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?
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Who This Episode is Great For:
- Local businesses affected by COVID-19
- Small to midsize businesses ready to scale online
- Entrepreneurs looking to grow their brand and ready to hyper-focus for big results
Summary:
There’s no doubt that COVD-19 will affect how some businesses run. These are hard times, but on this show, we’re talking about great opportunities to grow and scale your business online. These strategies will help you continue to reach and serve your clients while developing new streams of income and developing a new business model that leads to more lifestyle and location freedom for small business owners.
Highlights:
- How to meet with your clients virtually
- Software to work as a team online
- 5 things you can do right now to grow your brand from home
- How brick and mortar stores can sell products creatively
Resources Mentioned:
Team Management Software:
Other:
SweetLife Podcast™ Love:
Need faster business growth?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
Full Show Transcript:
you’re listening to the sweet life entrepreneur podcast Simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business, mental and entrepreneur activator A probe Age Hi there and welcome to the show Episode number 166 of The Sweet Life Entrepreneur A podcast and I’m April Beach Super glad to be talking to you. Not super glad to be talking about this topic, but we are finding the silver lining in today’s show. We’re actually going to dive in and talk about some really awesome business opportunities within the circumstance we find ourselves in with Cove in 19 across the world.
Now, if we don’t know each other yet in April. Beach, founder of the Sweet Life Company and Baby Plundering and host here of the Sweet Life Entrepeneur, a podcast have three awesome teenage boys at home. My husband’s an entrepreneur, and it’s always gonna be connected with you. I know we have a lot of new followers and new listeners, so thank you so much for tuning into this show. In a nutshell. I help women scale their business in a strategic way that helps you actually create lifestyle freedom while building a multi six figure company.
And so the strategy is that we talk about here on the show are to give you the steps to do that. This is a business development and business coaching podcast off the show. Notes from today’s episode can be found by visiting Suite Life Podcast Don con Okay, this is what you can expect on today’s show. We’re diving into business opportunities and how to find a silver lining with Kobe had 19. I am going to cover what to do if you are a local business, where you serve people face to face and you actually are used to seeing them physically.
Whether you have a brick and mortar store or you go to your clients, we’re talking about different ways that you can continue to grow your business and serve your clients. During this time, we are also going to cover different ways to connect with your team and continue to communicate, to continue to grow your business, and I’m going to dive into very specific strategies for those of you who are independent entrepreneurs and Sola preneurs Thio focus on things that you can be doing to grow yourself and your company during this time as well as we’re gonna wrap up the show.
And I’m gonna share with you personal things that you could be doing to grow as a professional. And then if you’re interested at the end of the show, I’m gonna be diving images, sharing some personal behind the scenes, just opening the front door of the beach house of our house and sharing with you some of the preparation that we do. Why we do certain preparation for certain emergency instances here in the beach house and also some scripture that I share with my kids to help sustain them and help them to feel strong and confident and at peace during really crazy times that we’re facing right now.
So we’re gonna dive into all the business strategy first. I’d love it. If you are interested, you’ll hang out with me and tell the end, and I’m gonna share with you behind the scenes here at the beach house. This particular show is perfect for you. If you do have an established business that serves clients face to face. If you go to work at a place where you’re working with other people and a co working space. If you are not really sure how to continue to do your job and actually grow your company when you can’t see people face to face and it’s for all of you,
Mom is out there just like me who are thinking big picture more than just about your business, about your life and your strategies and how to continue with the momentum that you’ve already experienced in 2020. If that is you, then stay tuned and very specifically for those of you guys who listen your faithful listeners, you know what phase of my lifestyle entrepreneur road map that you are in This particular show is tagged for every single phase of my life. So entrepreneur road map. Those were the five phases of business designed launch and growth.
If you aren’t sure where you are, you’re welcome to go back to the show notes and take a quiz, and you can find out what exact phase of business growth and development urine and receive very specific tips to grow your business. Beyond that point, we usually tag each episode here on the suite Life podcast. So you know whether or not a particular business. Training applies to where you are in business right now, so you aren’t getting distracted or sidetracked. So this particular episode, of course, does apply to every single phase of business development in my lifestyle.
Entrepreneur Road map For those of you guys that are wondering, Okay, let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode. First things first. I want to talk to those guys with local businesses. So if you have a business where you serve somebody face to face, maybe you’re a realtor. If you’re a massage therapist, maybe you are a counselor or a trainer, and you are used to actually having people interact with you at locally. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have a brick and mortar store, but you’re used to interacting with people locally.
