will. Like. Instead we focus on this aggressive devote. And like I said before, that actually draws people to your specific personality. I will tell you, I am not for everyone. And a lot of people will tell you that, right? I am cooky and crazy and silly and all these.

    And I wasn’t that for a really long time. And my greatest achievement, I believe with charisma hacking is building a business around actually who I am. Because every time people watch my videos, every time they move higher in my programs or up my value ladder, they only want to get to know me more or at the very bottom. They know if I’m not for them and they leave don’t waste any time,

    I don’t spend any money marketing towards people who are not a good fit. So with this, when we put it okay, charisma hacking, right? We make people themselves and we make them not only themselves, but that version of themselves, that level of themselves is the very best person they can be in their business and for their clients. So when I said like,

    I didn’t want to be the face of my company or led me to taking all of these amazing things, all of these things and really breaking down what was important, how do we make you yourself? Because the frightening thing is you absolutely can build an audience if you are not being yourself. And that should terrify you because all of a sudden you’re creating a new problem.

    You are building an audience for a person who does not exist. If you create an alter ego and a character that you feel we’ll help you be less nervous and you just no put on your Sasha fierce face and you go on camera, you are building an audience for that person. They are investing in that version of you. That is not sustainable. You can build an audience that way,

    but you will spend time and money acquiring an audience, acquiring a customer that is not a good fit for any of your higher programs, especially as a coach, because the closer they get to you, the more they will realize. First, you create distrust. You create a sense of discomfort because they realize you’re not the same person and they leave, right.

    So instead we say, okay, you’re going to be the face of your company. You’re going to be the same 100% of the time so that we can create trust and we can make them aggressively devoted to you by being the face of your company. So I know we have a big face framework that we’re going to go through too, but that’s the core Prismic mapping.

    And that’s a scary statement to hear for some of our listeners. And I am so glad that you said that the fact that you are literally building an audience around somebody that doesn’t exist, because it isn’t you and you aren’t showing up authentically to who you are and who you’re going to be after they buy you and, you know, refunds and, you know,

    disgruntled people. I mean, that’s all part of what happens in that. And so it’s so important that you said what you said, but I also think it’s pretty sobering in the fact that you said it as clearly as you did. And so I also know that, you know, we have a lot of listeners and with the process of where they are in business,

    when you are starting to launch, I actually think that in my experience, in coaching businesses, through the development and growth phase, the launch people, surprisingly, they, yes, they deal with kind of struggling with this so much. They actually are pretty good at being themselves. It’s after they start getting a little traction, I have seen them go to this next point of saying,

    oh, but I’m not enough. Oh, now I need to become somebody different in order to actually keep getting a little bit more attraction. This is usually like in the first 18 months, sometimes I see that transition. And so I love that you said that because eventually that’s going to be a brick wall for them. And thank you so much for speaking the truth.

    And that’s what we do here on this show. And I know our listeners really want and need to hear it. So let’s talk about this face framework. What is it, why do people need it, break it down for us? Absolutely. So with the space framework, what we are really assessing is two things. So it’s your personality style or type,

    or your charisma style or type that’s one side of it. And the second side of it is the level, right? So the first thing that we establish is making sure that your personality type is right, or we can even say is true, right? And I’ll break down the different parts of your personality that we make sure that we assess the second part of that.

    It never changes your personality or charisma type never changes, but the level does as you get more competent or more, you know, at an expert level on video, these very specific things are going to level up, but who you are and your personality type doesn’t change them up super important. So we go through F a C E so F is the floor,

    or we can save a level. We can call it the Flavell level if you want. Right. And this is where we assess how competent you are or how effective you are at making sure these next three, the AC and E are the right type and what level they’re at. So Fs floor. So we’re going to assess the level a is authority.

    C is and E is entertainment. So with all of our research that we’ve done, you know, not only over the last year and a half, but obviously for the last, you know, 20 years, I have found that you have to have these three things in order to fully connect with a human. Now everybody has them within their personality. So it’s really important that on-camera,

    we make sure that all three of these things are present in very specific times. So authority makes people act, it makes people buy. And I’ll tell you how we measure that in just a second. Compassion makes people confess. It makes you safe. It makes them engage in the comments. And I’ll tell you how we measure that. And then entertainment makes people watch,

    right? So with each one of these things, we have a way to measure, not how you are in person, right? What we’re saying is we have to make sure how you are in person when you are with your very favorite person in the world is the exact same person. We call this emotional accuracy as you are on camera. So we look at these very specific types of your personality or parts of your personality.

    So authority would be like, when you’re in charge of something, when you are in your element, teaching something, how do you act when you are with your very favorite person? We have very specific ways. We measure that with compassion. It’s when you’re being empathetic with people, when you are counseling them, when they come to about hard things or when you’re being vulnerable,

    how are you sounding? Right. Voice face, body language, right? How do you sound? How do you move? How do you speak when you are actually doing those things with your favorite person in real life? And that entertainment is when you are goofing off, when you are being lighthearted, all those different things. Now, each one of these things are going to look very different for different people.

    Some people’s authority is based in strength and empowering, and it can even feel a little bit aggressive. Some people’s authority is very much based in patients and making sure that people know that they know what they’re talking about by being very patient with them, right? Compassion, same thing. Some people are like, Hey, I’m gonna kick you in the butt.

    Like we got to go. This is how I’m being compassionate. And other people are deep listeners. And they want people to feel very seen entertainment. Some people are dry, some people are bubbly. Some people are, you know, the kid in the back, coroner making jokes under his breath, right? There are different types of all of these different things.

    So making sure that you assess how you are when you’re with your very favorite person, once again, I’ll give you the ways to measure these. You say, how is my voice? Right? The most common thing that I see with my clients is when they’re on video with me and they’ll be like, oh my gosh, I’m so excited. This is so great.

    And then they get on video when we’re filming now. Like I am so excited to be here. And I’m like, okay, well, if your voice like this, we’re actually excited. And then you sound like this. When you’re on camera, when you’re excited, it’s not emotionally accurate. Right? A lot of people say the word authentic. I don’t actually like to use the word authentic for this very specific reason.

    I like systems. I like to measure. I like to be measurable and repeatable. And authenticity is just a little bit vague. Right? I know what they mean. And I, I think that that’s fantastic, but emotional accuracy with exactly what I just did with my voice, we can say, is it accurate? Or is it not? Is that actually how you sound move speed when you’re excited,

    when you’re being compassionate, when you’re being authoritative or not. Right? So we dive into all these different things. So now with the level, so once we find the type, once we find your specific personality type, then we assess the level. And as you go up in level, you are able to retain attention more. Your watch times go up.

    That’s the entertainment part. You are able to know pain points, objections, and get more comments and engagement because your compassion is higher and you are able to move people to action in very real ways, any call to action that you give them, whether it’s by opt in, watch the next video. If it’s in a course, it’s very effective. And people do what you basically tell them to do,

    right? So we have your type and then we start moving up your level. So within the authority, I’ll give you this. And then I’ll tell you a quick story. So within authority, we have five different levels. Only the top three, make you any money. The bottom two do not. The very bottom level of authority is the level of authority where,

    okay, have you guys ever watched somebody and thought they have no idea what they’re talking? Right? You watch them in your life, their stuff, or associate my business with them. It would do bad things to my business. It would not be a good idea, right? Yes. Bottom level of authority. The next level is the most interesting level because it still does not make you money,

    but this person is very likable. You watch their stuff, you share their stuff. You like route them on from the side, but you would never pay them money if you will watch them. But you’re like, oh my gosh, they’re making their dreams come true. This is so great. I would never hire them as a coach, but I would totally,

    you root for them, right? I’ll share their stuff. This is great, right? Still doesn’t make you money. You can be the most likable person in the world have the most views in the world. But if you’re missing that authority, you still aren’t making any money. The next level up from there is employee authority. What this means, we’re basically saying how much control will somebody give you of their business?

    Right? So with employee authority, somebody would give you a checklist. They would feel, and a lot of coaching clients, guys, if you are a coach and you get clients that feel like they will give you the checklist of what you’re going to do, you have employee level authority. Even if you can get them to bring you money. At first,

    it is not a good client for you, right? Because they feel if they gave you a checklist of exactly what to do, you would be competent to accomplish it. The next one is contractor level authority. This is the good, because of the glides who feel like every single thing you do is up for discussion and that they can decide which actions they want to take.

    And not because with contractor level authority, they trust you in one very specific area, but they don’t trust you with steps. They don’t trust you with direction. These are things like funnel builders, where we say, okay, you know, I am in charge, but I trust that you have expertise in building this funnel. But every single thing we do is up for discussion.

    And in the very top level of authority is coach level authority. When you get to this level of authority, not only will people pay you and see you as a coach, but when you get coaching clients, you have been given control. They do what you say. They trust your expertise in your area. It’s something where you can give them steps and direction.

    And they are ideal clients. They pay you money. And then they thank you for taking their money because you have this level of authority. They don’t question that, which is really great. So with all these things, like I said, I have not said anything about some personality types have more authority than others, right? Every single personality type, regardless if you’re introverted,

    extroverted, loud, quiet, whatever, right. Every single personality type goes through these levels. Right. And the way that we measure, if you’re being effective in this is do people move to action, right? Do they buy, or do they opt in or whatever your call to action is at the end of your video, if they don’t, you know,

    your authority is probably down in the second from bottom level, right. They probably like you, if they’re engaging with you and be like, oh my gosh, I’m being myself. Right. But they do not see the authority enough to buy from you. Go ahead. Given you so much. So yes, obviously so much to say, I’m sure our listeners are like,

    oh my gosh, okay. I’m like, I’m not taking notes by the way, side note, Macola and I are always co moderating clubhouse rooms. So just join us in a clubhouse room and, and McCall, and even expand on this for you personally as well. So this is really interesting as you were breaking it out. One of the things that I,

    from like the offer development side of it that I see as I see like level three and four, for those businesses that do like the done for you or the done with you type services, which is interesting because some coaches obviously also have another separate of their division of their company that is like the build-out or, you know, whatever that is the done for you.

    But one of the things that I coach my clients on is you’re not the person that does that. You’re the coach. Like you have to have a separate team to do that, that works with that client to actually implement that. That is a way to grow and scale your business. But I’ve never clearly, I like the way I’m communicating it has gotten through,

    but the way you communicated, even now, I’ll be able to say yes, because that’s a different level of authority in taking your coach authority and bringing it back down to the contractor or that employee authority is actually reducing your expertise and bringing you down a scale after they have paid you top dollar or whatever it is that you do. And so, as you were saying,

    all of that, that’s immediately. What I was thinking is these entrepreneurs that are listening to this show, small businesses that are listening to this show that have the coaching authority, but also this separate, oh, I’ll do it with you or I’ll do it for you after I coach you and strategize how to do that. It’s a great business model. It’s a great way to scale and grow your business.

    Like we even have a separate design division of our company, but I don’t do it. And so it’s just really interesting that you were saying that. So getting back to these coaches though, what do they do? McCall, if they are like, oh my gosh, I think I’m at this. I’m looking at my notes here. And like millions of McCall notes behind the scenes and with a pencil because my children steal all my pens.

    It’s all we have left in the house and you know, like, what is the deal? If they’re like, oh my gosh, I met this employee level. I’m not showing up with confidence. How do you get them from where they are now to that level five that I have the authority here. I know what I’m doing. You know, me,

    I’m like, I have a framework. Everybody has to have their own framework or method. How do we help them? Absolutely. Such a good question. So the very first thing that everybody needs to do is they need to make sure that their type is correct. Right. So you can be very competent. And if you’re trying to, you know,

    I don’t know how many of your listeners know who Garrett J white is, but if Garrett J white and Russell Brunson, right? These are two internet marketers in the online space. If Garrett J white and Russell Brunson, or let’s say Tony Robbins and Bernay brown, or Marie Forleo, if they tried to use the same tactics, they would work for one of them.

    And they would not work for the other one of them because they’re very different people, right? So if you look at Marie Forleo, the way that she entertains is very authentic to her, right? He uses her voice kind of like this, and she’s kind of spilling all over the place with Bernay brown. If Bernay brown, tried would be Marie Forleo,

    it would be a disaster. And Renee brown people would be like, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy, it would not only like lower her entertainment level, but it would also lower her authority level. Right? The first thing that people can sense is just a yes or a no, they just say is something off here, right? Is something off.

    So the first thing that you want to make sure that you do is we’re going to find emotional accuracy in all three of these areas. I’m going to give you a very specific thing that you can do in order to do that. Because being emotionally accurate first, then you can actually be likable, right? As soon as you’re likable, we can start to increase your authority with very specific things as well.

    So the first thing that you’re going to do, I’m going to tell you a very quick story. That’s going to make sense of how to do this. So we’re looking for emotional accuracy. So when I was a voice teacher, voice acting performance teacher, I had this wonderful nine-year-old student named Beck. He was incredible, was like a bounce off the wall,

    kind of spastic kid who seriously, it was one of my very favorite humans ever. And I had taught him singing lessons, voice lessons for the last six months. But this was the first time he wanted to try acting. It was big audition coming up. It was this all male version of Annie, which was really interesting. And he had a three line audition.

    He had a script that gave him three lines and a description of how to say it. And he memorized his script because he was a go getter. And remember, my whole first business was before or after videos. So he comes down to my studio and he’s all ready to go. And I’m taught him singing any hard to get him to stand still.

    Right. And I read this description. I like, he hands me the script. I read this description. It just says very excited, basically excited out of his mind, there’s boats in the Harbor. He’s never seen boats and it’s, it’s supposed to be really exciting for him. And I was like, oh my gosh, he’s going to nail.

    This is going to be thing. So I’m like, okay, back, we’re going to do your before video. Are you ready? He’s like, yeah, I’m totally ready. And you kind of see him, like looking off to the side to recall his script, that he’s memorized. These three lines. I was like, okay, ready? Action.

    And he goes, the boats, mama, you were holding me up to see the boats. And they were right there. I was like, yeah. Okay, cut. Let me kind of like bounce around. He’s like how’d I do all day. Well, I was like this time. I just want you to be excited about the boat. Right.

    We just need to be excited about the boats. Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. I’m like, okay, ready? Action. He’s like the boat’s mama. You were holding me up to see the boats and they were right there. I was like, okay, let’s try something different. So Becca wants you to tell me about your very favorite thing in the entire world.

    My puppy snickerdoodle it was the best puppy in the world. When you tell her to sit, she sits. And when you tell her to stay, she stayed. I was like, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to talk about snickerdoodle. We want to be just as excited as we are when we talk about snickerdoodle. But instead of saying snickerdoodle we are going to talk about the boats.

    You understand? He was like, oh yeah, totally. I was like, okay, ready? Action. Just like the bumps, mommy girl, you have to see the bumps. And I can see the bright there. And what I understood in this moment with this wonderful nine-year-old is he didn’t have any emotional context for his copy. He had memorized it,

    which for a lot of people, if they have something memorized or scripted, they feel like they are doing it well, when instead that accuracy was not there, he knew need to have something in his life that was emotionally accurate for the emotion he was supposed to be on camera. And then he just had to make the match. Right? Coolest thing.

    I’ve had people when I’ve done this in trainings before say, well, what if I’m not like that? What if I’m not bouncing off the walls? Right? What if my snickerdoodle story? Cause this is what we call them. Sounded like the boats, mama, you were holding me up to see the boats. I can see them right there. That’s perfect.

    Right? Because then the way he talked about snickerdoodle will be, you know, my puppy snickerdoodle, Snickerdoodles coolest. As long as it’s emotionally accurate, it’s effective. Doesn’t matter what personality type. It just has to be accurate, has to be emotionally accurate. So with which one of these things we want to create or have snickerdoodle stories for authority, compassion,

    and entertainment, right? These are going to be, our triggers are trigger snickerdoodle stories. So when you are authority, when you’re in charge, when you’re in your element at home, right. With your friends, when you’re giving advice and you’re making sure that they’re moving to act in the way that you tell them, right. As a parent, whatever,

    as a teacher, right? In person, what are you like when you are doing these things? Things, how do you sound? Next voice was different. It was from the boats, mama snickerdoodle to the boats, mama. Right? Don’t let that happen. If it’s snickerdoodle, then it needs to be the boats. Right? How do you move when these things are happening?

    What do you do with your arms? What do you, how do you speak if you use very formal language online, but you will never use that in person. It is not going to translate very well. Right? So you need snickerdoodle stories for all three of these things. Once you find your personality type, you also can start to charisma that other people who have the same personality type in one of these areas,

    but a higher level than you, right? Easiest way to do this, find somebody who you feel you can. I can see yourself in and pay attention to how they communicate with people, pay attention to what’s effective, take notes, see what they’re doing with their voice, with their face, with their language body, right. You can say, oh,

    I like this person. They are like me authoritatively, but there’s so much more effective. Okay. I’m going to, I’m going to charisma, hack those things. I’m going to write them down. And I’m gonna use that. If it’s somebody who has a different personality type than you, like I said, Renee brown can not be Marie Forleo. If they tried to be something different,

    it would be a disaster. Right? So find your personality type. First with authority, we have content strategy and we have charisma strategy, right? Making sure that we have emotional accuracy. And second it’s making sure that you’re hitting very specific things in your content that lead them to buy before you ever to what all of my clients called the pitch transition.

    If you’re doing it right there, shouldn’t be a transition, right? The entire time you’re pitching or telling a story, you’re establishing your authority in a very specific way so that people ask people, ask for your programs. So when you get to the call to action, it is so easy. All of a sudden they just buy. They just buy from you because you have highlighted their pain in very specific ways.

    You’ve highlighted your solution in very specific ways, right? The way that you deliver it and the content that you bring to the table, the way that you structure your own frameworks that I know April has helped you with. Cause she’s a genius. That’s what I would say. That’s where I would start. Oh my gosh, the sneaker, everybody needs a,

    here’s my notes. This is what I wrote down. That we all need a snicker doodle story for each one of these areas, authority, compassion, and entertainment. So, okay. Next question. So when we are speaking in authority, when we’re speaking in compassion, when we’re speaking with the entertainment component, I know it all comes together into one video.

    What if those different stories bring up like another part of our personality? Does that make sense? Like what if like when you’re talking, like some of this is like, this is really serious and blah, blah, blah. But then it goes into my, but like, does that make sense? Am I making sense? Like if part of when somebody is on video,

    if the flow of the stories brings them through experiencing multiple, I don’t want to say multiple personalities. Cause that’s not the right word, but multiple emotions from me or whoever’s making the video. What about that? Like we’re taking them through a wave of different types of experiences through that. Is that okay or not? Okay. So you’re a genius because that’s what we call emotional mapping.

    That is 100% of thing that we do in everything. So with very short videos, usually you will have one snickerdoodle story, right? Very short videos. You have one emotional point that needs to get across. That is one, but with longer form content, right? We have what we call an emotional map with every single part of your speech, of your life,

    of your webinar, of your ad, whatever it is, right. If it’s long form video, then you are going to map out the different emotions that people need to feel. And then if you have a script you’re going to color coordinate it, right? You’re going to color code it. If you have bullet points, you’ll color code those, right?

    So you’ll have a color for entertainment. You’ll have a color for authority. You’ll have a color for compassion. Now, every single video doesn’t have to hit all three, but your audience has to see all three in order to fully connect with you. A lot of times, compassion isn’t introduced into every single video, right? Deep compassion, vulnerability. Sometimes you don’t see that in an ad,

    right? You only see entertainment and you only see authority, right? A lot of times when we get to sales calls, because those are also on video, compassion is extra high. You need people to confess their pain to you in very specific ways. So that compassion piece needs to be higher. So as you map out your video and you map out these snickerdoodle stories,

    you’re going to emotionally map it at which points do they need to make sure that they are feeling very specific things. Now, what I have my clients do is write out, post it notes and just stick them to your computer with those snickerdoodle story triggers in them. So when you get to those stories, you can look at your trigger and you can say,

    oh right, that’s the emotionally accurate thing. The other thing I would say is before every single video, we call it a cold open versus a warm open. You have to make sure that you get into that snickerdoodle story that you get emotionally accurate before you ever push record. The analogy that I like to use is imagine you were an Olympic sprinter and you decided,

    right. You’re like I got this or you were nervous and you had a 400 rates, right? Four times around the track. And you decided that because you got it or because you were nervous, you were not going to warm up. The first lap of your race would be your warmup, right? Either your warmup is chosen for you or you choose your warmup,

    right? So you would hit your stride after that first lap, after you’ve warmed up. Same thing with video. So many people push record. And then they’re like, well, five minutes into the video, I really get to be myself or like eight minutes into the video. All of a sudden I hit my stride. It’s because you are not in an emotionally accurate place before you hit record.

    Instead you push record. And then you’re like, hello everybody. I’m going to try to do this right. 30 to 45 seconds before your video starts, before you push record, before you start a clubhouse room, before you start your podcast, before you start whatever, speak out loud, your snickerdoodle story. But we turn it into an I M phrase,

    if your snickerdoodle story is all about, okay. Yeah, my entertainment, oh, that is silly. Right? Then you say, I am silly. I am silly. Right? Whatever this snickerdoodle story puts you in the frame of mind to write voice-based body language, right? You say, I am silly. I am silly until you get to the point where it is emotionally accurate and say other things out loud as well.

    If it’s authoritative and you’re like, I am empowering. I am empowering. So then when you start your video, you’re not like, hi guys, I’m here. You’re like, hi guys. I’m here. And here’s what I’m going to do. I’m an emotionally accurate person. Who’s being authoritative right now. Instead of having to warm up, having that time and losing people at the beginning of your videos.

    So you have a snickerdoodle story for each one of them. You map out those points. If it’s a long form video. And before you ever start those videos, you warm up, you do a warm, open 30 to 45 seconds before you get in that emotionally accurate place that we practiced with those snickerdoodle stories. So that it’s effective from the time you push record.

    Amazing. You guys, this is so much more McCall, just poured so much more into us. And we discussed before we started recording that she was going to talk about on this show. So as usual you have shown up and delivered and supported our listeners and you are freaking amazing. It’s just, it’s super unique in what you do. And I love that you have found your stride and your super power that is so different from everybody else’s out there.

    And it’s such a pleasure to work with you and to know you and do fun collaboration stuff with you. It’s just, it’s just always a blast. And I appreciate you so much. So this is ton of great information, and I know our listeners are going to go and really start applying the actionable steps that we talked about here. But like we have tomorrow’s next level entrepreneurs to listen to this show.

    People hone in here because they want to know that they’re getting trusted business advice, not just anything it’s really proven and trusted by us. And so we also have people that are action takers here, where they know if this is something that you guys know that you suck at this, that this is something that it is like, this has been it everywhere else in your business.

    You might be nailing or maybe you’re even not there, but you keep trying and trying and trying. And there’s just something off about the way you’re showing up. Then I want them to make sure that you guys know how to connect with McCall. In addition to our clubhouse rooms, in addition to the places where I would highly, highly recommend that you follow McCall and clubhouse,

    and that you do join our rooms, because we talk about these things, she’s goes in there and workshops it, all these things and helps. But like what would be the first step for somebody who is thinking, Hey, listen, I am really struggling with showing up authentically. I have tried. I want to be myself. I want to be true to myself.

    It’s deep rooted. I really want to be what I know that I am to my people, but I can’t figure out how, how do they work with you to start going through that process? Yes. The first thing that I want to be very clear on is most of my clients. So yes, absolutely showing up authentically. We work on that,

    but a lot of my clients feel like they rock on video, but their sales are not great. Right? They’re like, I am very likable. I am myself, but I am not selling right. Or they are rock stars. 90% of my clients speak in front of audiences of hundreds, of thousands of people in person. But for some reason can’t sell on video,

    right. Something doesn’t translate. So the way that you guys can work with me. I know that April’s going to put all of the links in the show notes that you guys can check out all the things, but I felt like the very best thing that you can do. I have a free thing for you. It’s charisma vault.com on charisma vault.com. I break down five days a week on Facebook live,

    and then I put them into this vault different personalities using my charisma hacking tactics. So you can see people of all different personalities, all different levels broken down using these tactics so that you can find those people who have the same type of different levels@charismavault.com. When you sign up, you get an email that literally says, be my friend. And if you want to work with me,

    you book a call. When that comes through to be my friend and we can bond and you can hire me as a coach and do all the things you also will get the free thing. No, you signed up, you get access to every single episode. There was like 120 episodes in there separated by different people, different personality types, different video types,

    whether you’re wanting to do ads, whether you’re wanting to do Facebook lives, YouTube webinars, live presentations on stage. Any of those things, they’re all broken into different categories and really, really easy to find. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. That is incredible. Charisma, vault.com. You guys. All right, Ms. McCall, we really appreciate you.

    Thank you so much for your wisdom and pouring into our guests today on the show. Super pleasure. Hey guys, such a great episode. I love that McCall was here and she spent so much time with us today. Again, all the show notes and everything we talked about can be found by visiting sweet life co.com clicking on podcast. And this is episode number 233.

    Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Please take a screenshot of this episode, tag me at April beach life and tag McCall Jones in it. And let us know your favorite part of this episode and how you’re going to apply her charisma hacking formula. I can tell you right now, I literally have two pages of notes from everything we talked about and I get to hang out with a McCall all the time.

    And I learned so much on today’s show and I really trust that you did as well. Thank you so much for tuning in here on this sweet life entrepreneur podcast and sharing this episode with your friends. We really, really Appreciate you. You guys have an awesome week and I will talk to you again.

    Episode 231: Getting Over The Fear of Hiring – with April Beach and Theresa Loe

    Theresa Loe SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Join us live in Clubhouse and bring Theresa your questions! 
    June 16, 2021 12:00 ET
    Follow the SweetLife Entrepreneurs™ Club to get the notification and exclusive room access 

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    This is a great show for entrepreneurs and who are ready to grow to the next level.

    Summary:

    You know you need help. You’ve been doing most of the work in your business and it’s time to move your valuable time to the CEO role. To do so, you need a team, or at least one person to begin your delegation process. But you haven’t moved to take action for a variety of reasons but they primarily all come down to mindset. And, you’re probably thinking one of these thoughts: 
     
    “I can’t afford to hire help.”
    “I’m uncertain of which role to hire first” 
    “I don’t have systems in place yet to delegate to someone else”
     
    If you’re thinking one of these things, you’re not alone. You should already know these are very common issues for many leaders… or we would not dedicate a whole show to discuss it. You’re in good company, but let’s get you into the right company with next level leaders who know how to manage their high-value time, delegate tasks to others, and give you the steps to find the right people to bring on board. 
     
    In this show, Theresa Loe, founder of streamlinedandscaled.com, talks you through proven solutions to overcome hiring hurdles so we can take your business from 6 to 7 figures. 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Know the most important mind shift you must make – and by doing so, everything falls into place
    2. Know how to hire the right person, not just any person with a skills

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate Friends. Thanks for tuning. In this episode, you are listening to this sweet life entrepreneur and business podcast. As my friend, Alexa, so beautifully introduced in our intro for this show. I’m April beach,

    the host here on the sweet life podcast. And thank you so much for being listeners big announcement. I can’t believe I’ve been forgetting to tell you guys this for the last, actually couple of weeks on the show, I was just named one of the top 50 moms in podcasting. And I just want to say, thank you so much to all of you guys,

    because you are the ones that made that happen. So many of you voted so many of you voted for me and voted for this show. And I just wanted to say, thank you so much. I appreciate you guys so very much for being honored out of all the moms to be in the top 50 in podcasting, you know, this isn’t a moms podcast,

    but having somebody recognize that it is hard to be a mom and run the businesses that we do and produce a show, especially for so many years consistently. I just want to share that with you guys and share with you. It’s all because of you. And I just thank you so very much. So just had to take a moment to appreciate all of the listeners here on the show.

    This is episode number 231, as I said, and today’s guest is somebody who’s going to really help you get over the issues that may be in your way from scaling and growing your business to the next level. Today, we are talking about getting over your fear of hiring people. So first of all, let’s talk about why the heck this is a fear.

    What is the deal? What is the matter with us? Here’s the issue as an entrepreneur, we have amazing ideas in our mind. And I’m saying, we, because this is definitely me. You guys, I have struggled with management over the years. It’s not my strength. I have had to work very hard to learn, to become a better leader and manager and delegator.

    And so we have all these ideas in our head and we think it’s so much easier. It’s so much faster if we just do it ourselves, but I’m going to tell you that. And I learned this the hard way your business is not going to get to the next level until you know how to create systems delegate. And most importantly, find the right people find the right people.

    You know, you need help. You have probably been doing most of the work in your business, and it’s definitely time to move your value time. Your dollar, your time is high is worth higher dollar, and we need to move you to that CEO role and to do so. You need a team or at least one person to begin your delegation process.

    But if you haven’t moved yourself out of a mindset blockages to the place of taking action for a variety of different reasons and you know, that it’s time to do so then this particular episode is definitely one that you want to hang out and listen to. You might be saying things to yourself, like I can’t afford to hire help, or I’m uncertain of exactly who to hire and what role they should fill,

    or you might be thinking, wow, I don’t even know how to help them onboard. I don’t have any systems in place. This is not just a beginner, entrepreneurial problem friends. We have so many clients that we can’t scale you guys into higher level online services until your delegation is in place until it’s not going to be a bottleneck. When we bring more clients into your business with higher level amazing programs and offers,

    this is a problem that my multiple six figure clients face as well. It definitely something, as I said, that I have struggled with over the years and I’ve had to force myself to work through and you’ll hear a little bit of kind of some of my struggles and some of the things I do behind the scenes when we talk about this episode. So if you’re thinking about these things,

    you are not alone. That is why we are recording a podcast this week about it. So let me go ahead and introduce you to our guest expert today. Her name is Theresa LOE and Theresa is a leadership and business coach for overworked entrepreneurs. She helps them streamline their operations to build self-managed teams so they can finally get their time back in scale with ease Theresa guides,

    people through that sticky transition from wearing all the hats. Raise your hand if that’s where you are right now, to just wearing the most important, how to evolve the CEO in the visionary hat. Nobody else can wear that hat, but we can help you get some of the tasks off your plate with other perfect people. And Theresa specializes in cultivating small,

    but mighty teams for online course, creators, coaches and other creatives. She’s amazing. And we’re going to be diving into all of this today here on the show. In addition, as you know, now, Theresa is going to be live with us on Wednesday, June the 16th, taking your team building questions in clubhouse. So join us under our club for this podcast.

    It’s called sweet life entrepreneurs, of course, and join us at 12 o’clock Eastern time on June the 16th, 2021. If you’re listening to this show live this week, and we’re going to roll up our sleeves with you. And so what we’re talking about here on the show, then we take it on to clubhouse and we workshop it with you. That’s what we do here on the podcast to really make sure that you are getting implementation for the business strategies here on the show that you know,

    you can’t take to the bank. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode with Theresa Lowe.<inaudible> Hi everybody. And welcome to episode number 231. My friend Theresa LOE is with us today. And you guys are in for a huge tree, especially if you are to the point where, you know, you’re ready to grow, but you felt like you have this bottleneck.

    And the bottleneck is, is that, you know, you can’t do everything. You know, you need to hire help, but there are some fears around that and I can personally attest to these feelings. So I’m so excited that Theresa LOE is here today to help you streamline and scale your business by growing your team by overcoming these fears, Theresa, welcome to the show.

    Will you please share everybody your background and a bit about you and how this became your area of expertise? Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. So what I do is I help people, entrepreneurs who are overworked, they’re stressed, they’re stretched to the limits. I help them streamline the back end of their business so that they can get their time back.

    But also I help them build self-managed teams. And it doesn’t matter if you are just starting out or you are multi-six multi seven multi-age you always want to have your team be self-managed so that you’re not doing all the managing and you can, instead of wearing all the hats, you’re just wearing the most important hat, which is the CEO hat. And so I work with people at different levels because the sooner you can start this the better.

    And the way I got into this was I was a co-executive TV producer for nine years for the top organic gardening show on PBS. And as the co-executive TV producer, it’s what we would call in the digital industry and integrator or a chief operational officer. So I was second in command and I had to run multiple episodes at the same time. So it was a very project management heavy,

    but at the same time, I had to have teams filming around the country and they all had to be completely self-managed. They had to understand what their jobs were. They had to be able to get all the episodes out the door, which is like little mini launches in our world of digital marketing. And so when I started my own business, six years ago,

    it took off really rapidly because I started getting a team right away. And as I started coaching other people in the industry, I realized that team was one of the things that was holding people back, though. We all start out with our laptop and a dream, and we start out doing all the things and wearing all the hats. Well, the sooner you can bring in a supportive team and not just anyone but a self-managed team,

    and you can have everything streamlined and clean on the backend that allows you to scale. So I help businesses scale with ease by streamlining and having self-managed team. Wow. And you’re right. I mean, I can imagine just the thought when you said that of all these little mini launches just gave me like a little like, oh my gosh, that sounds,

    that sounds terrible. To me, 96, We did 26 episodes a season. So it was A lot. Oh my goodness. So you’re constantly living in this mode of like getting this produced, making sure our systems are streamlined and that people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing at each phase along the way. And I can only imagine how many different moving parts that that would take.

    Yes. So you and your history, your experience, your expertise coming into online business totally makes sense. Why you can see things that most online entrepreneurs can’t in a way that it can make it completely easier. And I imagine really simplified compared to your project plans that you were managing and what you were doing. So one of the things that oftentimes we run into with new businesses is the fact that they either don’t know when it’s time to hire,

    or they think that it might not be time to hire, but they’re really dealing with some mindset issues around hiring. And we talked about this a little bit behind the scenes and how I personally struggled with this for a very long time. But talk to us about what are some of these mental blocks? What is the mindset of an entrepreneur who’s ready to scale?

    Absolutely. And before I even dive into that, sometimes like what you said, how do people know that they’re ready? So let me just address that. You know, that it’s time to get help when you are stretched too thin, you’re overworking, or you’re sacrificing yourself for the business. You’re sacrificing your time, your health, your marriage time with your family,

    your weekends, your evenings. We all have these ups and downs in our business where it might grow. And we have little moments of that. But when it goes on for long periods of time, that’s when you absolutely need to get more support and structure in your business because you didn’t start the business to be working 18 hour days. That was not your goal or your dream.

    And yet we can get stuck there because we don’t know how to fix this. And one of the things like you said, it’s a mindset issue. And I should also probably say right off the bat, that it doesn’t matter what level we’re going to be talking about, what the different things are that you can do in your business to get help. But it doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out,

    there are different ways to hire. So you can hire someone overseas. If you are really strapped on money, you can hire a virtual assistant that’s part time. It can be a working mom who maybe used to work in corporate and has incredible skills, but when her kids are in school or go back to school and aren’t, she’s no longer homeschooling, then she was going to be looking for something that she can do in those other hours.

    And so you can bring in someone part-time, but it can also mean when you are a multi-six multi seven multi-asset that you’re bringing in a full-time employee. So what we’re going to talk about here happens at all levels. So the first thing that happens with most people is they get stuck in a solo preneur mindset, and it doesn’t matter how much money you’re bringing in.

    You can get stuck thinking too small. And so what I mean by that is that they’ll say to themselves, when my business gets to the next level, then I will bring in the next help that I need in my business. And then my business will allow me to be a higher level CEO. And what I want you to do is flip the script on that.

    The truth is that you’re never going to feel ready to take it to the next level that doesn’t just magically happen when you wake up. So you have to start thinking differently. You have to step into your future self and start making strategic decisions. And so the truth is that when you start acting and making decisions as a CEO, then that means you would realize that you need to bring in help.

    And that is actually what gets your business to the next level. So rather than just waiting for the next level to happen and then bringing in help, you need to bring in help to get to the next level. Can you Say that again? Yeah. Say that again. This is really please, as you’re listening to this, you guys are, you know,

    hit, rewind on this or just hit pause Theresa. I want you to say that again in the reason why this hits home for me and I, I just appreciate it so much learning from you on the show as our listeners are learning right now is because I literally have on a whiteboard. I have my very own little whiteboard of what I’m eating each day and today’s intentions and kind of little notes to myself.

    But on that whiteboard, just like two weeks ago, I put on there for my things I need to do each day was millionaire mindset. And I realized this. So I have built a 7, 6, 7 figure business in the past. But this company that we’re working with right now, the Sweetlife company is on our way to seven figures consistently. And I realized that this was,

    I was not having that mindset. You guys, this is so important. And since I wrote this on the board, like Theresa is saying, and I’ll go and look at what I’m eating every day. And my goals, my workout plans, it’s all right there. That’s what I wrote. And I think that people think, oh, well, that’s just like a weird note thing,

    a weird mindset thing, but it has shifted my activity significantly in my business over the last couple of weeks. So can you say that again? So people hear that. Absolutely. So what we’re talking about here is the be, do have model. And that means that you need to be the CEO of your future and do activities that they would be doing in order to have what your goals are,

    your business that you want. Right? So people go, okay, well, how do I do that? Here’s a real, simple thing. Every single morning. When you’re looking at your list, I want you to ask yourself your, to do list. I’m talking about when you’re looking at your to-do list, I want you to ask yourself, what does my business need from me today?

    Who do I need to be today? And which activities on this long list are going to get me to the next level that I’m trying to get to, rather than working in those smaller activities, those things that you could actually hire out for it makes you realize that you’re spending a lot of time in the mundane and not in the 20% that moves your business forward.

    In fact, you’re so busy. You have like a 1% little sliver that you’re trying to fit. All those CEO activities in and the rest of your day is taken up with other things. So that’s why I started with this one. You want to be the CEO of your future. And so everything that you do needs to be aligned with that so that you can reach your goal.

    Yes, Yes, yes. And you should see my notes behind the scenes. You guys like a million million Teresa low notes already from this episode. And I think that, you know, people look to strategies, they look to benchmarks to accomplish. They look to be able to check off this list when in fact doing exactly, as you say is going to then reverse engineer what those activities are each day.

    And it’s just such a powerful thing. So I just wanted to pause there for a second. It’s a good one. Okay. Like this is not like, woo you guys. This is like, this is a set solid strategy. That is very important. And I can personally attest to it. So what’s next after we do that. So another belief that can hold people back,

    because we want to hit people from all different angles. Maybe that was it. Maybe they were waiting because they’re waiting for their business. A lot of times we’ll say, and this is probably the most common one. They’ll say I can’t afford to hire anyone. Right. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. You might say, I can’t afford to hire the next person or a high level person.

    And so the analogy I like to give here is if I were to come to you April and I were to say, I’m going to open a hotel and I just want to tell you all about it. And you’re like, cool. Tell me all about the hotel. And I said, well, I am going to be the person who checks people in at the front desk.

    And then I’m going to help everyone carry their luggage up to their room. I’m going to be the maid. I’m going to do the cleaning. And then when they come back down, I’m going to be at the restaurant and I’m going to take their order. And I’m going to cook the food and deliver the food and then run back out to the front desk for the next person.

    You would think I was a nut. And you’d say, you can’t do all those things well, and you can’t grow. And yet that’s what we do in our businesses, because we started with just us. And we were doing all the things and we kept getting spread thinner and thinner and thinner. So when you’re saying, I can’t afford to hire a team,

    what you’re really saying is that you aren’t putting yourself first and you don’t want to grow. And what I want you to do is realize that there are different ways to hire at different levels. So if you are just starting out, you can hire someone part-time. If you already have a business, then you can hire someone who is virtual, but maybe works more hours.

    And if you’re at a higher level, you can bring in someone as an employee. But the truth is that you can always hire. It’s a matter of finding the right person for the right seat to do the right things so that you’re not wasting your time or your money. And we’re going to talk more about that as we go through the other ones.

    Great. Thank you for that. And that’s a great analogy. So after this is established, right, we’ve established that you absolutely cannot grow without help. And this is very important. And certainly there are, some of you are listening who want to be solopreneurs. And this episode probably is not for you when you are ready to grow this, isn’t it.

