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:
Who This Episode is Great For:
Summary:
Highlights:
Resources Mentioned:
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs SweetLife Community on Facebook SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast on Pinterest April Beach on Facebook
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 Hey, guys, welcome back to the show Episode number 172 here of the sweet life entrepreneur and business podcast. And I’m April Beach, your host and your business coach here on the show. And ah, my purpose here is to equip you with tools and strategies that you can take to the bank and apply to your business right away. If you and I don’t know each other yet,
I’m a business development coach and strategist, and I help entrepreneurs and small businesses launch and scale online. And everything we do here on the show is proven tools and strategies that you can literally apply to your business right now and see a difference. And that’s our commitment to you. So today on the show, this is episode number 172. We’re gonna be talking about a lot of things, and I want to make sure that you know where to find. The resource is if you haven’t yet cruise over to sweet life podcast dot com,
and you can even enter Ford slash 172 to get to this episode directly. We have tons of free business tools there for you, especially those of you guys who are trying to launch and scale your business online. It’s certainly the best resource is out there, and our commitment is to just wow you with some incredible free stuff that other coaches charge thousands and thousands of dollars for So crews over the sweet life podcast dot com. That’s where all of the behind the scenes information in details can be found. So this particular episode we are talking about how to stay relevant and how to be a leader,
and then we can put a little parentheses behind it in times of economic downshift, cause that’s where we are. So these strategies and I’m talking about on today’s show strictly apply to where we are right now in our global economy. These probably would not be the same tactics that I would be sharing with you. Ah, year from now and they certainly are not the same ones that I was teaching you 12 months ago on this show. Okay, so want to make sure that if you’re listening to this and it’s not real time were in the middle of this cove it economy we’re starting to see the light of the end of the tunnel in this show is designed to make sure your relevant your leader and people are bouncing back to you and your business and your products.
After this little, strange time in the world is over. So everything we’re talking about on the show today is for that purpose. So this is for those of you were established business owners, nuance online entrepreneurs that are launching or you have an established online business and and you want to make sure you’re holding your grip and you’re holding the attention of those people that you’re called to serve. All right, So if you’re ready, let’s go ahead and dive in together. Or the truth of the matter is for many of you guys,
you have worked years to build your audience. You have created amazing content you have had on opportunity to connect with people. On a deep level, your list has grown. You have worked really, really hard. You’ve done everything right or is Lee at least is right as you possibly could have tried is a business owner. You’re getting traction. All of a sudden we hunted. We hit this brick wall, right? And there’s a chance that your business is one of those businesses that doesn’t fall where we wanted to fall in the order of importance right now based on our economy.
So when things slant down in the economy, people fall back to you can consider, like NASA’s hierarchy of needs, right? So on the bottom, we have, you know, the essentials food, shelter. And then, as as you go up in that structure and we’ll put a link to this for you in the show notes if you want to take a peek up at it. But as you go up in that structure, then you go into the top of it where it is things that people want,
like desires, deep desires and, you know, wealth and prominence and lifestyle freedom. Well, if in the past you have sold something that is on the top of that pyramid, there’s a really good chance people aren’t buying it anymore. And so therefore, there’s a really good chance that people aren’t listening to you anymore because you don’t have what they need and what they want right now. So if you’re a small business owner who’s audience has become silent, you’re no longer leading your people because, frankly, they’re not turning to you.
It means you’re losing your relevance. And so this show is really important for you to listen to, cause we’re gonna talk about different ways to pivot out of that. And, you know, as the world shifts, your business has to shift. And here’s the one thing I want you to know. It’s not forever you guys, but it could be 45 60 9100 and 20 days. And so I want to make sure that during this undefined period of time that you and your brand and your company are remaining incredibly relevant so that as we get out the other side of this,
you’re already at the top of people’s minds. It’s not like relaunching your business from scratch, because here’s the deal. The people that don’t remain relevant during this time, it’s going to be like starting back up again from scratch. And if you’ve been through the from scratch type of relationship, building and in list building recently. You know that that time and business building sucks, it’s really, really hard. And so we don’t want you toe have toe, get all the way back to number one. So in today’s show,
I want to dive into first of all what you could be doing immediately right now. And this is for sure.
Probably the only time that you will ever hear me say this. Number one. I want you to ditch your plan.
