Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/244
In today's episode, I'm going to tell you the C words that you need to focus on in business.
I have three C words that you need to be focusing on to ensure that your business is actually growing. More specifically, consistently growing over the longer term.
The three C words that I have for you are content, consistency and compound.
The reason why those three words are so important and connected, is because they are the key to the long term consistent growth of your business.
Let's have a look at each of them individually.
Content is one of the most critical parts of having an online business.
This is especially true if:
Content is how we connect with our audience, connect with our ideal clients, and connect the dots for people between where they think they need to be focusing their energy and attention in order to achieve the goal that we help them with, and where they actually need to be focusing their energy and attention.
Often people misdiagnose what it is that they need to be focused on, and they misdiagnose just how simple and effective it could be for them to get that outcome.
It's also how we nurture our audience and move them towards that understanding and lightbulb moment where they realise what it is that they truly need to be focusing on and what support they need.
Our content is how we are found. It makes us searchable. It makes us able to be found in the topic areas where we want to be known in our business.
When you share things on social media, most of the time you're not just sharing and telling people to follow someone, you're sharing and saying something specific that people need to check out - ie. an article or podcast episode.
That is how we are shared amongst our audiences. It's also how we convert.
Our content - especially on social media, in our emails and on our website - is how we help people to understand the transformation that we facilitate, make a decision about whether it's the right fit for them or not, and then ultimately make a sale and convert them into paying clients.
Content has a multi-layered multifaceted role in our business for reach, nurturing and conversion.
It's a really critical part of our business.
The number one thing that consistency drives is trust.
Our trust in others is directly impacted by our ability to predict their behaviour.
If you are completely inconsistent when it comes to creating and sharing content in your business, then it's really difficult for your audience to accurately predict your behaviour.
They begin to wonder how regularly they will get free and interesting content from you.
I know for myself, I've signed up for a free webinar with people or a free checklist, and then I don't hear from them for another three or four months. When I finally get that email in my inbox from that person, it takes me a minute to work out who they are and why I'm on their mailing list. Sometimes I can't even work it out and I don't know whether it's because I signed up for something, if they've bought my email illegally, or if it's just spam.
We know that the drivers of buyer behaviour are that they know you, like you, trust you and feel connected to you.
Your content itself helps people to know who you are and like you, but your consistency is what drives how much people trust you and how connected they feel to you.
If they are getting consistent content from you - and that might be once a week, once every two weeks or even once every month (as long as it's consistent and predictable) - that is what drives trust.
Consistent content has a compound interest effect.
Think about it: the more consistent you are with your content, the more it comes out on a regular basis, the more it's adding to the content on your website, the more it's building up that consistent algorithm on social media, the more reach it gets, the better your SEO, and the more it's creating that dynamic of trust and connection with your audience.
When you have a spurt of content that comes out and then you disappear for three months, when you come back, you're not just having to rebuild your algorithm and your trust in terms of SEO, you're also having to rebuild trust on a human-to-human level because of that unpredictability of your behaviour.
If I haven't heard from you for three months, the idea of buying from you has an extra layer of risk to it. Whether I feel it subconsciously or consciously, I am going to wonder or worry:
That is why I wanted to connect these three C words for you - content, consistency and compound.
How is it that we achieve that consistency of content for a compound interest effect?
The more you aim for perfection in your content processes, in what goes into the content, and in whether it's keyworded up properly, the more you have excuses to damage your consistency.
When we let go of the need for it to be perfect and instead focus on that consistency, we actually have a greater impact on our outcomes.
I'm not saying that you should:
I'm not saying any of that at all.
In most cases, our level of expectation for ourselves is well below our markets expectation of us.
I want you to give yourself permission to not get it perfect, to not have all of the SEO parts worked out, to not have to have the perfect camera, the perfect background, the perfect lighting or the perfect copywriting.
Chances are, it will be much much more valuable to your audience than that perfect thing that you make them wait three months for before they're allowed to see it.
I love batching content.
I'm recording a couple of podcasts episodes right now in sequence, and that batching process allows me to really tune into times when I'm feeling great, I've got my words, and I can actually string some sentences together effectively.
When I get in the flow of creation, I've got processes that I can use to create a bunch of content.
In this recording session alone, I've recorded three video promos for a freebie that I'm running, this is the third podcast episode that I've put together, and I've also recorded a Facebook Live and had a conversation with my team about a few different things.