    These are important strategies. So what comes next, Theresa, after we have gotten over these mindset hurdles that we’ve discussed so far, Right? So then the another thing that can hold you back is that you’ll say, well, good. People are hard to find. So let’s talk about that piece right there. Because if you are holding yourself back, because you think you can’t like,

    okay, maybe I understand that I will never feel ready. Maybe I understand that I need to hire, but I don’t even know where to start in hiring. And what I want people to understand is that there are good people out there. The trick is that you have to hire the right person by looking at character over resume. So a lot of people teach how to go out and hire,

    and they’ll tell you to put a post out a job listing, and then you bring in the person and you’re just looking at their resume to see if they have experienced. And I actually teach hiring in a very different way. I want people to be really, really clear on the type of person that they want to bring in. And I’m talking about character,

    what type of person do they need to be? Because even if you only have a team of one other person besides you, you’re building something here. So you want to start doing that right out of the gate. And as you get bigger, you want everyone on your team to have a certain character level. So when I’m hiring, I’m looking at character because the truth is that if I can get someone who’s a go getter,

    a problem solver, they’re excited about my work. They’re excited about my mission. I can teach them anything. They don’t even have to have the experience on their resume. So when you are going through the hiring process, be looking for the type of person who can grow with you and can learn, even if they don’t have experience, if you just feel right about them,

    because they’re like pumped and excited, then you were hiring more to character than to resume. Hmm. That’s such a good point. And that is, that’s how I hire is with, with an established skillset. But one of the greatest things that I, if I can just share for those of you guys who are listening, one of the greatest things that I have,

    I decided to do about 10 years ago, when hiring was, I decided to hire people that wanted to see their future in my business as well, could see their own, what, anything they’d life they wanted to build the time they wanted to be working, the kind of work that they were fired up. And although it might not have been the actual activity that they wanted yet,

    what was really helpful and how we’ve grown. Our teams is listening to them, trying to figure out what they want to do. What are their big, huge moonshots? What are their dreams and how can they accomplish those dreams underneath our brand. And I think that that’s why we have had a team who’s worked with us for so long is because of that now definitely skill set as well.

    But then I will also pay to have the right people trained in this skill set. So I’ll pay to have the right people in my team learn a skillset that I want them to have, even if they were just totally clueless, because it’s more about the person Kelly Buckner who’s our director of operations is that she is like my dream COO. And I just don’t know where I’d be without her,

    but the things she’s doing, don’t always align with her biggest dream, but she knows her biggest dream is within the future of our company. And so just wanting to kind of add that in there, as it is an example, for those of you guys who are listening. Yeah. Having lifelong learners is one of our core values. So we do the same thing.

    I have had different members go through courses so that they could get up to speed and it’s a game changer and they feel even more committed to you because now you are helping them grow as a person. So we’re all about growth and stepping into a bigger you. And sometimes someone on my team will find a course and they’re like, I really think this would be helpful.

    I would love to take it. And I’m all for it. I will pay for them to take that class. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And, and I think that what we’re talking about is the future of culture of small and micro sized businesses. And it really is true that so many people look for the skillset we’re in clubhouse rooms.

    You and I both are in clubhouse rooms all the time where people are talking about how do I hire and how do I do this? And how do I do that? And they’re getting great advice. Like, we’ll go to this and search for this skillset, but I love a warhead, the conversation we’re having here too, because you can have a person who’s really great at something,

    but doesn’t fit into the culture in the future. And, and I think the hardest thing, and I’ll just share kind of this fear since we’re talking about the fears of hiring, one of the hardest things that I had to deal with before I really started hiring for the right person, rather than the skillset was hiring somebody, training them, investing that time.

    And then they leave and being so fearful of so much time lost. And I know this isn’t just a, an April problem or a Teresa problem. These are problems that corporations deal with, you know, at this replacement costs in this replacement time. But I just, I remember feeling so fearful of going, gosh, I’m going to invest in this person and they’re just going to ditch me,

    You know? Yeah. And will, that can happen. And so one of the things that I work with people when I’m, I’m helping them streamline their business, there’s really three pillars we go through. And it’s the structure, the support piece, which is what we’re talking about here. But what you’re talking about is the scalability piece and that is having contingency plans.

    So that’s really having the structure behind the scenes so that if someone steps out, someone else can step in and having systems and processes. So that, that happens. But absolutely, we are also investing part of our heart when we bring someone in because we’re small businesses. So it’s a very small but mighty team. And there’s a lot of heart that goes into bringing someone in.

    But here’s the way I like to look at it. When someone is leaving for me, it’s happening for me rather than to me. And I want them to grow and go find a better fit because something that was not a good fit for them. And if it’s not a good fit for them, they’re not going to thrive. Just like if we take a flower and put it in the desert,

    that flower might be beautiful somewhere else, but in the desert, it’s going to wither and die. Right? And so if we have someone on our team who really is not aligned with staying with the team, it’s better that they go sooner rather than later. So sometimes we’ll have signs. And that’s some of the things that I coach people through. There’ll be little signs that we missed or along the way that we weren’t really paying attention to.

    But when someone is going to leave, I’ve had people leave to go on and start their own business. And I actually give them some of my coaching programs because I want them to do well because we’ve built a relationship. But if someone is stepping out, it’s actually happening for you because there’s going to be someone else that can step in that will take you even further than that person ever could.

    What a great set mind you have to read it. Yeah. Mindset is like everything. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. That is an amazing different viewpoint on that. Thank you for sharing that. I think that’s so incredibly powerful. So let’s get back to some of these fears that our listeners might be feeling. Some of these, almost like we could have named this like that,

    the four, the five lies you’re telling yourself, but you really need to be hiring by now. You know, what are some of the, what are some of these other thought processes that people need to overcome to really get into this let’s scale? This business let’s hire I’m ready for the next level. Absolutely. So one of the other roadblocks and this actually tends to happen with people who have,

    are already a little bit more further along is that they worry that they have to manage the team, or they are currently managing the team. And that’s why I specialize in self managed teams. If you are managing the team, as the CEO, something is wrong, you should never be managing the team. You want to be bringing in people who are in the right seats,

    doing the right things. And they are self-managed. So the way that you can tell if you are in the management, rather than the CEO role is if you are helicoptering them, right. We know we all know what a helicopter parent is. There’s also a helicopter CEO and it’s where you’re hovering. Like, are they doing it? Are they doing it?

    Are they doing it right? And some of that can be your systems that you have set up. Like maybe, maybe you don’t have touch points where you can kind of keep your finger on the pulse without being in the weeds. That’s something that I help people set up so that they don’t have to be in the weeds to know what’s going on. But sometimes it’s really a matter of learning to let go and let go in the right way.

    So what I want you to realize is that what we want to do, what we want to be stepping into is mentoring our team, not managing the team. This means having real clear expectations and results that we’re looking for. So they have a very clear lighthouse and we can have like, you know, 30, 60, 90 day check-ins and be able to say, okay,

    you know, we’ve got a little off track here, but as long as they know what lighthouse is, we shouldn’t have to helicopter them. They should be able to figure out how to get there. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Helicopter CEO. I’m definitely, I’m definitely writing that down. It’s so it absolutely makes sense. It was a great analogy.

    Yeah. And this is a random question. Just putting you on the spot here for our listeners. Is there a favorite team software for communication that you have that you like to recommend to your clients? Absolutely. So most of the industry uses a sauna and a sauna is great. I have used a sauna, but for project management, I really like monday.com.

    That’s actually my favorite. And the reason is because not everybody adapts well to a sauna and monday.com is much more visual. And I find for entrepreneurs, they’re very creative and they tend to have a lot of creative people on their teams and the team. If you have never used any project management software, and you currently have a team, it’s a much easier transition onto Monday than it is to a sauna.

    Now that said a sauna is great. I’m not saying a is bad. If you’re already using a sauna, don’t switch. If you love it. And it works for you. Great. But if you’ve never used project management software or you’re intimidated, or your team is Monday works really well. It also is very intuitive. And so it makes it easy for the team to,

    to adapt to that. If that makes sense. It does make sense. Thank you for sharing that. Our listeners always want to know everybody’s software stack of what we’re using. And I know a lot of our listeners use Trello air table is where we manage our, our podcast production. But back in the day, we used to use Smartsheet and Gantt charts and all these things that were just not user-friendly at all.

    And they were so detailed that we would send it to people and they would just be like deer in the headlights. And they’re just done. What is this? W w what is this? And so I absolutely loved Monday. We’ve had a guest recently who is talking about, is it like click up? I mean, whatever works for you guys. And I think that is the thing here,

    but I’d love, you’re an expert in this. And so I love hearing of what, what you recommend and what works for you. So thank you for sharing that. And any, yeah, go ahead. I was just Going to say what’s most important is that, is that you use it. So if you try something and it doesn’t work, try something else because everyone’s brains work differently.

    So it’s okay. If something else works for you, right. Perfect. Yes. The great advice. And then any final thoughts to, you know, this hesitation to hiring that you want to leave with our listeners, any like actionable steps. You’re saying, okay, listen, you’re listening to this episode because you know, you need to be hiring,

    but there’s a wall. There is a mindset shift that needs to happen, but there are actually things that you, as a leader are putting in your own way. And those are the things we talked about today. Like, I can’t afford to hire a team or what if they leave, or, you know, how do I actually go through the process delegation?

    And you shared some really important thoughts that people are already having. I know our listeners are hearing being like, oh yeah, that’s me. I’m thinking this in this process, what do they do now from this episode, from listening to the show, what are some actual actionable items right now where they can leave in that they can start fixing this problem today.

    Right? Well, if we circle all the way back to stepping into being a CEO and thinking like your future CEO self, what I want you to do is start doing a time audit. Now, when I say time, audit people’s eyes glaze over and they go, oh, that sounds so corporate. And I have to write down all the things I did all day,

    but here’s what I want you to realize. You may think, you know what you’re doing every day, but you’re probably doing some things you shouldn’t be doing, and you don’t even realize it. And you keep thinking, oh, I’ll just do it real quick myself. And it ends up taking an hour, or I can just whip this together. And you end up your whole day is totally shifted because you got down a rabbit hole in Canva or something.

    So what I want you to do is to do a time audit on yourself so that you can see, where am I currently spending my time and then put on your CEO hat and take a hard look at that. Are those the things that I should be doing? Which of these things do I know I just shouldn’t be doing, or I’m not very good at them?

    Which of these things could I hand off to a current team member or do I need to bring in a team member? So really doing a time audit should be your very first step. And then absolutely every single morning looking at that to do list, do I really have to do these things, which of these things are going to move the needle the most in my business,

    which of these things are the moneymakers, which of these things are driving me to my goals and make sure that you’re working on the right things, because we can very easily get busy, busy, busy doing the wrong things, and nothing can slow down your growth faster than doing that. Great. Teresa you’re you are so wise, thank you so much for your leadership in this.

    And you coach entrepreneurs who are in six figures, seven figures to eight figures, and you have a couple of different programs. So if you guys are listening here, you know, this isn’t a podcast where we sell you anything. We don’t even accept advertisers on this show. The deal is, is we want you to have the next steps to take action.

    So Theresa, can you tell people how they can connect with you and based on where they are, what phase they’re in, what do you have available to get them to that next level with their teams? Absolutely. So where people can connect with me is streamlined and scaled.com, all one word. And on the website, I have information, lots of free resources.

    What I have in the way of programs is if you are just hiring your very first team member, or if you have just hired poorly and you need help hiring the next team member, I have a program called team up like a boss. It’s a very low, very inexpensive program that has all my templates and processes my whole methodology for hiring to character first.

    Okay. Then the second program that I have is a group coaching program, multi multi figure, and multi seven. And that’s where we streamlined the backend of your business and get your team to be self-managed and make your set you up to be scalable so that you can scale with ease and have your time back. And that is streamlined and scaled. And then I do consulting for multi eight figure businesses who already have major teams and headaches going on,

    and they need someone to come in and check out where are the issues? And I do that as well. Theresa, thank you so much. So based on where you guys are, there is a program, there is a solution start like Theresa said with going through your activities today, really focusing on the things that only you, and you can only,

    you can do, maybe like me write on your whiteboard or a sticky note or on your mirror and lipstick or whatever it is that you need to be honing in on the millionaire activities in your business. And that is, it starts, it sounds very basic, but this is truly, I can personally attest to this. This is truly where it all starts rolling from there.

    And we do have a very special tree for you guys, as you know, that we promote and share in network with you and help you link arms with you and coach you in clubhouse now. So if you’re an active subscriber to this show, that means it drops on Monday. This particular episode is dropping on Monday, June 14th and Theresa and I are going to be live answering your questions workshopping with you,

    taking your specific team, building questions, helping you strategize through the struggles or your concerns or your fears or your issues of growing your team on Wednesday, June 16th at 12 o’clock Eastern time. It’s totally free for you to be in there. If you’re really ready to take your business to the next level, it starts by taking action. And that starts by joining us at 12 o’clock on June 16th in our clubhouse room about this topic and to find the clubhouse room,

    you can very simply follow our club, join our club, even all you Android users now, by going to sweet life, community.com, again, that Sweetlife community.com. You can talk to Teresa, she’s there for you, and we’re, we’re all here to support you and all of the show notes of course, to reach Teresa beyond. What we talked about here will be in the show notes for this episode.

    This is episode number 231. Thank you so much Theresa for your time and your wisdom and your expertise and pouring into us on today’s show. We really appreciate You. Thank you so much for having me. It was fun. It was fun. Thanks.

    Episode 230: Simplified Systems To Scale – with April Beach and Brittany Keeling

    Brittany Keeling SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Join us live on Clubhouse to get your questions answered. 
    June 2, 2021 12:00 ET

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    This is a great show for entrepreneurs and companies who are ready to scale and grow, but lacking systems to make it happen. 

    Summary:

    It’s time to scale your business, and you know that systems and SOPs need to be in place. But, if you’re like me, the thought of sitting down and documenting your tasks sounds as fun as having teeth pulled. Thankfully Brittany Keeling, our guest expert, is sharing practical ways and clear, simple systems you can follow to start scaling now. 
     
    In this show we’ll also cover the difference between a platform, a system and automation. These common terms are misunderstood but important to understand. Stick with us and join us live on Clubhouse to meet with Brittany personally and get your questions answered after listening to this show. 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Brittany’s 5 Steps To Scale
    2. How to create SOPs without crying 
    3. The importance of choosing the right platform to make your business easier to manage

    Resources Mentioned:

     
    ClickUp (Brittany’s Affiliate Link)
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. We are so excited to dive in depth. So number 230 here on the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, and today’s guest is simplifying your systems and helping you put standard operating procedures in place so that you can scale your business.

    And this is why this is incredibly important. We have so many companies that come to us and they want to launch courses and masterminds and memberships, and they want their suite of offers created. But oftentimes when we do a really good job launching scalable online programs, there are some systems that are missing in the backend. And when these systems in the backend are missing,

    then what happens is a bottleneck. And you actually can’t even absorb all of the money and the clients and the hard work that you’ve gone into in order to actually launch and reap the benefits of the hard work. And so today on episode number 230, we’re diving in with Brittany Keeling, she’s the CEO of be elevated a business operations and launch expert. And she’s going to take you through the processes of how to really simplify your systems.

    Now you’re going to laugh. I am being really transparent about how I hate creating SOP on this. So if you’re like me, you’re going to be able to relate real well to what Brittany’s saying. And we’re going to give you some amazing strategies to get through that today on this episode. So this is a great show for those of you guys who are in phases two through four of my Sweetlife business roadmap,

    that’s the startup to scale up system that we’ve created. And in order to figure out what phase of business you’re in simply go to sweet life co.com board slash quiz, and you can take a very short self-assessment. So this episode, this business training that we’re talking about is specifically for those of you guys in phases, two, three or four of that business system.

    What you can expect at the end of this is to first of all, know the most common standard rating standard operating procedures that should be in place for your business. You’re also going to get tips on software that can simplify your processes. And you’re going to know how to use the way that you work as a leader, as an entrepreneur, in order to put it into systems in a way that is actually going to happen for your business.

    So I’m so excited to dive into all this. And of course, Brittany will be with us live on clubhouse, the Wednesday that this show drops. So if you are not a member or following the Sweetlife entrepreneurs club on clubhouse, please make sure you search us on clubhouse life. One word, just like this podcast. And you’re going to get access to that room where Brittany is going to be able to take your questions.

    She’s amazing. And I’m guessing you’re going to want to have somebody like Brittany workshop with you, and that’s what the clubhouse is for. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s show. All of the show knows everything we’re talking about can be found by visiting our website@sweetlifeco.com forward slash two three zero. Oh, wait. I lied about that. All of the show notes can be found by visiting sweet life coat.com

    and then you got to click on podcast, but then it is episode two, three, zero. All right, you guys, I can’t wait to dive in with you. Let’s do it. All right. You guys welcome to episode number 230 here at this sweet life entrepreneur business podcast. I am joined by Brittany Keeling and yes, you’re probably getting entired me saying this.

    I met Brittany on clubhouse, like all of our guests, like lately, all my new clubhouse friends and she is amazing. I was in a clubhouse room with Brittany and she said three words that I was like, oh my gosh, I need this woman to come and talk to us and really simplify and clarify these three terms. And you’re going to find out what they are here and just a little bit on the show,

    but, you know, Brittany is a scaling with systems expert. And so that’s what we’re all about here on the show, giving you tools and strategies to move forward and scale your business. And so here we are, Brittany, thank you so much for joining us. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself and how you became such a systems ninja. Yeah,

    I’m so excited to be here. So I have a really sort of unconventional background. A lot of people get into this space from, you know, they were in the corporate world and they decided to go off on their own. And I actually started my first business straight out of high school. So I was a serial entrepreneur for a few years, with a few various different businesses.

    They were actually all online businesses as well. So been in the space a while and towards the end of 2018, I was feeling really burnt out with what I was doing. I wanted to change it. I just didn’t know what to do. And so I started asking people who knew me like, Hey, what do you think of when you think about me?

    What am I good at? What are my strengths? Literally, everybody came back and was like, oh, you’re type a you’re detail oriented. You’re great at like being productive and helping people reach their goals. And I was like, okay, I can do something with this. So heading into 2019, I started trying to like make that shift. But right at that same time,

    my dad who was a business owner actually passed away unexpectedly. And so I took over his company the day after he died. So yeah, I put my business hold and took over his company. I was 21 and it was a mess. He did not have. I mean, obviously I was grieving, but also he didn’t have anything documented. He did not have,

    you know, a second in command. It was basically two months of me being on the phone all day, every day with clients saying, sorry, he’s not here anymore, but we’re still business as usual. It was very weird. But another thing that we ran into a lot was like the questions being asked and us not having answers. And that didn’t feel good for anyone.

    Of course, we didn’t want to say, sorry, we don’t know the answer to that. But at the same time, my dad kept so much in his head, in his head and all over his desk. I mean, papers everywhere. So it was just really hard to try to run once he was gone. And thankfully we did end up selling that business four months later.

    And at that time I had planned a move across the country for like a month later. And I was like, oh, I have now no income and no clients and no business, I should do something. So I relaunched my business and I went like full force headfirst into the deep end as an online business manager. And so at that time, this was like August of 2019.

    And I just dove in, I invested in a mentor and I was like, you know, I’m just going to help other entrepreneurs create something that actually can outlive them. For me. It grew really quickly. I’ll give you the cliff notes version here, but essentially I created a bit of a monster that was doing for me the opposite of what I was trying to do for others.

    And so I ended up restructuring a bit around this, actually around the same time, last year. So around like August, September of 2020, and now we work with clients in either one day or one week and we have a few signature offers, but we really essentially help them either get their systems in check, do like an overhaul, get them things simplified,

    make it make sense for the long haul for them. Or we help them have a large-scale launch of a digital product or service in a short timeframe. We do like a seven day package for lunches or a one day for one week package for systems, depending on how robust it is. And clearly to have that done. We have to have a lot of really clear systems internally as well.

    Yes you do. Oh my gosh. So first of all, congratulations on all your success. It’s so hard when you know you’re doing something well and all of a sudden it’s running your life. I love how you have modeled. We talk a lot about life, first business modeling here on this show, and I love how you’ve modeled your offer to actually deliver that time in life that you want.

    Secondly, I’m so sorry about your dad. I lost my dad a couple of years ago and that is it just really hard still sometimes today I’ll like forget, and I’ll go to pick up a phone and call him and it’s just this weird thing or I’ll think, oh, I can’t wait to tell dad or whatever. And so I totally get that.

    And I’m so sorry about that. Your dad also was a total entrepreneur like that entrepreneur brain, like the notes everywhere, papers everywhere. I’m literally not going to turn the camera. You guys, before this, behind the scenes, you were typing something out to think like that’s way out. I need to write in order to think and process in. But because of that,

    then I have a million pieces of paper. And so your dad sounded like amazing man and very typical classic entrepreneur. And then the last thing, you know, I love how you have always been an entrepreneur out of high school. Like we have very similar stories. I absolutely love that. And so I’m just so glad that you were here on the show.

    Now what you’re talking about from a business sense, first of all, it’s no surprise that you are so successful because what you need are what people need are the tactical things that you actually deliver. It’s the not sexy part that everybody desperately wants and needs. They’re the systems and that like the SOP and the client pipelines and the launch plans and the content plans and all those things.

    So I’m so excited to talk about what we’re going to dive in today. And I know our listeners will be like, okay, bro, gen up so we can hear her talk. So, so like, so this is very exciting. And so I’m really, really excited about what you’re going to download for us today. So one of the things that we find as a company is a lot of companies come to us and they’re like,

    oh, we’re so excited to scale with courses and offers. And all these things help us design them, but it’s like, let’s stop because they don’t have their systems and processes in place. Yet. I was actually in a clubhouse room last week when I was saying that to somebody and the woman ended up DME me on Instagram saying, so you said I shouldn’t do this yet until I have systems in place.

    What are the exact systems? People don’t know, like you were saying before we started recording what they don’t know. So can we first for our listeners who might not be familiar with that, we first talk about what systems should you actually have in place before you start really scaling your business. Yeah, 100%. And I love that we’re talking about this because every business I’ve ever worked with that has overlooked these steps in the beginning has had to spend more time and more money and more energy backtracking to redo the things that were not done properly.

    So my hope is that if you’re listening to this, you will not get in that position. It is never too late to start creating systems. And just like April said, it is not at face value, super sexy to talk about, but it is super sexy when you get weeks of your life back. So, yeah. So I have sort of a top five systems that I like to focus in on whenever talking about like getting started with systems,

    mind you, there are a million systems in the world and I totally understand that, like can be really overwhelming. So I always just suggest starting with these five. And if I feel like too much, start with one, like just do one at a time because it’s going to be better than nothing. Okay. So let me make sure you guys heard this before.

    She says this. When you walk away from this show commit to start with one, if this is an area you need to grow. So sometimes when we hear all five, it is overwhelming, but Brittany is going to download you on what they are. So I’m really excited about this. Okay. What are they? Yeah. So quick overview of the five systems I like to hone in on are a task management and project management system.

    So this is where you can keep all of your ideas. So instead of having 12,000 places to look for things, it’s all in one place, an SOP standard operating procedure creation system. So you may or may not have heard of SOP before. And if you have heard of them, it may be in a corporate setting or it may just be like,

    sure, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what to do with it. How do I create them? Having SOP are important, but you need actually know how to create them. So having a system for creating new SOP is on an ongoing basis is going to be huge. The third system is a content planning and repurposing system. Let’s be real,

    pretty much all of us are marketing through social media. So we probably need to have a system there so that we’re not having to spend hours every single day typing up a last-minute caption just to get it off the door. Right then the fourth is a client management system. This one is huge, huge, huge, I’m such a huge fan of white glove experience and really kind of going above and beyond with the client experience because we want everyone in our sphere to feel really valued and a huge way you can do that is with your client management system.

    And then the fifth and final is email marketing. And if you’re like, well, maybe I don’t have a list. This is fifth for a reason. It is very important of course, but you don’t have to start with this one if it’s not the easiest one for you to dive into, but we can keep it super simple. Maybe you have an automated welcome sequence or some sort of automated email marketing in place.

    But even if you just have some sort of system for showing up regularly in your email marketing, like a task for yourself to write a new email once a month and send that out, it’s so much better than nothing, and you’re still going, nurturing your audience chat. Okay. So let me state those again for our listeners. And then we’re going to move on.

    We’re going to dive into a couple of those today. So the five systems you recommend people have in place to start our task management, SLPs and a process for actually creating SOP and an SOP. If you’re listening in stands for standard operating procedures for any of you guys that didn’t know that number three is a system for content planning. Number four is the system for client management and number five,

    it’s a system for email marketing. Is that right? That’s right. Okay. Let’s kind of pivot in. Let’s just focus in actually on those first two things tax management and SOP is here on this podcast. So when we’re talking about task management, there are so many things that businesses are doing on a regular basis. And oftentimes companies that are looking to scale,

    you have just very few people doing all the things, talk to us about how you recommend and how you really kind of lasso all of these things that are happening in order to get them into one place. Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is like, you know, there are first of all, so many ideas in our brain at any given time.

    And even if we just think about the ideas alone, not even the to-dos, it’s like you could have a million dollar idea, but if you write it on a sticky note and forget it exists, there goes your million dollars. Right? So I’m a huge advocate for getting things in one place. So initially, I mean, I would start with hunting down all the things you have all over the place.

    If you’ve got just tasks and ideas and to do’s everywhere, get them all streamlined in one place from there, you can probably then start diving into breaking things into categories. And again, this can be really overwhelming. And like a lot of times people are like, well, I just have one big list. What do you mean I need categories, but we can structure things very strategically when we are intentional about it.

    So if you zoom out of the day-to-day of your business and actually look at everything from a bird’s eye view and look at all of the tasks on your list, look at everything that’s popping up. Do you want assessment of what do I, and if I have team members, my team do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, so on and so forth basis.

    And what maybe aren’t we doing that needs to be done more regularly and even seeing like what tasks have popped up that are not recurring tasks, but you’re noticing them coming up more and more often that can really help guide you and figuring out what the departments of your business really are. So being able to identify it, doesn’t have to be like 18 departments.

    You don’t have to have a whole marketing team to have a department for that. When I say departments, I’m really, especially for small business owners, mostly honing in on the fact that like, there really are still segments of our business, where if we were to scale to a much larger level, we’d likely be outsourcing those two different team members. Yeah.

    And that’s usually where most of our listeners are. They’re like really ready to the point they want to scale. They have all these things that are happening. And many of them have even really started building their teams. But yet they’re not exactly sure. Also with that being said, many of our listeners are to this point where they also have a, just a ton of,

    VA’s doing a couple little things for them at once. So as they’re listening to this, I’m guessing you’re the expert here in this process. You also really recommend that even all these little pieces, even if it’s somebody who’s only working a couple hours a month doing a task for you that you develop SOP for that as well. Correct. 100% a gauge that I like to use is like,

    okay, if you were to take on 10 clients tomorrow, would you be ready? Yeah. My business mentor talking more says that all the time. He’s like, you know, it doesn’t matter if we get you all these clients in here, he’s like, you know, it can be like, it’s like a fire hose. If you do not have these systems in place,

    like don’t go out and grow. Right. Oh, that’s so good. That is such a great analogy. Oh my gosh. So you’re just going to lose them. All right. And that’s why when companies come to us and they’re like, we want to develop our signature offer. We want our signature courses or masterminds. We’re like, okay, are you going to be able to handle it?

    Because if you can’t then literally everything. That’s like an overflow out of the top and you know, let’s make sure your stuff is in place. And so I love this conversation we’re having. So in the process and behind the scenes, you were sharing how you guys go about doing this. You have a software that you love, and I’m just going to say out loud,

    you know, Kelly Buckner, our director of operations for our company is going to geek out when she hears this episode. Because I think that what you’re talking about is like right along the lines of something that she would love to look into more. So talk to us about how you go about this process for people. And, and also, I mean, they are in a million different places.

    All these things are in a million different places. Let’s talk about simplifying software for a minute. Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of entrepreneurs are, and you know, we’re in 18 different softwares when in reality there’s probably one or two that could replace the bulk of them. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, maybe you’re going to pay more for one software,

    but then you’re going to be able to let go of three others. And it’s so worth it. Now, if you’re using six softwares and it’s like, you know, you don’t have any problems and it’s working well for you and future casting. You’re not going to have any problems. Great. If it’s not working or if it is working, you don’t need to necessarily change it.

    But if you’re starting to grow and you’re ready to scale, and you’re like, you know what, being in all this software is just really not working for me. Then. I mean, something that my business does all the time is like helping businesses get streamlined into less software or at least suffer. That makes more sense for them. And so one of the things that we do is we utilize click up and this is where we use like our task management and our project management.

    But also we use this as like the one-stop for the whole business. And we do this with our own business, as well as for our client’s businesses. Because if you’re listening, I can almost guarantee if you don’t have some sort of system in place, you’ve probably got your Google docs, a hundred different docs or folders in your drive. You’ve got your handwritten notes,

    sticky notes, your whiteboard, your mirror, that you’re writing on your, your, everything, just everything notes on your phone. You’ve got your, your 18 journals on your desk. Like it’s just all over the place. And so being able to create an atmosphere where it doesn’t feel like, oh God, another place I have to look every day and instead positioning it in your mind.

    And also in the way you structure it as the only place you need to go and look at things every day, it really is a game changer because instead of waking up, you know, three hours into your slumber, remembering that you forgot to do three tasks that are like really important, and now you’re going to be panicking about it. You can have one place to put them all as soon as they pop into your head and then literally forget about it.

    Like you can just forget about it and come back to it later. Yeah. I love that. And that’s so important for entrepreneurs like me too. Not officially, but pretty officially have ADHD. And so this process of going through and understand like the tasks, changing task management, having things in one place is, is really, really, really important.

    And another thing you said just triggered something that I like to tell businesses all the time. And this is what Brittany is talking about. This is why this is important. I like to say, you know, how would you carry your business today? If you were already a millionaire, you’d already have these systems in place, and you’re never going to be there until you have these systems in place.

    This is the bottleneck. And this is so important. And you know, we’re not saying you have to use one software or another, like you can do it whatever way works for you. But the reality is, is simplified systems scale. They do simplified system scale. And so this is so incredibly important. Okay? So in this process you’re going through and people have all their ideas and they’re bringing their,

    all their ideas together, taken all their sticky notes and their pieces of paper. And they’re getting it. Like you guys use click up for this. How do you recognize, are there like certain departments of a business that are standard or typical for, you know, service-based businesses and online entrepreneurs where you tend to group together type of department. So you sort of,

    our listeners can kind of at least clarify their mind and start heading in one direction of how to organize their stuff. Yeah. Such good question. So some like standard departments that we like to utilize are like your headquarters, right? So for us, at least in here, we house various things like our capacity so that anyone on the team can come in and see what we’re working on.

    Like what big package, but also what’s coming. We have like the next several months booked out and we can all see it and be prepared. And then also if I’m on a sales call, I know what’s available and what’s not I’m meeting notes, go in there, employee onboarding various things like that. Team resources go in there. So like SOP is our brand kit,

    affiliate links, testimonials our team agreement. So we have like, all the team has come together and agree. Like this is our way of working so we can all reference that. And then another department is operations. So you’re going to have your recurring operations more than likely that may be broken down into various things like social media. So Instagram, Facebook,

    LinkedIn, so on and so forth. Maybe your email marketing can go and hear your metrics management. So if you’re needing to check on your numbers weekly, the list, of course. Yeah. Right. I mean, I’m thinking in my mind, I’m like podcast processes, like for us, you know, podcast processes, you know, PR speaking,

    client management. So as you guys are listening to Brittany talk, just think about like the grouping of repetitive tasks that you’re doing in your business and start to figure out what falls under each one. And then take an opportunity to understand that for each one of these, you need to develop these standard operating procedures, which brings me to the next question. So we hear this all the time and I’ll be really honest with you.

    Especially somebody that’s like always in all directions. I own four companies. I have three kids. I’m always on an airplane somewhere when somebody tells me and it’s okay if you have to tell me this, but let’s just keep it real here. When somebody tells me that I have to sit down and document every single thing that I’m doing in some capacity or some way for like a week straight,

    first of all, I’ve never, ever, ever done that. I can’t think of anything worse than doing that. And so what I ended up doing, and this is why, if you’ve also listened to the show before, I’m like not the best person to work for. I mean, I have an amazing team, thank God. But you know,

    it, it’s kind of hard. So it literally, I’m not kidding. You it’s taken me 25 years to get through. And so when I go down and I document like an SOP, it is usually like in a scrub, like we’re working on a project like that day. That is my work I’m going to do. But going through my everyday,

    you know, week just kind of documenting my time and managing my time and stuff. You couldn’t actually, I’m being so honest. You’re going to like school me here. Probably like you couldn’t pay me to do that for my own company. Like I am Wade. I’m like all off in a role. Is there any other way to do it? Yeah,

    totally. Okay. Good. Cause that way sucks. Right? At the end of the day, it’s like we’re busy and the thought of creating a whole system and process and documenting the SOP, Internet’s going to take me three hours longer than if I would just do it all myself and then never outsource it. Right. Right. But of course in the long run,

    we know that’s not true, but it doesn’t make it any to do in the moment. So I do have a philosophy that I like to follow a system. I like to follow with creating these because most business owners are very similar to you. Like I can’t say that I have a lot of fun sitting down and creating all of SOP for my business.

    And so if you don’t like it, then that’s yeah. Then they really are tough work. Okay. Right. And any, you don’t have to do it alone. And it’s actually to be so much easier than we think. So here’s what I like to do. And here’s what I tell people to do. Start identifying what needs to be documented.

    Right? So obviously your recurring tasks, easiest thing to start with, you know, it’s going to happen on a recurring basis. So start there. And once you’ve identified, this needs an SOP, take a loom screen recording. The next time you do the task, you can literally do the task, the exact same way you would without documenting anything,

    but screen record it and talk through what you’re doing as you’re going. And then if you have a strategic and like, well put together template for the written SOP, you can then give the loom or whatever kind of screen recording. You utilize to another team member. You can give it to somebody else and they can build out the SOP, the written version.

    They can include the video version in there. They can plug it into whatever. You know, if you’re using a task management software, get it in the right places, create templates within that. If you want, it can get really nice and crazy robust, but it doesn’t have to. And even better when you do it that way, you now have a video,

    an audio with your video and a written. And so no matter what kind of way somebody learns on your team, you’re meeting them where they’re at. Okay. Thank you. So I do that. I do LUME recordings and then you’re like Dropbox fanatics, and then I’ll put it in Dropbox. But I really thought that I was like duck taping the process together.

    And then, you know, we can get them transcribed through our Searchie and everything that we do. So thank you for saying that because I literally is like, this is just the way I work and it’s just the way it’s going to be. And this is the way I work and I just, I’m never going to change me. So I hope this works out for y’all,

    which, which it has. I mean, I have an amazing team, but in the back of my mind, I’m always like, you suck at doing this because you’re not doing it the way it’s supposed to be, but I know I would never, ever like literally over my dead body, am I going to sit down and write down my steps that I am doing?

    So, yay. I feel a little redeemed here on this show and then Kelly in the process, like she does this as well. And so like listening to the podcast, you guys all know like what we really like struggle with behind the scenes. We try to share it all with you. This is one of those things that I haven’t really liked so much.

    Okay. So in that process, you know, documenting it in whatever way that works. I also do audio recordings on my phone. So I do audio as well too. And that has seemed to work, you know, to upload them for certain files as well for my team and our team Dropbox folder, I should say, hopefully that’s acceptable, but it does work.

    Okay. So after somebody has, you know, really documented these processes, let’s go back and let’s kind of circle back and let’s talk about the importance of simplified software. Share with us more about click up, why you guys use that, why this is your chosen spot to do this in really why, of all the things out there, as, you know,

    there’s a million there’s Monday and Salesforce and all these other things, like why is this your go-to? And so our listeners is, is there processing can think, oh, well maybe I should check that out. Yeah. Great question. So let’s tie it in with SOP is right. If you create a hundred SLPs and they’re sitting in a Google drive that nobody knows exists,

    what’s the point, right? Versus if we can pull them in to a software, like click up, or if you’re using something else, you know, whatever you’re using, bring it into one place so that someone can super easily search the name of what they’re looking for, or go to the SOP folder or list and look through it, what they need to find.

    And you can even from there, so like in click up, you can create like a template of tasks essentially. So you could also turn your SLPs into templates if it’s like things that need to be tasked out. So if you’re onboarding a new team member, for example, that can be a template. Every time you onboard a new team member, you duplicate the template,

    you assign things out and boom, like you’re good to go. Okay. So this is making my mind totally gone in a different direction, which I won’t on this show, but I also teach entrepreneurs how to license and scale their content programs and systems. And every single one of them has a different place where they build those systems. And so what I’m hearing you say is it click up,

    could possibly be a place for those of you guys that this is really advanced scaling. But those of you guys who are listening to this show who are licensing your courses, your content, you’re creating a certification program. All of these mixed level scaling could use a software like this to really streamline the distribution of your processes and templates a hundred percent. And you can even like,

    you can like sell templates. You can share templates. I mean, you can do so much with it. And the reason that I really love click up above all the other platforms, I’ve, haven’t been in all of them, but I’ve been in many of them. And what I tend to find is kind of twofold. One click up is 10 steps ahead.

    Of many of the other platforms, other platforms are coming out with a lot of the things click up has, but they’ve had it for months. So why not choose the software that is going to be 10 steps ahead. And two, it has a very, very, very customizable interface. The aesthetic of it. You can look at it in so many ways and customize fields and can do it everything in your own brand colors.

    I mean, there’s so many ways to go about it. So I, I love it. I it’s just the, in my opinion, I clearly am a nerd about this platform, but I’m a huge fan. I’ve been in so many different ones and it just has proved to be the best and has the most robust options for what we need. Okay.

    This is, I really love this episode. Thank you so much for everything you’re pouring into us. Okay. Before we wrap this up, I do have to say, I love the aesthetic side women entrepreneurs. We really like this side. Like, I really love the fact that I can change the picture on the back of my Trello board. I mean the stupid stuff like that makes me really happy.

    So I love the fact that it does offer that option as well. And I appreciate you sharing this resource so much here. You guys, as you’re listening, we’ll make sure that we are going to share Brittany’s affiliate link to click up with you so you guys can go and play with it and try it out. There are three different words I would love for you to,

    this is the circle back from the beginning, define for us as we close up this show. And I think that the clarity and the definition of each one of these, whether whoever’s listening is new or established is going to be very, very helpful. Can you please define the difference between a platform, a system and automation for any of our listeners that aren’t crystal clear on these saints?

    Absolutely. And it’s really common to not be crystal clear on this because some of these buzz words right there, total buzzwords are used interchangeably when they shouldn’t be. And so it’s confusing for most people. And so what I have found is that if you’re not clear on what each of those are, it can be really difficult to know what you need or ask for help or find the right resources.

    So I’m really passionate about helping find clarity throughout these. So let’s start from, you know, a platform. So a platform is like a click up, right? Click up is a platform. Or of course there are other platforms like, you know, later first scheduling on Instagram or depths auto active campaign. There’s so many, right, but having a platform does not mean you have a system.

    It’s really how you utilize the platform that you can create systems within a platform being signed up on click up does not mean you have a system being signed up on any software does not necessarily mean you have a system. You can create systems within the platforms. Like we create systems all throughout clicker and they can go hand in hand, but they are different things.

    So a system is something that can actually be documented, right? A system is something we can put into an SOP that we can duplicate and do over and over again. And then an automation of course, is something that is going to be automatic. But again, it’s different. Not all of your systems are going to be automated. Some of your systems are not going to be automated and that it can still be a system.

    It doesn’t have to be automated to be a system and you can house. So an example here too, all three of these things can go hand in hand is within click up. There are automations. So you can have the platform I’m just using click up as an example here, you have to pay me to say this, but wish they were. So you could use click up as your platform.