Here are some suggestions and some things that you could do to continue to serve your clients during this time. These are business development strategies that we talk about all the time with established business owners. So here’s a little background of this and why this isn’t a downer. This is a really cool strategic opportunity here. I actually work with businesses, local businesses to help them scale their company by offering virtual service is right. Now, you find yourself if you have done that yet in a place where you’re forced to do that.
But I want to let you know that what you might be forced to dio is a business strategy that we use all the time to help companies grow and actually make more money by offering a combination of local service is and virtual service is So here are some suggestions so that you can actually start tapping in already to the opportunities of online business scaling even if you didn’t want to. Okay, so the very first thing I recommend if you haven’t started this yet,
is start to create a calendar online. And I’m gonna give a lot of different links to online software you can use in our show notes.
So don’t worry about that. You can cruise over to sweet life podcast dot com forward slash 1 66 and I will put the leaks of all of this software that I’m gonna recommend.
But the function I want you to do is to set up an online calendar if you don’t have one Yet for your business.
This gives people in your established clients an opportunity to book with you online. At that point in time,
meet with your clients virtually in a video call. This is how I work with clients all over the world.
And I have for over 12 years this is not something new. And if you haven’t tapped into this yet,
believe me, as soon as you start meeting with people, virtually you’re gonna love it. You might not even want to go back.
So start setting up virtual meetings. If you have a group of people that you’re used to serving, maybe you can’t show up to speak in an event.
Maybe you’re not able to teach a group of people like you had planned or to coach your host something that you had planned locally.
Maybe it’s a weekly class that you’ve done. I recommend that use. Do you think about creating a short term virtual online group again?
I’ll put all these links for you, but couple examples are a pop up Facebook group. You can create a Facebook community for his long or a short as you want.
Facebook does a really great job of helping you to connect with people and be able to serve them in Facebook communities.
In addition to Facebook, there are also other platforms, which I love. 1st 1 is disciple disciples,
an amazing on my platform where you can actually create in a community of your clients and customers and that you can connect with them and continue to serve them virtually an linked in Does a pretty good job with groups linked in is trying thio.
Continue to emphasize groups on Lincoln as well. If you find the majority of your customers are on LinkedIn,
then consider creating a short term linked in Group two. In fact, connect with your customers and provide virtual consulting and virtual service is to them.
Idea. Number three. Go back to old school phone calls. You guys, I think somewhere along the way we lost the power of getting on the phone with somebody.
It might not be a landline with a curly cord connected to the wall, but getting on the phone and connecting with your customers is a really powerful way to continue to serve them,
hear what they’re saying, understand their struggles and continue to coach them or consult them or provide service is to them if you have products that you sell.
So I’m talking to specifically to those of you guys who have a brick and mortar store with products, and you might even have a little bit of an online store.
But your primary business is having people walk through your door and see the face to face you can during this time when people might not be out in about as much as they have before.
How about featuring your products through live streams like a show and tell? How about showing up a couple of times a day from your business Facebook page from your instagram page and holding up one of the products talking about the products,
the features of the products? It’s like the Home Shopping network thing. This is kind of what I’m thinking about.
What an amazing way to talk to your customers about new items that just landed in your store that you know that they need anyway.
Show up on Facebook live, show up on Instagram and do a video about a product you can even give a virtual tour of your store,
and then I have a call to action for people that pick up the phone and call you in. Order that product over the phone.
That’s for those of you guys that don’t have a virtual store yet. We’re going old school. They can pick up the phone.
They can say, I really want that bag. It’s so cute and I can’t go in there and buy it.
But I love the way it looks. Can I please buy it from you? You can ring them up through your online.
Check out that you might have through PayPal or square up or any other online process it or that you have,
and you can drop it in the mail. To them, this is a great way to increase your social media falling to continue to build a relationship with your clients and to continue to sell products if you have a local store.
And, of course, if you have an online store and you haven’t really been able to have focused on that because you might have a local store as well.
Now is amazing opportunity to really emphasize your online store and to do some other natural interaction through social media to increase your sales again great places to do in these live product show and tells our Facebook instagram LinkedIn.
And if you have a high Twitter following, you might be able to get some traction as well on Twitter.