It's no coincidence that I've just been through a couple of days where I've been very customer-focused and very much speaking with my ideal clients. The cogs are ticking and I'm able to put some dots together - I've got some big things that I want to say to my audience.
I'm really in service mode right now, so I'm batching up a bunch of content at the same time.
If you are interested in finding out more about batching, getting that content out on a consistent basis and doing it in a really joyful way, I also want to recommend that you go and check out podcast episode 241: The joy of consistent and strategic content with Claire Riley.
Claire Riley is really the batching queen, so I would highly recommend that you check out that episode here: tashcorbin.com/241
Whether that be:
That external support makes a big difference to whether or not you embrace done over perfection and whether you embrace consistency over waiting for the perfect storm.
Having some form of external support is a really powerful way to ensure that you do nail that consistency.
In closing, I just want to tell you to stop running around looking for shiny things to fix your business, get you more reach, get you in front of new audiences and convert more effectively if you haven't yet nailed consistency of content.
Consistency of content underpins all the other shiny marketing strategies you could possibly find on the internet, so make sure you've got that very important foundation sorted first.
If you would like to understand how content and your content strategy fits in with getting your business off the ground (particularly in the early stages of online marketing), I have a great free resource for you.
It looks at all the key pieces that you need to get sorted in order to get your business creating consistent, predictable and juicy income.
If you're not yet bringing in an income that really feels like you've hit your baseline consistently, then this is going to be a great training for you.
You can find this FREE training here: tashcorbin.com/fasttrack
As always with every episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, if you have any lightbulb moments from this episode or follow up questions, make sure you come over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs community and share using #podcastaha and the episode number (244).
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/243
In this Q&A episode, I'm answering Jodie's question about how often I set myself a fast money target.
I also have a bit of an out of the box freebie for you today as well so make sure you go and check this one out.
Today's question comes from the fabulous Jodie Thornton. You can find out more about Jodie at jodiethornton.com.
She is a parent coach so make sure you go and check her out.
Jodie asks a brilliant question, which is:
"Hi Tash! How often do you set a fast money target?"
This is a really great question. Even though it's going be a pretty quick episode, there are some great little lessons in this one.
For those of you who are in my audience and have been around for a little while, you probably are familiar with this.
I do have a Fast Money training, and I also have a Fast Money Challenge that I run from time to time that's focused on setting and achieving a stretch income goal in a really short period of time.
I call it Fast Money (it's named after the fast money round on Sale of the Century).
My fast money goals are usually a seven to a ten-day goal. I don't always have a fast money target going at all times at this stage in my business, however, I always have a quarterly income goal, or sometimes I'll set it for a little bit longer (maybe it's a 100-day income goal).
I love setting a goal for the first 100 days of the year, so I'll have a 100-day income goal usually at the start of most years.
I would define a fast money goal as something where I'm going for a stretch income goal - maybe it's seven, ten or even fourteen days.
Due to fast money being a short term goal, I only ever really set a fast money goal these days when I'm doing a launch. Maybe I have a launch and in the six days of the cart being open, I set myself a big stretch income goal for what I'm going to bring in at that point in time.
I recently needed to purchase some things - a new phone, Apple Watch and a few other tech tools and toys - so I decided that I was going to go and manifest the money for those in three days.
The other thing that I use fast money goals for these days is when I see in my cash flow projections that cash flow might be a little bit tight in the coming months, so I do a fast money goal in a short period of time to manifest that income to get me through that poor cash flow period.
That definitely has been something that I've only brought into my business recently. I never used to do cash flow projections, but now that I do those more consistently and I can see what's coming up, I have been doing those fast money targets for myself once every couple of months. It makes it easy for me to see that if I only get my predicted income in for the month, then I may be a bit tight on cash flow and I'd rather have a nice buffer for myself so I end up doing a fast money challenge.
However, all of that being said, when I was in start-up, I actually did a fast money target every single week.
I would stretch out my goal a little further, I would have a look at what's coming up for the week and what would be a nice juicy stretch for me, and I would set myself a fast money challenge and I would go for it.
Every Sunday morning I'd do a review of the past seven days and then I'd set myself up for the next seven days.
For those people who are interested in my answer to this question because of where they're at in their business and using that to guide with how often they set themselves a fast money target, what I would say is set it for as often as you want.