    You could house your content creation system in here, and you can have automations in here as well to move things accordingly. So they can all go hand in hand. They are very different things though. And so I think being able to define those is really, really helpful. And being able to talk about things. Yeah, I love it. I wrote down that quote,

    having a platform does not mean you have a system. And I think that is so powerful and that’s really a great way to wrap up today’s show. Of course my like business coaching minus went crazy. Now I actually want you to reach out, to click up and have them sponsor a room on clubhouse in pay you to talk about it. Like, let’s get this right.

    So click up, we’re going to tag you in this and you need to be, listen, you need to hit Brittany up, sponsor her clubhouse rooms because it’s, it’s good for everybody. So, all right, well, I just really appreciate your expertise so much. And we are going to be live in clubhouse on June. What did we say?

    I think it was June the night at 12 o’clock Eastern time in the club that goes with this podcast. So this podcast club is called the sweet life entrepreneurs club. Search it up on clubhouse, hit me up, hit Brittany up, like send us a DM. If you want to know where the club is because Brittany sent me coming in live and we’re gonna be taking your questions from today’s show.

    And this episode is going to drop on Monday. You have two days to listen to this and come in and let Brittany roll up her sleeves with you and help you guys get your SLPs and systems in place, you know, answering platform questions, whatever it is, we are here to serve and support you. Not just listen to this show, but to implement the show and put it into action.

    So now you have a couple of, you have a resource as well, and I’m going to make sure all the things that we’re talking about here in the show notes for you guys. So what is a free resource you have for our listeners? Yes. I have a pretty doozy guide. It’s called five systems to take your business from scattered to scaling.

    And it goes a little more in depth into all five of the systems we touched on at the beginning of this episode. And then also I actually include in the guide my own SOP templates. So there you go. Yeah. I’m so glad. Oh my gosh. An SOP template. Okay. So all of the show notes are going to be found@sweetlifeco.com like on the podcast.

    And this is episode number 230, and everything’s going to be in there for you as well. But we want to see you guys in clubhouse, even you, Android users are getting invites now. So we want to see you guys in clubhouse. And if you need an invite, hit me up on Instagram. We have actually a lot of club invites they’re releasing to us.

    So we’re excited. You can RSVP for this event and we’ll get you an invite to that, Brittany, thank you so much for your time. I’d love to everything we’ve talked about and clearly appreciate you confirm me. I’m not totally crazy about the way I’m supposed to be doing things and just really appreciate all your expertise, how clearly you explained things and those you guys who are listening,

    please follow Brittany, pay her and follow and just thanking her for her expertise in Korean and tossed bang. It’s great. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you. Have a lot of fun.

    Episode 229: Creating Your Strategic Financial Roadmap For Your Business – with April Beach and Arnesha Bobo

    Arnesha Bobo SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Check out CFO for Women’s Small Business Resources

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    This is a great show for small business owners who are looking to scale but they’re missing the strategic foundational plan. 

    Summary:

    When it comes to entrepreneurship, people just start working. But, sooner or later when the time comes to scale, 60% of businesses realize they are missing a strategic financial plan and the foundations needed to move forward. Today’s guest expert Arnesha Bobo, Founder of CFOForWomen.com breaks down her Smart Financial Roadmap and the first 3 steps to building your strategic plan in detail. 
     
    If you don’t know your numbers, don’t know how to analyze KPIs and you want your business to grow,  this is an ideal business coaching episode to get your foundation in place.  You’ll be surprised that the first steps actually have nothing to do with your numbers at all. 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Have 3 clear steps to start creating a clear financial plan
    2. Understand how vision and core values must be part of your financial plan
    3. Be aware of the 4 numbers you should know every month in your company

    Resources Mentioned:

     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate This week on episode number 229 of the suite life entrepreneur podcast. We are talking with Arnesha Bobo about how to create strategic financial plan for your business. Now, this episode is incredibly important because she actually says it’s 60% of businesses come to her.

     

    Who’ve already been in business for an extended period of time and never have a strategic financial plan. So in this episode, Arnesha breaks down everything that you need to know, and the first three steps to create your strategic financial plan. So the reality is as entrepreneurs, we just kind of get in there and start doing the work, doing the business,

     

    selling the service and miss a lot of foundational steps. But when it’s time to scale your business, or when it’s time to get funding, when it’s time to apply to be a member of, of some sort of a, a board or an organization, people are going to want to see your numbers and you need to see your numbers in order to continue to be profitable.

     

    And then this is the episode where we dive in and help you really start building that out. And so that, you know, the process that you get to go through in order to fully take control of your numbers and your business. So let me give you an indication here of who this amazing woman is. First of all, yes, I met her on clubhouse.

     

    I know don’t laugh at me. We are going to be going live in clubhouse on Wednesday that this show airs again. This is episode number 229, and that is going to be Wednesday, June 2nd, 2021, 12 o’clock Eastern time. Join us in clubhouse because what we’re talking about here, I understand that you might have some questions. So it’s really important that we are then taking this from just a podcast,

     

    this one way conversation and giving you an opportunity to really workshop with our Neesha, to get your questions answered. And so Wednesday, June 2nd, join us at 12 o’clock Eastern. Let me give you an idea of who this amazing woman is. She tells her story. So I’m going to summarize this here, but our niche as a small business CFO in strategic planner,

     

    she works with women, led organizations who are ready to gain visibility in their finances and build a smart growth strategy together with her clients. She focuses on three key areas, capital structure, profitability, and growth planning. She is absolutely amazing. I know that you’re going to love her. And I’m so excited to invite you to tune into this episode. Again,

     

    as we always say, all the show notes can be found by going to Sweetlife co.com. This is episode number 229. So all these links, everything that we’re talking about here are going to be waiting for you on tap. And if you’re a new listener to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, thank you so much for coming. I’m April beach, founder of the suite life company.

     

    And I am absolutely stoked to have an opportunity to welcome you on this show. This show we’ve been named top 50 moms in podcast, but the show isn’t just for moms, all of you are welcome here. And we deliver a business strategies and trainings that other coaches charge thousands for. As a matter of fact, this podcast is part of one of the giving missions of our company.

     

    And we’re pouring into you week after week for four and a half years straight so that you know that you can take the business trainings and strategies that you hear here, here on here, here, here, here on this show, and truly implement them and take them to the bank. So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for being a subscriber of this show.

     

    And I appreciate you so very much. Now let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode. All right, friends. We are joined by my new clubhouse friend. Yes. I know another new amazing club friend that I have met. And so grateful for clubhouse are Nisha Bobo. And she is here because of the fact that she has been in clubhouse rooms with me,

     

    literally drilling down on what women need to know about their money. She is absolutely amazing. She’s a CFO for women. I can’t wait for you to meet her. And today on the show, we’re talking about creating a strategic financial roadmap for your business. And our Nisha is going to walk you through the steps in order to do that. So, or Nisha,

     

    thank you so much for coming to the show. Thank you for spending time with me here and all the time that we’ve spent together on clubhouse. And tell us a little bit about you and what you do. Yes, absolutely. I help women become better leaders in their business by improving their decision-making women are the fastest growing demographic of business owner. Yet they are the least paid.

     

    They’re not growing in other industries. And most importantly, they’re not getting access to funding that they need to help either grow their business or expand in other markets. So I help women. We’re all things, money with all things, money. I love that. Okay. So reminds me. I was actually in a meeting a week ago with an author of a book it’s about the new entrepreneurship and he was talking about women and minorities and immigrants as well coming in,

     

    and that they don’t have funding, but this gentleman who funds a lot of regular business was saying, they’re looking at ways to create new programs to do that. So just decide now, but it was very interesting to hear and just triggered me to say that because I do think that the funding hopefully is coming around, but like what we’re going to talk about today,

     

    there’s a lot of things that every business owner needs to do to get their ducks in a row before anybody will even pay attention to fund them. And those are the things you’re going to share with us today, but tell us a little bit about you and you know, really how you got into this, why you started your company and your, your journey about getting yes,

     

    absolutely. I have a 14 year corporate accounting career. So I’ve worked with very large companies. I’ve managed multi-billion dollar portfolios. And when I first started my company, I was at a nine to five or so I was a part-time entrepreneur, like many businesses starting out. So I would, you know, work my full time job, my nine to five.

     

    And then I would go home and work on my business, five to nine, how I became a consultant. I actually work with the procurement department for some corporations. And if you are familiar with the procurement department, that’s the department you go through as a business owner to get corporate contracts. So you have to go through a procurement process, you have to register your company with them.

     

    You have to submit financial information, you have to apply. And then you start bidding on different contracts that they have. So you can do this at a corporate level, government level, city, state, and federal, but I was at the corporate level and I noticed a lot of businesses did not qualify to do business with these corporations because their business head,

     

    no proper foundation. So they were not set up correctly. They didn’t have access to financial information because they only met with their tax accountant once a year. So I found myself a lot of days working with business owners to set their foundation up just so they could do business with that corporation. I am not a gatekeeper. If there’s an opportunity for me to help you come on and come on,

     

    but I want to make sure that everything is done correctly. So that’s how I started my business is helping other small businesses get into these corporations to do business with them. And then it started to grow from there. I later joined a national organization for women. It’s called<inaudible> the national association of women business owners. And I joined to become a better business owner because I had that corporate mindset and everything was structured,

     

    but I wanted to learn how to be a business owner. So I joined this organization, you know, attended some events, was able to do a couple of reasons, patients or answer questions that event. And I caught the eye of the president at no idea that she had watched me or she, you know, I was on her radar. Well,

     

    she asked me to join the board. And as I actually, yeah, I joined the board as a financial secretary. So I was responsible for doing all of the financial reporting for the organization at our chapter level. And I started working with a lot of female owned businesses. So that’s how I, you know, that’s why my core are women because I was able to help them birth.

     

    And I’m a woman. I love women. I love to see women win mommies, aunties, everybody. I want all women to win because I coming from corporate America and just seeing the huge disparities between men and women, the earnings, all of that, I was like, oh no, any opportunity I can help women. I’m going to do that.

     

    So that’s how I kind of got started. And I actually left the organization because relocated to Atlanta. So I’m in Atlanta, Georgia, the home of entrepreneurship. And I actually joined another business organization. It’s called the Atlanta black chambers. It’s a chamber dedicated to helping black businesses grow coffee. I have the executive director of course started. So, you know,

     

    do a lot of great, amazing things. Patients with the chamber got into leadership. So I chaired a couple of committees. I co-chaired another counting the financial services committee at one event. One of my chamber members actually invited me to speak at an event because she was a program manager for a city accelerator. And I was able to get a contract with the city.

     

    So I got my first contract sole source. I didn’t have to go through a bidding process. And that’s one of the longest standing contracts that I have. So now I teach a financial consulting to new and small businesses here. Wow. That is an amazing story. I mean, your story is just amazing. There’s so many things that people can take away from that story alone.

     

    And I think that like, it is remarkable. You are clearly very good at what you do, but I love the part of it where you just did it and people recognized it because you did the work and people recognize you for just like being true, doing your skill, doing the work and connecting important into others. Yes. Thank you. If I was building a personal brand and didn’t know that I was building a personal brand.

     

    Yeah. You had no idea. That is so amazing. That is so cool. Congratulations to you. And I hope our listeners are like, okay, like I can do this. Like there, isn’t always some big, huge, hidden strategy behind it. It’s just leading with what you know, doing good work and pouring into people and you get recognized and you get elevated.

     

    You get brought up. Yes. We could just end the podcast. This is today’s lesson, boys and girls. Oh my gosh. Okay. So you currently teach businesses on a regular basis. How to get their financial Jackson row, how to get their foundation in place. You do it on clubhouse all the time. If you guys are not following our Nishawn clubhouse,

     

    please make sure you do that. Is it our Nisha Bobo? Yes. We’ll make sure that’s in the show notes for you guys as well. Plus of course our Nisha is going to be going live with us in our suite life podcast, clubhouse room though, week this show drops and you get to connect with her even more directly and bring your business questions.

     

    So that’s just a side note, those of our listeners that know that, and can’t wait to have this conversation in a live setting. So you can get a chance to really workshop with our listeners too. So what we’re talking about today is really creating a roadmap for your business. And you have a method, you have a way that you bring businesses through this and it’s so important.

     

    And when you explained it to me, kind of behind the scenes, before we started recording, I was like, oh yeah. Oh yeah, that’s really, really good. So today you’re going to guide us through really the first three steps of that process of that business roadmap. So why don’t you go ahead and get us started here for those of our listeners.

     

    You guys should have a pen and paper, please make sure you’re taking notes or if you’re driving or at the gym or wherever, you know, you can always come back and replay this. So what is the first thing businesses should do in order to really start creating a great foundation? Thank you. Yes. So the very first step is creating a solid foundation.

     

    I work with hundreds of business owners a year and they, most of them just get into it. They just get into business. You just started doing it. There was no business plan. There was no page today. Your business is not registered. You don’t know which state you’re at should pay taxes. And like they’re all over the place. So I’m going to help you right now,

     

    create a foundation, a solid foundation. You need a business plan or some type of strategic plan, right? We’re known in our industry for strategic planning. That’s our jam. We do strategic planning from the top to the bottom of your organization. I have a top down approach. You need a plan. The very first step of creating your foundation, whether you are a new business established business,

     

    you’ve been in business 15 years, every single year, you should have a plan. And that plan should start with your vision. What is your vision for your company for this year short term and long term, right? Where do you want to grow this year? What do you want to accomplish this year? What do you want to improve this year?

     

    What do you want to be this year? What is your vision? Create a vision and stick to it because you are the leader of your organization and your team is going to follow you in your leadership style. They need to understand your vision. They need to understand where you’re trying to go. I had a meeting this morning with my marketing strategies that I just hired.

     

    And I sent her my strategic plan and she was like, oh my God, I’ve never had this happen before. Right. Never had a strategic plan. It lists our goals, our objectives, everything. I want her to have clear direction on what I need her to do for my company. I absolutely love that. Okay. I totally geek out on that whole entire thing.

     

    As you know, like we do strategic planning when it comes to drill out Venus suite of offers. And we were talking about this behind the scenes too, but like the whole financial side of it is so big and there’s so much more of a process that people don’t even talk about. And I’m not an expert in that I don’t, you know, build out their,

     

    their financial plans. And so that’s why, like, I’m just geeking out on the whole strategic plan thing. So let me ask you a question here. And this is, I think a lot of our listeners, we have businesses that are scaling, who are listeners. We have brand new businesses when we are talking about guilt or like, this is a problem.

     

    Like when is it usually with, and sadly, this is the case. Although it shouldn’t be entrepreneurs, aren’t very proactive on the things that, you know, we really just don’t want to do that. Isn’t fun. It doesn’t feel like we’re creating anything. So obviously they need to do this in the very beginning. Every business should be doing this in the very beginning,

     

    but honestly, how many businesses do you guys have coming at you that have been in business for a long time? And they don’t have any of this? I’ll say about 60% because, and the reason why they don’t have it in a place, like I said, when they start off, it just started doing business. There isn’t a roadmap in place.

     

    You just started doing business because you are good at it. Or you don’t really think it through or plan it out. And typically when you start to hurt in business or something goes wrong or not making the money yourselves or not increasing in your conversion rates are low. There’s a problem somewhere. And you need to just pause, pause so we can figure out what’s not working where the issues are and create a plan to fix that issue or implement some type of solution that will fix that issue.

     

    But if we don’t know what the problem, if you don’t have visibility on the problem, and you’re just trying to figure it out, that you’re going to continue to build yourself in a hole. So you need to just stop and figure out what’s going wrong. I’ll use myself as an example. I struggled with creating content because as an accountant, when I first started my business,

     

    I sounded really technical. My language was very technical and my content was not combining. I hired a content strategist. I was like, because look, I have tried Facebook. I’ve tried Pinterest, I’ve tried this. I’ve tried that. And I’m just not seeing the conversions or the view. I’m making the money. That’s not the problem. It’s the view.

     

    And she was like, oh, this is the issue. And this is the issue. But I had to hire an expert to tell me where the issue was. And I was like, oh, okay. So now we have a map in place. Now she’s like this. We start here to create this and you create this. And this builds on that.

     

    And then boom, there’s that content static every over, like over the next, maybe seven days, I saw a drastic improvement on our views. I was like, okay, thank you. I love that. Okay. So you guys are listening. If you haven’t done this yet, like, don’t feel bad. Don’t feel guilty, but it’s probably time to stop.

     

    If you don’t have this financial foundation as our Nisha is saying and place, all right. So after this strategic plan is created, what comes next? What’s step number two, that people should really start diving in to understanding. So step number one is creating the foundation, solidifying your vision. After you create your vision, you also need to create core values and smart goals.

     

    Your core values. You know, this is how your compass is what your company believes in. This is what you support. And this is how you pretty much operate. We have six core values in our company, and I always work with a business to create them when we’re going through the strategic planning process. So step one, creating a foundation, eat a vision,

     

    core values, and smart goals, right? And a lot of times with the goal planning every year, every January, we all get excited. We’re going to create these 15 goals and we want to achieve all these things. You have to structure your goals and organize them, right? You don’t need 10 goals. Maybe you just need three, three short term,

     

    three long term. That’s six that’s enough for the last year, the entire year. So creating those goals is enough, right? So step one, foundation, step two. We’re going to get into business performance. You need to analyze and assess your business. So once we solidify your vision with your company, the next step is I’m going to do a full,

     

    I’m going to analyze your business top to bottom. What’s not working in operations. What’s not working in finance. What’s not working with you. Hiring people. I’m looking for missing processes. Do you have a hiring process in place? Because if you don’t, you’re probably not compliant with the state you’re operating in, right? Do you have a business budget in place?

     

    Do you understand how much money you’re projected to make? How much are predicted to spend and your contribution margins? Do you understand your profit margin? So we get into some KPI reporting. I’m a numbers person. So I’m going straight for processes and then numbers. So making sure you have bird’s eye view and business owners, they typically only want to know how much money they may,

     

    how much is left over and how much they only taxes. There are so many other moving it’s telling me this. I’m fine. Just tell me the rest I’ll be on. I’ll be on a beach somewhere. Yeah. Just give me those three things and we’re good. Oh my gosh. Those three things are, there are still other factors that you need to understand total income,

     

    right? What are your top revenue performing items? If you offer, if you have a full product landscape by April, you work with businesses to build out their product suite. So business owners need to know what are their top performing, you know, products or startups. Don’t just dump everything in sales, right? That you need to see everything listed out expenses.

     

    What are your top expenses, right? How much of your expenses contribute to your labor? What are your labor margins? If you have a team, how much is your team costing you? Right. I know for a fact on a 70, 30, no product that I released is going to cost me more than 30% of their product so that I can remain 70% profitable.

     

    That’s how we build our service landscape. I’m not reducing my total projected income or increasing additional costs. Say that again. That was so powerful. Can you say that again? Cause I want to make sure our listeners did not just pass that up. Okay. So listen to this financial structure for your products. Okay. So what is your, what is your,

     

    when are your numbers right? 70 30. So that means out of a hundred percent, it only costs me 30% to produce my services so that I walk away 70% profitable. That’s a very small conversation around pricing, which that’s a whole different conversation, but you need to understand your profit margins going in. How much is it going to cost you to produce this product or service?

     

    How profitable do you want to walk away be? So I know every time we create something, whether it’s a bootcamp, a group coaching program, authoring a book, whatever it is, we’re going to walk away. So many percent profitable. If I cannot do that, I need to restructure the cost. Amen. Yes. And this is a thing,

     

    and I was actually speaking to a client about this this week. And we talk about it all the time. Like in your clubhouse rooms, I was in there and you were talking about this. The thing is, is that when we’re, most of our listeners obviously are online, businesses are offline going online. And so what I tend to see is that they purchase so much software and they have no idea how much money they’re spending on an ongoing basis as well,

     

    and what they actually need to use to produce that particular offer or a product. And so this whole entire conversation is, is just so helpful. So thank you again for being here, talking my best today on the show. Okay. So know your numbers and like down and dirty, what are the numbers that people need to know? So knowing your total revenue,

     

    knowing your total income, how much money did you make, even if you use a lot of payment gateways, like, Hey, Pao, Stripe, square, collectively, you need to know your total income, right? You need to know number two, your total expenses, how much money are you spending? Like you just mentioned, April people use all of these tools.

     

    We downsized all the time. I have what’s called shared services. So if we are creating digital products or consulting services, I want to utilize the same system. So I can just do a percentage allocation across the board. I’m not going to implement a ton of systems because that affects my profit margin. So total expenses, total income, and your bottom line.

     

    The difference between your total income and total revenue is your bottom line. Are you operating at a net loss or are you operating at a profit? You need to monitor that every single month because that’s going to affect you at tax time or when it’s time to seek capital when it’s time to grow. When it’s time to have the bit management conversation where you want to apply for funding,

     

    you need to understand your bottom line and all the factors that positively or negatively impact your bottom line. Yes. And a lot of businesses right now have also spoken to clients about this. As far as that, the relief loan, like the COVID relief loan. Like if you don’t have these numbers and you don’t know if there’s been a loss or a decrease or whatever,

     

    then you know, they aren’t there. Aren’t qualifying for some of this really powerful cash injection that they can get it. They weren’t in 2020, they can get into their business. So, so important. And then KPIs, can you really like dumb that down? Explain that. So people really understand how to look for this in their own business. Yes.

     

    KPIs are key performance indicators. So these, there are ratios to help you analyze areas of your business. Like your have revenue KPIs, you have labor KPIs, you have production KPIs. So when I say KPIs like they’re in ratio form, so you’re just taking numbers and providing them over to percentages. My favorite is revenue growth. How is your revenue growing period to period when,

     

    I mean, period, every single month is your revenue growing month, month, month, per quarter, or a month to a year. So how is your revenue growing while your a monthly recurring revenue, each department of your business is going to have their own KPIs? So you have financial KPIs, which I monitor. You have operational, you have logistics depending on the nature of your business,

     

    traffic to conversion. So there are different types of numbers. It depends on your operations, you know, marketing, they’re going to look at visits to conversions or visits to sales, to figure out what’s working. What’s not working in this particular marketing strategy or marketing campaign. So just understanding how to analyze your revenue and your income, or all of your numbers for your business in a percentage capacity.

     

    And don’t worry has a guide. We’re going to make sure that you have so that you can really start diving in this and make sure that you guys are taking action. As you know, here in the show, like we’re going to give you the step-by-steps business trainings here, things you can look for, but then, you know, it’s your job to go and implement this.

     

    And so our Neesha has a guide. That’s going to really start walking you through that process. We’ll make sure that you have a link to download after we’re done chatting here. Okay. And then what is this third step that you recommend businesses go through? The third step is creating a long-term plan. So once you have you slip out of your foundation,

     

    you’ve created a operational plan for the year. It’s time to think long-term and long-term in the, the mains of everything, right? Capital are you, do you have the right capital structure? Do you have the right money in place? You have access to excess capital like lines of credit and business credit. Are you able to grow that you have debt in place?

     

    Are you able to properly manage your debt? One of my clients incurred a lot of debt over the last few years. So we put together a very aggressive bit management plan to reduce their bit because it was affecting her bottom line. So you had this heavy umbrella of debt over your business. And if you’re in the rat race every single day. So being able to create opportunities to reduce that debt without hurting,

     

    you know, operations, too much team, your team and operations capacity planning, what is your team doing now? What can I do better in the future? And how long can they do it? Right. We have a lot of technology that’s coming down the pipeline. A lot of AI, what can be automated in your business for us? We actually started out as a bookkeeping firm.

     

    So we started out providing bookkeeping services and we’re quickly able to scale up to CFO services because a lot of bookkeeping services offer automated bookkeeping. So we’re doing the day to day, that can be done automatically. You don’t have to pay a lot of money for that, but the strategy and the planning you’re going to spend money on because a computer can’t tell you that you have to have somebody to sit down and read through the numbers with you and read through your operations and fill in that.

     

    So number three is definitely planning for the loan term. Wow. What a powerful thing. I mean, that must feel so good for businesses to have you go in there now probably virtually and be able to help them unpack what they want and hand them a strategic plan to get that. I mean, just like for a second, you guys listening, like imagine what that would feel like to you to have somebody like our Neesha come in there and unpack all of this for you and what you’d walk away with.

     

    And no, I don’t get like commissioned for making sure. She’s just saying, you know, like imagine how much that would take off your plate of wondering what you’re missing. See, here’s the thing I find that most business owners worry so much about the things they don’t know that they’re missing. They don’t even know specifically what they’re worried about, but they know that they don’t know enough about certain things that they don’t know enough about.

     

    And they know that they’re there in sometimes business owners, even clients of ours, who’ve been in business for years and years. It’s like, they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. And that is no way to run a business, especially creating a business. That’s going to skill you into the future. So I love everything that you’re saying. And it’s so incredibly important that businesses go through this process.

     

    And after they figure out their long-term plan, you guys are Nisha has a full guide. That’s going to go into detail, but just really, really like top level. What are the next couple steps that people go through in this process? The next step will be assessing your tech deck. So what is what tech interviews is using? You know, do you have outdated processes?

     

    Do you have outdated systems? A lot of times we found that companies that have smaller team, they have a team size. That’s unnecessary because too many people are doing too many manual things. There’s no automation in place. There’s no, there aren’t any sequences set up to trigger this action. When you have poor outdated processes, you have unhappy employees, you have a lot of manual work.

     

    That’s costing you a lot of billable hours for your company. And most importantly, you have people doing a job that could be automated. I was an unhappy employee in one of my corporate dives because the tech was just so old and it was so manual. And I was just, this is, I felt like I wasn’t living up to my potential because I was trying to figure out how to automate this process instead of doing the actual job.

     

    And you don’t want unhappy employees, you want people that are happy to do the work for you to help you in your organization. And they can help take things to the next level. Asset protection is another one, making sure your intellectual property is protected. I just had a meeting with my attorney because we were talking about some programs I want to roll out.

     

    And she was like, make sure you send the prelim over to me so I can look at it to make sure it’s part of our IP deck. So making sure that your IP is protected and then last but not least for my small businesses tax planning, please, please, please free tax plan. That’s why no longer a number is important. You should not wait until tax season to know your numbers,

     

    especially in a year like this. When we had an administration shift, we are in a pandemic there a particular way. Things have to be calculated. Are you ahead of the game? Are you being reactive or are you being proactive? I would prefer for you to be proactive when it comes to the pre-tax planning phase. So those would be the remainder of the steps in the rule.

     

    Wow. Okay. So today we talked about creating a strategic financial roadmap for businesses and you are the founder of CFO for women and everything was so informative today. You’re always just giving so much not, you know, we say that I’m also giving so much value. Well, yes, it was incredible value. But today I just appreciate you so much.

     

    And you do this in clubhouse as well because you really, really dialed it down to the tactics. It’s not just all about idea or strategy or what needs to be done, but it’s going through the tactics. And so I appreciate your time so much on the show today and how can people find you? And we’re going to make sure the links to your download are in the show notes as well.

     

    So if you’re driving, you can’t write this down. No worries guys, but how can people really connect with you more? Absolutely. You can always find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at CFL for women. Those are the handles for those three platforms and I’m on clubhouse ads. Our mission speaks up there every Monday at 3:00 PM. I am also there some Tuesday evenings hanging out with April,

     

    but I’m always there. I’m just slide in my DMS. If you have any questions, I’ll make sure you get access to the right resource. If you are in the city of Atlanta and you are a new or established business, but you need some additional support, you can contact the urban league, the entrepreneurship center and register for one of our free accelerated programs.

     

    This is about $20,000 worth of free training for you and your business. I am one of the coaches for their program. So please come out and receive the assistance. That’s why you can find me. Wow. Yeah. Luckily Blog that goes out every first, Monday of the month, it’s called your bottom line. So you can go to www.cfoforwomen.com and click on blog.

     

    It’ll take you straight to our blog. So we upload a blog every single month to help you get access to resources and strategies for your amazing, amazing, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. And this is Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, episode number 229. So everything that our Nisha just said, and you weren’t able to jot that down will also be found@sweetlifeco.com

     

    click on the podcast. And this is episode two 29, and don’t forget to join us. Live in clubhouse under the sweet left entrepreneur’s club on Wednesday, the week this show drops, I’m looking at my calendar right now. I think we said, that’s going to be June 2nd, Wednesday, June 2nd, at 12 o’clock Eastern time. And Arnesha and I are going to be in there taking this conversation a bit further and strategically there to make sure you guys are getting your questions answered.

     

    So thank you so much for joining us Arnesha. I appreciate your time and expertise. Thank you so much for having me

    Episode 228: Unlocking Your Potential To Achieve Your Goals and Dreams – with April Beach and Ashlye V. Wilkerson

    Ashlye V. Wilkerson SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Join Ashlye live in our weekly SweetLife Podcast Clubhouse room on Wednesday, May 26th 12:00 ET

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    This is a great show for women who know they are called to lead and need a plan to accomplish their goals.

    Summary:

    Goal setting is only as good as the plan you have to achieve them, your personal drive, and self-ownership of your goals to assure they come true. When it comes to building your future, you are the driver of that car and sometimes life and business get off track. In all cases, to get where you really want to go, you need a map that’s customized to your personal destination. On this week’s show Ashlye V. Wilkerson, empowerment and leadership coach for women, shares her Phenomenal Women Leading Pink Print Process™: 4 proven steps to get from where you are to where you want to be.

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Have framework of Ashlye’s Pink Print™ Process and know how to apply it to your life
    2. Have immediate steps you can do today to make positive change in your future
    3. Get tips on ways other entrepreneurs measure their goals to create your very own success measurement system

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate Welcome to episode number 228 here at the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast. I’m April beach host and founder of the Sweetlife company, where we give you proven tools and strategies to design, launch, and scale your business online for 26 years collectively with our business and four years here on the podcast.

     

    Thank you so much for joining us everything that we’re going to talk about. All of the resources, if you’re a listener, you know that you get a lot of gold from this show. This show is known for delivering business trainings and strategies that you can take to the bank, but business coaches charge thousands for you. Get them all here, free on the show.

     

    So because of that, I want to make sure you know where to find the recap and the links and the resources mentioned on today’s episode, you can cruise over to sweet life co.com simply click on podcast. And this is number 228 today on the show. This episode is for entrepreneurs in the first three phases of my sweet life business system of the start to scale up online business system.

     

    What does that mean? If you haven’t yet? We have a very short self-assessment that you can go take very simply by going to Sweetlife co.com forward slash quiz. And it will tell you exactly what phase of business growth you’re in and based on the base of business growth you’re in, there are certain things you should be focusing on this particular show falls into an appropriate tool for you to be focusing on if you were in phases one through three of that business system.

     

    So that’s where you can access it. Make sure you’ve done that all the resources are of course, proven, trusted, and they are available to you completely free again@sweetlifeco.com forward slash quiz. So today on the show, this is what you can expect. We are talking about unlocking your potential in achieving your goals and dreams with the one and only Ashley Wilkerson. I can’t wait for you to meet this powerhouse woman.

     

    She truly is dedicating her time and she’s dedicated her life to teach and elevate other professionals. And so she is such a gem and a treasure, and you are going to walk away with tangible tools. You’re even going to get access and understand her proven method to help women walk into empowerment and unlock their potential to achieve their dreams. She actually gives that to you here on the show,

     

    and we dive in a little bit deeper to help you implement that process. So there’s a lot of great things coming to you today. So let me give you a little bit of an introduction. Ashley has received distinguished honors, such as being named the who’s, who among professional women, the state 2040 Columbia business, monthly best and brightest 35 under 35 national council of Negro women living a legacy award,

     

    the ramp foundation education trailblazer Midlands chapter, the American business women’s association business associate of the year, Brooklyn Baptist church, millennial magic award, South Carolina, black pages, 2040 Columbia metropolitan magazine, top 10 Columbia young professionals, alpha Kappa alpha sorority incorporated. South Atlantic region married the vote in outstanding graduate member incorporated cluster seven leadership award United way of Midlands live United cheeky award and Columbia regional business report,

     

    2020 phenom. Wow, she’s amazing. Let’s go ahead and dive into today’s show<inaudible> Hey, you guys welcome back to the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast. I am so excited to be joined here by my new friend, Ashley Wilkerson. And yes, we met on clubhouse actually is an absolute rockstar. As a matter of fact, she’s one of these people that,

     

    you know, those people like you’re in a room and that’s the person walks in the room and everybody just gets happier because they’re there the whole atmosphere and the room is just like, Ashley’s here. Well, that’s what it’s like on clubhouse. You’re watching the video. You’re going to see this, you know, behind the scenes in this episode. And I’m so excited to have her on the show.

     

    Ashley, welcome to the sweet life entrepreneur podcast. Tell everybody about you, what you do and your superpower. Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure, thankful for the opportunity. Love you April beach. And thank you clubhouse for club because I’ve had the opportunity to meet some phenomenal women such as yourself. So I greatly appreciate the here with the sleep life.

     

    So I am a health and thought leader of the phenomenal women leading a community. It is a women empowerment community where we strive to help women become better versions of themselves, unlock their full potential and achieve the goals and dreams that they have for themselves and their lives personally and professionally. So it is an honor to serve as a coach, to the ladies in my community,

     

    as well as a mentor and a friend, everyone in the community does not necessarily need coaching itself. They may be a part of the community for the support for the empowerment for the connections network with others is so there are different reasons why people join the community, but they do have the option to utilize the coaching services if they need to as well. And you know,

     

    I know it’s such a fantastic resource because on clubhouse people actually come in the rooms that you’re hosting and talk about, oh yeah, I’m in your community. And I love it there. And I mean, there, there’s nothing more powerful as a coach than having other people who you didn’t even ask to be there, show up and be like, oh my gosh,

     

    I love Ashley’s stuff. I love being part of this. So kudos to you for truly designing an engineering it place that is so real and safe for women to grow. So it’s amazing. The stories that I’ve heard people say about this community, and we’re going to be making sure you guys know how to tap into Ashley here. So let’s go ahead and talk about what business training,

     

    you know, this, this show is known for business trainings and strategies that other coaches charge thousands for. And so our listeners I know, are fully excited to come and show up here and be like, oh my gosh, what is Ashley going to teach today? And so today you and your area of expertise, you are going to guide us through your framework.

     

    And let me set you guys up for this framework because yes, I, I get to get a little peak to it before Ashley walks us through it today. But you guys listeners, you guys, you know how a lot of those coaches out there are saying, Hey, listen, you know, really live your dream life or walk into who you are.

     

    And there’s a lot of motivation. There’s a lot of amazing inspiration out there, but there is a gap between where we want to be and actually how to get there. Well, what is so special about Ashley is she has a method and she has a framework to actually guide you to that process. And you’re going to get a sneak peek of that framework here today.

     

    Actually, can you tell us just a little bit about how long you have been working with people and how you really got into this space of, of guiding women to empowerment and achieving their goals and dreams? Absolutely. So my background is actually in early childhood education and psychology child psychology. And so I’m a former kindergarten, first grade teacher and that’s how I entered into the space of education in the field of education.

     

    But then as my career evolved, I became a teacher trainer. My first year teaching the school district hired me to lead a series of professional development sessions, teaching other teachers how to best teach reading. And a lot of the teachers were senior level teachers, meaning they had over 10, 15 years of experience and I was a first-year teacher leading and conducting those sessions.

     

    And so in that moment, that’s when I developed a love, not only for children, but a love for adult learners as well and the entire continuum of education. And so that is really the core part of everything that I do. I believe that education is my true framework. That’s my pillar, that’s my foundation. And I bring that into everything that I do even as I facilitate and moderate sessions on clubhouse education is a part of my moderating style on clubhouse.

     

    So that’s where I started with bringing adult learners into the fold of what I do. And from there, I ended up transitioning into higher ed. And so from teaching those professional development workshops, hosting conferences, leading seminars, developing curriculum, I then transitioned into the higher ed space. And I became a adjunct professor, a professor, a sitting on a university board of trustees and being really ingrained in higher education and the adult learning process.

     

    And so transitioning into that, I initially taught in the college of education, but then I was approached by our local women’s college. And they asked me to do something that no one ever asked me prior to them, which was, Hey, can you develop a course for our women in leadership studies? Hmm. Interesting. You want me to develop that course?

     

    Because my background is in education. So the courses that I usually develop are pertaining to education it’s early childhood and elementary education and they say, yes, well, your background is education, but you’re elected to a university. It’s a state level board. You’re the youngest, you’re the only woman of color. You lead leadership initiatives in the area you’ve completed different leadership preparation programs.

     

    You would be ideal to lead the charge for developing this course and you’ll serve as the inaugural professor. And so I said, okay, I’d be happy to do that. But know that if I do that, I need the autonomy to develop the course as I see fit. And they said, sure, that’s totally fine. So I said, okay.

     

    So I developed the course and I included an educational component. My husband always says that learning happens in a conversation. That’s what I sought to do in that course. So in that course, I didn’t structure it as me being the instructional authority for 14 weeks, I actually developed the course to include a panel discussion 10 of the 14 weeks. And what we did was I focused each week on a different topic.

     

    And I feature women leading the charge in that topic area, in that area of expertise. And so one week it was women in religion. Another week, it was women in medicine. Another week, it was women in politics with another week. It was women in media. And so for 10 weeks I had women from all over the state of South Carolina,

     

    come in, we had CEOs, we had senators, we had mayors, we had everyone doctors, attorneys, everyone from all backgrounds come in and they share their trajectory. They share their journeys, they share their teachable moments. They share their backgrounds. And that is where the true learning takes place. When we can glean from the insight of others, where we can learn from their experiences where we can ask them it real time questions that we have,

     

    that’s how we then answer and unlock our full potential. That’s how we then develop ways that we want to improve, enhance what we do, what we offer, who we are or identify who we’re trying to be. So that’s how I entered into the space, but the course was for two semesters, it lasted for one year. And then that department was downsized in that course was not offered again after that.

     

    And I became a mother of two during that second semester. And so I transitioned my schedule and I transitioned my life. And when I did that, the ladies missed the community because I actually opened up the courses. I opened up the sessions of the course for people in the community who weren’t students of my class. I made it open to the public and free admission.

     

    So we had women coming in from all over to sit in and listen to these conversations. It’s a really grow and learn with the attendees and the participants and the feature speakers. And so I did that and they did not want the community to end. And so, as a result of them not wanting the community to EDD four years ago, it didn’t transition over into a Facebook community,

     

    a small intimate Facebook community, a few hundred people. And then from there, it evolved into mentoring sessions and webinars offerings and our conference, our women empowerment conference. And so it just kept evolving and evolving based on the needs of the members of the community. And it grew even more so as a result of COVID and clubhouse, I say the two CS COVID club app.

     

    And so I grew as a result of those two days, and now we have a platform on clubhouse. We have a platform on Facebook, we have touchpoints on other social media processes. And then we also have a targeted group on mighty networks through our mentoring circle. So it’s really evolved over the past four years. It’s evolved significantly. So over the past year,

     

    as a result of COVID in clubhouse and yeah, that’s how we’ve started. Okay. So many this could go in a million directions from there. I’m going to, I’m going to hold to the promise of stain so that you can teach everybody your, your method here. A couple of things about this for our listeners. I think it’s really important for you guys to pick up on,

     

    and I want to just highlight this. And what Ashley was saying is that you see the evolution of the process of business development. So often it is tempting to think that you want to start at the very end that you want to launch this thing. And it’s just going to be what it is. As a matter of fact, I had a client this morning that was struggling to move forward because she wanted it to be perfect.