What a creative, fun, disruptive way to continue to be in your customers lives moving on. Four.
Those of you guys that have a team that you run you need to connect with your team. Here are some different platforms that you can use to continue to grow your team that will benefit you in the long run.
Even when you come back together locally, you can use slack. It’s a great way to chat with teams you can use.
Streak Streak is a plug in to Gmail for business that has your pipelines in your sails, and many people can tap into where customers are in the process,
virtually through email by using streak. There are also other platforms, like Facebook, workplace, Vasana and Trail.
Oh, and we’ll make sure that we put all the links to every single one of these platforms for you in the show notes.
So if you’re driving your car right now or you’re busy and you can’t write this down. Just cruise over to sweet life podcast dot com forward slash 1 66 and I’ll make sure that we’re sharing all of these really simple and powerful software platforms that can help you grow your business,
serve your clients virtually and continue to connect with your team. Okay, now let’s switch gears a little bit.
Now I want to talk to those of you guys specifically who are already entrepreneurs. You may already work from home.
You may already have the laptop lifestyle Freedom. Congratulations to you If you do that, I can’t even tell you how grateful I am right now for the fact that I don’t have to leave the house.
It is just a feeling of peace for me. And so if you have that as well, I’m grateful for you.
If you do not have that, please hit me up here. You can send me a direct email to podcast at sweet life co dot com,
and we’re happy to work with you to establish that sort of a business model in your company as well.
For those of you guys who already have this business model, this is a really amazing time to start hyper focusing on what you need to be doing to continue to grow your personal and or your business brand.
So some things that I want to challenge you. So you listeners other. You guys know you Are you private Listening to this podcast for a long time?
You’re a coach or a service based consultant. You are really ready to continue to press in and grow your business.
You might even have had big plans of what you were supposed to be doing in your company over the next couple of months.
They might be getting a bit sidetracked Right now. I want to challenge you to do a couple of things to grow your business.
During this time. Number one I want to talk to those of you guys who specifically know you have a book in you.
Sometimes we need something disruptive like this in life to make us set aside the timeto outline or write that book.
If you’ve had a book inside you and you find this time that is inspiring for you to sit down and write it.
I want to encourage you to do that for those of you guys who’ve just been busy in the busy work of serving clients.
You know what I mean? You’re busy in the busy work. You’re constantly serving clients. You have very little time to actually work on business about men.
I want you to look at your weeks. Look, att. Some of the changes. Maybe you don’t have to be driving around as much taking your kids to all their activities.
Maybe. You know, you aren’t going out to go to Costco to go shopping groceries getting delivered to you.
The silver lining here. You’ve eyes. Is it? This situation with Cove in 19 is actually giving us the gift of time.
Time to be home. Time to think about what’s important time to be with those people We love time to focus on our health and time to focus on our business.
All right, So if you’ve been busy in the busy work with your business, I want to challenge you to sit down and start thinking about outlining new packages.
Higher level service is deeper offers with better results. I want you to sit down. Look at what you’re offering and consider bringing your business to the next level by creating new offers,
New packages. New service is your new programs. Take this time to brainstorm. Look at what people are buying and what they’re still challenged with and consider what you’re selling.
I also want to encourage you that if you haven’t yet, now is a really great time to set up a virtual coffee.
So we talked about this in last week’s podcast episode. Excuse me an episode number 1 64 We talked about this.
So two weeks ago we talked about how to connect with people in a deeper way locally, and one of them was to create a smaller mastermind in set up virtual coffee with business colleagues.
Do that now find five different people. If you don’t know them, reach out to them and Facebook groups or an instagram and ask them if they want to chill and have coffee with you.
Talk shop, help each other out, really create business relationships with people that understand what it’s like to be exclusively in online entrepreneur.
Another opportunity. I want to encourage you in. Have you been avoiding doing live streams because you’re not comfortable?
Now is the time to get comfortable. I want to encourage you to do be doing more lives, dreams to connect with your audience.
Maur to be sharing may be behind the scenes a little bit about what you’re doing in your company. Whatever that looks like to you,
now is a great time. Thio Face any fears you might have had of going on video and going live in really encouraging your connection with your audience virtually and then just a couple other pro tips for you.