When I'd set myself a fast money target and stay focused on it for those seven days, my income was always better - whether that be during the seven days or in the following seven days.
For me when I first started my business, that was actually me practising and refining my own manifesting strategy. That's why I did it so consistently.
I might take a week off every now and again or sometimes what I would do is I would start on a Sunday and end on the Saturday, and then the following week, I would just take three or four days off and start on the Wednesday and then do a 10 day fast money target.
It's really up to you.
For me, I'm the kind of person who works really well when I have short term goals, I have deadlines, and I have a process to follow.
As my business started to grow and my income became a little bit more predictable, I would create my fast money target for the first week of every month.
If I wasn't close to my monthly income goal at the end of the month, I might do a fast money target than as well.
There are lots of opportunities to do fast money targets for yourself and set yourself that short term stretch goal and go for it.
I would say to just pay attention to how it makes you feel, whether it really lights you up, and how well it works for you.
Also for me, the big thing that I got out of doing those fast money challenges back to back was that it really showed me how to notice the difference between being tired and needing to take a break from stretching myself, and resisting the mindset work and actions that I knew would grow my business.
I was constantly checking in with myself and asking: Is this my resistance, limiting beliefs and mindset blocks coming up? Or is this just me actually feeling a bit tired, not wanting to go for a stretch this week, and wanting to allow myself a beautiful rest week?
A little bonus tip here, and what really worked for me, was that I recognised when I started doing fast money targets very consistently, that in the week I was due to be menstruating, that was not a great time for me to go for a fast money target.
Some of the actions that I wanted to take to get out there and start bringing in that money weren't necessarily aligned with where I was at in my cycle.
I learned about that by doing both Flow Freedom and Your Business Your Flow with Stasha Washburn.
If you don't follow Stasha, I highly recommend her. You can also find her on Facebook HERE.
That was definitely incredible for me and was a big part of me learning: Is this tiredness because it's not the right time? Or is this the right time but I'm in resistance because I actually don't want it to work? Or I don't want to try and then fail and have made people see me publicly fail? Is there some other mindset block coming up for me here?
Nowadays, if I'm going to do one of those short term income targets, the first thing that I check is where I'm going to be in my cycle.
I also make sure to check: What is coming up for me right now in terms of the different phases (because we have those four phases that you need to learn more about from Stasha)?
That has been instrumental in me really learning how to ride along with the ebbs and flows of my energy, and tying that into how I schedule myself and whether I'm in stretch mode or contemplation mode in my business as well.
Jodie I hope that I've answered your question.
If you are interested in finding out more about setting and achieving short term income goals, I do actually have a free training.
I highly recommend that you go and check that out here: tashcorbin.com/fastmoney
If you've been listening along to this podcast episode and you'd like to ask me a question, make sure you go to tashcorbin.com/question, pop your question in there and I'll make sure to answer it on the podcast and give you a shoutout.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
As always, make sure to come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, share any aha's or questions you have using #podcastaha and the episode number (243) and I'll see you over there.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/242
In today's episode, I'm going to share with you sales conversations that do NOT feel gross.
I know for a lot of people, they either try to avoid sales conversations or they do sales conversations but they absolutely hate it.
If that is you, I want you to pay attention to this episode. If you LOVE sales conversations, I still want you to read along because I'm going to help you make them even more effective and successful for you.
The number one thing we need to get clear before I jump into improving your sales conversations, is the agreement that sales conversations are absolutely amazing.
They are awesome for you, they are awesome for your ideal clients, and they are awesome for your business.
Why is it that we avoid sales conversations or don't like them?
In most cases, it's because we don't know how to do sales conversations effectively, or the way that we are doing sales conversations just feels yucky and so therefore we try to avoid them.
Why do I believe sales conversations are amazing?
They create so much connection. You're having a one to one conversation with someone about what they want, what they need, what's getting in their way, and how YOU might be able to help them achieve their goals.
Therefore it's one of the most high conversion activities you can do in your business, and it gives you really deep insight into what your audience is thinking, feeling and wanting in your area of expertise.
This is such an amazing insight to assist you in getting your messaging clear, in making sure that you are speaking to the right outcomes with your value proposition, in refining and changing up your packages, and looking at your pricing structure - there are so many benefits to doing consistent and regular sales conversations.
Not only that, you get a chance to practise speaking about your work to new and different people, and you get an opportunity to refine your messaging in your broadcast marketing activities because you're keeping up to date with what your audience is wanting and looking for from you.