     

    She wanted it to be at the end, but it wasn’t an evolution of the business. And Ashley’s story is a perfect example, how your ideas and your intellectual property evolves and grows. And so this is just such a great example of such a powerful story. And so want our listeners to take that away. We could have just end the episode right there and just say,

     

    see what Ashley did. It’s it’s so cool. So I, I just appreciate you sharing that so much. It’s just a lot of wisdom and business growth and development there. So as we’re sitting here right now, we did meet on clubhouse. I actually remember now, I think we’re in one of John Lee’s rooms and you were asking a question about mighty networks,

     

    which is a whole nother conversation that we can have. And I think that was the first time that I ever saw you. And I love how you have curated a bunch of different places for conversations to happen. So smart, the way you’ve done that in here on the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, we’re extending the conversation too, as well with your method. This is an very important topic because of the fact that this is what every woman really wants,

     

    but yet again, they lack the framework to get to this injury result. There is an idea there is this picture painted and there’s a feeling inside women of, of what they want to be and who they know they’re called to be. But there’s usually these barriers to get there in this process. So start guiding us through your process. First of all,

     

    what is your process called so that everybody knows the phenomenal pink print? Yes. Okay. It is absolutely amazing. So this pink Framp process is Ashley’s and you ladies can bank on it. I will tell you, so, you know, kicking this off, you said the very first step in this process is really helping women to identify their goals. Can you walk us through the first step in this process?

     

    Yep. So oftentimes, and I work with women on all ends of the spectrum. I work with a women who are transitioning out of college and they don’t know exactly what they want to do to begin their adult lives in their careers. I work with women who moms and significant others, and they spent a lot of time pouring into their children and their family so much so that they feel they’ve lost themselves,

     

    or don’t quite know what they want to do next in their lives for themselves. And then I work with women who have had amazingly successful careers. They’ve achieved all the goals, they’ve done all the things, and they’re still stuck with what’s next, right? And so those are three different age points, but it’s really the same pain point that they’re experiencing.

     

    Who am I, what do I want to do? Who do I want to become important aspect, an important element of our journey. And as women, we experience that element several times through, out our lifespan, our lifetime, our journey. And so really, really focusing in on what goals do we have and what do we want to do next is so important.

     

    And you have to really map out what those goals are. And those goals are not just for your professional side, it’s for your personal side too. So what are your personal goals? What are your professional goals? Where do you see yourself in the next year, two years, three years, 10 years, 15 years. Where do you want to be?

     

    What are the goals you want to achieve during that time period? Where do you want to go? That is so critical. And that’s the first step of the pink print is identifying. What are those goals? I have a question for you. Do you find that when women come to this place and they want to identify their goals, do they ever feel,

     

    I guess guilt is the word I’m thinking of? Do they ever feel guilty or shy or embarrassed? Because sometimes I know the women have huge goals. Like I want to be a TEDx speaker, or I want to do these really big things. And are women sometimes afraid of actually sharing how big they really want to be, because they feel bad about that.

     

    Is that something that you see very often? So I see a couple of things. I see the confidence. Isn’t always there to work towards or to go towards those things. And so they’re not confident in who they are, their abilities, their value. They don’t feel worthy of attaining certain things at high levels. They feel embarrassed sharing. They get caught into the comparison trap of,

     

    I don’t have what this person has. I haven’t done what this person’s done. I haven’t attained with this person hesitate. So I must not be able to get those things. And so they get sucked into that comparison trap that happens oftentimes. And then ultimately, sometimes the issue really is being able to name exactly what it is that you want for your life,

     

    what that desire is, and then be able to walk towards that safe. And that’s why the pink print is so important because it helps you to name it. It’s to identify. What’s a part of it. What are the components of it what’s required to achieve it. And then it takes you through that roadmap of identifying strategies for doing that thing in achieving that thing.

     

    Wow, it’s so powerful. Absolutely. And I can imagine that that is you have a great deal of experience in all these different situations, all these different reasons why women come to the table with a big heart’s desire, but yet all the excuses are the reasons why that they maybe shouldn’t or don’t deserve to achieve or do those things. So again, why your pink print is so powerful.

     

    So after somebody goes through this process of really identifying what those goals are, what’s the next step? What do they do? So then the next thing I have them do is to get focused, gain clarity, because it’s one thing to have all of these goals. But if you are actively trying to accomplish all of these goals, but they don’t contribute to each other,

     

    or they don’t compliment each other in any way, then you’re going to find yourself And Running all over the place. Right? And so you have to gain clarity and you have to get focused in, in order to do that. I walk them through prioritizing their goals. All right? So all of these are goals. Ours. I have a lot of goals,

     

    but let’s put these goals into priority. And that priority is up to how you see fit, the priority that you set for your goals. So it could be a time priority. It could be a finance priority. It could be whatever it is, whatever way you define that, how already system it’s neither right or wrong, it’s yours. So you identify how you’re going to define that.

     

    And then you prioritize it that way. Once you do that, once you prioritize it, then you go through and you get focused and you gain clarity on these are my goals. This is how I prioritize it. This is my roadmap. Because now that you have this, guess what the books you read are going to be determined by this rooms you attend on clubhouse are going to be determined by this.

     

    The conversations you participate in are going to be determined by this, the things you watch and listen to, they’re going to be determined, this, the actions that you take, they’re going to be determined by this. And that’s what clarity and gaining focus for you. Woo that’s Right. That’s so great. So powerful. So powerful. I mean, just,

     

    I had somebody called the other day a shiny squirrel. So it’s this, it’s this shiny object and squirrel absolute fix. And I think also when women can, I don’t know, everybody relates and sees things the way I do, but I know a lot of us are visual and we need to see things. And when we actually see that pink print,

     

    we can actually see it there. And there’s just so much power in, in having something come to life in this very clear action plan. Okay. So somebody has gone through this process, they’ve gone through the process. They have this clarity, they have their roadmap that you’ve guided them through. They are seeing things the way they have never seen it before.

     

    Almost a simplified way. A very, like all the noises calmed down. They’re hyper-focused, their goals are crystallized what now? So this is the step where we actually develop the pink print itself. One of the words that I use in, within my framework is called smart goals. Okay. And so for smart goals, you’re breaking down the acronym, smart.

     

    You are making sure you have all of the components that are a part of that goal. So you have the specifics, you write specific details, information needed for that goal. All right. And then the M is for measurement. How do you measure if you’ve achieved that goal? How do you measure your progress? If you are on track towards completion of that goal,

     

    what’s the measurement that you’re going to use? The a is for achievable. Is this goal achievable for you with the time, with your effort, with your skillset? Can you achieve it? The next letter R is for realistic. All right. Is this something that’s realistic for you to do? Is it realistic within a time frame? Is it realistic within your skill set?

     

    Is it realistic based on the measurement? Is it realistic based on the specifics of the details you’ve identified. And then the T is for time, you set a time for when you want to start this goal and you set an anticipated time for when you would like for this goal to be complete so time. So I use smart goals, which is a framework within my framework of developing your peat print.

     

    And once you’ve already identified those goals, you’ve gained clarity. You’ve prioritize those goals. You’ve made sure that those goals are smart goals. Now it’s about developing your strategy within your pink print. So what are your strategies for achieving each one of these smart goals? What are those action items that you need to complete for each smart goal to be achieved? And that’s the pink print that is genius.

     

    That is absolute genius. As someone who teaches people, how to develop frameworks, this is why people in your programs are so successful is because you have taken the time to truly create a transformational program for them using these frameworks and frameworks within frameworks. And I have a lot of listeners that are laughing. Cause we talk about frameworks within frameworks and methods within frameworks here on this show all the time.

     

    And sometimes they get our listeners are like really confused about that. Cause they’re trying to do it. What’s the difference? What comes first, a method or framework? Well, this is a perfect example of how Ashley has brought this to life in her transformational program. So great, amazing explanation and job. So I have a question for you also, because this is constantly a topic you’re on the show.

     

    Totally random question. How do you find people tend to measure their own results? What are some examples of the way people? Obviously the goal is different. So that’s going to dictate the measurement, but just generally speaking, if some of our listeners are like, gosh, you know, I really, I really want to start measuring my results. What are some examples of the ways people can measure their own results as you’ve seen your students do in your programs.

     

    And so some of this is a probing thing and I have to probe out of them, what I really want, what I need to know about what they want to achieve. And so for instance, one of my clients, they knew that they, they wanted to sell their new book project, right? And some question for her was how many units do you want to sell?

     

    And I said, Hmm, let me think about it. And I said, well, you need to identify, you need to know how many units you’re trying to sell. Because knowing how many units you trying to sell will help guide you when you are utilizing your strategies. And you are really targeting in on your book promotion, you’ll know exactly how many people you want to target.

     

    How many groups you need to speak to. If you’re on track for selling the number of books that you’re trying to sell. And then I challenged her to take it a step further. Now that you know how many books you want to sell. I want you to break that down into three categories that you offer. How many paper book, back books,

     

    how many hardback books, how many Kindle versions? No, what you are striving to do, and then identify the measurement. So if a business owner says, I want to increase my revenue. By how much, if a business owner says, I want to sell more products, how many units, if someone says, I want to lose weight, how many pounds,

     

    if I want to save money, how much do you want to say? If I want to eliminate debt, how much debt do you need to eliminate? Knowing what that number in that measurement is helps you to then target in, right? If you’re trying to make an additional $20,000 a month and you have services and products that are 1000, 5,000, 10,000 a year,

     

    trying to make an additional $20,000 a month. Okay? It’s different to say, I’m trying to make an additional $20,000 a month versus saying, I’m trying to close two, $10,000 clients, right? Close $4 clients to close $21,000 clients. Great example. We took our goal from I’m trying to make more money a month. I’m trying to make an additional $20,000 a month.

     

    I’m trying to close $21,000 clients too. I’m trying to close five of four or $5,000 clients too. I’m trying to close to $10,000 clients. Yes. Yeah. A hundred percent. What a great example of that. What Ashley just shared. So bring it down, down, down, down, ask yourself more specifically, more specifically, more specifically such a great example.

     

    Okay. So your students, they’ve gone through this point. They have their pink print, by the way, such a cool name of your signature framework. I love it. And they have, they have their phenomenal women leading pink print. Yes. What happens next? And I already know what you’re going to say. And obviously our listeners are probably like,

     

    okay, well then they need to do it. But like, let’s actually talk about what this really looks like in real life. What’s what’s next. So all of my clients will tell you that I’d say three things to them. Number one, take action. Number two. Don’t let me work harder on your goals than you’re working on your own goals.

     

    And number three, I will fire my clients. Meaning I will fire you. If you’re not taking action, I will fire you. If I don’t see you committed to your process, I will fire you. If you’re not making progress, I will fire you. If you’re not doing your homework, which are whatever the action items are. I will fire you.

     

    If you’re not honoring your commitment in yourself and your investment in yourself a year time needed support into yourself, into things that you want to achieve. Make absolutely that you’re taking action that you’re working hard on your goals is that you’re honoring the commitment with yourself. Amen. That is so important. And I love that you fire your clients. I think that is such an important thing to do.

     

    It’s almost like you’re, there you go. I’m going to fire you because something needs to change here. And I, and I, and what was your second thing? Don’t let me work harder on your goals than you. We’re going to, we’re going to get that out. That’s going to be an Ashley Wilkerson quote that goes out how good This podcast episode.

     

    All right. So my team, as you’re listening to this, pull that quote out of that is like the winner. It’s just amazing. And there’s one other point you said, you know, as we’re wrapping this up in the beginning is that you said to me before, behind the scenes, before we started recording and I wrote it down, cause I was like,

     

    it’s just so important. Is it? You said, we, we bring all of what we are to what we do. We buy all of who we are to everything we do to everything we do that is also so important because I think that especially those of our listeners that are transferring from corporate and really getting into entrepreneurship or those people who have been entrepreneurs for a great deal of time,

     

    which is a lot of our most registers. Now in that scale phase of their business, there is this division where people think, okay, well this is life and this is business, but I love your philosophy. It’s a philosophy that my husband and I abide to as well and our family. It really is. It’s everything who you are, is brought into this.

     

    And I love how you teach creating this cohesive harmony between everything we were designed to do for the people that we were called to serve. And so I, I really love everything that you teach Ashley, and I love you being here on the show. I appreciate it. Thoroughly enjoyed myself. You just a gem. I absolutely love it. So let’s talk about how you guys can connect with Ashley.

     

    So as you know, now we have our regular weekly Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast room on clubhouse happening every single Wednesday at 12 o’clock Eastern time where you guys get to jump in and jam with our guests. Talk about the topic of this week. So this week, especially if you’re alive subscriber to this show on all of our podcasts listening channels, which is everyone,

     

    as you guys know, even Pandora and apple music, now we’re everywhere as you’re listening, make sure you join us on Wednesday and you get to connect with Ashley directly as an extension of this podcast episode. So she is going to be there like she always is on clubhouse. Totally. They’re pouring into you and taking your questions and workshopping with you beyond what we’re talking about here on the episode of this show.

     

    And besides that, okay, so those of you guys are like, oh my gosh, Ashley is exactly what I need. I’m ready to move. I want my pink print right now. Ashley, how can people move forward and get in line as far as joining your program or working with you privately? Absolutely. So they have a few ways they can do it.

     

    They can connect with me personally. It’s a S H L Y E V on all social media platforms. You can connect with me at Ashley B on all social media platforms. They can also go to my link tree slash Ashley B. And when they go to my link tree slash Ashley B, they will be able to see, they’ll see the community group that’s on Facebook,

     

    the free community groups. They’ll also see the option to get registered. So tin our second annual moving and leading phenomenally conference taking place on October 23rd, they will see details for coaching with me. They can join the group, mentoring, coaching circle community, or they can register to sign up for a free consultation with me for one-on-one coaching services. So either way,

     

    whether they are in the free community, whether they are joining us on clubhouse. They’ll also see my, all of my social media connections on my late tree, so they can email me directly. They can tap into any and all of my social media pages right there on that page. Everything is right there, easy peasy for them to access me and access the phenomenal women leading.

     

    Awesome. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I just have to send, or it’s my pleasure. Absolutely. For everything you’re doing and thank you, clubhouse for our listeners already been on there yet. So they’re Android listeners. So I promise you guys, you guys are getting on there soon in the meantime, connect with us on Instagram here.

     

    And of course this is episode number 228 of these two great live entrepreneur podcasts. So we will make sure that all of the show notes are available for you@sweetlifeco.com click on the podcast and you guys know the drill episode two 28. We’ll have all the goods. All right, thanks again, Ashley. Appreciate you.

    Episode 224: What’s Your Brand Archetype – with April Beach and Carrie Thomas-Omáur

    Carrie Thomas-Omáur SweetLife Entrepreneur April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Take the quiz to find out what phase of business you’re in. www.sweetlifeco.com/quiz
     
    Join us live on Clubhouse every week at 12:00 PM Eastern Time to get your personal podcast episode questions answered. https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@aprilbeach

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    New or established entrepreneurs who are struggling to differentiate your brand from others.

    Summary:

    Struggling to stand out? Perhaps your business has been rolling for some time, but the seas are getting crowded and you’re not standing out. It’s time to brand outside the box. In this episode brand personality specialist, Carrie Thomas-Omáur explains how to understand your customers’ core drivers to connect on a right-now level and create raving fans by understanding your brand archetype. 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. What really drives your clients to buy
    2. Your customers thought process when considering your offer
    3. Understand brand archetypes and how to find yours
    4. First steps to laying out the visual representation of your brand

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator a probate. Hi everyone. And welcome to it. Episode number 224. Thank you for joining us back here at the sweet life entrepreneur and business podcast. And today I am joined by a very special guest. Who’s going to help us dive into brand archetypes the way she teaches it is so easy to understand.

     

    And so I can’t wait to get into today’s episode, but before we get started, just a little bit of housekeeping, first of all, if you are not yet following us on clubhouse, please do. So. We host a live clubhouse room every single Wednesday at 12 o’clock Eastern based on this week’s podcast. So if you’re listening to the show and it drops on Monday,

     

    and you’re a subscriber of the show and you have questions and you want us to dive into your business with you and answer your specific questions based on the content we’re talking about on this week’s podcast, we do it every single Wednesday on clubhouse faithfully at 12 o’clock Eastern time, and you can join me and my guest and this week it is Carrie. I’m so excited and we are here to support you.

     

    It’s an extension of this podcast, a free service, and part of, one of the many outreaches we like to do here as a business here at the sweet life entrepreneur podcast. If you’re new to listening, we give you tools and proven business coaching and strategies for decades and decades that have been proven that you can bank on. And one of the most popular tools that we have,

     

    I want to share with you, if you haven’t grabbed it yet, is the lifestyle business roadmap. I call it my start to scale up system. And that is a very quick short self-assessment that you can take to find out exactly where you are in the process of designing and launching and scaling a business for high profit and deep purpose. And you can take that self-assessment simply by going to sweet life co.com

     

    forward slash quiz. And when you do, I’m going to give you a specific customized list of exactly where you are in the process of growing and scaling your business. And you’re going to get a pinpointed checklist of what you should be focusing and working on right now. So you can go grab that@sweetlifeco.com forward slash quiz, and please join us on clubhouse so we can get to know you and know all about your business.

     

    All you have to do is follow me on clubhouse at April beach. The link is also in my Instagram bio at April beach life. And I would love to connect with you further and take your questions. Okay? So today’s podcast is about brand strategy. I love how my show is about brand strategy today. We’re talking about really, what is a brand archetype?

     

    How does this fit in? And when I sat down with our guest, you are going to love her, by the way I met her on clubhouse. So we love the collaborations that are happening on that great app, very real time and authentic. And her name is Carrie, Carrie Thomas Omaro. And I want to make sure I’m pronouncing her last name correctly.

     

    She has a beautiful last name. She is a branding expert, and here are the things that you can expect from today’s episode. You’re going to understand your customer’s core drivers and motivators and how they fit into your brand strategy. You are going to understand brand archetypes in general, and you are going to know how to exactly create raving fans from your brand archetype.

     

    So let me go ahead and give a formal introduction. Carrie Thomas Amaro is a former corporate rebel turned entrepreneur. She’s a branding extraordinary Carrie’s top mission is to help entrepreneurs build premium brands to increase their visibility, credibility, and profitability in the business market. Carrie believes there are so many good people with amazing messages and MIS and missions that can really be impactful to others,

     

    but they lack visibility. Raise your hand if that’s you, you have an amazing world changing message, but you’re just not exactly sure how to get that out to the world. Then this podcast is for you, Carrie dives, into her personal story and how she literally fell into brand strategy. And because of this, well, maybe godly accident is some people might call it.

     

    She is become a leading brand strategist, and I know you’re going to be able to relate to her. I can’t wait for you to connect with Carrie after this episode on clubhouse with us. And let’s go ahead and dive into today’s show. All of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com. And this is episode number two, two, four.

     

    All right, let’s go ahead and dive in. All right. You guys welcome back to another episode here on the show. I am super excited to be connected with Carrie and to bring you Carrie’s genius today on the podcast. Let me give you a little bit of back story, Carrie and I met on clubhouse and immediately when I heard her speak, I was like,

     

    Oh my gosh, I want to hang out with her. I want to learn more from her. And you’re going to know exactly why if you haven’t met her already yet on clubhouse today’s episode. So Carrie, welcome to the sweet life entrepreneur podcast. And so excited that you’re here. Tell everybody a little bit about how you became such like a brand whisper.

     

    You’re like the landing branding, Ninja genius teller. First of all, thank you so much. Like it literally means the world, like for you to invite me on show, literally all The things. So I actually started in this journey. I used to be, well, I have my degree in human humanistic psychology. So I’ve always wanted, like,

     

    even when I was little, like I used to always be like, why do people do the things that they do? Like, what are the things that make them like, make the choices that they make? So I was doing that, that my degree in human psychology. And then I actually got a job. It was actually thrown at me. I was working at a restaurant,

     

    like, what am I really like? My, my brother. He was like, Hey Kara, I want you to run my restaurant. And I’m like, you not, never did any of this ever in life. And he was like, yeah, but you’re smart. You’ll figure it out, figure it out. So I did that and I remember like the most pivotal moment.

     

    That’s why I was like, I gotta get my stuff together. It’s like he was a pizza place. And I was like doing the order and stuff. And I was like, okay, we need cheese. I was like sick. Not knowing that this was like six boxes. Is that like, It’s bulk ordering. I definitely originally spent a lot of time in restaurants,

     

    so I absolutely totally know what you’re talking about. Yeah. And it’s funny. Cause he left me, like, I would say at least three weeks, then he left me to go on vacation for a month. But like I’m over here, like trying to do orders and do all this stuff. And I’m just like, well, the shipment comes in.

     

    It’s like all the shift keeps coming in and they’re like, what is your I’m? Like, I ordered like snakes and it’s like, each box has 12 bags and I’m just like, okay, let’s figure this out. So we have key pieces of dollars slice it out. But actually it’s funny. Cause everybody always asked me like, how did I start learning all the things that I learned that mistake,

     

    like we were very new in business and I was like, we have to get people in these doors. I have all this chief Shamar comes home in two weeks and he’s got to literally like yell at me and cuss me. Yeah. I have to figure this out. So I was like, I need all the people around us. Like, no we’re here.

     

    Like how can I do it? And I was like, well, what would be the easiest thing to do? And I was like, easiest thing to do is like to get in touch with all the restaurants and businesses around me to know us to come over. So Lily, what we did, I was like, Hey, we got this chief.

     

    We’re going to give everybody a free cheese pizza. We’re just going to drop it off. So I literally just started dropping off cheese pizza and me happy personality. Hey, thank you guys so much. My name is Carrie. I’m the manager. I probably seek the pallets. I just want to drop off this chief. Please let me know if you ever want to come hang out.

     

    I’m always there. My team’s always there. We would love to have like literally just everywhere, like just drop it off cheese pizzas, the glory I’m like Oprah, which it was so crazy. Cause literally like within a week people just start coming and they were like one, they were like here, like no one’s ever dropped this off pizza. And then like,

     

    you were just like, your energy was just so amazing that we just went to come hang out with you. So literally like people just start coming and coming. Luckily all the pieces, all the cheese was Columbia before he came. So that was good. Yeah. But that was when I realized that I was like in business, you need to double down on what you’re good at that.

     

    For me, it’s always been connections and relationships. So I was like, I’m going to have to double down on this. I’m going to have to create this visibility strategy and what I start calling with a fat visability. So like literally I want to be extremely visible to every business within five minutes, like around the perimeter. And that’s what we did.

     

    And we were able to become extremely profitable in the business. And I did that for about two years, but like I just graduated from college and it wasn’t cool to have that type of insurance anymore. So I had to go into corporate and I did corporate restaurants and I actually was at felt like corporate working on the opposite side as a business consultant, working with franchisees have increased their visibility and profitability.

     

    So that’s what I was doing. But the whole time I was still with my thoughts of like, how can we get people in the restaurant? How can we change the perception? Because of course the way big plays, how come change perception, especially when there’s so many subways, how can we make this the way the go-to set weight in terms of everybody else that’s in the area.

     

    And that’s what we kept doing. How can we do the things? How can we do it? And sadly, my father passed away March of 2019 and that’s kind of when I was like, I wanted to do more. My dad was in the military for 26 years. He may so much impact. And he replies, like I remember at the funeral,

     

    they were like, I had one conversation with Paul and like literally my life changed. I was like, Oh my gosh, one call like one conversation. And that’s when myself, I want to do more. I wanted to do more outside of that. And one of my franchisees, he always used to say that, cause I made those schedule and I didn’t really work a lot of hours.

     

    She was like, here, you need to do something like start a business. And I was like doing what he’s like, and I was going to do it in restaurant. But after my father died, I was like, I really want to work with impact or entrepreneurs. I want to work with people who have missions and messages that they want to get out,

     

    but they’re not visible. They’re brands. Aren’t in alignment with who they are. I need to help them get visible so people can like, so the impact that they want to make, they can find, make it. First of all, I’m so sorry. You lost your dad. I lost my dad six years ago and I still every single like week or so,

     

    like pick up the phone to call him and then remember he isn’t there. It’s really, really tough. And sometimes having a vision into seeing something differently, whether it’s, you know, what happened to you is just such an eye-opening thing. And I I’m sorry that happened, but I also love your story because it’s usually something like that and it makes us stop and be like,

     

    okay, Hey, wait a minute. Am I really where I’m supposed to be in my actually using my skills? The thing I love about what you said brand strategy, is that what you have taught these businesses to do. Isn’t this like, you know, Proctor and gamble or Budweiser or huge big brand strategy. You’re really talking down on this level to these what we call micro businesses.

     

    Okay. Like 90% of our listeners is a show where micro businesses wouldn’t qualify to be a small business cause that you can have up to a hundred employees. Right? And so these micro entrepreneurs that have very, very small teams and the concept of being the go-to business, not for everybody, but just within this fear of influence, granted it’s different. We’re talking about online business is so simple.

     

    It’s yet so smart. And so I love what we’re going to dive into today on this show. And thank you for sharing that. I think that so many are like I did years and years and years waiting tables and bartending, my husband was in the restaurant was in corporate restaurants. There are so many entrepreneurs that are from the restaurant industry. It’s because we are bad-ass and multitasking actually I’ll say that if you can,

     

    if you can be in the restaurant industry, you can do anything, anything. I usually do fine dining. And I think that’s what I was like, Oh, I can do all things out. Right? Yeah. I did find dining. Like at the end I did find dining and I was like, man, I actually should have been doing this.

     

    I sell $300 bottle of wine, make as much money as I did. You know, back when I was 17 serving vegan food across a bar, but you know, it was great. It was, it was good experience. And so diving into, you know, kind of brand strategy, some of the things that we’re going to talk about today in our audiences want to know my people ask me this,

     

    your people ask you this, like this is the thing they want to know. And we’re going to break this down for you guys today on the show. The biggest question is, is how do we build this business and personal brand at the same time? How do we know the balance between, you know, what we’re sharing out there as a company and what we’re sharing out there as a personal brand,

     

    as a human that kind of behind the scenes and you have three different things you’re going to take us through today, which I’m so excited to talk about. And so the first thing that you say in your process that you bring people through in branding and strategy is understanding your customer’s core drivers and really like what keeps him up at night. Can you elaborate on that?

     

    Teach our listeners, that process and this being step number one. Here’s what you guys got to do in order to tap into this level of influence. Yeah. So what do you want to do is you really want to understand who they are. So of course, like people say like, what books do they read? What Facebook groups that, Hey,

     

    that’s great. But you also want to really understand the psychological like back, like who motivates them. Like when they have a bad day, what, like, what are the things that kind of gets them out of? And the way that you do that is the easiest way to do that is by start talking to your customers, like start asking those personal questions.

     

    I have that relationship. Cause we were like, Hey, you know, I know that was crazy. Like you were doing that launch. I know it was a little rough. Like what were you kind of going through? Like, let’s talk about it, let’s see if we can adapt to it. So next time they might understand what you’re doing next time we can fix it.

     

    And a lot of times they were like, you know, Carrie, like I want like, I really, really want to be able to like be there for my family. I want to be able to create this life for my family. So that’s, what’s keeping them up at night. Like that’s the thing and you’ll hear it. They’ll tell you.

     

    And they’re like, I want to be able to do this with like every time I feel like I’m getting almost there, I just can’t take that leap. So having those interviews with your clients and actually listening to what they say, because I think a lot of times we don’t really listen to what our clients say, but actually listening and then actually diving deeper,

     

    say, okay, like, so you really want to help your family? Like what, like what are you trying to do? Like, what do you want to do with your family? I really want to put my daughter in private school. I really want, I really want my wife to be able to homeschool like our youngest stuff like that. Having those conversations is what is going to be able,

     

    so you can understand how to communicate with them and how to do those other people that we’re going to talk about in a way So smart. Okay. So first of all, people don’t like taking time to do this and it’s the best market research they can do. And it’s the most direct. And I love that you said that because a lot of entrepreneurs,

     

    like we are solutions finders, so we just want to solution and be like, Oh yeah, yeah, it’ll sell. And I love that. You talk about how important it is to actually talk to your audience for sure. The best market research. If you guys are not on clubhouse with me and Carrie, you should go and clubhouse. Cause it’s like market research gold.

     

    You can just room about a question that you want answered and you’re going to get all that feedback. Some you don’t want, but some really great important feedback regarding what, what you guys are trying to do. And so understanding basically what keeps him up at night and the things that matter to them that do not have anything to do with what you’re selling.

     

    That’s what I heard what you said. Oh, I like that. I like that. Yeah. It’s funny. Cause I feel like I’ve been, I’m always on the soap box is especially because we’re all entrepreneurs just because we’re an all white space doesn’t mean that our clients are just like these people laid at people. They’re real people in the real world with real life,

     

    things that are going on every day and those things just because they’re on the screen, it’s still happening. So you have to take time and ask those questions and try to figure out what is their real day to day life. Like for me, I’m a at, so I get up at seven o’clock in the morning to homeschool my knee, that there is something that up and that’s a driver for you.

     

    And, but it very impressive by the way, just so you know, your superstar rockstar For sure. But very important. Okay. And just understanding Those other drivers behind the scenes and like the second thing you had said in this, like really kind of pulls off of what we were just talking about is understanding your brand archetype. First of all, can you please explain to our listeners that don’t even know what a brand archetype is?

     

    Like, what is the definition? What is a brand archetype and then help our listeners understand how to utilize? Yeah. So the easiest way to explain what a bread archetype is, if everybody is familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So everybody has certain needs and desires that they have to get to be able to survive and feel like they’ve made the next step.

     

    So of course, you know, water, shelter, money, commitment, relationship, that’s what people need. Those same things that they need are the same things that go into the bread archetype. Like they have the hero brands, musician brands, the innocent, the Sage, like all those are different bread archetypes, but all of those are based on the core needs that we have Nate.

     

    So what happens that how to really leverage it is a differentiation factor. So a lot of times, especially right now in social media of everybody came online. But a lot of people that do the same thing, like I feel like you’re gonna throw a rock in social media and he had a bread strategy. Yeah. But because they haven’t leveraged a brand archetype,

     

    they’re speaking the same language that everybody else and speaking actually create a brand archetype and speak in that language. You’ve differentiated yourself. And you’re actually now tapping into the coordinate and core desires of your dream client of your Raymond band. So now when it comes to your offers and your services and your updates, they’re like, Hey, I’m going to listen to this person because they’re speaking to me is that it’s speaking to every black everybody else.

     

    And it’s what we call is that the true foundation of creating a frictionless print. Wow. Okay. And one of the things, one of the notes I took and we were talking a little bit behind the scenes in planning, this show is that people go to the brand that understands their thought process. And I thought that was so smart that you said that and they’re going to the ones that speak to their heart and they’re going to the ones that speak to their true desires.

     

    And honestly what their personality is as a person. Those are the ones that they’re attracted to you even like said, you said something about your mom, you shared this really cool thing. Like your mom’s are attracted like safe brands. Like, you know, like a lot of moms are in that, you know, and that whatever Ramy is and moms are right.

     

    And maybe that just generation where as that’s not the same thing that necessarily drives everybody else. Yeah. Cause it’s like a key example about, let’s say you have a mom who really like bills. Like I’m looking for like a brand that’s safe, that’s secure. They’re going to be looking for conversations and words. That’s going to be like assurance secure. Like that’s the words that they’re going to want to hear because that’s going to speak to their language.

     

    But for me, like, I get excited by like transformation, innovation, things like that. So I’m going to want to hear things like creative, like innovative moving things like that. That’s the stuff that I would like to me. And that’s why I said it’s super important to understand who your customer is, that it may level to be able to have that conversation when it comes to your brand archetype.

     

    So cool. So cool. Okay. And then the next step you’re going to take our listeners through is understanding now how to represent that visually. What does that look like? What are your tips on actually bringing a visually to the world? So the thing is like always tell people that colors have feelings and fonts have emotion. So you want to make sure that when ever you choose your brand architecture,

     

    you look and you kind of see like what feelings actually are kind of bringing off like what the words are actually bringing it all. So let’s say you have a rebel brand. If you think of a rubber brand, like if you think of like Harley Davidson and things like that is very bold, disruptive, challenging the status norms. So when you think of their colors,

     

    you’re going to think of Rez black, things like that. They’re not going to think of like a baby pink is going to throw it all out. You and be like, hold up. Like, this is not speaking to me Down. Yeah. And you said colors have feelings and fonts have emotions. Wow. That is so true. Yeah. We wouldn’t,

     

    we wouldn’t think that for sure. And I think oftentimes we’ll look at a brand and wonder why that maybe that brand doesn’t really turn us on or we’re really not really attracted to it. And yeah. A lot of the times like, yeah, those colors just don’t make me feel like I want to go on a field. They don’t do it for me.

     

    And it’s funny. Cause I always, I feel like makeup brands. I used to be a makeup artist. Like in my past life, I love entrepreneurs. We’re so cool. We’re so mixed up. There’s so many experiences. Yeah. So I used to do makeup and like I used to always think it was super cool. Like how makeup brands created different looks and feels to attract different people.

     

    So like, are you a makeup girl? I literally don’t wear makeup at all. I’d go, I get my eyelashes glued on. So I don’t even have to wear mascara is anything I do. I don’t know how to do makeup. I’ve never worn makeup. I have zero clue. But all of my I’m just weird. All of our listeners probably know exactly what you’re just about to say.

     

    Yeah. So like benefit tarts. Like those were really poppy, like millennial brands. Like that’s what they give off. They give that puppy millennial, like this has the new trendy items, but then you have like NARS, Estee, Lauder, things like that. They give like this look spiel and the prices are different just because of it. Cause you’re like,

     

    Oh wait. But when you go over to nurse and Estee Lauder like you and your mind already say, Hey, I’m probably gonna spend $300 And what, what I don’t, but that’s an airplane ticket to me, but I get what you’re saying. You know that that’s a ticket on a journey to me now I get what you’re saying and it’s such a good correlation.

     

    And so this visual representation. So first we talked about understanding what keeps your people, your ideal people up at night, at night, not even necessarily as it actually relates to your product or your service or your program or your course or whatever it is that you’re selling. So what are their core drivers? The second thing that you talked about, I love the brand archetype in understanding how to create that connection between the personality of your buyer and the personality of your brand.

     

    And I know that, you know, that’s spoken about often, but I really appreciate you breaking it down on the show. We haven’t had somebody on the show in four years, that’s actually talked about brand archetypes. So I wanted to make sure that that was really defined for our listeners. And then you’re talking about bringing it out visually and making sure that there’s a visual,

     

    very clear visual representation that is thoughtful in color and font. And then obviously in messaging and the work that you did within the brand archetype development. The last question I want you to answer for us today, very interested to get your take on this. This is clearly a topic of conversation within my mastermind today. You know, everybody has a different thought on this for entrepreneurs that are building both that business and that personal brand.

     

    And we’ve talked about understanding the actual brand strategy of it, but now actually the process of posting and sharing. What percentage do you recommend people share transparent, totally irrelevant behind the scenes versus about the business. Is there a split that you have seen that’s working behind being transparent in what you’re showing your audience, even at literally Siri’s listening to me, she’s always listening.

     

    You guys turn her off. What does that percentage, what is that difference that you see as far as posting about the business and posting about the company brand versus posting about what’s personal, maybe what you’re cooking for dinner or a hike you’re on or even your kid. Okay. So this is exciting for me because I always talk about this and we have a thing.

     

    We call it our content bucket. And in those contents, it’s not me. There are about, I would say at the minimum about three to five, but that kind of depends on like where you’re at, how we try to map it out is what strategic pieces of content. And this will kind of break down, like how all is it happens?

     

    The strategic pieces of content. That is how you think about STEM. So like, what is your thought processes on your business? And a lot of times the easiest way is like, what’s your show? Like what’s your stage? Like, do you have a podcast? You have a YouTube, you have a Facebook show where you’re actually able to have conversations with people and people can understand how you think.

     

    So that’s going to be your one bucket. Your second bucket is going to be, what are the, that can come from those pieces of content that you just talked about. That can be resourceful for people who might not be ready to work with you now. So what are the things? So for me, like if you ever go to my social media,

     

    like we teach about bread architects. We teach about color theory. We teach about different pairings and color palettes that people can use. That doesn’t really do anything for me, but it becomes a resource will aspects for somebody else which provides education, but also still goals aligned with our strategy. The next car is always going to be, what is your, what is your heart’s feet?

     

    Are you a person that like is motivated by like, you want to inspire people. You want to motivate people. You want to make people laugh. What is that heart piece? That’s like, really like really close to you. So for me, it’s always to try to inspire other people. So in March we’d have like the Sheik who marches. We had nothing to do with our business,

     

    but it was aspirational for me because I always want to highlight other people, inspire other people to show like, Hey, these amazing people are doing amazing things. You need to see what they’re doing. Get inspired by them. The next part is who are our clients? What’s their testimony is whatever our case study. What are the people that you want to actually work with insight?

     

    Like who are they are inside? Like what, who are your avatars? Why do you work with the people? Like where are they at in their journey? Why they want it? When are they ready to work with you have that in there. And then the last piece. So it will be 20%. If you decide the last piece, we call it all things,

     

    your name. So it will be all things, April, all things. Carrie’s like, what are the things that is about me? So those are like, for me, it’s like my real, like I’m showing my personality. I’m doing all my things. I’m doing my dancing because that’s me. I’m actually like a happy-go-lucky person. Like I did like an egg drop thing with my niece and nephew this weekend.

     

    I did that in my story. That’s my day-to-day life that showed the different parts of me, but what happens? And this is what super cool. And I love it with our clients is their social media becomes a place where people just want to hang out. Cause they just want to see what’s going on. What are they doing today? Like, Oh,

     

    this is really cool. I didn’t know about that. That’s a great thought process. Then think about that. They keep coming back over and over and over again. You start seeing all these profile businesses while you’re patient. Like these people just keep hanging out. I really anything this week, but it keep coming back because you become a place where they just want,

     

    they feel comfortable and happy. Mm. I love that. Okay. Those five buckets are absolutely genius. And I know people are like, okay, don’t forget you guys as podcasts. You can replay it. Let me see if I can restate the five buckets. Number one is your thought processes or your methods or your systems are kind of your, your,

     

    what I would call your signature method, your signature framework, like your IP, your zone of genius. The second one are actions people can take and a place where you can be resourceful based on your zone of genius and what you teach, who aren’t ready buy from you. The third one is what does your heart speak? Like, are you a motivator?

     

    Are you funny? Like what other things can you share that might or might not relate to your business? The fourth is who are our clients? What are the case studies? What do they need from us? How to know when they’re ready to work for us or work with us, what does that trigger? What are some of the things that our clients are working on?

     

    And then the fifth one is all things, your name, like, what are you up to today? What are you doing? And so that does answer like the 20%. I think that what is your heart speed is also possibly very personal is what, But it can go business. And that’s the really cool part because like, for me as caring about people as a part of our core values.

     

    So when it came to the shoe marches and even like our biggest coming up in June, it is an alignment with that. So like the boss brushes in alignment with what my heart speaks with my heart speaks of how to inspire people, to take those next steps in their life. Even if it’s not, when we just take the next step. So cool.

     

    It’s the things that your beliefs and your motivators and things like that. I, I love that so much. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. This was a lot of great information. And I know our listeners went from some of our listeners who went from never even understanding branding to going from how to understand the audience and even now how to create content.

     

    I mean, that’s just way above, you know, but I think a lot of our listeners, so if you guys hung out until the end, you’ve literally got your content buckets, which is super genius. How can people find you? How can they connect with you if they want to know more about your services? Yeah. You can just visit us at www dot Connect dot com.

     

    It’s funny because the last is the Irish word that means to bring light to which goes into our brand, which is what we try to do. Even like in our businesses and shining light on other people’s brands, bring light to them and have people see them. So that’s why I love, like, I, I love our business Smart. Say you’re a brand strategist,

     

    good meme or good, good business name or two. And then this is episode number 224 here on the sweet life entrepreneur podcast. So you guys can find all the show notes and all Carrie’s links and how to find her in the show notes here@sweetlifeco.com. But then also we get to jam in a clubhouse room. So if you guys are unclip housed in your listeners to this show and you are subscriber,

     

    like you’ve clicked the subscribe button, you’re getting downloads of these episodes. And so you’re listening to it real time. Carrie and I are going to be live on clubhouse on the Wednesday that this show drops at 12 o’clock Eastern time. So if you’re listening to the show in real time, Carrie is going to be in our clubhouse room, taking your questions,

     

    workshopping with you, talking about these five buckets and brand archetype and in all this stuff. And if you, if you’ve never moderated or with a room with her, you never been in a room where she moderates. She’s so much fun. That’s where I found her. And I can’t wait for you guys to get a chance to dive in deeper with Carrie as well.