Now is an amazing time to be pitching podcasts. Working on your media pack, working on your signature talk If you’ve been putting these things out,
if you’ve been putting out booking yourself on podcasts or booking yourself on stage is, now is the time to dive into that because there’s always you can continue to grow your business virtually,
and you are now given the gift of time. We’re looking again at the positives in this situation here.
I know there are a lot of really sad and terrible things happening right now, but I wanted to create a show where we’re looking at the positives here together.
Okay, now I want to give you some specific suggestions based on industry of different ways where you can utilize the opportunities here.
First of all, if you’re a therapist or a psychologist or a counselor or a life coach uses time to help your clients find peace and grow internally,
obviously you’re a psychologist or therapist. You already know that you’re the expert in that. Not me, but one of the things.
And there are some regulations of what you can do based on your licensing. One of things you could do is hosting a virtual group,
meeting or hosting a session where people can come together. They can share some concerns that they might be having together and really be able to talk about that.
You could do that in zoom meeting rooms, and you can do that and go to meeting and a bunch of other software we’re gonna give you.
The resource is to check out. But the point here is people are turning to you. People are looking to you because they need to find strengthen themselves and so looking at the situation,
and I think it’s okay to not continue business as usual, or at least to look at what else can be done to connect us in a time where we might felt isolated or disconnected,
and many people feel scared again. I know that there are certain regulations to that. For example, I called my child’s both my kids counselor who doesn’t have the ability to meet with them virtually because I didn’t want to bring my kids into the medical offices.
So I do know there are some regulations to that that based on the regulations you have, I just really wanna encourage those of you who can to be creating an opportunity to bring people together in that.
So it’s one business idea for you. If you’re in marketing, how can you help your clients create campaigns that work with Cove in 19?
I’m not saying make a joke of it, but you’re the creators. You guys are marketing geniuses. How can you help your clients actually start talking about the situation,
working with the situation, other than possibly ignoring it, pretending like it isn’t there? Or maybe that’s a terrible strategy.
Maybe they do need to ignore it because it would be detrimental to their particular business if they honed in on that sort of,
ah, of a negative focused again, you’re the experts. But consider helping your clients creating campaigns in response to this,
or creating a business strategy with intentionally not focusing on this. For example, if you have a client that has a cruise ship,
then you’re probably not gonna be talking about Cove in 19. But there are other marketing campaigns that that can be built on.
If you have a physical product, you can increase your sales by making alterations to what you offer how you bundle your packages.
Think about that. So if you sell, you know diffusers and CBD oil and you know in different hair bows for kids.
Can you make packages? And can you market your packages? Can you create new products based on what people want right now with other things that are happening?
And I want you to think creatively outside of the box? What can you do to create, or how can you alter what you already have in order to meet people’s names?
If you’re in real estate, can you offer those virtual home tourist for your clients? So where you’re taking your cell phone,
your face, timing them, Or maybe you’re going through each one of the homes that you have under your less teen and you’re doing video tours of the homes with your commentating,
so it’s very personal. It’s just like you were there taking a client through a home. But instead they don’t have to be there.
You can facetime them. They can say, Hey, can you go back? I want I want to see that room again and you can walk them through there.
So really thinking outside of the box and disrupting business is normal in order to provide a really great amazing service and continue to grow your company.
If you’re a travel blogger, what can you do? The highlight. Different things that people can do at home in the area outside.
You know, these are all specific suggestions for you, and I want you to really be thinking outside of the box in different ways.
You can continue to serve your clients, continue to increase your sales and continue to grow your business during this crazy time.
Okay, and that ends our time together today, where we’re talking about strategies to bring your local business online during this time,
different ways to connect with your team different outside of the box ideas to continue to grow your service is and continue to serve your clients.
And, of course, for those of you were established online entrepreneurs already, we talked about different things that you could do to really focus in and bringing your brand to the next level during this time and for all the show notes from this episode,
please cruise over to sweet Life podcast dot com forward slash 1 66 where you’ll also find business help to learn to grow in scale,
your business online in different opportunities where we can help you do that immediately if needed. And if you’re interested in hearing the personal side of some of the preparations were doing,
the things were focusing on as a family and how we’re helping our kids just hang on tight and I’ll be right back.
Okay, welcome to the beach house. I’m opening the front door and sharing with you some pretty personal stuff regarding this episode.
This issue that we’re all dealing with globally and just sharing with you. For those few were interested in a little bit about how how we deal with us,
how we prepare for things like this, and so In order to give you some background, I need to tell you a story which many of you do not know.