So what do I mean by that? I mean, if you had a content calendar that was planned out for the whole entire month of April and May and off your graphics air done and your content is in there if that content calendar doesn’t read the temperature in the room,
you could piss a lot of people off. Or frankly, they just might think you’re completely irrelevant in totally tune you out.
So I want you to really consider ditching the plan. It doesn’t mean that you can’t pick back up the plan when things start rolling again.
But those businesses that are continuing on as normal I know you have gotten some of these emails a za matter of fact,
some business people and leaders that I love. I’ve been getting emails from them, and I’ve unsubscribed because females are completely irrelevant and I think a little insensitive in Those leaders aren’t reading the room and you can tell that they have their plan.
They had their content written. They had their podcast recorded, you know, they had their articles already in line,
and they’re just going with it because they’re trying to pretend like everything’s fine. But everything is not fine.
And it’s okay to say that everything’s not fine for a little bit. I think it’s important as a leader,
as a business leader to remain relevant. So stuff number one is take a look. And if you need to ditch your plan,
you know, for heaven’s sake, stop downloading all those freebies. I instagram that say we’re going to give you your content to go live for the next 30 days.
Stop downloading those stop following a plan that comes from somebody else. You are the leader, and it’s time for you to lead.
Okay, so ask yourself these questions. What are people really listening to right now? What is being told?
Talked at poured into your clients right now. And what do they actually want to be listening to right now?
There’s a really good chance that what is coming at your clients, whether it be from you or somebody else.
If you haven’t made this sort of pivot shift, there’s a really good chance that is not what they want.
And so they’re going to start tuning out. And so I want you to ask yourself, What do they want right now?
Dig into their psyche, dig into their aspirations, dig into their fears, dig in to maybe some things that they’re dealing with that could possibly have nothing to do with your business at all.
But ask yourself those tough questions and ditch your plan if you need Teoh. The next thing is, I want you to start sharing connecting in leading.
All right, so more than ever before, you should be present. You should be live streaming. Know that.
Probably make some of you just like swallow your your heart because live streaming can seem really scary. And I’ll give you some tips.
Here. The end of this recording. Okay, so the end of this podcast, I promise you as I’m saying this out loud,
I’m going to give some tips that are gonna make live streaming really easy for you. Okay, But let’s get through the strategies here that I have for you.
I want you to go live away to go live a lot. I want you to go live on your Facebook page.
I’m going to go live on Instagram. Wherever your clients are, focus your attention on the places your clients are,
whether it’s posting videos on lengthen, you know, even YouTube, whatever that may be. Be present and go live.
And here are three types of content that you can and frankly, you should be posting. Number one is content that connects you to your audience.
This is a big one right now. This might actually be over 60% of the content that you are posting right now.
Content that connects you to your audience are behind the scenes, you know, kind of showing people what’s going on in your life in your home,
how you’re setting up your home office, how you’re managing your team’s air remote, working with your teams.
Those are things that are behind the scenes content. That’s content that connects you to your audience. It shows that you’re vulnerable.
It shows them what’s happening, and it shows them that you’re cool with them, not seeing everything perfect.
When you show up like that, it opens the door for them to talk back and say, Hey,
you know what? Things aren’t perfect here, either, and it starts a dialogue and it starts a conversation in what’s really cool about it is it creates connections with your existing audience about new things.
So if you previously might have, I had a connection with your audience because you’re a graphic designer, and certainly that’s why you’ve connected with them.
They hired you to do their graphic design. Now you might find that you’re connecting because you both loathe homeschooling or you both Can’t,
you know, figure out how to come up with something new to cook for dinner. You know when we’re in quarantine.
So finding those connection pieces is so valuable right now in a note to those of you guys who are brands.
So if you have a brand and you yourself aren’t your brand, right? So if you have a business with you know 10 15 25 employees and you’re wondering like how we show up here authentically as a company as a brand.
You can still do this. People want to see the CEO. People want to see the marketing director take turns taking over the companies INSTAGRAM account and going live take turns popping in and posting.
You know, videos about how you’re doing things behind the scene on Facebook. It doesn’t matter if you’re a brand or you’re in individual brand or company ran an individual ground number one.
Creating content that connects is the most important thing for you to do. Right now, Number two is creating content that proves that you know what you’re doing.