     

    So Carrie, thank you so much for being a guest on the show and all of the genius that you brought. It’s been such a fun time hanging out with you. I love everything that you said, and I know our listeners really appreciate you pouring into us. Thank you so much. It literally means the world to me. I said at the beginning,

     

    you’re so sweet. It’s it’s truly our pleasure. All right. You guys, thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Isn’t Carrie, just such a gem, such a sweetheart. I hope you walked away with exactly what we promised you would the understanding of brand archetypes and how to use this in your business to speak to the core needs of your audience.

     

    Again, you can join us on clubhouse, the live conversation and Q and a at 12 o’clock Eastern time, every single Wednesday, simply by following me on clubhouse and clicking the little button next to my name, to turn on alerts. So, you know, when we’re going to be talking and you can find me at April beach on clubhouse. All right.

     

    You guys have an awesome, awesome day. I can’t wait to talk to you again soon. Bye bye. For now.

    Episode 222: How To Safeguard Your Content with Copyright Protection – with April Beach and Francesca Witzburg

    Francesca Witzburg SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Join Francesca live on Clubhouse Wednesday, April 14, 12:00 Eastern time Click here to join the SweetLife Entrepreneurs™ Club and get notifications and room links.

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    Those who want to know how to file for and use copyright protection. 

    Summary:

    In this episode we’re talking with The Trademark Attorney, Francesca Witzburg, about what you need to know when it comes to protecting your creative works by filing for copyright protection. If you’re a course or content creator, and you have work that is not protected, this is an urgent episode for you. We dive into who needs copyright protection, what you must be careful to do when hiring help to create works for you, and how to start the process of protecting your work. 
     
    This is part 2 of a 2 part show with Francesca Witzburg. In part 1 we dove into Trademark protections for your work.

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Know if you have work that needs to be protected
    2. Understand how to own the work that others create for you
    3. Have the first steps to file for copyright protection today

    Resources Mentioned:


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator a probate. Hi everyone. And welcome back. So the show April beach here, host of this show and founder of this wheat life company. I’m so glad that you’ve joined us again. This is part two of a two part series that we’re doing with our special guests,

     

    Francesca Whitesburg. Last week, we dove in to trademarking protection who needs trademarking, the difference between word marketing and design marking. And so if you miss that, please pause this show, go back and start with last week of that is an area of need in your business. That was episode number 221. And today this is episode number 222. This episode is for those of you who are in any stage of business development in that stage is connected to our start to scale up system.

     

    If you don’t know what phase of business development you’re in, we have an amazing, powerful, free resource for you where you can take a short assessment and get the exact stage and phase of business development you’re in and get a complete list of what you should be working on right now. And you can get that short assessment and access all of those tools by visiting Sweetlife co.com

     

    forward slash quiz. If you haven’t done that, or if it’s been a while, since you’ve tested where you are in your business growth phase, I highly recommend you tap into that amazing resource. Now let’s talk about what we can expect from today’s show. So this episode is for those of you who want to know how to step into the process of protecting your creative work through filing for copyright protection,

     

    our guest is absolutely hands down amazing. She has done work for our company and many of our clients, and I’m so pleased that she agreed to be on this show. Today, we are talking with the trademarking attorney, Francesca Whitesburg about what you need to know when it comes to protecting your creative works by filing for copyright protection. If you’re a course creator,

     

    if you’re a content creator, if you have work that you have actually built, brought to life in tangible form and you have not protected it yet, we need you to be very careful. That is your creative work. That is your genius, and you need to protect it so nobody else can take it from you. And so we’re talking about how to go about that in today’s show clearly a very important show for our audience.

     

    Now, the end of this episode, you’re going to know if you have work that needs to be protected. You’re going to know the process of going through the first steps to filing for protection. And you’re going to understand a few other very important things like how to own the work that others create for you. Other independent contractors, and even how to avoid getting into trouble when using protected material from other businesses within your marketing.

     

    There’s so many important things that we discuss on today’s show. And so I’m so glad that you’re here and you’re not missing it. So let’s talk about our guest. If you did not hear her amazing introduction last week, let me give you an introduction. Francesca Whitesburg is an award winning intellectual property law attorney specializing in trademarks brands and copyrights. She advises Tom businesses,

     

    brands, entrepreneurs, professionals, talent, startups, and individuals. Francesca has experienced working at various in-house global luxury brands. She has also worked in the world’s largest law firm today. She’s a partner at an IP law firm, Loza and Loza and creates content on her Instagram. And she can be found at the trademark attorney on Instagram. She’s absolutely amazing.

     

    So I’m very glad that you’re here, power packed episode. So let’s go ahead and dive in all of this show notes and the resources that we’re discussing can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com and simply click on podcast. And this is episode number two 22. Also, we have one more important bonus. So Mark your calendar. If you are on clubhouse,

     

    we invite you to join Francesca and me in our regular Wednesday room on Wednesday, April the 14th at 12 o’clock Eastern time. Now, what does that mean? That means you get to jump into a clubhouse room and you get to ask Francesca your copyright questions, your direct business questions. That’s what we love clubhouse. And we actually use clubhouses our community extension to this podcast now.

     

    So we have a regular room. We host every single Wednesday at noon. You are invited to join us there this week on April, the 14th, Francesca is going to be there taking your copywriting questions as an extension from this podcast episode. So it’s an amazing opportunity of course, completely free and a chance for you to really get your business legal questions answered.

     

    If you’d like to join this room, here are the steps to do that. Visit me on Instagram at April beach life. And you can click on the link in my bio and simply follow me on clubhouse and follow our club on clubhouse. When you do that, you’re going to have notifications and with clubs house, when your notifications are on, that gives you access to these very special rooms.

     

    So very simply follow me on clubhouse. And I can be found at, at April beach on clubhouse, where you can go to my Instagram at April beach life on Instagram. And both of those opportunities will give you a chance to follow me there or giving you notifications in access to Francesca. So that’s our special bonus with today’s episode. And I know that’s going to be so powerful for so many of you who really do have important business questions you need answered right now.

     

    So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s podcast episodes. Welcome back to another episode here on the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast. I am joined again by my very favorite person this year, Francesca Whitesburg. She is here diving in with everything legal for you to protect your content, your intellectual property. And this is actually part two of a two part podcast episode we did last week.

     

    We dove all into trademarking. So if you miss last week, pause this, go back to episode two 21 and start with that one and then come back here and join us. If you listened to last week, let’s get ready to go. We have so much to cover today and you are going to gain so much knowledge by this wonderful woman who is here just strictly to pour into you to protect your intellectual property.

     

    So welcome back to the show. Francesca, thank you so much for me. Thank you for having me April. I’m excited to talk about copyrights. Yeah. Okay. So actually let’s go ahead and dive right in. So really what is copywriting for anybody who is absolutely brand new at this? They know they need to know what it is, but they don’t even have a baseline starting point.

     

    Yeah, of course. So copyright is a form of intellectual property protection that the text creative works that can be your videos, your photos, your courses, the layout of their website, your podcasts. It covers anything that you’ve created. That’s fixed in a tangible media. So it can’t be like an idea in your head gotta be written down, actually like manifested in the real,

     

    but once it’s out there, it’s protected automatically under copyright law. Okay. So let’s take a step back. I know we talked about it extensively in last week’s episode, but can you just give a general description to our listeners in what is intellectual property, Of course, intellectual property, which is IP, which we refer to as refers to creations of the mind.

     

    They’re your invention. Anything that’s proprietary that you can upload your photos, your grants, your slogans, trade secrets. These are all things that you have created that either you or your business owns. I like to say you have your IP toolbox. And then in that tool box, there’s different tools you can use like patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.

     

    So good. Okay. So incredibly foundational, but yet so many businesses aren’t aware of that. All right. So my next question for you, and I know our listeners, especially those who listened to last week are automatically asking this question right now. What is the difference between a copyright protection and trademarking? Yes. Trademarks really protect source identifiers. So Sweetlife when you read that name,

     

    you know, that that’s April beaches programs, she’s offering her consulting services April. You’ve seen, created a full brand around that. And also it’s your company name too, but to consumers, we know that that’s April. So that word tells people that if you get consulting from this person, it’s April, who’s behind it. The same thing. When you see Coca-Cola or burger King,

     

    you go to a McDonald’s in Spain, you’re in a know that it’s the same person who’s behind that. That’s the function of a trademark. Now a copyright is a very different tool, but they can overlap. So copyright extends to any creative expressions. So if you have a really unique logo that went along with sweet life, I it’s like a little like circle with some interesting artwork in there that you use.

     

    And when I, anyone one sees that I think April, but also it’s very detailed. It’s original. That can also be protected by copyright. So if you are working with IP counsel, a good lawyer is going to advise you holistically and really tell you all the tools that you can use to protect your intellectual property from different angles. Okay. Fascinating.

     

    And so for our listeners, do they need to register their works for copyright protection? So copyrights are similar to trademarks in that they are granted automatically. As soon as you create something you posted online, put it, like we said, in the fixed medium, then you have protection. However, if someone is using your work in an unauthorized manner, that your permission,

     

    right. To actually get them to stop in the United States, you need a registration certificate. So I like to say, you know, you could send them a letter, you can send them a DM telling them to take it down. Cause it’s, you know, using your copyrighted material. But with that, without a registration, it’s like waving an empty gun.

     

    You’re really not gonna have any teeth behind it. Got it. Okay. And so let’s kind of just pause here because I want to get back into content around courses and really big written works that many of our listeners do, but let’s just kind of take a jog for a second and talk about a couple of areas where people tend to run into trouble and they have absolutely no idea when they’re using other people’s works.

     

    So the first one is photography and using somebody else’s photography within your business, what do people need to know in relation to copyright? Anytime you use photos taken from the internet or anyone else’s photos, technically you need permission and you can get yourself into a lot of trouble if you use it even on just a random post or you’re using it for something more visible,

     

    even mental, a lot of trouble. And so the way that you get around it is you either use photos and images that you’ve taken yourself, or you can purchase the rights to some of these images. That’s where you can use database as like Getty images to buy a license, to use those infants for certain purposes. Yeah. And I think that the,

     

    you know, so many new businesses and actually even established businesses that are just trying to scale online, just kind of starting to get their Instagram out there. They don’t realize that grabbing another photo out there, you know, there is a license, but behind that and that you have to be within your legal rights to use that. And so just wanted to make sure that we were discussing that here on the show as well,

     

    because I, I know that people have ran into problems with that in the past. Another kind of side question for you here, going back to our listeners original piece of work, their course that they’re creating the content that they’re delivering within their coaching programs or their mastermind, or they’re teaching their intellectual property, their methods, their signature programs, right. With some of our listeners hire other people to create parts of their work for them.

     

    What do they need to know and be careful about when they’re doing that? Yeah, that’s a great point April. So when you hire someone to create whether it’s a logo with design web design, anytime you’re paying someone to build software or whatever it is, if they’re not an employee within the scope of employment, paying them a salary or hourly, or the bank benefits,

     

    then technically they are the owner of the intellectual property. So you need a written assignment called an assignment for what an assignment means is a transfer of rights. So that person needs to sign a document that says all the intellectual property created around this program. And it’s more detailed than that, but I give all that copyright and all that property is transferred to two and you’re comfortable.

     

    It’s very critical, especially if you’re going to pay a lot of money, really need to get this in writing because otherwise they own what you thought you paid for and they can continue to use themselves, or they can give it away to other people and competitors. Yeah. Imagine that nightmare hiring somebody to, you know, create something for you and your course or your program.

     

    And then it’s not actually yours. So important. So thank you so much for discussing that. And that assignment is, is really incredibly important. And, you know, I know that the majority of our listeners, their teams that they have are actually independent contractors. So this is completely something that is critical for them to be aware of is this assignment within their independent contractor agreements.

     

    And that’s why working with an expert like you to make sure it is, it says exactly what they used to say is so incredibly. Okay. So let’s go back to this process of protecting copyright. So another side question for you when our listeners are using the notation on the bottom of their slides or their PDFs or delivering, or their written work, and they have the little copyright protection and then they have the gear on there and then their ownership,

     

    why is that important? And what is the correct way? If there is a correct way just to enter into that sort of, Yeah, you, you hit the nail on the head, you see the copyright symbol, which will say do it in an emoji you’re on like on your phone. And then you put either your name or your company’s name.

     

    Whoever’s really claiming rights to that ID. And then the year, and what that does April is that’s putting third parties on notice it’s again, reminding people, Hey, this is my copyright. This is protectable information. If you use it without my authorization, it’s illegal. So don’t do it. We’ll do it. The only way that you can really get them to stop is if you file that registration.

     

    Got it. Okay. And so I know that we get that question all the time. Clearly if I don’t answer it because I’m not an attorney and I know that so many of our users are wondering that, you know, they see that when can I use it? How do I use it? Especially those that have multiple years listed on that listing and in exactly how to go about doing that.

     

    And so does the year usually reflect the original work or does the year cover when it is currently being protected in that listing on it? It could vary, right? So like sometimes it’s like people open up a book, you’ll see the original publication copyright notice, but then they’ll be the most current version. But for our purposes, I think it’s fine to do it.

     

    Like, let’s say you had to create your website in 2020, you can have 20, 20 is the date, but then if you make changes to it, which you’re going to just keep updating, updating the year. Okay. So many, I already know that these are questions people listening or are having, okay. So now let’s go back to kind of the center of what we’re talking about here today for our listeners,

     

    how do they start the process of protecting their intellectual property, their content course program outlines, where do they begin with this process? Yeah. I’d love the way you put it April, because you implicitly said, how do they protect what they already have? Everyone already has IP. It’s just a matter of understanding, which are your most important assets and how you go about protecting them.

     

    So I actually offer an Ikea audit where I will look at websites, social media pages, courses, some of my clients give me access to their, you know, their subscription-based or whatever, log in to see their forces. I do a very holistic review. And then we will go get on the phone and do a 30 minute call to discuss what their most important assets are or we could talk about,

     

    okay, here’s the name of your operating vendor? Have you thought about three markets that’s going to filing for that copyrights? Do you have your independent contractor agreement language? We’ll kind of go through and just do like a checklist, like as if I literally am doing an audit on your seat and make sure you have everything there. I recommend that as a starting point,

     

    and there’s also an IP audit and I can action plan, which is like the deluxe version of that, which is going to really do a deep dive. And then we come up with eight phase one plan, which is your first three to six months on what filings to do. And then also the next like six to 12 plus months for the next round of filings,

     

    because everyone has so much great content. That’s great IP. It gets a little overwhelming to think, Oh, I have to do everything. The reality is that you don’t, you stage it out. And if you have a plan strategy about it, it’s really not going to be that expensive. It’ll be way more expensive than the end. If you don’t do this.

     

    And if you try to do deal with cease and desist letters or sending this letters as they arise. Yeah. Nightmare. So once somebody submits their work for copyright protection, each time they update it, do they need to resubmit that Great question. So anytime you modify a work that it becomes a new popular, it’s a new work. So I would say as long as the modification is substantially similar to the original work,

     

    then you can rely on that. But if it’s very different and using that a lot publicly, it’s probably worth at least running it by an IP lawyer to come up with a strategy. Okay. So much great information, Francesca, thank you so much for being our guest again here on the show and joining us in clubhouse rooms where we talk about this.

     

    There’s so many places where people can connect with you. You know, we highly recommend that people take up the opportunity to go through an IP audit. And what I love about why I have you on this show is that you understand the way service-based online entrepreneurs work and you understand what they’re creating and you understand courses and masterminds and signature programs, and you understand all these things.

     

    And so it’s hard, frankly, to find an expert like you, that fully understands the assets that our listeners are creating. So thank you so much for being on the show and being an amazing resource and the best place for people to connect with you is through your Instagram. Is that correct? Yes. I have a link in my bio. It’s my counselee.

     

    I’m happy to get on a 15 minute call just to hear about your business And to discuss if you want to do an IP audit or if you just want to Connect. Yeah. Great. All of you guys should take her up on that. It’s a very, I know it’s crazy. It’s totally free. So you can be found at the trademark attorney on Instagram and we will make sure that a link to that of course is in our show notes as well.

     

    So it’s the trademark attorney on Instagram. And what is your clubhouse handle the trademark at the trademark attorney on clubhouse as well? Of course. Thank you so much for being here again and being our guest expert this week. I know that everybody really needed to hear a way, the things we’ve been talking about the last two weeks on the show. So certainly appreciate your time.

     

    Absolutely. Thanks April. Thank you so much for sticking around with us. What an amazing episode Francesca is a super genius and perfectly in line with what our listeners and our clients need. If you would like to work with Francesca, if you would like to just take her up on her opportunity to connect with her for a free IP audit, please visit Francesca directly by visiting at the trademark attorney on Instagram.

     

    So for handle is the trademark attorney on Instagram and the trademark attorney on clubhouse. She can be found at both of those places. Thank you so much for tuning into the show. Again, all the show notes and everything we talked about, and all these links can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com. You guys have an awesome day. Bye bye for now.

    Episode 221: How To Protect Your Business by Trademarking – with April Beach and Francesca Witzburg

    Francesca Witzburg SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Bonus – Join Francesca live on Clubhouse Wednesday, April 7 & 9, 12:00 Eastern time. Click here to join the SweetLife Entrepreneurs™ Club and get notifications and room links.

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    As you name your business, programs, courses or creative work, you want people to recognize them as your brand, and it’s important that you know how to protect your creations so that others can’t use it. 

    Summary:

    In this episode, we’re talking with The Trademark Attorney, Francesca Witzburg, about what you need to know when it comes to protecting your company name, tag lines and creative work including your courses, branded programs and more. In this jam-packed powerful episode, we’re diving into; Who needs trademark protection? How much it costs? How to check if the name you want to use is available? How to block someone from using your trademark and more. 
     
    This is part 1 of a 2 part show with Francesca Witzburg. In part 2 we dive into Copyright protections for your work.

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Know if you need to file for trademark protection
    2. Understand the difference between word and design marks
    3. Know where to start in your protection process

    Resources Mentioned:


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business, mental and entrepreneur activator a probate. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode two. You one here, we’re diving into an important topic today, and that’s how to protect your business through the process of trademarking. And there are so many questions around trademarking.

     

    We get this all the time in our business programs, especially in my year signature offer business program, where people are really coming in and branding their method, branding their industry, leading signature programs. And so there are always questions around how do I protect the name of what I’m creating? And so I invited today’s guests to come in, pour into you.

     

    And this is what we can expect by spending time together here today. First of all, this episode is for those of you who are in any stage of business growth and development. Now, this really aligns with one of the tools here that we give away completely free with the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast. And that is a self-assessment where you can find out exactly what stage of business you are in.

     

    And you can take this self-assessment by simply visiting Sweetlife co.com forward slash quiz. So when we’re talking about who this particular podcast episode is for this episode happens to be for any of you wherever you fall in the phase of business development. Because if you haven’t protected your intellectual property yet through trademarking, then this is an important topic to pay attention to. So as you go through the process of naming your business and your programs and your courses and your creative work,

     

    you want people to recognize that they’re yours, they’re your brand. It’s an important part of building your business, a recognizable brand. And so in this episode, we’re talking to trademark attorney Francesca Whitesburg about what you need to know when it comes to protecting your company, name, your tagline, to your creative work, including your courses, your branded programs,

     

    and more, this is a jam packed episode. And she talks about powerful things in here that every single business owner needs to know. And then we’re diving into who needs a trademark protection. How much does it cost? How to check if the name that you want is available, how to block someone who could be using your trademark or infringing upon your trademark.

     

    And there’s so many different things we’re going to dive into. So I’m going to go ahead and get right over to the episode. However, I want to make sure that you know, that this is part one of two episodes where we have Francesca on the show. And so next week we’re talking all about copyright protection and today is all about trademark. At the end of this episode,

     

    you will know if you need to file for trademark protection, you will understand the difference between a wordmark and a design Mark, and you’ll know where to start in your protection process. Everything we’re talking about here can be found@theshownotesbyvisitingusatsweetlifeco.com. This is episode number 221. And one last thing we are going to be live with has got on clubhouse the Wednesday that this show drops.

     

    So that will be Wednesday, April the seventh at 12 o’clock Eastern time. So if you were not following me yet on clubhouse at April beach, and you want to connect with Francesca in, take your questions from this episode to her, live in clubhouse, then make sure that you join us. And you can simply do that by following me at April beach on clubhouse and turn on the little bell for the notifications.

     

    And you will get notified when we’re going live, which will give you access to Francesca. It will give you access to this room. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s business training.<inaudible> Hi everybody. I am so excited to be joined by Francesca Wittenberg, who has been instrumental in helping our business, make sure that everything that we have is our ducks in a row.

     

    If you will say, and she’s here joining me on the podcast today, talking about quite a few very important legal foundations that you really need to have a no for your business. And so Francesco, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself in UHIN, who you serve and really how you got to where you are right now,

     

    professionally. Thank you so much, April. I’m super excited to be here. My name is Francesca Pittsburgh. I go by the trademark attorney on Instagram and I’m an IP lawyer. We’re going to talk about what IP is, but basically I help creators businesses, anyone who has created something using their intellectual creativity and especially people who are trying to monetize that I help,

     

    whether it’s trademarks, copyrights, helping businesses get started to monetize and protect what they created is what I do. And I service really a variety of industries. I have fashion experience, story brands, online businesses in particular, and navigating how to protect content and all of the assets that you’ve created online. That’s really been my niche for the past year or two.

     

    And, you know, I got started by going to law school. I had no idea what intellectual property was like most people. And I thought it was so amazing how, what you create are your real assets. These are real things that you can command. You can protect, you can sell. So I really fell in love with that. And also helping businesses get off the ground.

     

    I feel like I’m able to kind of give back really help people launch. And so I got into it. I worked at a small IP boutique. I also had experience working in the legal departments at Prada and Tory Burch and the international jewelry brand from there. I really got the bug and I just wanted to learn everything in anything about intellectual property, in whatever industry.

     

    And then I worked at the world’s biggest law firm called Dentons. I worked in Manhattan and Brock center for a little bit over three years, and then I made a big change. Yeah. I mean a big change becoming a partner at an IP boutique firm, meaning we only do intellectual property from start to finish like firms located in LA, but I’m based in New York and New Jersey.

     

    I can service clients everywhere. And since September, I’ve just been really hitting the ground, running, helping a lot of online businesses, connecting on clubhouse, meeting people like you April. So I’m super excited to share my knowledge with everyone today. I’m so excited that you’re here and you know what? You do this super hyper niche area of serving online businesses.

     

    I mean, you help our listeners protect their ideas and protect their services and their programs and their courses and their actual digital products, which is absolutely right on. And I know that there are so many people in this business space that are creating content that are creating different assets and what we call IP that have no idea, even the first step on, on how to protect that.

     

    So let’s go ahead and start there. What actually is IP? What is intellectual property? Sure. So intellectual property refers to creations of the mind. They are inventions designs, creative works, brands, slogans, or anything that you’ve created kind of creatively. And so the law is divided up into certain categories and I like to call it, you know,

     

    you have your IP toolbox. So there’s certain tools that you can use to protect whatever it is that you created or your business there’s patents, which protects inventions. Sometimes it protects certain ways of doing things processes, and it also sometimes protects designs. If it meets certain thresholds, then there’s trade secrets, which kind of works in tandem with aunts. If you’re not eligible for a patent may be able to protect confidential and secret information that is proprietary to your business so long as you’ve kept it private and you haven’t publicly disclosed it.

     

    Then what we’re really going to focus on today is trademarks and copyrights. Trademarks are your brands. They are the symbols. And the names that you have created to tell that this is my business. I April beach am the owner of your signature offer. I upgraded this course, and that is my protectable content. The function of trademarks are to point to the source.

     

    And then there’s copyright. Copyright is the creative regime. It really extends to creative, works such as content photos, certain texts, if it’s eligible videos, website layout. So, you know, just by saying that alone, there are so many different tools that you can use to protect an online business. And so we can talk about that. Wow.

     

    Okay. So in, this is exactly why, I mean, just in that definition that you just gave, you talked about four really important areas that our listeners can and should be possibly if they qualify, protecting what they have created and what they plan to create. And I really want to dive specifically into trademarks today and we’re going to have Francesca back on the show.

     

    Everybody don’t worry, and we’re going to be diving into other things as well. But I think this is really the most important place to start out. You know, just in my, your signature offer master class, we were having this kind of behind the scenes conversation about this. And even those students of mine that have been in business for over a decade are just almost like in this panic mode when this conversation came up because they realized they might not have done things correctly.

     

    And so that’s why I’m really excited to dive into trademarking today. So first of all, I understand that there are two types of different trademarks that you can protect. Is it like a design Mark and a word Mark? Can you explain what those two different types of, of marks are to our, Yeah, I get asked all the time I have a brand name and I have a logo,

     

    which one should I file for what’s protectable? And the short answer is that the word market itself, if you file an application with the government, just for the word in standard characters, that will automatically protect the name and any siloization. So if you go to re rebrand and change your logo, if you have a wordmark registration, that’ll extend any specializations colors,

     

    whatever format. So we do searches for the word. And if that’s available, I usually say, go for the word Mark, but you’re right, that sometimes clients will have, let’s say it’s not just a script, right? Let’s say that they came up with a unique character or some sort of interesting artwork that they have in a circle next to the word,

     

    a good example of this is target, right? You know, target has the word target and red, and then you’ll see the bullseye above that bullseye they use as a trademark. So they could file for the word target without a stylization and be protected. They can also file just for the bullseye, which is the design element, and that will be protected or they can file for a lockup version,

     

    which includes the word and the design. So there are a variety of ways and it really is case by case specific, but more importantly, it’s about budget. And I always tell clients, start with your corny for your forklifts and services, because it can get very expensive. And also as a point of strategy, it may not be worth filing for every single variation of the bark.

     

    Just start with your core name and your core goods or services. Okay. And who needs to file trademark protection? Let’s kind of really cover some basics like who needs it. You know, what’s funny is that if you were asking this question 10, 15 years ago, the answer different, it used to be fortune 500 companies had trademark lawyers and they were the ones Coca-Cola Pepsi,

     

    big brands were the ones registering trademarks that has completely shifted with online businesses. And I think we need to take a step back and explain an important concept April that you and I have discussed. So in the United States, trademark rights are based on use. So I’m sure all of you have one point or another. Someone has said to you, Oh, you don’t need a trademark right now.

     

    You don’t need to file the trademark. You have rights just based on use, just continue to use the problem with that is, like I said, 15, 20, 30 years ago, that wasn’t really an issue because you were a store in one particular market in one city, right. Or your restaurant, or you were consulting in one area in person.

     

    So it didn’t matter. Really. If someone was using the same name, you’re in New Jersey and someone’s using it in LA necessarily. So the law as it States is you have Commonwealth rights. Your rights are limited to that, to where you’re actually using who you’re servicing with online businesses that has caused to be blunt chaos, because how do you prove where your servicing clients by being on Instagram online,

     

    you know, having websites that technically target and market, not only all 50 States, but even outside the us. So the way that you get around those issues is by filing the application with the government, having a registration gives you a presumption of rights in all 50 States. So that way, if someone is using your name, all you have to do is send them that piece of paper.

     

    That’s triplicate of registration and show them that you’re the owner and they should in theory. Got it. So many questions that, and I’m obviously, you know, I’m bringing questions from clients that I, that I know have been asking as well. So let’s kind of start back at the beginning. If there’s somebody who’s listening to this and they have program that they’ve named,

     

    let’s say it’s best business, one, two, three, or whatever that they have been using for a long period of time. What are their first steps as of now versus somebody who hasn’t even, who’s coming up with a new name, let’s start with the established people that are saying, Hey, listen, my company name isn’t registered my program, or my course name or my mastermind name,

     

    isn’t registered. What should those people that are already have an existing piece of work that they own do at this point in time? Yeah. And I think it comes back again to budgeting and understanding that a little bit of money can go a long way if you’re strategic about it. What I like to do differently, I think than most lawyers is clients come to me and say,

     

    Oh, for test that I want to file for this. I say, let’s take a step back. We can definitely file. But did you protect your brand name, your core name? I have clients that come and say, Oh, this slogan, I want to protect it’s brand new and it’s new. No one’s using it. So what I do is I do an IP audit for a lot of clients,

     

    but when they come to me, I say, let’s just take a step back. Let’s look at all of your websites, all of your courses, and let’s figure out what’s the most important instead of you deciding or someone telling you which trademark to file let’s think strategically and say, what are your most core names, your core content and connection with your core services?

     

    Because it gets very expensive very quickly. So I would tell people who are using, and they haven’t had anything registered to really, you know, touch base. I’m happy to do this, to discuss and do the IP audit, but you can also do it yourself and just think like, what are the core names that I’m using and for what particular services,

     

    and then get those on file. Yes. Maybe you came up with like a super cool name slogan that you’re using, but are you really going to be using that in six months to a year versus I would say the name that you’re operating under, that may be the first starting point. So I would say, you know, either check in with an IP attorney who can do that with you,

     

    for you, or think about it and then get those on file. Okay. And let’s make sure that you guys don’t have to wait until the end of this. If you want to connect with Francesca for that IP audit, find her on Instagram at the trademark attorney. And she actually has a link in her bio on Instagram. You can just schedule a call with her.

     

    So we’re making it really easy for you. It’s the trademark attorney on Instagram. And plus she has amazing videos and things on there that you guys will love. And you can schedule a call to set up that IP on it. Okay. So for those people that are listening and they’re new in business, and they’re just trying to, they’re thinking, wow,

     

    I really want to name my company. This, what are their first steps? You know, let’s actually talk about how to search the U S PTO. What is that process and is, Yeah. So the first thing is to come up with a name, if you’re just getting started, I would say, come up with names that try to not be so descriptive because as business owners and content creators,

     

    we want to express to our viewers what exactly it is that we’re offering. But unfortunately that falls on the lower end of protection. On the trademark scale, the really strong trademarks are the ones that are either made up terms like Google or terms that have nothing to do with the product that you’re selling, like Apple computers. Then there’s this sweet spot that a lot of marketing people like,

     

    like April, you do this really well. You will find names that kind of hint at what you’re doing, but don’t literally describe like your signature offer. So those are the sweet spot they’re called suggestive marks. But anything like weaker than that is, is a little bit more descriptive in there. You can still get them as trademarks. They’re just a lot harder to protect and enforce,

     

    meaning other people may be able to use them. And then when you go to create a brand that you’re about to invest a lot of money in, you know, you need to think about these things. So the more made up the less related to the actual things that you offer the stronger and the better. Okay. So for those people that are like,

     

    okay, this is what I want to do. How do they go search and see if somebody already has that trademark registered? Yeah. So let’s say you came up with an awesome name. The first thing to do is go check on the U S T o.com. That is the government website. The government has a database of registered and pending trademarks. You can plug in the Mark,

     

    but unfortunately it’s not very user-friendly. For example, if you put in the Mark, it really may only give you either the exact spelling, maybe with a space, but it really is very limited. It’s going to look for the exact Mark. So if you did work with the trademark where like, for example, I have special software where I plug in the Mark,

     

    I plug in the goods and services and then with its AI software, it’ll pull up marks that are medically similar. Maybe they have a translation and a foreign language, and all of those can be potential issues that you’re not going to find yourself. However, for your due diligence. The first thing to do is for you to check on usp.gov, because maybe there is a dead hit,

     

    and you’ll find that there, the next thing to do, though, it’s not enough just to look on you as PTO, because there could be people who are using the Mark that may not have a registration. As I mentioned before, trademark rights are based on use. So it’s really important to see who’s using and who can raise a potential objection. You check Google,

     

    check, Instagram, check all those platforms, and then if it looks good, that’s when you go and you work with a trademark attorney. Okay. Okay, great. So you do your due diligence, you know, go, you know, was us pto.gov, not.com. It’s not geo OB do that check and then Google the heck out of it as well.

     

    And I, I think that that is so important. I know that, you know, some people go, Oh, they’ll just search it and they’ll be like, Oh great, it’s available because it’s not popping up. And that is absolutely nowhere near enough. And then I can speak for experience. You guys, who are listening that I have had Francesca put our trademark names in her AI system and crazy things that there’s no way I ever could have found pop up.

     

    So it is definitely an important investment to make. If, if you were in the process of growing your company and you have IP that you want to protect. And so I think that’s really an important thing. So any other last words today, when we’re talking about trademarking moving forward or any other things that our listeners need to know that are often missed,

     

    maybe common questions, basically, what am I not asking that I should be asking you? Yeah. Number one, we’re in the middle of a, of a pandemic and a financial downturn. So you’re going to have a lot of people who may not want, or may not have the deans to file trademarks. So I will tell you there’s things you can do to try and protect your name,

     

    even without a registration start using those TM symbols. And you may not know what that is. So a TM symbol, now that I’ve mentioned that you’re going to see them everywhere. It means that people are claiming rights to a name or design as a trademark. They’re saying I’ve created this. And when people look at it, it points to me means that’s my website,

     

    it’s my services, whatever it is. So you came up with a slogan, or if you have your brand name that isn’t yet registered, put the little TM in the upper right hand corner. And what that does is that puts third parties on notice. So if you have another person to get the Google search went on and found your website, they’re going to see immediately,

     

    Oh, this person is claiming trademark rights. I better back off. So that’s an extra element that you can do. It’s not as strong as a registration clearly because your rights are only limited to where you’re using until you get it on file. But at least it’s something. And I would say, think about budgeting for that registration, for some of your four names.

     

    It may sound expensive. And I think it’s worth quoting. You know, you’re going to get people who are gonna do this cheaper, and you’re going to find people who are gonna do it more expensive, but my firm has a fixed fee package with a trademark search and the government and the filing. And it’s 1250, you know, that’s a deal,

     

    it’s a deal. And I’m just thinking like the cost to respond, who would demand letter or to send a demand letter is that amount. So to get that on file, to kind of not have to worry, think about maybe budgeting that as part of your business process. Yeah. And I will say about, Oh gosh, it’s been about 12 years.

     

    We filed a registration for a program that we were licensing to healthcare. And this was 12 years ago. And I think I paid, you know, well over 2,500 for somebody to just file that registration for me. So this is 12 years later, grand Jessica’s team. This is a deal. You guys it’s like the deal of a lifetime and it protects you.

     

    And it really covers you. So we love that. So all of you who are listening, if you’re in this place, whether you’re new and you are just coming up with names of really, frankly, especially for those of you guys who have content, you have IP, you have things that you haven’t protected yet. You haven’t done your due diligence.

     

    I don’t want you to lose those Francesca. Doesn’t want you to lose those. And so if you have questions about this, I highly recommend that you hit Francesca up for an IP audit. Again, she can be found at the trademark attorney on Instagram and she will, of course be back here on this sweet life entrepreneur podcast, again as well. And we’re going to be diving into copywriting next time,

     

    which I know so many of our listeners have questions about protecting, like what actually is that? And so I’m excited to talk about that the next time that you are on the show. Thank you so much for being here and for all of your wisdom and pouring into our listeners. Thank you April. Thanks everyone.<inaudible> Wow. What an amazing episode.

     

    Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Again, join us live on clubhouse. You can follow me at April beach, turn on the little bell for notifications and you’ll get exclusive access to this room where Francesca will be here this week on Wednesday, April the seventh at 12 o’clock Eastern time. Taking your questions based on what we talked about on today’s show.

     

    And don’t forget to connect with Francesca directly for her IP audit, which is a very important thing. It’s totally free. I don’t know anybody who shouldn’t take this opportunity up. She is absolutely a gifted expert at what she does. You can visit Francesca at the trademark attorney and she can be found at the trademark attorney on Instagram and on clubhouse. And on Instagram,

     

    you can just very simply click the link and schedule a direct free complimentary consultation to get your intellectual property audit started. All right, again, this is episode one of a two part episode. Next week, episode number 222. We’re coming back with Francesca again, talking all about how to protect your creative works through copyright protection. All right, you guys have an awesome day.

     

    It’s so great to chat with you and thanks again for tuning into this sweet life entrepreneur and business podcast.

    Episode 220: Writing Emails So Good They Lick The Screen – with April Beach and Kate Doster

    Kate Doster SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Bonus: Join us for a LIVE Clubhouse chat and get your email marketing questions answered. 
    Simply follow our club on Clubhouse and turn on notifications. 
    Live room will be 4/2 12:00 ET 

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    Small businesses who either currently use or want to utilize email marketing.

    Summary:

    Email marketing is an important way to connect with your warm audience, hold an ongoing conversation and increase sales. However, most businesses flop when it comes to writing emails that truly compel their audience. In this show, Copywriting expert, Kate Doster breaks down the process of writing great emails in an ethical way by wooing the hearts of your ideal clients open. 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Know what makes a good email and a great one
    2. How to use “calls to actions” correctly in your email
    3. The process of writing amazing emails that convert

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     
    Kate Doster’s Podcast | Inbox Besties
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. So two 20 here on the suite live entrepreneur and business podcast. I’m April beach, your host, and I’m super glad to be chatting with you. And yet another week here on the show,

     

    this is episode number 220, and I can’t wait to dive into today’s topic. This is one of those ones where behind the scenes here, I was taking so many notes based on what our guest expert was teaching today. So there’s just gold inside this episode, as we hope to deliver to you within every single episode. First of all, before we get started,

     

    if you’re new to listening to the show, thank you so much for tuning in here. We also go live and talk about the podcast and take your questions every single Wednesday at 12 o’clock Eastern time on clubhouse. So if you are not yet following me on clubhouse, please do so. I would love to connect with you. We can really dive in and roll up our sleeves regarding your business questions.

     

    Every single Wednesday, faithfully at 12 o’clock Eastern time. And my handle is at April beach on clubhouse. So I would love to see you there also, if you’re new to listening, or maybe it’s been a while since you’ve tapped into this important powerful resource, we have our lifestyle entrepreneur roadmap quiz, and this is based on my start to scale up system.

     

    It’s a totally free tool. If you’re a listener to this show, you can go and take a very short quiz, just six simple questions. And it’s going to tell you what phase of business you’re in and based on the phase of business you’re in, we give you an exact checklist of what you should be focusing on and what you should be working on to scale your business,

     

    or just really get your business to that next level. And you can take that quiz any time you can go back and take it again and again, by visiting sweet life co.com forward slash quiz, or you can simply text the word quiz to the number (805) 254-0880. And we’ll send you a link to that. So those are our free tools. In addition to all the gold,

     

    you’re going to hear her on the show that I wanted to make sure that you have upfront so that we can keep your business implementing as we move forward through the entrepreneur podcast here. So I appreciate you listening to this show. This is what we’re talking about today. So let’s set the stage. This show is great for those of you guys who are in the first three stages of my start to scale up system.

     

    So that’s based on the quiz. So if you’re in phase one, two or three, this is a great episode for you to listen to. If you’re in phase four or five of my start Taylor scale system, you’ve nailed this strategy. And so I recommend going to find a different podcast to listen to that applies to your stage of business. I want to make sure that I value your time so much.

     

    And the strategies we’re talking about on today’s show are for those people in the first one, two or three stages of the start to scale up system. So what we’re talking about here is how to literally write emails that are so good. They lick the screen. You’re going to be mind blown about what you hear on today’s show. This is for small businesses who you either currently use email marketing.