I don’t talk about it very often. But my youngest son, Samuel, was born with very severe food allergies.
And at a very young age, I learned that if there was ever an emergency that the American Red Cross couldn’t feed him,
he really could eat nothing in. So from the time he was a baby, I’ve always had stockpiles of food because I’ve had this deep rooted mama fear that he’s going to starve if they’re Waas something that happened in 2011.
I believe it was. We were here in the 100 year flood in Colorado and I was very glad that we did have food supply because we needed it.
And so we are very prepared as a family. There are reasons why we’re very prepared. I wish that I didn’t have to walk through is a mom and my son didn’t have to walk through all the scary times that he did.
Is is a young kid with severe allergies, but because of those things, there’s always beauty in the ashes,
you know, because of those things were always very prepared. So if you’re curious here in the beach house,
yes, we have lots of supplies, but I want to encourage you to do whatever you feel is comfortable.
You need to do what brings you peace. Obviously, they’re different guidelines or recommendations based on what country you live in in what your government recommends that you have.
But I just want to encourage you, too, do you? And to find peace in whatever brings you peace.
There are a few cool things that you could be doing at home with your kids, like maybe reading a series of books that you’ve never been able to dive into.
I was just thinking of reading Call the Wild with my kids because I know the movie is out, and I haven’t read that since I was a kid.
My boys have never read it, so I know there are a lot of things that I think about.
It’s almost like what you think about if you’re stuck in a blizzard for a long time, all the fun things we could do at home.
We as a family love Qattan. We absolutely, totally geek out on that game. And so we play a lot of Qattan,
and there are multiple different things that you can do at home to really make this time with your kids super special in.
So if you find yourself where you stuck at home, I don’t know if you will be when you listen to the show and I’m hoping that none of us have to be.
But if we find ourselves a bit isolated, there are some really fun things that we could do to find the silver lining and to connect with each other more deeply.
And I just want to encourage you guys to do that. And although this is not a Christian business podcast,
I’m very transparent, and you guys know that I’m a Christian, even though I love using the F word and costing a lot as well that really trips a lot of people up any out.
I’m not shy about that. And so one of the things that we’ve been doing is sharing with her two kids different scripture that they can stand on when they’re feeling afraid in giving them a couple of different tools every single day before they leave the house and I just want to share with you.
This is very personal. I’m not saying that every family needs to do this, but I want to share with you guys what I do every day before I send my kids Doctor school.
Besides the basic, you know, making sure their address didn’t have shoes on and something to eat every single day before they leave,
we pray over them. We plead the blood of Jesus over them. And now I also anoint them with oil and those air things that based on Scripture.
Lord says that as parents we have authority to do for our kids to help protect them in the world,
not just in times like this, and honestly, shame on me for really ramping it up. Doing it now,
in times when, you know, it could be a little sketch to send him out in the world.
I should be doing this every day, but this is what we’re doing now. And they just wanted to close out and read you guys really cool little excerpt from Jesus Colleen on March the 10th.
This is the day that I’m recording this show, so I thought I would just read for you guys real quickly here.
It said what it says. It says your mind for all time and beyond time into eternity. No power can deny your inheritance in heaven.
Even if you falter, is you journey through life. I will never let go of your hand. And that’s just a short little snippet from Jesus calling.
And I have clients with many face. I serve and I connect, and I am very good friends with women who believe a variety of different things.
And so I’m just sharing with you behind the scenes what we do as a family, and I just want to encourage you to tap into your piece to your source.
During this time, we’re really strategic on a business building side, but we and you’ve heard me talk about this.
If you’ve listened to this show for three years, I don’t believe in work. Life balance. I believe in building companies that harmoniously connect with each other,
and now is just a CZ important to talk about that. So that’s today’s show. Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
I adore you. I hope you found the strategy is helpful I hope those view establish entrepreneurs. Her listening you felt challenged to bring your brand to the next level during this time,
focus on some things, maybe even putting on the back burner. And there are a lot of software.
Resource is for you here in this show. You don’t have to remember them all. I will make sure that we have links to every single software resource for you to check out whether your new toe online business or you have been doing online business serving your clients online for a long time.
I’ll make sure all the resources are in the show notes. You could find those show notes by visiting suite Life podcast dot com board slash one 66.
Thanks so much, You guys, I’ll talk to you next week.
That’s all folks!