So this could be pictures of you with clients in the past social proof testimonies, screenshots of D. M’s that people are sending to you screenshots of emails for the other clients,
or sending to you asking questions and talking about how you work with other people, how you been able to get other people of results in the past and just reminding your audience that you really,
really good at what you do, even if you might be doing it a little bit differently right now.
or even Perhaps, if you’re not serving clients at all right now. So the 1st 1 is content that connects.
The 2nd 1 is content. That proves that you know what you’re doing. And the 3rd 1 is content that teaches.
This is content where you’re gonna share your coaching, your expertise, data leadership You’re pouring in. What it is that you do as a leader,
as a business leader in your area, your niece, your area of expertise. So I want you to start sharing these three types of content regularly.
Want you to ditch the plan, Look at the content of your sharing and make sure it’s relevant to what is happening right now.
And my challenge to you is to do this. Number one Seriously, stop hiding out. I know it’s hard to show up when you don’t know how you should be showing up,
but the first step is showing up. So show up and be present. That is going to solidify that you’re strong and you’re a leader.
But you’re also vulnerable. And you’re willing, Teoh, just show up for your people. I recommend that you go live seriously.
Seven days for the next seven days straight. I recommend that you go live on your social media feeds.
It might seem like overkill, especially if you’ve never gone life before. Ah, lot of reasons why we do this is because the Social media algorithm,
frankly, when you go live the first couple of times, there’s nobody that’s gonna be there. It doesn’t show people that you’re going live.
And so after you do it a couple of times, whether it’s instagram or Facebook, it’s going to start to catch on to be like,
Hey, you know, April’s live again. It’s gonna start start showing it to more people. But what it does is it also shows your commitment to your audience and that you want to be president.
You want to be there for them. You can also share what you’re struggling with and create these common connection points,
whether it’s parenting or loneliness or the fact that you’re drinking way too much wine or what we call it,
like the cove, it 18 instead of like the freshman 10 or the freshman 20. Whatever college freshman you know,
pounds were on the cove, it 18 you, right? You know, if you’ve been sitting there eating bond bonds and drinking wine and you know,
whatever. Share that, just be Rheal and eat and be who you are and show your strength. Even if you don’t feel like it,
we’ll be sure with you like a little case study. I, of course, have been doing this myself before.
I’m gonna come on here and tell you guys to do this because I always want to make sure I’m giving you proven strategies that work in your business.
And I’m not very often live on my Facebook page, and I have started running. Now, don’t laugh too loud.
I’m a terrible runner. You buys it is between like teen in my knees, earning. I mean,
I suck it running, okay? And so I went out for a run on Saturday and there was snow all around me.
I just had to get out of the house. I wanted to push my body. I was craving that and in the middle of my run,
in a nice excuse for a NH opportunity to breathe, I pulled out my phone and I did a live stream,
and I did a live stream, you know, just regarding data and the trajectory of businesses. I looked like shit.
I was out of breath. I was just canting. You could clearly tell I was not some agile runner out there,
and I did This live stream video lasted, you know, maybe like six minutes in that video got organically more views than any of my other live streams of me sitting here in my office.
Why? Because people wanted to see that I look like shit. People had to see what I was doing that had nothing to do with,
you know, business development strategy. And I think that people also wanted to see the fact that I’m pushing myself.
I want to see my leaders pushing themselves, because when I see people that I follow when I see people that I admire what that when I see people that I learned from pushing themselves to new levels even when it seems out of place or impossible or don’t feel like it,
it inspires me to be pushed to do levels to. And so that’s just a little case study. And I just want to encourage you in that so show leadership inspire,
encourage, be uplifting and be strong, even if you don’t feel strong, Believe me, I did not feel strong making that video,
and I certainly didn’t feel strong running. Okay. And the next thing is to be the glue. If you have an opportunity to create a community in a connection amongst your clients and your fans and your followers,
do it. Now is a perfect time to launch a Facebook group. Now is a perfect time to create some sort of connection or community,
whether it’s a text group or a boxer community, whatever it may be, now is an excellent time for you to create that group and lead that group through this uncertain time.
In doing these things, you are going to remain relevant in doing these things. You are going to show your strength and leadership,
even if the things that you’re talking about don’t necessarily directly relate with the primary signature service or offer that you have released in the past.
But we want you to stay strong. We want you to stay top of the mind off your followers so that after this time is over,
you don’t have to build these relationships from scratch, and the best way to do that is to lead authentically and to show up often,
especially right now. You have a captive audience. Everybody is home. Everybody’s online more than ever, and now is the time to step out and be present.