     

    You’re not sure if you’re doing it right, or you’ve never used email marketing before, and you want to learn how to leverage email marketing in your business. Email marketing is an important way for you to connect with your warm audience. It’s also important for you to hold an ongoing conversation and to increase your sales. However, most businesses flop when it comes to writing emails,

     

    it’s truly because it’s, it’s actually a skill it’s not as easy as you would think that it would be in your emails really need to compel your audience. So in the show we have Kate Doster, who’s a copywriting expert. She’s going to break down the process of writing great emails in an ethical way, by wooing the hearts of your ideal clients and their wallets open.

     

    At the end of this episode, this is what you can expect. You’re going to know what is the difference between a good email and a great email. You’re going to know how to use calls to action correctly in your emails. And you’re going to know the process of writing emails that convert. So let me tell you who is here today. She is absolutely amazing.

     

    Kate Doster is the host of the inbox besties podcast. Creator of love your list. 2.0 email marketing mega course, it is dangerously obsessed with helping ethical entrepreneurs carve out their slice of the interwebs by winning the hearts and wallets open of their small, but mighty audiences. Thanks to funny bell marketing and easy yes, many offers. So that’s important as we went through our bio,

     

    her bio here, that what Kate’s bio says is she helps you. Even if you have a teeny tiny small list, increase the engagement in the sales based on your list. That was one of the key things. When I was reading her bio and why I asked her to come on this show because listen, you guys, you only need a hundred true fans to build a great business.

     

    That’s what it starts with these huge audiences. I mean, this can be an illusion. So those of you that don’t have huge lists with 10, 20,000 people on it. This podcast is great. And it’s also for those people that do have huge email lists. And perhaps you are failing at connecting well with your list. Kate believes you don’t need to bleed the alphabet or be a dirty rotten spam face to write emails,

     

    adult subscribers, and to taking action gobbling up your paid offers like candy or kale, if that’s what you prefer. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s podcast. All of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com simply click on the podcast button. And this is episode number 220<inaudible> All right, you guys, I am joined by Kate Doster and she is going to give you the complete strategy that you probably didn’t even know.

     

    You’re actually missing to write amazing emails because what she teaches, what she talks about, isn’t just the fundamentals. It isn’t just like how to section out the content in your email. She literally teaches you how to write emails for so good people lick the screen. And that is her quote. I stole that from her to name this podcast. So giving credit where credit is due,

     

    Kate, welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you here tell everybody about your superpower in your company. Sure. So I’m Kate Doster of Kate doster.com and hosted the inbox besties podcast. And my super power is really being able to help people. Not only feel like they can do anything, but actually give them the tools to get them there.

     

    I think that there’s a lot of people that kind of hype you up and make you feel amazing. But then when they’re like, but how do I do X there’s like, go figure it out. But like, no, like we do the whole approach because our mission is to put money in the hands of good people so they can do good with it.

     

    So our business is primarily a digital course business. I am extremely selective about the one-on-one clients that I take on, but primarily it’s courses digital products. We just we’ve got to help the good people out there. Right? And you teach people how to like create these insane bodies of copy that totally bring to life what it is that they do, their super power.

     

    And there’s such a disconnect. I’m so excited to have you on this show. I need to give Angie true blood, our favorite person credit for connecting you with us. And when Angie was like, okay, this is an amazing guest for you. First of all, anybody Angie sends to me, I know it was just an amazing guest, but then I saw your,

     

    your topics. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, yes. Emails that not only like convert, but emails that give an experience. So let’s dive right in and talk about one of the things you said behind the scenes, as I was getting ready here and taking my notes for what we’re going to talk about today is you have kind of like this four things that you go through.

     

    And the first one you talk about is something that really other copywriting teachers don’t, and that is all about mindset. Talk to me about mindset and how that plays a role in copywriting. Sure. So like I said, good people do good. Most good people have very bad associations with things like selling. They don’t want to be annoying. They don’t want to be lumped in with a spammer faces.

     

    Are there really bro Hames as we call him the world, he’s our arch rivals. He has a whole voice as he does. So because of that, they tend to really freeze that when it comes to emails, you know, Oh, I don’t want to be annoying or I don’t want to be spammy. Oh, you know, like I haven’t emailed them in three months.

     

    So now they are literally psyching themselves out because either they feel bad, they feel guilty. Everyone’s been telling them everywhere. Like you need to have an MLS. Why don’t you have an email list, email, your email list, you dummy. So they get all up in their heads and they do no thing because everyone’s been on the receiving end of really bad emails.

     

    But here’s the thing. The sheer fact that you are having this thought of, I don’t want to annoy people. I don’t want to be a spammer means that it is physically impossible for you to be there. And it is physically impossible for you to write one because the really broad themes as a world who are those farmers, they do not care. The fact that you care proves that you are going to send them high quality stuff.

     

    So who guys think you already did it? And when I talk to people like 100%, it is always, Oh, I feel like, or I think it’s like, so it’s not truly the mechanics. It’s I need to get your finger to, to hit the sand on the good old convert kit, Right? Oh my gosh. Okay. Like we can just end the podcast right there.

     

    Like, okay, you need to fix your mindset. You’re amazing. You’re not like a douche bag. You’re going to send grace. So I think that’s so cool. Okay. And then the next thing that you talked about is, you know, being on your list is a privilege. Let’s talk about that mindset all together. What do you mean by that?

     

    Okay. It is a two side of the coin. One. When you realize that people are honestly lucky to get your enthusiasm, your encouragement, your knowledge, your expertise, they are lucky to be there. So all of a sudden that scarcity mindset of, you know, if I send a newsletter, a hundred people are going to unsubscribe. So no,

     

    like I don’t have this mystical thousand number. Like who cares the people on the other end of the screen, do not know if they are one of, 100, one of five or one of 10 million. They have no idea when it is our mission to help you need to help regardless of that number. So when you’re like, Oh, bring it on my list as a privilege.

     

    And somebody sends you a nasty email back, you laugh at them and then you kick them out. You’re like, no, like literally I send a lot of emails. I send a lot of what’s called sales emails. I got two last year. One was because I said home slice. And the other one I think had, but face in the subject line,

     

    I literally went to go see what these people had signed up for. I’m like, how did you get here? I was mad at my landing pages, my gatekeepers, my content like allowed you in here. So when you go out with that mindset of being on my list is a privilege. Not only are you not going to care about the heaters because you’re like,

     

    whatever, Sally, there’s a way more people for me to help. I hope you go find your own teacher is that, then you’re going to have a plan for it. So it’s a two side of the coin, like on next again, you’re allowed to have that human experience. If somebody sends you a me an email back, but then you get to laugh at them and be like,

     

    man, I wish I had so much time that I could sit there and complain and whine and have my day ruined by somebody else. But like I’m too busy out there making a difference. So I can’t, Well, you just like blew my mind. That is so profound because I mean, what are the things we’ve talked about in the, the last four years is having somebody on your list as a privilege and,

     

    and treat them with care and all these things. But what you’re saying is just so true to every single thing that I know, I feel as an entrepreneur bit like basically, like, I feel like you have just given people permission to be like, you are valuable. What you say is worthy. Your content is amazing. If somebody doesn’t resonate with it,

     

    see you later celly, like you said. And then the next thing I said was really important, which we can even get into in this episode. Was that the gatekeepers is that making sure that your opt-ins, we’re totally not going to go there. Cause we could do a whole show on this, but making sure your opt-ins disqualify people at the same time as they qualify people,

     

    the right people, that connection that you meant, I’d love that you mentioned that too. Okay. So when we’re writing email, the next tip kind of mindset strategy that you have is, is really treat people like people. I know I’m literally doing the shocked face. You guys can hear it. So again, because good people doing good things, right?

     

    No one wants to be a spammer face. You tend to forget the, like there’s another person on the other side of this screen. So like how many times have you gone to like check your email, but then like the dog knocks over the plants and I need to clean it up. And then by the time you get back to your email, it’s like the next day or two days later.

     

    So like, if you have this amazing product, you have this amazing coaching program and you only email people about a once you’re being the jerk. Ironically, it is the other way around because what if they just didn’t check their email that day? Now they are never going to know same thing with, and I know that this goes beyond the scope of this particular lesson,

     

    but same thing with launching, like when you’re actually doing a launch. Yeah. If all of your emails are, you’ve got one day left, you got five minutes left and all of those are awful. Awful. You do need to send things about time limits because people do need to know. So I have nothing against timers, but you need to understand what actually goes through a person’s brain.

     

    People are not logical. And when my students kind of grasp that around their heads, they’re like, Oh, Piedmont logical. If there were, you would have all exercised today, there would be no smoking industry. There’d be no drinking industry. There would be no drugs because people, if they were logical, why would you start smoking? When you know,

     

    it’s only going to hurt you. Cause they’re not logical. So realize that they’re not logical trying to be like what? There’s eight modules. And my competitor only has four. You dummy is never going to work because they’re not logical. You have to actually compel them. You’ve got to cut through the crap. You need to know how a human brain works.

     

    And that’s why my students get like astronomical results. And they’re like, Oh my trip wire, it’s converting at like 5%. Can I go higher? I’m like you to realize that normies only get it at one to two. Right? And they’re like, Oh, so then we’re just like, you know, going against ourselves. But when you understand how a human brain works,

     

    treating people like people it’ll all work, which is why, if you haven’t emailed your list in a while and your first emails is big sob story about why you haven’t emailed them in forever. Everyone is going to be like, I don’t like you. Cause like they don’t care. But if you go in with some type of value and then you’re like,

     

    Oh yeah. And if you’re wondering, how would I get your email address? Again, treat people like people because you signed up for this. Oh, all right. Help me out with something. You tell me what I’m thinking. We’re good to go. I’m not going to hit spam. I might just unsubscribe quietly. So treat people like people realize how their brains work.

     

    So many good things that you said there. I love that. Okay. So let’s actually talk about, and I was actually laughing. I had to put myself on mute cause I started coughing. You’re totally. You totally have me. Correct. You know, leverage really love it. So talking about like I know, right? Like talk about, let’s go into actually the mechanics of writing an amazing email.

     

    So walk us through the mechanics of actually doing it after everybody deals with all the mindset stuff, which I’m so grateful that that’s how you open up this training. I mean, you just have to, again, just like set up. So you can’t do one in seventh grade and have a six pack forever. I mean, I wish present witness tasks could have just been like take that postpartum weight.

     

    Right? So again, it can be a daily thing, you know, it can be a daily thing. So don’t just think like, Oh, but I thought I worked on this. It’s always going to have a thing. So when it comes to writing emails so good, they can like the screen one getting out of your own head is important too.

     

    Like we had just talked about treating people like people is important. Why do you check your email? Cause you don’t want to have to write that sales page you’re supposed to, because you don’t want to have that awkward conversation with your VA because you’ll know that you’re supposed to be pitching podcasts, but you don’t want to get around to it. So they’re like,

     

    Oh, let me just check my email real quick. Right? So you’re doing it as a distraction. You’re doing it as an escape, which is why when people are like, Oh, but I send these big, long, huge emails. Yes. I know being in spam is probably a bad thing. Promotions it’s all right. People check that tab.

     

    The thing you do not want to be in is the all read this leader email. Okay. So you cannot info slap people in your emails because people are not going in with the mindset of an email of I’m going to do hardcore learning. That’s what a blog post is for this sort of podcast is for that’s what a YouTube video is for. That’s what a course lesson is for an email is that short hit of escape.

     

    Okay. So you need to realize that. So when you’re doing your email, yeah, you can have on that super long, as long as it’s entertaining. No one’s going to care. And as long as you’re not trying to tell them a hundred different ways to get clients, they’ll be fine. So when it comes down to actually writing an email like that makes them want to like this screen one,

     

    you need to realize what your actual goal is. So your goal might be for them to reply back. Your goal might be for them to read an email, your goal might just be to build comradery. Then you’re going to want to make sure you have an action. I say, every email needs a call to action. It doesn’t have to go someplace else,

     

    but it can be a reply back. I think that reply back is one of the strongest calls to action. Because next time it is more likely that your email is going to be in the folder that you want to be in. Or again, it can be a follow me on Instagram. It can be on this, but you’ve got to give people a reason to go over there.

     

    You just can’t send an email being like, Hey, are we connected over on clubhouse? No, you need to entice them. What is in it for them? Treat people like people. So in order to make your emails more entertaining, I get constantly, but Kate, I don’t have a big personality like you, but I’ve averaged, but I’m boring.

     

    I guarantee you, there are something about you that you can start putting into your emails, whether it is the name of your cat, your favorite song. You can, one of my favorite things. If I can’t figure out, what I want to email about is I’ll go to a website called holiday insights. You can just Google any of them and I’ll see like what day is it?

     

    Like a national nacho day? Okay. So like say if I was a food blogger, then I could just send Nasha recipes because it’s natural nacho day. If I’m somebody else I could talk about like know like it’s natural natural day. And you know, since that’s pretty cheesy, I want to tell you about the three things that are going to make your website cheesy.

     

    Like you can just rip off of these things. And now all of a sudden, not only are you just using just stats to like 200% of blondes, make more money, I’m making that up. But again, look for stats about your industry stats, about what day it’s going on and then just make some correlations. And the more that you get used to doing that,

     

    the better that it’s going to be. Again, there was a reason why you created a blog post or why you’re going Facebook live, which got me thinking about, which is why in the slide. I don’t just necessarily give them the link, give them the link, but then put a little bullet points because you got to remember, people are reading on their phones.

     

    So when it comes to structuring things, you want to make sure, honestly, if it’s longer than two sentences, I say, give it a paragraph. It used to be three. But I feel like if it’s a wordy three, the probably should be a paragraph. So you’ll see that a lot. Cause people will skim, you know, make sure you use things like bold texts,

     

    but have, you know, little bullet points underneath to talk about like, what’s so great on there. Like, Oh, okay, it’s going to tell you the one thing never to send in your email. She’s going to tell you, if you haven’t emailed your list in forever, these are the two words you used to not having your email, like think of what can I do to make these a little bit more interesting.

     

    And then it’s like, Oh, because every email guys spoiler before, really every email is a sales email because you are selling the fact that you get them, that you understand them, that you’re going to be there for them, that you’re consistent, that you want to interact with them and that you are not ability to borrow him. So whether you’re asking for cash or not,

     

    every email is a sales email. So now you don’t have to get over sending any cause they all are. Oh, I love that. I love that. Oh my gosh. It’s so good. You’re just gold. Okay. I mean, that’s just, you just nailed it. That is so good. And I have learned so much here. Okay.

     

    So I’m going to throw out a couple of common questions that we receive as a company. And since you’re the email queen, let’s see how you answer these. So, and you already answered the first one was does every email need a call to action? And so you’ve already answered that. So we’ll just skip through that. And I love how you answered that in some form.

     

    Oh, you know, let me ask this question in case anybody’s thinking, could the call to action, be giving them steps, like now go outside and look up at the sun and take two deep breaths. Like could the call to action be something that doesn’t have to do with replying or interacting back to you at all? Or is it just having some sort of a call to action?

     

    So definitely give them action steps. Like quick wins are huge, which is why I love how you said go outside and take two deep breaths. And you didn’t like tell them like this whole giant routine to do, but there’s nothing to say at the end of it that you can’t be like, and when you go outside snap a pic and tag me on your Instagram stories.

     

    So that way it’s really organic. And so that way you can share them on for doing something. So if you’re going to give them a little task, give them a place where they can brag about themselves, treat people like people, they like feeling good About themselves, post About it. And some people will, some people post in the Facebook group tag me on your eyes,

     

    your story post on my business page. So I can say how awesome you are. Let’s go outside together. You know what I mean? So that way you can incorporate them more in the world and then treat people like people they’re going to associate that good feeling with you and that’s what you want. Cause then So cool. Okay. And so along those lines,

     

    we’ll just say, if you’re listening to this podcast and you absolutely love everything that Kate’s saying, make sure that you take a screenshot, I’ve listened. He does put it on your IgG story and tag Kate and tag, thus we live company, or you can just tag April beach life and okay. So cool. Now next question. Newsletters versus emails,

     

    you know, the newsletter was kinda dead honestly like seven years ago, but now we actually have clients that like their newsletter is so amazing and they only send it out like once a month and it’s like long and juicy and almost like a calendar. What is your take on the strategy and the difference between newsletters in regular emails? How have you seen those playing out?

     

    If you will only send a newsletter and by newsletter, I want to make sure that we have the same definition. Are you saying something where it’s like multiple calls to action, multiple sections? Is that what you’re defining as a newsletter? Yeah. These are huge newsletters that some of our clients, which are larger companies already, that you know, are in the process of scaling that they send out these newsletters,

     

    people like go crazy at one of them could be sign up here for this. And one of them could be, did you remember to join this? There are multiple calls to action. In these things. We call that more of a magazine style email. If that is the only one that you will do, so you will actually send it, then send it.

     

    So I had an interior designer who was a student and when she tried to do of that one call to action type of a thing, she really mindset got into her head a lot. And so what we did is we went ahead and we turned it into like her Wednesday newsletter. We gave it an actual name and I told her just like magazines have repeating sections.

     

    You need to have some repeating sections, but realize that if you are trying to sell, say an ebook and you’re still having all three of those sections, then the likelihood of them buying is going to be a lot lower to people. Like people, you give them a lot of stuff to do. They will do everything else or they’ll do nothing. Like there’s actually a scientific study.

     

    The jam study. If you get 12 choices versus 24 at 24, you’ll just walk by because you’re just like, that’s too much for my brain. Right? So when I told her, that’s not to say she can’t have flash sales or launches because I feel like, Oh my goodness, she’s emailing on Monday. It’s gotta be important. So then she can just do the one that has the one call to action.

     

    So make sure that you are strategic realize with those newsletters, that the likelihood of them going to spam or promotions is going to be higher. The more outward links to different places that you have, the more likely it is to trigger something. So you can link to your Instagram five times if that’s your call to action, because it’s going to the same spot,

     

    your Instagram. But if you’ve got an Instagram one, that’s going to a deal that you have one that’s going to a blog post one, that’s this one that’s that it can go in there. But again, if you are more likely to send us a magazine style newsletter than send nothing and send it, just realize that your sales aren’t going to be as high because you can’t focus them on one particular action.

     

    So like I would never send a new style in the middle of a launch that would make no sense because people would get derailed. So that’s just the difference if what you want to go with. So if you’ll never do anything, just one of those, but again, try to keep it consistent because then people that are interested in certain parts, they’ll always go right down to that section.

     

    Okay, cool. And now I have a couple other questions that are coming up that I know people are probably thinking. So I’m trying to be in the mind of our listeners right now, a question about the frequency of sending. Is it better to send more frequently, you know, less frequently? Does it depend on the relationship between the business and the audience?

     

    Is there like a regular consistent, like rhythm that you recommend with email sending? Okay. For most people, if you only send once a month, this is nothing. That’s your client. And again, if they’re a larger corporation, they could probably get away with it once a month. Especially if you’re a smaller, more personal brand is not going to necessarily be enough because people are going to forget about you.

     

    You’re not top of mind, they’re their goal. Fishes. Everybody has a goldfish treat. People like people. You’re going to hear that a lot. What I would say for people, especially if you are a personal brand, especially service owner, you’re selling your own courses, aim for once a week. That’s four emails a month. Y’all handle writing four emails a month and what’s gonna end up happening is you’re going to get so good.

     

    You can batch them, meaning, sit down and write them all. Sometimes w a lot of my students really love to do is they will come up with a topic for all four and then they’ll write like two at a time. Right? So again, it’s done, they’ll load them into the convert kit. They’re active campaigns. Doesn’t matter whatever tool you’re using.

     

    And then they know that they’re settled and then people get so hyped about this. Or they do some casual selling, which we teach in the course. And then I’m like, okay, I’m going to add another day. But I would never say like, email this. Now, if you’re doing a launch or you are doing a flash sale, you’re going to want to send more than one email.

     

    Because again, people might not check. They might forget treat people like people they procrastinate so that you’re going to have a little bit more. But as long as honestly, what you have to say is interesting and it’s tackling different doubts or your habits that people have, you can keep sending Austin repeat yourself. Okay. And then the one last question I had is when somebody does have a launch,

     

    you know, it’s normal that people unsubscribed from the list and people get so afraid of that. They’re like, Oh, like the whole mindset thing, which we already knocked out of the ballpark, that’s gone. Now, we already dealt with that. What the question here is, is there like an average expectation for a percentage of unsubscribes that you have seen during launches or is it totally vary based on different brands and businesses?

     

    How frequently they launch? How big obviously, how great the relationship already is with building the relationship? Is there like a average percentage that people can quote unquote expect in unsubscribes around a launch period or no, I don’t know if it’s necessarily during a launch period. The only stock that I could find was in general and it’s actually does hold true. If you guys go look at your analytics is usually when you send any type of email,

     

    you can expect about a 1% unsubscribe rate, which is pretty interesting. So again, if your number is a hundred, then your percentages are going to be like very skewed. So keep that in mind. We need to have some logical, even though I don’t do logic, but like, so keep that in mind, right? When it comes to a launch,

     

    the biggest reason that people are unsubscribing is because you started talking to them about something they didn’t care about, or you never gave them an out. So like the launches that I do, even though, like, I teach email marketing. If you didn’t sign up for a launch, trigger a webinar, a challenge, all of that. I’m not going to send you all my launch emails because you’re not going to want them.

     

    I will send you two. And one of them is just a recent it’s like, Hey, I know you didn’t sign up for this webinar, but I know that you were struggling with ABC and D this is open until Wednesday. If you want to come, come, if not, that’s cool. And then in my launch emails that I have, and I always tell my students to do this too.

     

    I always have that link bottom of the email, sometimes top of the email, Hey, if you know that love your list is not for you. This round, then click here and we’ll chat after the launch is over. Or Hey know that you have a great relationship with your list and you’re making more than $10,000 a month with it. Click here.

     

    I won’t tell you any more about my course, because you don’t need us right now. Just give people an out, treat people like people. But again, if you are setting that one hour to go 30 minutes to go five minutes to go, and you’re making everything about you, then I guess if you could take anything away from this, especially when it comes to launching,

     

    you need to be more excited for them than yourself, because nobody, I mean, we do care that like you have expertise. So I’m not saying any of those fake it till you make. And I hate that line. What I’m saying is I am so disproportionately passionate about seeing Sally earn money from our food blog. When everyone else in our whole fricken family thought that she was nuts.

     

    Like, I am like hardcore rather than like, love your list. And I make all of this money. And like, yes, obviously in each of them, a copywriter, not some rando that hit like big with a pin, obviously that’s important, but it’s not like, Hey guys, my course is open. Never it is. If you are struggling with this and I get very,

     

    very specific, we call them moments. We don’t have time to talk about them. Now y’all are going to have to tell me to find out that’s right. Then I got this and it is going to help. And here’s how it’s going to help because I am so excited. Literally you can see my face to see my people succeed. You have no idea.

     

    And when you come at anything that you create that way, and I don’t care if it’s a meal planning guide, I don’t care if you help cleaning products, I do not care. We are more excited for what they’re going to be able to avoid and achieve. It’s like, I know, yeah, I’ve got this thing they’re going to buy. This is why my students and I get a logical Results and people like that’s bananas.

     

    Like no that’s treating people like people. You are so good. I’ve appreciated you sharing and totally pouring out your crazy good expertise into our audience. This is amazing. Okay. So you have, of course an amazing free thing that people can have. Like if they want to connect with you further, or if they just want like these amazing results, you have two years worth of emails that you are giving to our listeners.

     

    Tell them what that is. That’s amazing. Sure. So what it is is two years worth of email idea prompts. So if you’re ever sitting there looking at your screen, you’re like, I’ve got no idea what to email about. Or even if you’re like, I don’t know how to make this next thing sort of interesting. We do have it dated.

     

    Now, keep in mind if you’re listening to this and it’s like July, it’s like, Oh, well, half the month is wrong. Spoiler alert. January is going to come back. So as April, so it’s may, so you can just restart it over. Like there’s no problem. And some people will actually they’ll follow it verbatim. Like,

     

    Oh, may it sets in this, this, this, and this. And we’ll do it. Some people mix them up. Some people go and just peer in other months. And that is 100% there because now, you know what it is. If anything is time-based because a couple of months we’ll have something like, it’s not Neil national hug your cat day,

     

    but if there’s something that’s going to be time-based to be, well, we make sure that at least once a month, you’re really highlighting some type of paid offer, whether it is an affiliate deal, whether it is her own stuff, any of that sort of stuff is in there as well. So you can hand it on over to Kate Doster dot for slash Sweet life,

     

    either with a hyphen or without I got you both. And then you guys will be able to get that. And you can always listen to my podcast, wherever you’re listening to this. It is in a box of besties and my Instagram, which I’m working on. Let’s say it that way. I spent so much time cultivating my email list, social media.

     

    I kind of forgot about, so it is Kate underscore Doster. So y’all can see the name and I’m sure we’ll have it in the show notes. Yeah, we will. And yeah. Yeah. Instagram followers does not equal amazing experts. Definitely. There’s not an equivalent therapist. I want people to be able to connect with you more. And also you are newly on clubhouse.

     

    So I’m like talking to you behind the scenes. You guys, if you’re in our Sweetlife club on clubhouse, I’m talking to Kate about getting on the calendar. And so we can do a clubhouse room for you guys where you can connect with her directly and ask her your questions, which is so cool. So we’ll put all of that information in the show notes as well.

     

    Kate, thank you so much. It was so awesome to get to know you and to hear everything that you deliver today. We really appreciate your time. I think you’ll ever remember guys being on your list is privilege. So treat it like one<inaudible> Thanks so much for hanging out with us at the end, you are the a game players, right?

     

    You were the winners, the ones that stay and apply all the strategies. As a matter of fact, I was speaking in a clubhouse room recently that if people actually just listened to this podcast for the last four years, they probably would save up to a hundred thousand dollars in startup and scale business coaching that they might have spent on other coaches. We really are here to dedicate true and proven business strategies that you can take to the bank.

     

    So thank you so much for listening to this show do join us in our clubhouse room. We would love to meet with you and clubhouse. We’ll be speaking live at 12 o’clock Eastern with Kate Doster herself. If you’re listening to this live, that will be Wednesday, April 2nd, at 12 o’clock Eastern. And you can find that room by visiting sweet life business.club.

     

    I’ll say that again. Sweet life business.club. And all you have to do. If you are a clubhouse member is you can quickly simply click the button and join our club and you’ll get a notification of this room. All right, you guys have an awesome day. I’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye

    Episode 219: How to Build A Personal Brand That Lasts A Lifetime – with April Beach and Nicole Herring

    Nicole Herring SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Need faster business growth? Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    Entrepreneurs in the first stages of business growth, who feel like you’re struggling to make a decision on your personal brand and how to represent yourself to the world.

    Summary:

    As an entrepreneur, expert or professional leader, one of your strongest assets is your personal brand. Your brand is the outward representation of who you are and what you bring to the world. But oftentimes, leaders struggle with imposter syndrome, or get confused about how they want to show up. You might be afraid that you can’t take things back once you show them to the world or you’re fearful of judgment or regret.
     
    In this, our guest Nicole Herring, NLP Practitioner, breaks down her process to help you make strategic. personal brand decisions.

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Understand personal vs company branding
    2. Have a set of questions you can ask yourself to make personal brand decisions

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate, Hey there, and welcome to episode number 219 here on the Sweetlife entrepreneur in business podcast. And today we are diving in and Having a conversation all about how to build a personal brand that lasts a lifetime with our guest in the house today,

     

    Nicole Herring, this is a great show and we’re going to go ahead and dive right in. But before we do, I want to make sure you have utilized the tools we have for you here to grow and design and scale your business here at this sweet life company. And through this week, I have entrepreneur podcast, all of which can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com

     

    on there very specifically, I want to point to our start to scale up system. If you haven’t yet taken the self-assessment to find out what stage of business you are in, it is absolute gold. There are some short questions for you to answer. And then based on the stage of business, you’re in, we give you a whole entire list in a checklist,

     

    actually with support in steps to get your business to the next level. So no more confusion overwhelm or shiny object syndrome. There’s a very short assessment will get you there. And you can take that assessment simply by visiting Sweetlife code.com forward slash quiz. Okay, let’s go and head and dive into today’s episode with our guests. This is what we’re talking about.

     

    This show is great for any of you who are in the first stages of your business, launch and development, and even scaling your company. So based on where you are in that, self-assessment, this is great for those of you in stages one through three, and you feel like you might be struggling to make a decision on your personal brand and how to represent yourself to the world.

     

    Because as an entrepreneur expert or professional leader, one of the strongest assets that you have is your personal brand, right? And your brand is an outward representation of who you are and what you bring to the world. But oftentimes commonly leaders struggle with imposter syndrome. They get confused about what they want to show up, who they want to show up as who they want to show up for.

     

    In actually I talk with a lot of entrepreneurs who are kind of afraid just to even put their personal brand out there to the world, because they know once they do that, you know, you can’t really take it back. And so they feel like they are just stuck in this place where they can’t move forward. You’re worried maybe somebody is going to judge you and you don’t want to have any regrets,

     

    but as a leader, as an expert, even if you have a company brand, it’s important that your personal brand shows up to the world, because people are going to connect with you as a person so much more than they’re going to connect with a brand or any sort of accompany brand first. That’s why everybody loves seeing behind the scenes on your Instagram or talking to you directly in a clubhouse room,

     

    who you are and who you show up as are incredibly important things. And so that’s what we’re talking about on today’s show. Today’s expert is Nicole Herring. She’s an NLP practitioner that breaks down her process to help you make strategic, personal brand decisions. And here’s a little bit of Nicole story and she shares it more when we dive into this, because I think it’s important for you to connect with it.

     

    Basically she’s done everything. She’s been a designer and an entrepreneur, and she struggled with the fact of really stepping into who she is called to be as far as being also a mom. And she has gone through the process to create an amazing structure that she’s going to guide you through today that helped herself go through how to make personal brand decisions for her business.

     

    Another little backstory here is Nicole is also, I first met her. She traveled with us to Florida in fall of 2020 for our Sweetlife company planning retreat. I had never met this woman before. She was absolutely a gem, even though she lives like 12 miles from me, isn’t that crazy. We had to fly to Florida from Colorado to meet each other for the first time.

     

    But one of the things that really stood out to me, she photographed our entire week there and it was amazing, but how she did that was she really worked with my team. She photographed my team as well to really extract who they were as people so that it represented in the outward view of the photos that they would use professionally. It was absolute genius.

     

    And that’s why I have invited her on today’s show. You’re going to absolutely love this woman, just like I do. So at the end of this episode, you’re going to understand personal versus company branding. And we’re really diving into the personal branding side. And Nicole has given you a set of questions that you can go through and ask yourself to make the smartest,

     

    most confident, personal brand decisions for yourself. All of the show notes and everything we’re talking about can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com. And this is episode number two 19. All right, let’s go ahead and dive in.<inaudible> All right. You guys, I am joined by my very, very good friend, Nicole Herring. And let me give you a little bit of a background story.

     

    Before we dive into today’s business trainings. Nicole lives 15 minutes from me, but we had never met. We were introduced by Cathy Hawn. Who’s an amazing woman and she connected us because I was looking for a photographer. Now here’s a little bit of the background story too. I have never been into like personal photo shoots because I didn’t believe anybody could actually capture me and who I authentically am.

     

    I was, my experience was I was always like forced to be somebody that I’m not anyway, long story short. We were planning our business retreat at a beautiful beach in Tampa, Florida on the beach in Tampa, Florida. And I really wanted to bring a photographer and I met Nicole and I realized he was the first person that I had ever found that could truly capture the authentic behind the scenes of what we were doing as a company and to get amazing photography of really what it’s like to be part of the Sweetlife company and who I am as a person.

     

    So I had the pleasure of spending a week with Nicole on the beach in Tampa and walked away with the most incredible photos, just capturing everything we did as a company. But then also, I mean, this woman took the time to know me. She even had me like laying down in that sand And I was like, yes, you want me to lay down with my hair and the seashells in the ocean.

     

    I would love that. You know, so she, I really took the time to know who I was as a person. And I am just so blessed to have her in my life. Now, the thing that we’re talking about today is one of Nicole’s incredible giftings, and that is helping entrepreneurs actually create this personal brand that lives a legacy that is true to who they are as people.

     

    And so there’s a big process of doing that. It’s not just showing up to take pictures. There’s so much more than Nicole identified in that. And that’s why I’m so pleased to introduce you guys to her today. Because after you hear about her process, it’s going to really put you in the right direction of creating your personal brand in a way that’s true to you.

     

    So Nicole, welcome to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast. So glad that you’re here. Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here. I just want to say thank you. And yeah, I love, I love how we had to travel to another state, literally on the other side of the country to finally meet each other, we have had a couple of calls and COVID kind of came up and our original plans derailed,

     

    but we came together anyway. So I love how worldwide our brands are. And yet, like we still had to meet, we still had to get on a plane to actually connect. And it just, it’s just the way I love to do business. Like, I’ll meet you by the beach. I think I wrote that at the bottom of the email.

     

    I’m like, just tell me when, and I’ll meet you by the ocean. Right. And we did too. Like she met me by the beach. It was awesome. Tell everybody, yeah. Tell everybody about, you know, kind of your evolution To your now area of incredible expertise. Thank you. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. Cause it’s like at one point when I decided I wanted to leave the version of motherhood,

     

    that was the stay at home, the homemaker version of motherhood. What else is out there for me? I really did not know what that looked like. And I just thought, how can I get paid to be creative? I didn’t know what that meant. There was a whole entrepreneurial part of the journey that I was just like, so outside my realm of possibility at that point,

     

    I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And so I did, I went on a journey for a couple of years of just allowing myself to say, Hey, I would love to get paid as a personal stylist. As an interior designer, I rebuilt and refinished furniture. I paint on canvases, like all kinds of things and then fell into finding that I had a knack for writing.

     

    And then writing led me to copywriting and copywriting led me to branding and branding led me to photography. And then it was like this whole full circle cycle where it was kind of like, Oh, branding, photography, personal style, interior design, all of that is all so well encompassed and all the facets in one nice and neat package. And I was like,

     

    Oh, so like, I didn’t even know branding was a thing. So I really pursued that path. And I really loved it. I worked with some great women, helping them build their brand, writing content, helping them create launch strategy. And then they would do nothing, right? Like they would pay me thousands of dollars to develop these concepts.

     

    And then they would get stuck in their own brain. And in their own minds of feeling like they were an imposter or they couldn’t figure out how to then become visible in their business, even though they thought they were hiring me to solve the problem of, Oh, as soon as I have the copy, I’m good to go. As soon as I have the images,

     

    I’ll be good to go. As soon as I have a launch strategy and I have the bird’s eye view, I know how to take steps. I just need somebody else to show me, help me see the way. And so I thought, Oh great. I’ll be happy to be, get paid to be creative and do all of this. But then I found that they were just not taking action in the business.

     

    And I thought to myself, okay, what is it that is keeping some people from taking action and some people did not. And then it kind of, I stumbled down the path of NLP, which is neuro-linguistic programming. It’s a modality for coaching through the mental and emotional blocks that keep you from creating success in your life. And I found some of my own blocks and healed and transformed theirs.

     

    And then I was like, sign me up. How do I become a practitioner? So I put a pause in offering creative services so that I could bring this to my clients so I could support them mentally and emotionally while they are creating a brand so that they’re not living in this tension of who they are portraying themselves on social media versus thinking there’s somebody different in real life.

     

    And so as a really a matter of eliminating that tension and helping them see that they are the best and the worst of both of that and owning the good, the bad and the ugly so that they could actually move forward with their business. So there’s the long and the shit of it. Yeah. I mean, that’s so it’s so important. I think there are so many people listening that have spent so much money on valuable deliverables like you were creating,

     

    right. And they thought that that’s what they’re missing and they still don’t take action on it. And so I love that you were so intentional and you’re like, wait a minute, you’ve paid me thousands of dollars and you’re still not using this stuff. What’s the problem here. So I love your journey. It’s very much who you are now that I know you kind of being like,

     

    okay, now where let’s take another step back, where are we getting stuck? Where’s the bottleneck. So today on the show, we’re talking about how to build a personal brand that lasts a lifetime. And we’re really talking about a really how to encompass that. And there’s so many different things that we’re going to dive here. And, you know, if you’re listening and you have bought many things before and maybe felt like you were stuck and you haven’t taken action,

     

    this was a really important episode for you to keep tuning into cause Nicole’s can actually take you through her framework in order to actually that outlines a thought process for you. So you can make intentional decisions, which is so cool. But before we get into that, let’s kind of set a baseline for somebody who’s listening that might not know. So first of all,

     

    let’s define the difference between a company brand and a personal brand and kind of dive into that just real quick. If anybody, I wouldn’t say, if anybody I know who so many people ask me these questions, like, should I brand myself or should I brand my business? And what’s really the difference. So can you just basically explain that for anybody who might be wondering?

     

    Sure. So when you’re branding a business, you’re branding a solution that appeals to a particular ideal client. And so everything that you’re doing within a brand of a business is okay, who’s our ideal client. Who’s willing to pay for the solution that we’re offering. What is their price point? Is it for a business to business solution? Is it a business to consumer solution,

     

    right? It’s all about the consumer and the problem that they’re attempting to solve when you’re in a personal brand, you’re still very focused on the client, but the client also wants to feel like they’re resonating with the person who’s delivering the solution, who’s delivering the transformation. And so the personal brand aspect is just, it’s a bit about who you are as a human and you’re injecting those qualities into a brand.

     

    And the very simplest way is to take like, like you and I were talking about previously is just taking, you know, a few basic adjectives about who you are as a person and injecting that into the visuals of your brand. And so that when people meet you in person, they feel like they already know and connect with who you are, because your feed or your,

     

    you know, the way that you speak, the energy that you have comes through. And so there’s, there’s no disconnect there in the personal brand, from the visuals we’re seeing online and the person that they meet in person, right. Because you don’t, your brand is speaking for you long before you’ve actually connected. One-on-one Right. And something you said to me before we started recording,

     

    that was just super important is that you said the personal brand also tells the idea of clients. It tells them a story of what’s possible. So they are actually able to see what they personally, it’s very hard to find, see yourself personally, in a company brand, right. But when you’re looking at a person and you’re seeing their life and what they’re doing and how they’re going about doing that,

     

    where they go and what they’re wearing and who they’re hanging out with and all those things, all of that is representative of what is possible for them when they work with your services. And I thought that was so important for people to understand. And that really speaks a lot to, if anybody has that question, should I brand myself, or should I brand my company?

     

    There are very important. We could have a whole podcast on that, but just, just to take away, there are some very important to note that doing both is very important. Moving forward to a certain extent, obviously, based on, on your company and based on honestly, based on your company, exit strategy, if you want to have your company acquired and things like that in the future.

     

    Okay. So let’s go ahead and dive into why it’s important now. So some of the reasons why it’s important to create an authentic personal brand that is really, really true to who you are in a couple of things I want you to define for us, if you could, please are number one, what is imposter syndrome? Because that word is used quite often and people might necessarily not necessarily know the actual definition.

     

    And then what’s in between that in self-doubt. Yeah. Thanks for asking. And I did bring up the definition just because I want to make sure that I am saying it correctly, because the way that I, well, I’ll just go with it. So imposter syndrome, according on a quick Google search, it says that it’s loosely defined as doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud.

     

    And it’s disproportionately affects high-achieving people who find it difficult to accept their accomplishments. And so basically when I say, what, how self-doubt and imposter syndrome differ is it, imposter syndrome says that you even look at the evidence and then you diminish it. You actually say, Oh, I’ve created 40 grands in my business, you know, in X amount of time.

     

    But that was just a fluke. Like I got really lucky. These three things happen, X, Y, and Z. I didn’t really make that happen. It was a fluke. It was by accident, all that. So you diminish what you’ve accomplished and also hold it against yourself. And so the self doubt is what keeps you from taking action in the future.