Okay, Before I wrap this up, I promised you that I would share a little tip about live streams.
Number one. If you want to practice going live, join us in our Facebook community. It’s sweet life community dot com.
It’s a totally free Facebook community. There’s awesome small business owners and their and we do these things where we actually let you practice going live in our Facebook community because sometimes it’s weird and you don’t know where to look,
and you don’t know what buttons to push. Cruise over to sweet left interview. Not common. Join us,
but here the tips I was going to give you When you are speaking to a camera, whether you’re going live or you’re talking to a video camera and recording videos or you’re on television,
for example, this is how I originally learn. This is when I used to contribute to our local news stations here in Colorado.
When you’re looking at a camera, think about the fact that you’re only talking toe one person. If you think Oh my gosh,
I’m talking to the masses and thousands of people are watching me right now and thousands of people are looking at me.
You will totally freeze and it will be really awkward and it’ll scare you to that, right? But if you just picture that you’re talking toe one person,
that only one person is going to see this and whatever’s on your heart or your mind, whatever you want to share,
whether it’s business or personal, whether it’s you know, that content that proves you’re the expert or content that coaches people,
you’re only talking to one person. When you look at that camera lens, OK, I promise you,
if you only think one person’s looking, a look at this one person is going to see it, and that’s this One person talking to right now is my ideal client.
You can even name that person if it helps you. You can even picture one of your friends on the other side of that camera.
That’s the tip. That’s how you get over the fear of live streams and the fear of life video because you know what?
In the end, technically, any time we create content, we want to only create that content for that one ideal audience,
that one ideal client until by thinking these things, you’re not off base because, in fact, anything you’re saying is for that one ideal client.
So that’s your tip for getting over life. Okay, today we talked about the importance of showing up and being relevant.
We talked about ditching the plan if you have had a plan in place, and it totally is unrelated to what’s happening right now,
we talked about the three different types of content, but you should be sharing number one content that connects,
showing people behind the scenes and what you’re doing. Number two content that proves that you’re a badass. That’s content that shows testimonies from people have you worked with or pictures of people you’ve worked with or you know,
anything that can share that You know what you’re doing that you’ve helped other people get awesome results, and then the third type of content is content that teaches,
and this is content that shares your expertise to give some tips in different sorts of ah insider know how that comes from an expert like you.
All right, And then one more thing. If you have an offer, if you’ve developed a new habit offer that you have for people,
let them know that. Invite them to join your pivot plan and bite them to join your offer. Invite them to join what it is that you’ve done,
but do it in a way that you’re connected with them authentically. The most important thing here is that we aren’t selling.
The world were serving the world during this time. And so any plan that you create should be serving the world and not selling the world in your content in your social media,
and your messaging should come across that way as well. And if you’re struggling with losing leadership and you don’t have a product,
you’re not sure how to pivot or your business is becoming less relevant. Now is the time to make the shift.
I’ve been working with a small group of entrepreneurs and established small business owners to help them create offers, scaling from offline to online and bringing offers into the picture that your clients actually really want need offers that can really,
truly be a life raft where your clients are right now, if you aren’t really sure how to scale your business online,
what actual virtual offers to create what that means to the big picture of your business. If you’re struggling to choose that online business model,
and if you’re struggling because you don’t know how to create messaging, that’s really authentic, and you want to make sure you’re companies still profiting,
then I invite you to learn more about what I’m doing with this small group of businesses. We’re calling it Shift 2020 and to get more information on that,
you can just go to the show notes for this episode. Or you can simply text the word shift to the number 31996 and I’ll send you a link on where you can get more information.
All right, you guys, I hope you’re doing well, and I hope this message finds that everybody in your household is well.
Also, I love connected with you. Thanks so much for staying tuned with me here again, Resource is for you Are number one went to the show notes for this episode at Sweet Life Podcast dot com ford slash 172 Resource number two is to join our free Facebook community.
You can find that by visiting sweet life. Community dot com and Resource number three is to join me in shifting your business for 2020 so that you stay profiting,
leading and your marketing in the right ways. To get more information on shift 2020 you can just text to the word shift to the number 31996 Or you can cruise over to the show notes,
and they’ll be a link for you to learn more about shift 2020. All right, help! You guys are awesome.
Talk to you soon. Bye for now.