     

    So then you’re now diminishing. What’s possible for you, even though you have evidence that supports that you can create Results because you’ve done it. You’ve now diminished it and created self doubt that then prohibits you and even self sabotages. You moving forward with the expertise, the zone of genius that you have, the skillset that you’ve nurtured, or your natural talents that you have,

     

    right? Like all of that, you then now discount and say, it’s not, I mean, I can’t really charge. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Like I just, you know, whatever. So now you’re discounting what you can do in the future. And the imposter syndrome kind of is how you reflect on what you’ve accomplished and say,

     

    I’m just surprised if, if only people I, the fluke made 40 grand or whatever it is. Right. Right. Okay. So just a random question for somebody who’s listening. I mean, most of our listeners are in this growth and scale phase of their business, but for those that are listening, that are brand new business and they haven’t done anything yet,

     

    like they’re starting from scratch and they’re looking around and being like, like, how do I do this? There’s all these other people that are better than me that have been doing this longer than me, that LA LA LA like all these things that they’re saying to themselves in their mind, we’re going to go through this framework here, which I’m so excited for you to share your framework.

     

    But is there something that you would say to them specifically? Oh, for sure. So all the time, and I mean, this is, I’m not making this statement up. People say it all the time, but it’s like, you cannot compare your beginning to somebody else’s chapter 47 or whatever it is. And so you have to allow yourself to,

     

    to be bad, to be a starter, to be fresh, to be new. And also, if you really want to look at what you’ve accomplished in your life, you can lean back and evaluate self-evaluate every job you ever had, even as a babysitter when you were 14, right. Like take it way back and go old school and look at every job you ever had and look at the skills and qualities and things that you have honed and created from each individual job.

     

    I mean, I know I worked at a bagel shop when I was a child. Like not<inaudible>. Yeah. You definitely got through that. I mean, 15, we were children. Right. We thought, we thought we were so big, but yeah. So, you know, 15, I worked at a bagel shop and then I worked at a law firm when I was 16 years old,

     

    just, you know, working in the back. And so every single job that I’ve had, I’ve been able to look and see like, okay, well, if I could do that job at age 16, then what did I get from that, that qualifies me for what I’m doing now. And you can actually go back and just prove to yourself and self-evaluate and say,

     

    actually, I had no luck, I’ve done a lot, acquired a lot of skills. And so it’s the human condition to look at where we’re lacking, as opposed to where we’re actually having the skillset and honoring what, what we do know. And so you have to literally train your brain to not look towards the negative and seek out the positive. Okay.

     

    So, and then one of the, one of the ways that this works, even with one of my clients recently is that she was like, I was like, okay, tell me a time in which you felt really successful. And she was like, Oh, I don’t know. I’d have to really think about it. And I’m like, don’t think about it.

     

    Just tell me a time in which you felt successful. She’s like, well, I don’t know if the is like successful enough. And I was like, see right there, right there as a, as a feeling of not being good enough. And the reason why is because if I said, tell me something that sad that happened, you could immediately go to a sad memory,

     

    but you wouldn’t second guess, was that sad enough? Was that the status memory I’ve ever had? Probably not. Right. And so it’s a human condition to really look at the least important parts of the detail and make them the most significant things you have to retrain your brain. And so that’s a process that I actually teach my clients. That’s the reframing process that I’m going to teach you right now.

     

    It’s a bit of, a lot of different things that I’ve learned. There are so many teachers out there who teach different parts of this. And for me, pulling it all together was not a feat in the sense where it was a hard accomplishment, but when I really saw the full picture, it just kind of blew my mind. And so until that process,

     

    yeah. Do you want me to Right into it? Yeah. So let’s tell him, let’s kind of set everybody up for what’s about to come. So there are seven steps to it and you actually break out the word reframe into an acronym. So sh so you’re going to guide people through this process. And so at the end of this process, like when they’re done with this,

     

    they’re going to have a clear thought process to make decisions on building their personal brand. That will last a lifetime. So that’s the outcome of what you’re about to teach here. Yes. Okay. So let’s go ahead and dive in. Yes. Tell us your reframe process. Okay. So when you are reframing something, the first thing we want to do is really look at,

     

    okay, what is the real and undeniable facts? What is the reality? That’s what they’ll let our RFC on spore. And so what we want to really do is break it down into three words or less of the problem that you’re trying to solve and take away all of the unnecessary words and all of the emotion and just simplify what you’re trying to create.

     

    And so if what you’re trying to do is sit down and create, copy, offer a website. Or if you’re trying to write sales content in an email, or if you’re trying to start a nurture sequence in, in social media, you know, you just don’t make it into a big problem. You just like writing content. You know, what’s the most simple way for you to say this is the problem that we’re solving with the reality of the situation.

     

    And so then the next letter is E which is experience. And so you really want to talk about like, what is the experience, the reference in which we want the person plays through the event of the thing. So in reference to writing social media content, when it’s the experience that I want my clients to have, when they’re reading through this, what is the experience I want to have when reading this same thing with writing content,

     

    for an email sequence or in sales page, what is the experience we want people to have? And what’s the experience I want to have, right. Do I want to feel confident? Do I want to feel right? So that’s actually F I dumped right into the next step. It’s, it’s such a natural process that I can lead right into it.

     

    And so the next letter of reframe is F. And so then you think about, okay, well, what are the feelings I want to accomplish in the writing this piece of content? I want to convert our readers into clients. How do I want to feel the number, one thing that people neglect to feel as confident, or like they know the answer to their client’s problem.

     

    And so they sit down and they start to go into this worry, like, I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what my clients need to hear. Oh, what am I doing? Who am I anyway? Right. So they go into this emotional mind drama instead of sitting with confidence that they’re the expert and they know how to solve this problem.

     

    If you can tap into that energy and get into that feeling and dictate the experience you want your clients to have. And so when will you, right? So like, let me Over to like building their personal brand. So once somebody listening would be, you know, you’re thinking when you’re writing the copywriting for your social media or in your website, you know,

     

    really going through, you know, what is reality? What isn’t, you know, what is the experience you want people to have when they experience your personal brand? How do you want them to feel when they experience your personal brand? Yeah. This process is so good. Okay. So, and then R yeah, so the R is for the reaction.

     

    And so a lot of times there’s an unintentional way that we react to our own thoughts and feelings. And so just how I was saying, when you’re sitting down and you’re thinking, okay, what is it, how do I want to be feeling when I’m writing the sales page or developing my brand and deciding who I am in the world and how I’m offering my services,

     

    who am I, what are the feelings I want to have? This is the reaction of going in and thinking immediately the human design of just saying, I don’t know what I’m talking about and having that knee-jerk reaction of, of discrediting or diminishing all of the things that, you know, to be true and accurate about yourself and the a and the next one is just assuming radical responsibility and choosing an action instead.

     

    And so instead of having the negative reaction and making decisions about your brand, what if you were just really intentional and you chose to like, trust yourself and believe in what you were saying and believe in who, who you were being and not live in that tension of that, your online personality or your online identity, and that brand is any different than who you are at home.

     

    Sometimes there is some tension there, and that’s the mental and emotional awareness pieces that you have to kind of get the coaching on because the strategy is nothing. If you don’t have the mental and emotional pieces that support who you’re becoming and who you’re growing into in the online world. And so the M and reframe is for mindset awareness. And this is a different way of looking at it than most people usually do,

     

    because a lot of times people think that mindset is, you know, like you’re either in growth mindset, you’re either moving towards something or you’re in limited mindset, or you’re in a lack mentality. And sometimes there’s something in the middle called neutral that nobody really gets to. And so I like to really attribute the mindset awareness to even like a storyline. So if you have a story,

     

    there’s like a hero that’s out there, like saving the world. And they’re the ones that are in the growth zone and they’re making all the magic happen. Right. Then you have the other side, which is the victim mentality, the fixed mindset. And then sometimes there’s these innocent bystanders that are just part of the story, but it’s not really their drama,

     

    but they’re just there, they’re a neutral person. And so sometimes I think that when it comes to in a mindset, when we’re looking, especially if you’re trying to build your brand, you coach people on this all the time, like find your competitive people, look at what they’ve got, what they don’t have assess their brand what’s missing. And then from there,

     

    fill in the gaps with what’s natural and true to you, and really honor what you’re better at, but then get out of there and do not stay in the place where you are now living in comparison land and looking at their, at their content. And now going into the victim mentality that your brand is not as good as theirs, you know, all that kind of stuff.

     

    You just need to get back to neutral by just removing that negative feedback from your own brain, by just knowing who they are, knowing what the competition is, and then not living in their world is the only way you’re going to create success. And so you have to just decide, am I going to grow into this? Can I go into neutral?

     

    Or am I going to tumble down into victim world and, and be in a limited mindset? And now second, guess everything that I’ve made a decision on. And then the very last word is E which is the three E’s. Cause I could not pick one. There’s too many great words here, but listen, you have to experiment. Okay. So you just have to shift things and just be willing to experiment live in the curiosity whenever you’re testing your brand and you’re validating your offers,

     

    you just have to say, what’s working and what’s not working and really take the failure of things landing or not landing away from who you are as a person, a failure. Is it about an event? A failure is not an adjective of me as a human, right? But it might be a rat. The failure of a specific idea that I had,

     

    the idea was a failure. That doesn’t mean I’m a failure as a person. So you have to be able to experiment with curiosity, obviously, execution of all things, right? You give strategy to people all the time, how many people are taking strategy in and implementing, right? Like this is the disruption that you want to create in the market.

     

    And, and in your industry of saying, okay, like, listen, information is not enough. If you’re not executing and implementing, you’re missing the Mark. And you, I know as a, as a brand and as a company are wanting to really change that. And then self-evaluation, I mean, here’s the thing, the reason why we fire people in business is never the reason why we hire them.

     

    So if you can’t go back and look at why you’ve fired employees and you’re not learning anything from that experience, right? So the same for ourselves, like if we don’t self evaluate and look at where we, what worked, what didn’t work and allow ourselves to grow through all the circumstances, building a brand, launching an offer, all those things. If you’re not able to self-evaluate without being hypercritical of yourself,

     

    right. It’s like critiquing and experience without being hypercritical of the self, that’s a learned skill set. So, and that’s one of the things that I found is that people were just, their inner critic was so harsh mine too. Right? Like I was like, everything that I did was not good enough. And I did not become an expert in overcoming imposter syndrome because I just learned from a book.

     

    This is the crab. I don’t know if I can say cuss words on here, but I’m like, this is the S H I T that I went through to overcome my own self doubt and my own imposter syndrome and be like, actually do know a lot and had to go through this process. So this came from a year’s worth of wanting to get out of my own damn way to be honest.

     

    Right. Right. And I love your framework. And I just want to highlight something you said, just kind of in recapping here, it was under the mindset piece. I love the neutral piece. And I think that you’re so right. I don’t hear that spoken to very often too, though, the gross or the fixed mindset, but what you said is you have to just decide to grow through this.

     

    And I think that is so important because I mean, there’s nothing sexy or glittery about that. You just choose to go through the process of taking the action, which is your next step, you know, really in believing in what you do. And you just choose, take action to continue on, to force that wall down. And I think that that is so important that you said that.

     

    So let’s go ahead and just kind of recap this reframe. So this is your reframe process. And what our listeners can expect is when you go through this and you take these concepts and you apply them to developing your personal brand, it gives you the thought process. So these are things that you think through as you are developing your visual in your written brand and the way your brand is represented to the world.

     

    And so first you said the Aras reality, what is real and what isn’t the E is experience. And you elaborate on that. So beautiful. The F is diving into your feelings. The R is the reaction that a is assuming radical responsibility, love that the M is really the mindset piece. And then the ESA experiment execute. And self-evaluation, was it evaluate?

     

    Yeah. Yeah, it was evaluate. It’s also good. It’s also good. And so this really is a thought process. I love that you have created a process of thinking to make sure that people are making strategic decisions about their personal brand personal branding. And I think that that’s why so many people get stuck, but when we’re branding a company, you know,

     

    it’s totally different and we can pivot brand strategies and all those things. When you are personally branding yourself, especially putting it out on that forevermore timestamp on social media and what that looks like online, things that, you know, we cannot take back. Like once we put them out there, they are there. I think that’s also why people like there’s some confusion or fear or worry of doing it incorrectly,

     

    but you’ve just done a beautiful job laying out this framework to have people really consider, you know, this is what I want to create. This is why I want to create it in a very intentional way. That is in fact, going to build a personal brand that lasts a lifetime. So thank you so much for taking the time for people. And how cool is it?

     

    Like it’s always through our own journey that we build the most incredible solutions for other people. So the one thing I do want to say, I just want to say one thing is that a lot of times too, people put, they put this feeling of this as like, Oh, it’s, it’s forever, right? And it’s, it is building a lifetime brand doesn’t mean that you have to choose this one thing,

     

    and then you’re going to stick to it for the rest of your life forever and ever. Amen. It just means that, you know, like you’re going to be true to yourself no matter what. So your brand is going to be aligned with you for the lifetime of your brand. It doesn’t mean that what you’re choosing today is the thing you have to stick to for the next 72 years.

     

    It’s just how to be aligned for the lifetime of your brand. No matter how your alignment, the ebbs and flows of your own journey can always re attribute and rebranding is a thing. People do it all the time. You don’t have to say this needs to be set in stone. So don’t worry about that part. Just know that your brand will always be a reflection of you.

     

    If you are really in tune with your and who you are as a human and confidence in that is what creates the most beautiful brand identities. Right? So well said, thank you so much for being on the show, Nicole, and we’ll put it all in the show notes here, how people can find you, but in the meantime, for those just listening,

     

    tell everybody about your business and how they can find you on social media and online. Thank you. Yeah, I do personal concept coaching and I do brand identity coaching. And really it is the beautiful part that I love is to support the woman, to feel like she is the best of who she is in real life. And then making sure that that transfers into her brand.

     

    And so that it feels this like it’s business, it’s personal and it’s, it’s a one beautifully reflective relationship. Instead of living in the tension of that, my website is really simple. Nicole herring.com and I C O L E H E R I N d.com. I have brand retreats coming up. Let’s all fingers crossed. The travel opens up internationally for right now,

     

    we’re doing some, you know, a mainland of retreats. And of course I do coach my clients on a one-on-one basis. And I do have a group program that the sweet life company is helping me to get out into the world. So that’ll be exciting. And yeah, on social media, you can find me on Instagram as Nicole Herring, brilliant or no mine mastery coach.

     

    Sorry. I recently changed the name of that. And then of course, I’m on clubhouse under Nicole Herring, just my name. So come find me, I’ll be getting on there and helping women to break through their self belief and limitations within themselves so that they can just get out there and make a difference. Yeah. And I will say, I actually get a lot of questions on who does our photography.

     

    So this is the woman you guys, if you’re following me on Instagram, you want to know who’s taken all of our pictures. Nicole is the one and people have been asking me actually like, who is she? I want her to come to me and on my retreat. So those are, those are all good things. And what she’s teaching here in her coaching process sets you up to make sure the outcome,

     

    the visual outcome is in line with who you are. So yes, the photography, the retreats are amazing, but I would highly recommend if you aren’t sure, and set and confident in who you are and who you were supposed to be to the world to really make sure that you’re honing in with Nicole and getting that set first. So everything you build and create is manifesting in the way that it is supposed to,

     

    and it’s in line with you. So thank you so much for being on the show. I absolutely adore you. Thank you for who you are to us and the things you do for us as a company as well. All right. You’re welcome.

    Episode 218: Entrepreneur Sleep: How To Thrive As A Peak Performer – with April Beach and Mollie McGlocklin

    Mollie McGlocklin SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Join the SweetLife Entrepreneurs Club on Clubhouse to join an upcoming room with Mollie and April

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    If you’re a sleepless entrepreneur, this show is for you.

    Summary:

    Sleep is affecting our businesses. Whether good, or bad, your sleep is connected to your company’s performance in some capacity. And, beyond that… our health and livelihood as humans.  But we all know that, right? 
     
    If you’re like me – You have no desire to listen to a podcast that discusses everything you already know!  But this episode is different. Sleep expert, Mollie McGlocklin dives into tracking your sleep with tech, understanding Heart Rate Variability HRV, and simple small-steps you can do each day to work with your Circadian Rhythm. 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Know how your Circadian Rhythm affects peak performance
    2. Know how to read the date from your wearable sleep technology
    3. And have basic things you can do tomorrow morning towards more productive and healthy sleep

    Resources Mentioned:


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

    Need faster business growth?

    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     

    You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. Hi everybody. And welcome to episode number 218. And I’m April beach, your host founder of the suite Life company. And I am so glad to be talking to you again, usually on this show,

     

    we’re talking about scale strategies, online, offer creation, how to create your courses or your mastermind and funnels and marketing. But we are all about building a business to give you the life that you want. And so that requires a holistic view on strategies for both business and life. And so I love doing shows like the ones that we were doing today.

     

    And let me be completely clear with you about why this show really hits home for me. About two weeks ago, I landed in Philadelphia from Denver for a weekend to visit my oldest son who plays lacrosse for the university of Delaware. And I was on my laptop. The whole entire time got out of the airport, got in the rental car, turned on clubhouse,

     

    and I was really tired. You guys, I had just gotten to this point where I had been going, going, going, by the way, I thrive on going, going, going, but I turn on clubhouse and I was browsing through the rooms of what I should listen to. And there was a room that popped up regarding sleep and it really hit home for me because I knew that this is something that I do not do well in this area.

     

    Now a little bit more behind the scenes. I don’t like sleeping. I love being awake. I do really well from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM. You know, the world falls away, everything’s silent. And that’s when I really thrive as a creator, frankly. And so I would much rather be awake living life than be sleeping. And that’s the way I’ve been my whole entire life,

     

    but it’s really taken a toll on me and let’s even go a little bit deeper in transparency behind the scenes. What I used to think when people talked about, Oh, you know, I hit quote unquote, that wall. These are the things that I thought, Oh, you’re going to love me. Or you are totally going to hate me and never listened to this podcast.

     

    Again, here’s the honest truth. When I heard anybody say or tell their stories about how they got like super tired and hit a wall. These were the things that went through my head, keeping it real. I thought I am stronger than those people. I thought that will never happen to me. And I thought I am born to thrive in like this balls to the wall type of a life.

     

    It’s always how I have been. I love living like this. These people just aren’t built like me. Okay. Talk about really, really judgmental. And that’s when things like hit us on the face because it is in the face because that’s exactly what happened to me in over the last couple of months, I have gotten completely exhausted. The second part of this and why this episode is so important to me personally right now is that I lost my father to dementia.

     

    And I realized that the way my brain is functioning is not the same way. It was 10 to 12 years ago. And for whatever obvious reasons that is, you know, age, maybe being one of them, I’m not taking care of my brain. And it is one of my greatest assets. And so when I heard our guests today speak on this clubhouse room about sleep.

     

    I knew that I personally needed for her to come in here and deliver some insane wisdom to me as a CEO, as a business owner. And I believe that there are some of you guys out there that need to hear this message and what she’s talking about as well. Now here’s the deal. If you’re like me, you haven’t seriously, no desire to listen to a podcast that discusses everything you already know that you aren’t doing right?

     

    But this episode is different. Our guest today is going to dive into tracking your sleep and understanding technology behind sleep trackers. And she’s talking about simple steps, okay? Simple things that you can do. You know, we’re not going to come in here in this show saying you got to get sleep, but that’s not at all with this show is about,

     

    which is why I personally appreciate this episode so much. So let me introduce you to who our guest expert is today. Molly McLaughlin is a creator of sleep as a skill, a company that optimizes people’s sleep through a unique blend of technology, accountability, and behavioral change. She created this company from her own experience when she literally has had not slept well her entire life,

     

    she had massive, poor sleep habits. And all of a sudden she found herself in for months. She dealt with insomnia in her background is in behavioral change. And so she went down this rabbit hole to figure out like, what is going on with these disturbances in my sleep. And she really went in a way that did not include sleep AIDS. And because of her experience,

     

    now this company was born and she is an absolute expert at helping you know, how to really get the sleep that you need and understand sleep. And that’s what we’re talking about on today’s show. So at the end of this episode, you will know how your circadian rhythm affects your peak performance. You will know how to read the data from your wearable technology,

     

    which was super cool because I wear sleep technology, but frankly, I really didn’t understand how to read the data. And so that is very cool. We’re talking about this on today’s show as well. And you’re going to walk away with some basic things you can do. First thing tomorrow morning to move towards more productive sleep in more healthy sleep. So here are the background notes,

     

    everything we’re talking about, including a link to join the Sweetlife entrepreneurs club in clubhouse, where Molly and I are going to be going live. And she’s going to be chatting with you about your Entrepreneur sleep and peak performance questions can be found by visiting the show notes for this episode. There’s a lot of things in here and even more tools that Molly’s given you.

     

    So if you want to know more about, we’re talking about Connect with Molly further, be part of this conversation and frankly learn right alongside me, visit Sweetlife co.com click on the podcast. And this is episode number 218. So let’s go ahead and dive in with Molly.<inaudible> All right. Hi, you guys. Welcome to another episode of the Sweetlife entrepreneur in business podcast.

     

    I am so excited to be joined by my guest today. I’m actually found her on clubhouse. Many of you know, who’ve been listening that I am bingeing clubhouse and can’t get enough of it. And this is exactly why, because I get to dive into spaces that I never would have been able to before in find people like Molly. How do you say your last name off?

     

    Yes. Perfect McLaughlin. Absolutely. Yes, I know. Is it phonetic? Is it not? Yes. And find people like Molly McLaughlin. I am so excited to welcome you here on this show. Can you introduce everybody to your area of expertise in super power? And just give us a little bit of background before we dive into what we’re talking about today.

     

    Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me here. This has already been a pleasure. I can’t wait to get into more with you. I am the creator of a company called sleep is a skill that helps people optimize their sleep through a blend of technology, accountability, and behavioral change, and a little bit background on me and why I’m so obsessed with the topic of sleep and why it’s totally changed.

     

    My life is that for so many years, I did everything not to do for your sleep. You know, every article you read what to do. I was doing the opposite in a lot of ways, but it really didn’t think it was much of a problem. I didn’t think much of it at all. Living in Manhattan as an entrepreneur, burning the candle at both ends stressed to the max.

     

    And I just thought of my sleep as a lot of labels. I thought of it as I’m a night owl, I’m a short sleeper. I’m not the greatest sleeper. Oh, it must be in my jeans. That’s just how it is for me. And, and you know, a number of different things, but didn’t think of it as something that I would have much of a say of how to transform.

     

    And I didn’t correlate when I was starting to get more and more sick at different things, you know, just getting run down anxious. I had guessed straight as I had shingles. I had a number of things that were just indicators, right. That you are stressed and things are not working. So, so yeah, and then it was not until I went through my own period of insomnia while traveling internationally.

     

    So in different countries, you know, not speaking the same language and I cannot sleep. And it was really a lot of the entrepreneurship part of it that, you know, our businesses weren’t ready to be taken on the road yet. My fiance and I, and how it manifested was suddenly I can’t sleep. And the amount of anxiety that was happening during that period,

     

    I went to the doctors in Croatia, got, you know, with Google translate and leave with their version of Ambien. And in that moment, kind of like, what is the game plan here am. I’m supposed to just take something like this for the rest of my life, that doesn’t align with my identity of who I think of myself and yet I’m desperate to sleep.

     

    So what do I do? So what ended up happening was really just getting up under this area, going really down the rabbit hole of what it would take from a, what I learned to chronobiology and circadian rhythm perspective to transform my sleep. And then from that place, it really just snowballed into like podcasts, newsletters, courses, all of the things.

     

    Okay. So you said so many things and we’re just going to kind of come together and pack it. But right now, I mean, your super power is helping high performers and entrepreneurs and small business owners have a healthy life and sleep. Yeah. That we all identify just like you said, I mean, I am you back in the past, right?

     

    I definitely, I do not sleep as much. It goes in flows. I have an inconsistent sleep. You know, I have kids which brings a whole nother dynamic into that and I travel about five months a year. So with that being said, I think I have like a recipe for disaster relief disaster. And so I’m so excited to learn from you today.

     

    And I know our listeners too, are going to be like, Oh yeah, that’s probably me. I’m like, so let’s start by just really unpacking this. So you said circadian rhythm. What is that for anybody that is not really aware of that term and what part of our bodies function in that capacity? How does that work? Yes. Perfect.

     

    And I also want to say for what you’re sharing too, despite that being one of the lowest points at the time of my life was what it felt like, you know, just nothing is working. This is the worst thing is horrible. And yet I do now look back on it as being one of the best things that could have happened to me.

     

    So if you are at any given spot in your journey around sleep, I think there really is so much to learn from it. It really, no pun intended woke me up and had me transform my life in ways that I don’t think I would have, unless it was at such a rock bottom place. So having said that, Well, just along the lines to thank you for saying that.

     

    Cause I do feel like, I mean, I’m really transparent here with our listeners on the podcast. I mean, I do feel like, like I had hit a wall, I just turned 45 this week and I’ve always been able to push and push and push on a high performer, had tons of energy, always been able to do it. And it was just finally a couple of months ago as a first time in my whole entire life where I was so tired and I couldn’t push through,

     

    I’ve still always been able to do that. I like, literally couldn’t think I literally couldn’t speak, like the words were coming out of my mouth incorrectly, but it was the first time ever where I feel like I hit that wall and I couldn’t keep pushing it forward. And so I knew at that point in time, and this was prior to Christmas that like,

     

    I’m not healthy. I’m like, it doesn’t matter. I go to the gym every single day. All those things don’t matter. Like I knew that I was literally aging my brain and frankly, as with my father had dementia and these are all things that I’m starting to think about. And I’m saying, listen, I have really hit this wall and I need to sleep.

     

    This is no longer something that, and I don’t want any of our listeners too. And this is the whole point of the show. Like, don’t get to the point that Molly did. Don’t you get to the point where I am, where I’m like stalking this woman on clubhouse. You guys help me. I have hit a wall. So we don’t want you to have to be to the point where I frankly am literally at this recording and where Molly was,

     

    because how much more are you capable of being before you ever, ever get here and so on and so forth. So thank you for saying that. And that’s why I stopped you. Yeah, absolutely. It’s really important because I won, you know, I was reading nonstop, all these different things around how to improve my sleep and speaking with all these different experts and one thought leader in this area had made the point that when your sleep is not working,

     

    there’s something that your body is really trying to tell you. And I’m not trying to say that in a loose, like esoteric way or anything, but I think that’s really important because how I was running my, this didn’t come out of a vacuum. This was from, you know, years of kind of a mismanagement of my time, my days my,

     

    you know, keep pushing it to the next level. And, and so it occurred from a snowballing of that. And so what it really took was that to actually, for me to listen. So I don’t know the plus side while I at the time didn’t want to go through it. It actually was a blessing. And so I hope that there can be that message and that there is,

     

    there are so many success stories on the other side of people being able to shift this area. So one, I acknowledge you for the sharing and the, the vulnerability there, because it’s so important. And to, you know, so then the, how, so what you said about the circadian rhythm, why this is important in this conversation is one just to kind of bring it back to the basics.

     

    So no matter where you’re at and where your sleep journey is that we can always start to come back to one that this is a skill that, okay, so this is learnable. So let’s just let’s learn. So from the strategic rhythm perspective, one that exists on a spectrum was something that I didn’t understand. So the circadian rhythm is this 24 hour rhythm as human beings that we function within.

     

    But that rhythm, the queuing system for that rhythm can either be on the spectrum of, from a strong side or weak side. And you might be falling somewhere in between that spectrum. Then I would make the argument that many of us are on the weaker side of that just as a modern society, how we’re, how we’re functioning and as diurnal creatures.

     

    Yeah. This is all kind of coming from this concept around chronobiology the science of really time and how that impacts our biology as diurnal creatures. We are meant to be active during the day and at rest at night. And of course, in my example, I was doing the opposite, like, you know, upside down living. So we’re looking to,

     

    how can we bring things back and align with those cue givers that will help our rhythms be strong? So we, you know, those people, those friends of ours that might go out, everyone goes out and out super late, but they still wake up at the exact same time, you know, early morning. And you’re like, how are they doing that?

     

    That’s crazy. That’s actually what we’re looking to train for is that kind of specificity around just the automaticity of waking up routinely going to sleep routinely around the same times, but there’s tons of things we can do to get to there. Okay. Fascinating. And I know those people I’m married to one of those people that it doesn’t matter what time he goes to sleep.

     

    It is like, this is what time he gets up every single day. Yeah. Okay. So talk to us about, you know, really why is this important for fully understanding for those higher achievers busy entrepreneurs? How does this fit into our, you know, whole life business strategy? Because to me, as a business strategist, the way I need to form it within my own brain is say,

     

    this is part of my strategic business in life design. This is just as important is marketing and selling and other things. So it’s a very holistic approach to business and life. And so how for entrepreneurs and small business owners are really just high achievers who are listening to this, why is this so important? How does this really affect their everyday? And honestly their profit and their performance.

     

    I mean, that’s what we’re really getting down to get to if that’s the driver great, that’s the driver, are you not making as much money as you could be because frankly you aren’t sleeping. Right. I’m sure that there’s some data and some correlation there. Absolutely. Well, so there’s so many places we can go with that, but I can just even say anecdotally that my fiance owns companies that help train poker players at the table that are high stakes,

     

    lots of stress, and how to make those decisions, that their decisions in their thinking from a cognitive athlete perspective will impact, you know, possibly thousands and millions of dollars as a result. Right? So one of the first places that they begin is the sleep optimization perspective. And I work with tons of poker players in the management of that. And so I share that just because that’s a very tangible experience of at the table,

     

    you can either walk away with lots of money or not. And so it’s kind of entrepreneurial in nature, but you apply that in the high stakes of your days of your, you know, business interactions with people and just that cognitive ability to show up consistently and reliably, like, you know, so in the example of myself for years, I, there wouldn’t be accountable illness around how I would be when I’d wake up in the morning.

     

    It wouldn’t be like, Oh, okay. So for that next, really important client call or what have you, I will be bringing my a game. It wasn’t like that. It was like, I hope I get a good night’s sleep and you know that I can have that functionality. Right. Like, That’s me, I’m raising my hand. If you guys are watching the video,

     

    it’s like, this is me. Yeah, for sure. Yes, exactly. Cause that, you know, and there’s tons of studies that will point to this. So whether it just error rates, if you’re sleep deprived and the amount of errors that you might make, if you’re taking scent, you know, test, or this is important for pilots,

     

    you know, these would become life or death elements, but certainly from a productivity perspective, like you’re gonna have all your faculties available to you in those really times. So just to scale it back, I think of it as a couple of things. One, I think of it as super, super important for that productivity perspective. And also because I had so much of that mental health component in there with anxiety and stress and moodiness and crankiness and freak out,

     

    then, then with that just, it provides for me just a really important space to be at a equilibrium with how I’m approaching the world around me and stress levels and anxiety levels. And we can get into some of the wearable indicators for that. So it’s not so esoteric. It really has some kind of quantified data behind it. Right. Okay. So yeah,

     

    let’s go ahead and do that actually. Can you, I definitely want to talk about the wearables at the time of this recording. Probably if you’re listening to this six months or eight months from now, the wearable part will probably not be accurate enough today because the technology is evolving. And that’s what we’re kind of talking about behind the scenes, but let’s go ahead.

     

    Can you start just by sharing a couple of steps for those of our listeners who listened, they’re like, okay, this is, I am April right now. I mean, just tell me like, what should I be doing to get on top of this, the process of bringing this into order. Yes. Great. Okay. So step number one.

     

    What I actually say is despite the fact that a lot of what I’ll be talking about from the circadian rhythm kind of lifestyle perspective is that a lot of it’s kind of how to harken back to almost Hunter gatherer days and like, you know, aligning with sunrise and sunset. I’m not saying everyone needs to rise with the sun. I’m not making that at all,

     

    but I’m saying that there’s a lot of things we can do to bring about that workability with those rhythms of nature, because that’s going to really result in higher sleep efficiency and quality of our sleep. And at the very same time, despite the fact that I’m saying that I’m also gonna promote the marriage of technologies. And so much of this technology is at the source of our kind of being off-kilter with the,

     

    that relationship, ironically, then bringing in tech, I’ve found to really make a difference to game-ify this. So again, you know, down the road, you’re listening. What I would say is the first place to begin is a logging system of where your sleep is at right now is really, really eyeopening to people because often people say, I know I’m not sleeping well,

     

    but then we try to get up under will. How much, how many hours are we sleeping? What times are we sleeping? How many wake ups, what’s your sleep onset look like? All of these sorts of things. And a lot of it is like, well, I don’t know some gray areas, a lot of question marks because it is it’s,

     

    it’s such a hard area to track. So getting a proper or getting a sleep tracker of whatever at the time of listening to this is known to be one of the most effective on the market at the moment. Right. And follow them On Instagram or club ads. Cause I’m sure she’ll be up to date with this. So yes it is. She will.

     

    I’m sure be talking about what is the most up-to-date thing when you are listening to this episode? Yes. I’m often fondly known as gadget girl by the end of the clubhouse. So we were talking about that was my name and not from a perspective that these are infallible, there’s still things you don’t want to just blindly listen to whatever stats are coming back.

     

    You want to be aware of what they’re good at, what they’re not so good at, but either way, what they tend to be pretty solid at is are you asleep or are you awake? What time does that look like? But then also some health metrics that indicate the, your recovery that you attained throughout the course of the night. So all of those things will give us,

     

    you know, kind of a window or insight into your sleep. So I say, start with that first place because, and years back, what it was, one of the first recommendation was keep a sleep diary, you know, write it out manually. And now you could do that, but also, you know, to begin to start tracking, it will be automated for you and often provide a way more insight that you might be surprised by some blind spots.

     

    And along those lines, I have a question for you about one of those metrics with one of my slit trackers that I, that I had used in the past. And you mentioned it when, before we started recording this, which was heart rate variability, can you explain? I mean, I saw it on my sleep tracker. I, when I’m like Googling it online,

     

    it was actually really hard for me to understand why that was so important. Can yes, it was a one Oh one on that. I’m so glad you said that. So this metric, this one metric you could devote into multiple podcasts, there’s actually entire podcasts that just talk about how to kind of understand this one metric and influence it. You’re not alone in the confusion of it better.

     

    I’m like, why don’t I get it? So it, but it’s the reason why it’s I foresee one, it’s already ballooned in popularity around understanding this. And I foresee it being even more and more influential in our health. So the one, what is it? It’s heart rate variability HRV is basically the time interval in between your heartbeat and indicator of your recovery.

     

    So if you can think of heart rate as kind of your load, that’s put on to you, you know, moment to moment, then HRV is reflective of how quickly can you recover from moment to moment? So it’s recovery of both mental elements of recovery, but also physical elements of recovery. And that physical can be about like the foods you’re eating the workouts,

     

    you’re doing the air quality in your space, preexisting conditions that you might have going on. But then the mental component is really eye-opening to just how you’re relating to the world around you as entrepreneurs to, Oh my goodness. Like that can be really eyeopening. You get a lot of stuff on your plate and suddenly that that number will show that impact. And that can be a really cool way for those of us that might want to do that.

     

    Push through, push through mindset. And I’m so one of those to start to respect the importance for recovery time and almost relating to our body, like an athlete would to build in that really next level of recovery so that you can take on all the things you gotta take off. Okay. Yeah. And I can see that I do understand a certain aspect and the correlation of that because when I used to train for fitness competitions and we used to do the heart rate training,

     

    and when you know, between the things I was doing, like how fast would my heart recover between sets? And so is that kind of the same thing that we’re talking about here that’s happening in sleep that we’re measuring? Yes, exactly. So that’s why a lot of people are excited about particularly longitudinal nocturnal HRV. So there’s, you can measure, of course your HRV 24 seven and the nighttime HRV can be really eye-opening because that’s giving us an indication while there’s not presumably as much noise that’s happening because there’s a lot of noise on your measurement of your HRV during the day.

     

    Cause you’re, you’re eating, you’re, you’re talking, you’re working out all these things. Whereas when you’re sleeping, presumably that’s largely recovery time and that is what HRV is all about. But so if you wake up and traditionally, this is very simplified because there’s way more nuances to this metric, but often the higher it is from your baseline, the more recovered you are and the more you see it kind of dipped down,

     

    then that can often indicate that you are being more taxed, you’re stressed or you’re getting sick. So it’s actually really popular right now. That’s why it’s trending to with COVID that a lot of people are looking to this as indicators and days in advance of when you might even feel that you’re getting rundown, that that number is shifting. Then that can be a signal to really prioritize that recovery.

     

    So those are just some of the ways that you can relate to it. But in the practical application, what I see with my clients is so all the clients are wearing wearables. They’ll see, Oh my God, my HRV is really dipping like significantly. So then they’ll prioritize recovery from whatever that looks like. So if they’re big time athletes, then they will adjust their training to really lower that.

     

    And to take that off time, if they’re just entrepreneurs and they might kind of scale back some of their calls or what have you to really make a difference with that number and then get recovered in a way that can make a difference. The following day, That’s amazing. This is so much great information. Okay. So number one, log, make sure that we’re paying attention to what we’re doing.

     

    Get a wearable let’s, you know, we’re not going to do with the archaic way of tracking when we go to sleep. I mean, there is just absolutely so much data out there that I’m hearing you say that it’s important for us to track know and be able to understand so that we can adjust things. So what else would you recommend for those people who are listening after they go through these first steps?

     

    Like what type of common adjustments are typically? I know every single person is different, but are typically beneficial that you have seen with high performers and entrepreneurs. Yeah. So one asterisk that I would put for the wearables is just ensuring that you’re, we’re not getting like a no CBO effect by saying, Oh my God, I have so many friends that literally would come because I’m only getting 20 minutes of deep sleep,

     

    30 minutes of REM or whatever. And so one just know that as of, at least this time, the recording, most of the hand and wrist wearables, they are said so much great information. I love what is available there. And the sleep stage classification in particular. So knowing is this deep is this Ram is this light, it’s not the best.

     

    So to not get yourself all riled up around that part, instead focus on those basics that we talked about, what time did you go to sleep? What time did you wake up? And then some of those recovery metrics, so to stay in that zone. So that’s just my aspect around that. But then what I would say for, for all humans and particularly entrepreneurs is this concept of circadian rhythm.

     

    Entrainment is really, really valuable to have a framework by which you set up your days so that you can strengthen that circadian rhythm. So you can be like your husband, right. And just kind of the goal is to be like your husband and to basically wake up around the same time off to go to bed at the same time, all of that comes from that.

     

    So this is actually a term you can find in any kind of chronobiology textbook of understanding that you are in training your circadian rhythm, but that is from a number of what they call time givers that are external to you, that you are playing a role in from a behavioral perspective of getting so a couple of those that’ll just rattle off real quick. The top down most important one is light,

     

    particularly sunlight. And the timing of that. So if you get nothing out of what I’m saying, then I would definitely say that first thing in the morning, how to train yourself to get even just a few minutes. I mean, ideal would be more, but a few minutes of sunlight outside. And unfortunately behind a window, doesn’t really count. It counts,

     

    but takes much, much longer estimates with Jamie’s ICER out of Stanford, puts it at anywhere from 50 to a hundred times a longer to reset your master clock each morning, if you’re getting sunlight behind a window versus outside. So you want to just get yourself outside, but also expose particularly your eyes to that morning, sunlight, you know, you want it to be wherever you might be on the globe.

     

    We’re aiming for that to be in the morning hours usually before like 10:00 AM of getting that morning light. And the reason for that is that behind your eyes is the super charismatic nucleus, which is your master clock that influences all your peripheral clocks as to what time it is. And why that’s important is then a whole cascade of kind of hormones and functionality happened based on what time the body perceives it to be.

     

    And so we want it to be as consistent, those triggering systems as possible. So that’s that light in the morning and then dosing it throughout the day. But then you want as bright days as possible and as dim nights as possible. And when I say dim, it’s like post sunset, you want to be getting, I mean, really the, the actual recommendation is like candles,

     

    but I know that’s not always so practical. So even like, I got like red lights over here. So, you know, you can, that can be another thing that you can bring in if you’re not willing to do the candles. But so we’re looking for very, very dim lighting that allow us to have our cake and eat it too. So versus like how things used to be sun would set.

     

    We kind of go to sleep not long after for thousands of years now, we want to be able to still like, you know, do things, but we don’t want to impact our melatonin production. So that kind of red light candles or worst case scenario, incandescent lights that have more red in them, those can make a difference. So that getting that light right,

     

    and then the next step would be temperature. So being mindful of really having this arc of your body temperature throughout the course of the day. So high temperature throughout the day movement activity, eating, you know, having engaging in lots of dynamic, cognitively demanding tasks, all those things during the day. But then in the evening, shifting over to fasting,

     

    you know, relaxation, resting, connecting kind of calming everything down. So for entrepreneurs, what we do is create really like say layout of your day, where you have a set wake up time, he was set bedtime. And then from that place that had a Creek kind of two parts of your day, like a day mode and a night mode.

     

    And then even just these little things like understanding like, Oh my God, when I have my food will influence the timing of when I fall asleep. And when I wake up and, or the amounts of wake-ups that I have throughout the night, things of this nature can be super, super empowering for people I learned so much. I never knew that about the sun in the morning.

     

    Thank you so much. I’m like, literally I’m here taking notes. It’s just incredibly fascinating. And so the sun and the light, obviously all makes sense now that you explained that, but that would never be anything that would be, you know, just obviously common knowledge to those of us who aren’t experts like you. And so thank you so much for sharing that.

     

    Okay. You have given us a ton of information. I have one last question that I’m curious about how you’re going to answer. Obviously I don’t know it, and that’s why I’m asking it. Is there a minimum amounts of sleep that general and I’m sure everybody’s different, but generally speaking that you believe people need to function in a healthy capacity. Oh yeah.

     

    That’s the million dollar question. Everyone wants to know that one for sure. And you know, so some of the, the known recommendations are having us as it, a healthy adult, as it changes throughout the years, basically what age you are. But as a healthy adult than getting anywhere from seven to nine is the recommended amount that we’ll have thrown out.

     

    There are other people that will speak to that you can, for some people might make sense to be in the, you know, six is range and what have you, based on their, the quality of that sleep. So I will say that it’s kind of split on that, that topic, but certainly what you can do is through the tracking element of things,

     

    start to get up under that. The more we have some of these kind of top down, most important things addressed, then what often begins to emerge because, you know, sometimes you got to get past all of this sleep deprivation and built up time of variability, of sleeping all kinds of hours, and then not enough and ups and downs. So once we start having those structures often,

     

    what emerges is more of your kind of set point for your sleep at the age that you’re at and at the health level and energy expenditure that you’re at each day. So you can have a clear understanding of that once everything else just kind of falls into order as well, is what I’m hearing you say. Okay, I lied. I have one, one more question.

     

    Can you catch up on sleep? Mm, yeah. Good question. I know. Cause then it’s like that sleep debt topic was very popular for a number of years. So that is another one that is a bit of a point of contention, but there’s different schools of thought so well, if we go back to the conversation around dementia that you mentioned,

     

    that’s a really big topic that’s come out of. This looks like a really strong correlation between sleep deprivation and neurodegenerative disorders. So whether it’s Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s dementia, different things of that nature really linked because of the lack of proper cleaning. So glymphatic drainage was the coin, the term that was coined around this. So glymphatic drainage meaning versus lymphatic it’s glymphatic and glymphatic is the cleansing process of the brain each night during sleep,

     

    during deep sleep in particular. And what it’s doing is it’s basically rinsing out with a janitorial process of your brain, of the buildup of waste products in the brain each night. And that’s what amyloid beta plaques are. Basically what’s left over. It’s a kind of calcification in the brain if we’re not having that proper amount. So the concern, so the reason I mentioned that is that we don’t see a lot of great ways to counteract that.

     

    So say if you’ve been doing that for years and years, and there’s this buildup of this kind of a dirty brain, if you will, that buildup, and it’s very similar to brains that we see for late stage Alzheimer’s dementia or what have you. It looks a hand in hand and we don’t have a really strong way to then reverse that. So what I would say,

     

    even from that perspective alone, is that we don’t want to rely on this kind of messy relationship to sleep where I’ll make up for it on the weekends, or what have you, because also if we just get back to the basics of what we know for great sleep, that the more we have that variability and the up and downs, one of the term for it is actually social jet lag.

     

    And so social jet lag being this concept that, you know, Oh, around five days of the week, I’m really great with my sleep. I do pretty consistent, but then on the weekends, you know, I want to let loose and then you stay up late and it’s like three hours difference and, or more or whatever. And so with that,

     

    then it’s, you’re having the experience that’s similar to, from a biological perspective, similar to jet lag. When you try to get yourself back on your normal schedule on Sunday night or Monday or whatever, but you didn’t go anywhere, but you’re still having that negative impact on your body. So the long and the short of it is it doesn’t seem to be a reliable method to build that sleep debt and kind of knock it out by having these long stretches of sleep.

     

    Because then that also impacts cause quality sleep is a measurement of how your sleep was the night before the night before that. And they, before that. So it kind of all plays a role in there. So if you didn’t sleep so well, one night, often people will benefit from what’s known as kind of rebound sleep because you now, the body is really craving to get itself back on track and it will,

     

    you know, kind of greedily get the sleep staging that it needs, but you can’t rely on that as a sustainable element because then that throws off your circadian rhythm. And now you’re getting tired at the same time. And it’s so frustrating. Right? All of that makes sense. Oh, thank you so much. I learned so much today. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show and we’re going to make sure everybody knows how to find you in the show notes,

     

    but can you tell everybody who’s listening to this? Like, Oh my gosh, I need more of Molly. I need her help. I need her in my life. You know, what does that look like? How can people work with you more? Yeah. Well, number one, just thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for your also just transparency and vulnerability about how you’re relating to your sleep.

     

    And, you know, just gives us all hope in these different periods when we are struggling to hear, okay, I’m not alone. Cause you know, that’s really what I was dealing with with my sleep. So, and it’s takes courage to share that cause you could be like, Oh yeah, I’ve got my whole life together. And dah, dah,

     

    dah. So, you know, I really, really admire that. So great work with that. And then yes, if you are struggling with your sleep, this is a real mission-based thing for me. so1@sleepasaskill.com, there’s lots of things that are available for free. We have a weekly newsletter, so I call it Molly’s Monday obsessions, cause I’m pretty obsessive about this topic.

     

    And so all of these, you know, things that I’m obsessing about in the world of sleep and also kind of asleep experiments, lots of graphs and fun charts and whatever. And so that’s every Monday when you sign up for that, you also get a free downloadable PDF. That’s optimized bedroom, how to optimize your sleep environment comes right along. And then we also have a sleep assessment that you can take.

     

    So whatever you’re dealing with with your sleep, then that will get you some kind of tailored advice around those areas. We have weekly podcasts with different sleep experts and you know, sleep tech and what have you. So all of that is available for free. And we put out a lot on social media and we’re really amping that up as well. And then if you are really struggling,

     

    you need more than that. Then we do have courses and one-on-ones and different ways of working together as well. Wow. All right. Thank you so much, Molly. I’m definitely going there and I appreciate your time and your expertise and pouring into me and our whole entrepreneur community. And I am sure that this is going to be an important topic. It has been,

     

    but really, as you said, moving forward. So we just really appreciate your expertise and, and being here with us today and it was such a pleasure to get to meet you same here. Thank you so much. You are welcome. Thank you.<inaudible> What a great show. Thank you so much for learning alongside me and hanging out. Most likely you knew a lot about this information.

     

    Probably a lot more than I did, but it’s just such a pleasure to, to learn. And I took a million notes if you’d like to join Molly and me in a clubhouse room where we are talking all about sleep, wearable technology and all these things so that you can function at your peak performance as an entrepreneur, whatever that looks like for you go to sweet life,

     

    community dot and There you can join by link our clubhouse club. You still need to join separately on clubhouse if you’re not a member, but you’re going to get an email with reminders and, and an invitation to this room with a direct link to this room. So again, you can go to sweet life, community.com to join our Sweetlife entrepreneurs club on clubhouse to talk to Molly live about this.

     

    And of course, all of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com click on the podcast. And this is episode number 218. Have a great day. And I’ll talk to you guys soon.

    Episode 211: How To Fill Your Programs Using Guest Speaking – with April Beach and Heather Sager

    Heather Sager SweetLife Entpreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

     

    Episode Bonuses:

    Grab Heather’s FREE training: How to Build Authority as a Speaker WITHOUT Second Guessing What You Say

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    Entrepreneurs looking to get in front of your ideal audience and establish yourself as an expert in your space but you’re not exactly sure how to go about it through the process of speaking. 

    Summary:

    If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re looking to get in front of your ideal audience, establish yourself as a trusted source and solution, and sell more of your signature programs, services or offers, speaking is a great way to do that. However there are strategic steps that should be followed in order to achieve your ideal outcome, and what we learn in speaking to this week’s guest is that you can actually send clients away by saying the wrong things.
     
    And this week’s show, Heather Seger, strategic speaking advisor, guides you through her four-step Speak for Authority method to fill your programs using speaking. Heather also dives into statistics speakers need to know, how to tell the right story, and expert insights to make sure you are speaking up in the right way, to the right audience, about the right topics. 

    At the end of this episode you will:

    1. Understand the four steps to the “speak for authority method”
    2. Know how to nail your message
    3. And understand quick strategies to choose your signature talk topic

    Resources Mentioned:

     
     
     
     
    Follow us on Clubhouse App: @aprilbeach


    SweetLife Podcast™ Love:

    Are you subscribed? If not, there’s a chance you could be missing out on some bonuses and extra show tools.  Click here to be sure you’re in the loop.  Do you love the show? If so, I’d love it if you left me a review on iTunes. This helps others find the show and get business help. I also call out reviews live on the show to share your business with the world. Simply click here and select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. Thank you so much ❤︎

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    Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.


    Full Show Transcript:

     
     

    You’re listening to the SweetLife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. Welcome back to the show. This is episode number 211, And then I’m April beach. Super great to be connected with you today. We are diving in and we’re talking about how to fill your programs using guest speaking.

     

    And we have Heather Sager, the one and only in the house. So what you can expect from today’s show is if you are a coach or a consultant, and you’re really good at what you do, even the leading expert in your space, but you’re having trouble getting noticed will speaking could be a really powerful way to establish yourself as a leader and get in front of the perfect audience.

     

    And so today we’re talking all about the steps to do that and giving you the methodology from the expert herself, Heather Sager, but real quick, before we jump into that, if you’re new to hearing the show welcome, this is the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast, and we give you step-by-step business trainings that are so good. There’s no way they should be free.

     

    You can find all the resources we have by visiting sweet life co.com. And if you’re interested in scaling your business, developing your signature program, signature method, signature offers in truly scaling your business to live life on your terms for massive profit. Then we would love to help you get to that place. Visit Sweetlife co.com and that is our Ninja skill. And that’s what we do.

     

    All right, diving into today’s episode. This is for entrepreneurs in all stages of my start to scale up system. So we like to tag these episodes in advance. So, you know, whether or not this is really a good, good opportunity for you to learn and grow based on the phase of business you’re in. So if you weren’t sure what phase of business you’re in and therefore what you should be focusing on right now,

     

    you can go and take a very short quiz just by visiting sweet life co.com forward slash quiz. And we’ll give you a full download of exactly where you are in your business, growth and development in exactly what you should be focusing on right now, so that you can grow your company faster. So that’s one resource I wanted to share with you. And along those lines of this particular episode is for those of you who are in phases two,

     

    three or four of that start to scale up system. So hopefully that will equip you to know whether or not you should hang out with us any longer. And I’ll tell you if you’re in this phase, you are not going to want to miss this episode. And one other quick housekeeping announcement. I know that we have probably been talking about clubhouse way too much,

     

    but I wanted to let you know that you can connect with us and connect with our suite life podcast, guests experts. By following me on clubhouse, I am at April beach on clubhouse, and we now host a weekly room at 12 o’clock, every single Wednesday. And that is Eastern standard time. So if you want to be on the hot seat,

     

    if you want my eyes and your business to help you strategize your next steps, find us on clubhouse and subscribe to our clubhouse updates. If you are not on clubhouse yet, or if you just want the updates you can visit Sweetlife co.com forward slash clubhouse. And we’ll keep you in the loop of what’s happening on clubhouse while you might be waiting to get on the app and we will send you reminders and invitations to our upcoming rooms.

     

    So I know that was a lot of information and you can find all the information I just shared with you and the resources for these show notes, which is going to be@sweetlifepodcast.com forward slash two 11. Okay, let me introduce you to our fabulous guest on today’s show. You get to hear from Heather Sager. Heather helps entrepreneurs structure their ideas, clarify their message and hone their speaking skills so they can deliver a magnetic live presentations,

     

    videos, and workshops to grow their authority, whether on a physical or a virtual stage, she’s spoken on stages around the world. Teaching six to seven figure business owners, how to grow their company using effective communication. She also works one-on-one with business owners to prep them for the stage and help you manage and prepare your message for the most impact. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode.

     

    Again, all of those amazing resources that I shared and everything we’re talking about with Heather can be found by visiting Sweetlife podcast.com forward slash two 11.<inaudible>. All right, you guys welcome back to another awesome episode here at the Sweetlife entrepreneur business podcast. And I am visited today by none other than Heather Sager in what we’re talking about is something that’s so important.

     

    I know many of you guys have questions about, so we are immediately diving into how to fill your programs using guests speaking. So Heather, thank you so much for being on the show today. Give yourself an awesome intro, an intro that you deserve because you are a very powerful at getting people amazing results and tell everybody about what you do. Thank you so much.

     

    I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for the chance to serve your audience today and talk about pressure on an intro. I mean, I mean, honest, I will say behind the scenes, so I have followed Heather on Instagram and it’s one of those things where you’ve been connected and a little bit connected, but not completely connected. And I knew that you guys needed to hear from Heather.

     

    So very excited to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for that. So, as April said, I’m Heather Sager. So I’m a coach for online Entrepreneurs and essentially what that means. I always joke that I teach people how to do the thing that most people fear more than death, which is public speaking and in the online space. It’s kind of funny because we think about public speaking back.

     

    If y’all worked in corporate ever, how you think about getting up in front of a group and giving a presentation or teaching a workshop, or we think about speakers as the people who live their life on the road at conferences on big stages. And none of those things seem to really fit in the online space of coaches and course creators and online entrepreneurs. And what I like to remind people is the fact that as business owners,

     

    we speak to people every single day. So we are already speakers. It’s not like a label that we just, all of a sudden adopt. We’re already speakers. And so I, what I do is I teach people how to do it with intention and purpose. So what they speak about actually connects back to not only what they’re passionate about, but also what they do in their business.

     

    I think your voice has the potential to be a magnet for other people, for them to go, Ooh, I’m not only do I like her. I want to learn more from her. And the more that you get out and use your voice on different platforms, the more you pull people back with you that they’ll want to join your programs and hang out with you more and buy from you.

     

    So that’s what I do. My background is my many entrepreneurs is incorporat where for years I spoke on stages around the world as a corporate trainer, where I taught actually entrepreneurs in the medical space. So doctors and their teams, I taught them customer service and sales to very taboo topics in the medical space tell you, as a 27 year old kid, it felt like teaching doctors how to sell,

     

    how to talk about what they did, how to talk to their teams, how to talk to their patients. That was an intimidating task at hand. So I had to learn how to speak in a very different way. I had to learn how to be influential and persuasive with an audience who was highly skeptical of my experience, my age, everything about me.

     

    And so that’s where I got my like big girl chops around speaking. That’s where I had to fight through all my own insecurities about being a, I was talking about being like a baby nugget on a stage being an unexperienced or inexperienced professional. Like I had to work through all of those mental issues. We go through. I had to do that in a very highly publicized,

     

    highly criticized space, but I did damn good job. And I realized that while I love my job as a trainer, what I really loved was teaching people how to use their voice for good. And I got really good at storytelling. I got really good at the body language and the hand gestures and all those things that come with speaking that are more than just the message.

     

    And I started getting people asking me, could you teach me how to do that on a stage? Or could you teach me how to lead a workshop? And I found all of my free time in corporate was teaching my peers and other businesses how to do what I was doing. And at some point I was like, I don’t want to do this for anybody else anymore.

     

    Why don’t I just do this full time? So I made the leap like many do, which is, let me start my own business and help other people do the thing that I love. But here’s the kicker. It wasn’t just about speaking. It was about speaking with purpose because I think speaking is like gasoline on a fire. I think speaking is one of the best marketing strategies that we can use in our business.

     

    And I think people treat it as a skill, but speaking, it’s actually a strategy. So many things that I want to say, right, right now about all those things. First of all, now you guys know I wanted Heather on the show buyer that was like, okay, we can just end it, just go work with other, and she’s going to help you be just this insane speaker,

     

    but you don’t really, you said so many things though. So as business developers and obviously that’s what we do at the Sweetlife company, we help people develop their programs and we help them develop life-changing programs and offers and these amazing services. Right. And one of the things that they are always asking about is, but how do I separate myself from other businesses that are delivering the same type of results besides doing it within the framework of my program?

     

    Like how do I stand out? And it always comes back to taking the authority on what, you know, in stepping out and speaking about it. So that’s the first thing. And I can’t wait to dive into the strategies we’re going to talk about here today on the show, but something else that you said that it’s so true is that you’re speaking to people all the time.

     

    It doesn’t always have to be a webinar or an actual live event. But when, as an online entrepreneur, when you have the opportunity to actually speak to somebody and take them on a journey that you have pre crafted, it is a skill. And that’s how you get people to follow you that are the right people. And I, I want to just kind of pause for a second saying,

     

    even if you’re listening to the show and you’re like, wow, I, you know, speaking doesn’t fit into my business model, listen to what Heather’s saying, because you’re already speaking. So let’s make it so you don’t suck at it, right? Let’s make every single moment that you are having the, honestly, the privilege, just like I just felt very blessed and privileged that people listened to the podcast.

     

    Right? All of us, when somebody is listening to what we have to say, it is a very unique opportunity and a privilege to be able to speak to these people. So what we say and how we say it is incredibly, incredibly important. So just love everything that you said there. And I appreciate how direct you are about the importance of this.

     

    So you help establish business owners really take the lead in doing so by speaking an increase. What I love of course is the sale of their programs. Talk about how you do that. You have a very special method and I’m going to tout Heather’s method here for a second. By way. If you all don’t have a method we need, we want you to have a method to make you known into gain the trust of the people.

     

    You’re leading. Talk to us about your method in what is that called? And can you guide us through your method today? Yes. 100%. I love methods. We were sharing our love of frameworks and methods, and just easier ways to help people understand what it is you do, right? We all think things make sense in our own heads, but really our own heads are a very special place that only we understand.

     

    So we have to be able to articulate them. So my signature method that I teach inside my program speak up to level up. It’s where I teach online course creators and coaches, how to leverage speaking in a way that’s going to grow their business. We walk through something. I call the speak for authority method. And the reason why we call it the speak for authority method is every business owner has different goals related to speaking.

     

    Some people might be like, Hey, I want to get paid to speak $10,000 for a keynote or $40,000 for a keynote. That’s one strategy. But when it comes to speaking, there are several strategies that you can apply. One can be growing your revenue in your program. So selling from stages, another could be driving leads to your social media accounts or leads to your list or leads to your offers.

     

    Another one could be just not peeing your pants. When you go live on a platform, it could just be growing your confidence. But I think throughout all of it, speaking is like a business card for your business and all of these, their authority boosting activities that when you grow your authority, you have the ability to charge more, get on better stages network with the people that you want to network with,

     

    collaborate with the business partnerships you want to have when you have authority, which is clout, where people see you as the go-to in your field, it seems like doors open naturally. So if you aren’t known, if people don’t know who you are, you could be the best at what you do, but until other people point at you and say, she knows what she’s doing,

     

    or he’s an expert in this, by the way you don’t say you’re an expert. You let other people do that for you until that moment comes. It doesn’t really matter how good your program is. You have to articulate it, make it sound like a big deal and get other people talking about it. And that’s where growing your authority becomes a really important thing.

     

    Wow. Okay. Yeah. So talk to us about this, speak for authority method. And I love how you preface it by saying that the reason why it’s so important is because all these goals are absolutely important and they do apply probably to every single person listening to the show. So what is the first part of this method? Where does somebody start when they want to take action on that?

     

    Yeah. You’re going to love this one because this goes right up your alley of what you teach, which is number one is nail your messaging. What I mean by that is you have to nail, who are you talking to? What do you have to offer? And how do you talk about those core offerings, your messaging? So, what’s interesting is the first time I taught my program,

     

    when I started working with groups of entrepreneurs versus one-on-one, I started by going, let’s create your talk and I would start extracting ideas out of their head and formulating a signature talk with them. And what I realized pretty quickly was, Oh my gosh, this was the first time they were vocalizing their ideas. And some of them didn’t even have their programs fully formatted or organized in a way that really got people Results.

     

    So I found out, you know what, when people start moving from just writing down their ideas or drawing out their ideas, when they start articulating their ideas, that’s when they realized, Oh, this either makes sense or it doesn’t. So step number one, nailing your messaging means that you are not just thinking off, like speaking off the cuff or winging it all the time.

     

    Here’s this big myth that happens a lot of times when we see experts where we see influencers on a podcast or on a video or on clubhouse, we think, Oh, they’re just so naturally gifted. But here’s the thing. These people have been talking about these things over and over and over and over again, they know what they’re talking about. It’s not by chance.

     

    It’s on purpose now, sometimes it’s by chance because they’ve just done it enough where they know no, but they have discovered what their core talking parts are. You have to understand what should you, and what should you not be talking about to lead people into your business, not lead them to other people’s businesses. Like there is a difference. You can talk about a lot of things,

     

    but if you don’t have your messaging nailed, you could be providing a lot of education, but then serving them up open doors to have other people help them because they don’t realize how it connects back to you. Wow. Okay. And to totally put you on the spot here, at least as because everybody’s saying like, Oh my gosh, shoot, am I doing this?

     

    Am I, cause everybody wants to be out there and sharing information, a great value. Can you give us an example of how sharing some information as in a particular way, may lead somebody to go work with somebody else? Yeah. I’ll give you me. It’s an example. Okay. I talk about speaking, right? And I want you to imagine speaking.

     

    This is like this giant ocean of information. It’s in the, the marketing ocean. There’s so many different things we can speak about. And one or two times I did podcast episodes or interviews where people are like, Oh, speaking on camera, Heather, will you come talk about getting over your fear of the camera? And I’m like, sure, I love this.

     

    This is within my wheelhouse. But what I realized is when I would start doing all these interviews that were specific to getting over your fear of the camera or going live on Facebook or all these things, which I, I do teach, what I realized was my messaging was really specific to social media speaking. And my offer is how do you speak on all kinds of stages?

     

    Get your messaging down, use guest stages. Yes. Use your stages. But the speaking on lives and Instagram stories was such a minute point. I don’t want people to know me as the person to help you get over your fear of the camera. Like that’s not what my program is about. Even though I have episodes around it, like the messaging while it was a good,

     

    relevant topic, it wasn’t core messaging. That’s going to drive back to my program, speak up to level up. I mean, it’s a lesson in my program, but it’s not the core concept. So I think a lot of times this thing that happens is we’re like, Oh, it’s within the wheelhouse. Well, you have to think about, is it like a neighbor down the block in your content?

     

    Or is it like on the block, like on your street, in the house that you’re trying to attract people to. Wow. That’s so important. Okay. I’m just going to take a little, left-hand turn tangent here as we are all diving into, or as many people as we possibly can, we’re driving into clubhouse. For example, I just did the recording of this hosted a,

     

    a welcome event room for a bunch of women entrepreneurs last night. And they were all asking, what should I be talking about in these rooms? And I felt grateful now. I didn’t totally lead them astray, but it was always coming back to cause I’m obviously not the speaking coach, but it was always like, what do you want to be known for?

     

    And I think that this is so exactly important what you said, because there are so many things that we can talk about. I can, you know, talk about a million components of, of our program as well in, in the ways and other things that are like supporting evidence, supporting document, but not that may nugget. So what I’m hearing you say in what I want,

     

    all of you guys to hear is what Heather saying is that go for go after what you want to be known for. This is also important why we have your signature program created so we know what we’re selling people into. So it aligns with your program so important. And I think that there are so many people that are just looking for any opportunity to get in front of an audience that they are willing to speak on.

     

    Oh, I can speak on that. Oh sure. I can speak on that. And what you’re saying is that is not strategy. Let’s be very strategic and make sure that in the little amount of time that somebody is willing to give you attention, to hear what you have to say, that you are making a good use of that in establishing an understanding of who you are,

     

    who your brand is and the, in the end Results you provide bingo so power. And let me give you a visual for that, because I want to make sure hearing me say, don’t ever talk about those things. Right? Okay. I want you to imagine, do you remember back in, I don’t know if some kind of math class, when we were in school,

     

    that something called a scam. I think it’s called a scattergram. It’s like the graph that you would draw with the dots. And it’s like, when you would have a point, it’d be like all these dots that you’d look for the trends of the dots. Maybe this is a terrible example, but go with me here for a second. I’m sticking.

     

    Yeah. You guys should see behind the scenes in the recording. I’m like, ah, So if you think about like the dots, like mapping different coordinates, but I want you thinking about is you want to map like the bulk of your coordinates. I E the bulk of your speaking to your signature offer. But if you have a little dab, like,

     

    Ooh, I’m going to talk about this because it’s sexy or I’m going to talk like, I’ll do a room talking about how do you do your voice on clubhouse, not what I teach, but it’s a sexy topic that people want. Like if my little scattergram, gosh, I hope that’s what it’s called. If I have like a couple of beeps and boops of topics that are outside of my core,

     

    that is not going to dilute. I’m known for, it’s just going to expand it. But if I spend too much time outside of my core topic, then I will be unforgettable because there’s no repetition on my core topic of people seeing over and over again. Oh, I want to speak on guest stages. Heather, Sagers a speaking coach for online entrepreneurs.

     

    Oh, you want to know how you speak into this strategy? Heather, Sagers the coach to help you with that. Like you have to make sure your repetition in your wheelhouse is happening in order to earn the right to have those scattered topics. Absolutely. Awesome. Visual. Thank you so much. I have no idea what you’re talking about because frankly,

     

    I think I was skipping school in stoned, every high school math class, but just keeping it real with that being said, I can totally get the visual and that completely makes sense. My teenage boys are going to listen to this podcast and yeah. It’s cool. Your mom’s super cool. Oh, they they’ve heard all the stories. Okay. I am redeemed.

     

    Whew. Anyway. Yes. Totally makes sense. Okay. So you’re going to be unforgettable the closer you stay to what I’m hearing you say, the core, the center of that. Scattergram like the primary message. So powerful. Super awesome. All right. So step number one is like, we’re still at step. Number one, you guys, this is our goal.

     

    The information that Heather has given you here. So nailing that message in deciding what we’re talking about. So the second step in that is obviously an extension of that. The second step you say is creating the actual signature talk itself. Sure. A little bit about how to go about doing that. Yeah. So for those of you who like cooking, I love cooking.

     

    Imagine step one is like your amazing applause where you get all your ingredients out and you know what you’re going to make. Step two was actually following the recipe to build your delicious food, whatever you’re making your meal. So your signature talk, you’re not coming up with random things on the fly. It’s strategic because you’ve already done that homework. So your signature talk needs to guide your audience from where they are to where you want them to go,

     

    which doesn’t have to be like a hub, but a tricky to buy my program. You need to guide them in their thinking and equip them with the tools to be successful on whatever the transformation they want. Your program just helps them do it faster. So your signature talk, it has to include stories. You have to be speaking to people’s beliefs. You have to be hitting that really good balance around insights and awareness and speaking to where they are.

     

    But gone are the days where you can just talk about the why fluffy stuff for your whole talk. People hate that they know when they’re being sold or when somebody is bringing fluff. So people in today’s market, what tangible tips and strategies. So you have to balance your talk with both. How do you provide insights and teach people how to think differently about your topic?

     

    You can’t skip over that because if you do, when they go back in their business and try to apply it and something’s off, you, haven’t equipped them with the right context for them to be successful, to be able to maneuver it in the context of their business, you have to teach them how to think. And then you have to give them some tips and strategies.

     

    How I recommend people do that is you teach the why, and then you teach the what, and it’s gonna get a little technical, but I feel like your audience might love it. My format that I follow with people is you go, why, what, how easy model for a presentation? And you sandwich it with an opening story and a closing story.

     

    Like not rocket science. It’s what I work with. Every client on opening story, closing story in the middle of the sandwich is the what, why and how, and if you’ve worked with April and you’ve been around her world, the what section is essentially your method. So you’re almost there. You just need to work on, okay, how do I get this messaging in?

     

    And what’s the right place to talk about it in the how to make people hungry for more. But your signature talk should be like an accordion where you can deliver your signature talk in five minutes because you know your talking points, but you also can expand it and make it, I mean, a full day workshop, maybe even a full course, right?

     

    So you should be able to know what your talking points are within your signature talk. And that becomes your business card on those guest stages. And it perfectly segues into purchasing your signature program. And I mean, this is just absolutely the journey that you take people on it and how you nail and get it and get people really understanding what you do and your zone of genius.

     

    Couple of questions for you about the stories do you find? And maybe there isn’t a right or wrong answer, but I’m just asking the questions. I think that possibly your audience is hearing. We should totally do a clubhouse room on this, like in conjunction with the week we dropped this, we should, we should do a clubhouse room and take Q and a I’m here for it.

     

    And that would be so much fun. So talking about really quickly about the stories, are they usually a story about another client, personal stories about how the expert themselves or the leader has overcome? Like what type of stories? I mean, are we making people cry? Does it depend on the context when we’re talking about stories in general, is there a quicker,

     

    seriously? You guys follow us on clubhouse because Heather and I are going to do this. I’m just putting her on the spot right now. We’re going to house the clubhouse room on this. So just join our clubhouse room and you can ask your story. Questions, go to our Instagram. Bio is go to Heather’s Instagram bio. I’ll give you a little to give you a little teaser.

     

    The secret to good storytelling is knowing what emotion you want people to feel. That’s the key thing. You have to be intentional with the emotions you want to evoke. So for example, when I was working with Tyler McCall last month, we wanted people to feel heart, but we also wanted to laugh. So we talked, we did a story about the time he went to forestry camp and was too embarrassed to tell his father that he had to take a dump.

     

    So he had to go home. So like outside of the content, very weird left story about like 11 year old Tyler, that was one. But like, you have to catch people off guard, but you have to know what emotions are you going for? And obviously your stories have to have a point. There was a business lesson in that story.

     

    I promise you. Yes. I’m sure there was, yes, we’re too. Like on the nose with our stories where like, I hate this people’s signature story where they’re like, let me tell you about my perfectly curated journey, which pumped me out of this perfect place to be your expert. No, I think it’s bullshit. Your audience is not in the exact same space that you were.

     

    You can’t say I was in your shoes because I think it’s obnoxious and rude because you don’t know what their shoes are. I think we have to tell our journey stories differently in a more authentic way. If we want to attract the kind of clients we want. That’s if you want to have, I think, authentic, ethical, meaningful relationships that make impact,

     

    you have to tell stories differently than what we’ve been told with the bro marketing online. Ah, here’s here’s my class name. There you go. Nice. Yes. Yes. Okay. Awesome. All right. Step. And we are going to do a clubhouse to room on this. So let me just say you go to sweet life podcast.com forward slash two 11,

     

    which is this episode number. And we will make sure there is a link to how you can get into this club has room and has asked Heather your questions. Also follow us both on Instagram because we’ll post our events on our Instagram accounts to Heather. What’s your IgE handle at the Heather Sager at B Heather Sager. Awesome. Okay. So step number three,

     

    we’ve nailed the signature talk. We are on a roll. What happens next? What’s the next most important thing? Okay. So I think as entrepreneurs, we get by a lot by writing things out and typing things in our Google docs to post on our blogs or whatever else. But if you want to speak, you actually have to speak. Which means the first time that you speak your signature talk out loud should not be on a stage.

     

    It should be in the privacy of your home office, where you can sound like a blubbering idiot because you will. So, so step number three is becoming magnetic with our delivery skills. So you have to learn how to speak in a way that’s captivating and entertaining that serves your audience gone are the days where you can just show up and shoot a video on something good on a,

     

    how to people’s attention spans are short. Even our live events are like on clubhouse. People can jump in and out of rooms quickly. So you have to understand that your delivery skills, it’s not just the words you say, how you say it matters more. So you have to think about, am I speaking in just audio right now? Or am I also,

     

    do I have video when it comes to communication? There’s three parts. The words that you say, how you say those words and your non-verbals. And I think people put a disproportionate weight on those. What it works out to studies that came from Southern California universities in the seventies, show that in marketing, when we’re talking about things that have an emotional message,

     

    which most of our marketing messaging does, 55% of what we communicate is our non-verbals. So our facial expressions, our gestures now posture over half of what we communicate, which is why video is so powerful in allowing us to see, Oh, she’s authentic. Or she’s not like video is powerful because you see those. But 38% of what we communicate is the,

     

    how we say it. The, the pace, the volume, the emphasis, those kinds of things. It’s 38% leaving. Only 70% of our communication to our words. Now, as online entrepreneurs, we’re used to writing, we’re used to emails. We’re used to captions. We’re used to putting all the weight there. So it’s scary to think, Oh crap,

     

    I have to focus on these others, but I see it as a gift. You don’t have to be so precious with your words when you’re speaking. In fact, I screw up all the time. If you rewind this back, I have misspoken. I have I’ve strung words together to didn’t actually make a sentence. I speak like war all the time,

     

    wrong words, whatever. You just keep moving because your energy, how you deliver it in your body, language carries you and your message. So if you don’t get intentional with how do you want to be received? What kind of energy do you want to create for other people? What do you want them to feel when they hear you? See you listened to you.

     

    If you don’t practice that, you’re leaving it to chance. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t, I don’t want to leave to chance what people say about me. Like, I want to be intentional and be like, damn, I want to work with Heather or, Oh, you can get speaking coach. That’s going to help you bring your energy up,

     

    work with that. Like, I want to be more intentional. I don’t want to like be caught up and obsessed with what people say about me, but I know I can influence it. So I say, why not? Yeah. That’s amazing. Those stats are very interesting. I had not personally heard those before, so super, super surprising. And then step number four.

     

    Okay. So how do we, how do we go about wrapping all this up together in this is your speak for authority method. This is your unique IP, your methodology. You have gotten people Results going through this process going through these steps time and time again. So wrapping this up, what’s that last really important thing that people need to do? Yeah.

     

    So building your authority means you need to make sure that your speaking strategy fits your strategy. That you’ve outlined. So if you determined that speaking is going to grow your authority, you have to say, okay, what podcast stages do I need to be on? Which live events do I need to be on? Who would I need to partner? How do you identify the right player in your industry to help position you in that way?

     

    If your strategy was to grow your leads, all right, in this stage, we’re going to make sure the freebie that you offer on stages correlates with your signature talk. So it’s not just a, one-off like, Oh, go take my random free training about something. That’s not what I’m talking about. You’re not going to drive that. So that’s what we’re going to talk about.

     

    How do we get results from our speaking determined by the strategy that you identified as your number one, so making money, but that’s negotiating a higher fee. Great. If that’s selling your program, great. If that’s driving leads great, like it’s kind of a pick your own pathway there. You haven’t figured out what strategy you want for you. And then we have the template to say,

     

    okay, how do I make that happen from a stage? Fantastic. How powerful is this? You guys? All right, let me make sure that I can summarize your four steps as clearly as possible, because there was so much gold throughout this process. So your speak for authority method that you just laid out like a red carpet here. I mean,

     

    this is gold. You guys, you would have had to pay Heather a lot of money to get this information. And so make sure that connecting with her more, both on clubhouse, and we’re going to give you some ways to work with Heather after this. So the first part of your method is really nailing your message. The second part is really creating that signature talk.

     

    The third is delivering it with confidence in the fourth. Part of your method is elevating your authority. Did I summarize that correctly? You did great. You did great high fives and applause for your articulation. Okay. Students, good students. You guys should see my, see my notes behind the scenes. I’ll just share personally, you know, public speaking has just always been something that I love to do.

     

    And once I get up there and once I get on a roll, I’m great, but it is such a head trip for me to get up there in the beginning of it. And my biggest fear, I tried to figure out what I was afraid of. Cause clearly I talk all the time. I’m not afraid to speak, right? And I really don’t care what people think about what I look like.

     

    I’m one of the few speakers that usually takes a stage in some sort of flip-flops. But what I realized I was afraid of is that people were going to leave that room. And this was when we were having, you know, regular events that people are going to leave that room unchanged. And I realized that, wow, what if somebody says that was a biggest waste of an hour?

     

    I ever spent it scared the shit out of me seriously, forever, because I was like, gosh, I just want people to leave here and have some sort of a transformation. And I was taking that. I’m really an advocate for that. As you know, like that’s how we develop programs, your programs should deliver a transformational measurable result. And I wasn’t really sure that my signature talk was doing that.

     

    And so if you guys are listening and you have whatever issues, like Heather said it at the beginning, people would rather wet, like die than speak on stage. What is that saying in the beginning? Yeah, it’s a good Jerry Seinfeld joke around more people would rather give eulogy or a B in the coffin than give their own eulogy. Right? That is awful.

     

    We were all given a voice for a reason. We’re all called to do great things for a reason. And using what Heather told you guys today in this show and her method is going to help you get clarity on all of this. And I’m super excited and appreciate your expertise and your time here today on the Sweetlife podcast. So we’re going to do a couple things to wrap up this episode.

     

    First of all, Heather has a way to get you started. Obviously we want to give you tools to take action right now. So Heather, where do people go to learn more about working with you directly? Yeah. So the speak for authority method we talked about today, I outlined this in a little bit more detail and at a little slower pace,

     

    if you want to head over my free training is up right now. If you head over to Heather singer.com forward slash free, you can download that free training. You can watch it right away and go through it. And I teach you how to actually use this method to start driving leads into your program. So you can grab that. Now it’s really designed for coaches course creators and small business owners who do not have a large following,

     

    but want to start establishing their self as authority. So that’s perfect for you, but also if today’s conversation was of interest and you’re trying to out what kind of stages would even work for me? Like how does this even play out? I think maybe we should go on a second date. So maybe let’s jump into a training. Let’s go on a second date.

     

    So I have a podcast it’s also on that page. Heather sager.com post free. You’ll have two options. The podcast is the Heather Sager show and you get like a little Besta playlist that you can hear a little bit more around how I speak. You can get used to my style a bit, steal it, use it for your own and start getting more comfortable with this concept of what does it look like to speak on other people’s stages,

     

    but also use daily opportunities to exercise your voice, build your confidence. And most importantly, be more intentional with your message that you want to share so you can make a bigger impact. I love it. Okay. So I’m looking at my phone here. If you guys are watching the video behind the scenes, looking at the schedule, this show is live on January 25th.

     

    It is episode number 211. So that means sometime this week, you and I are going to host a clubhouse room and we are going to implement and talk to our audience and answer questions for people that are listening to this show. So I’m so excited to, we’ve been talking about like, you know, doing rooms together. So here is how you find out when this room is happening.

     

    First of all, you can go to sweet life co.com forward slash clubhouse, and you’ll get a list of events and the direct link to the event so that you guys won’t miss it. Cause clubhouse is a lot of fun things happening. If you are not on clubhouse, then listen to my podcast that I recorded episode number 209, about how to get started on clubhouse.

     

    And I just want you guys just to take a second here like me. I do have many notes. If you feel like you are struggling to be seen as a leader in your space, that you really want to connect with people on a more personal relational level relationships sell. That’s what sells and you want to get in front of your ideal audience and give them an experience,

     

    transform them through your speaking so that they can work with you more. I highly recom