We resist those marketing and sales conversations because we don't have a way of doing sales conversations that feels great, or we've got some mindset blocks about being salesy, upsetting someone or being pushy or aggressive with them.
That is why I see so many women trying to avoid sales conversations, and instead making sales only via broadcast methods such as sending emails, sending someone to a sales page, jumping straight into doing group programs instead of selling one to one packages, selling via their social media and making offers into Facebook groups. But they never actually have great quality sales conversations with potential leads.
I learned sales conversations the wrong way.
When I first started my business, I had two coaches that I had worked with who taught me how to do sales conversations. Both of them took that sales conversation training straight out of the bro-marketing book - very aggressive, very manipulative types of sales conversations.
Because of the way that I learned sales conversations, I tried to avoid them as well. I absolutely hated doing them.
Not only did I try to avoid them and hate them when I did them, I also experienced physical symptoms when I actually had some sales conversations.
When I was doing sales conversations, I would get what I called The Rash of Despair. I'd have this rash that would creep up out of my cleavage, take over my neck and then envelop my face. Many times people would ending up asking me if I was okay because I had turned bright red, and I would just brush it off saying that it was hot, but really it was because I was so uncomfortable with the process that I was taking people through.
That led to me going through a significant period of time where I didn't really do sales conversations at all, unless I was doing the upsell at the end of a single session with people.
Even then when I did the upsell at the end of the single session, I mostly made sales by people asking me how we could keep working together and me very briefly stating what the next package was and how much it was.
I'm very lucky, however, that about four or five months into the growth of my business, I realised that sales conversations would be so valuable for me in really refining my messaging and copy because I was struggling to understand how to speak about the value proposition of my work in a way that really converted effectively and at scale.
I decided to reconcile my differences that I had with sales conversations, but also learn how to structure them and do them MY way in a way that felt comfortable for me.
At that point, I threw out the sales conversation structure that I had been taught, and instead, I developed a sales conversation structure that felt really good for me.
I also had a little check-in with myself after every single sales conversation by asking myself:
When you're doing a sales conversation or avoiding a sales conversation, I encourage you to tune into how that feels, and why it feels that way.
I want you to really pay attention to that.
You might find that it comes down to one of three S's:
1. Skill
It might be that you just don't have good sales skills. Sales skills are a bit of a non-negotiable when it comes to being an entrepreneur and having your own business, so is this an opportunity for you to improve your skills in doing sales conversations?
2. Structure
Perhaps you don't have a structure that feels like it works effectively for you, that guides you and your ideal client through that process so that it feels like you're ticking the boxes that you need to tick along the way, and you're getting to the point where you're pitching and feeling confident and comfortable doing that. Sometimes it's a structure issue.
3. Shady
Is it just a shady practise that you've been taught, and it's not aligned with your values and you don't want to do it? That is totally cool as well.
I'm going to go through these three S's with you and give you some advice on how to address these depending on what the combination is for you.
There are two ways for you to grow your skills in sales conversations.
1. Learn sales skills from people that you trust, and whose sales processes you love
Many women in the Take Off program are in there because they want to learn how to sell the way that I sell.
The way that I sell really resonated for them, it felt very comfortable and empowering, and that's what they want to learn in their business as well.
There are lots and lots of sales mentors out there. The number one piece of advice I would give you is before you sign up to learn selling from any of these people, go through their sales process.
If you are signing up to learn sales conversations with someone, I want you to ask them if you can have a quick chat about working together, and see how they make you feel in that sales process.
Sign up for their newsletter and see the way that they treat you when you are a lead in their business.
You might also like to unsubscribe from their newsletter and see how they treat you when you become someone who's not a lead in their business. I have unsubscribed from some things, and I can tell you, the way that some of their unsubscribe options were worded were absolutely manipulative and really gross. That actually helped me make the decision that I didn't want to stay on that person's list and I wasn't going to go back to them because that was really gross and I didn't like it.
Learn sales skills from people that you trust, and go through their sales process.
Listen to their podcast, get onto their mailing list or follow them on social media and see what happens in that process.
Even just sliding into their DM's or sending them an email and seeing how you are treated will tell you a lot about the types of sales strategies that that person employes, and how they're going to teach you to make sales in your business as well.
2. Practise
You build skills by practising.
You aren't going to jump into doing sales conversations and be brilliant at it from the very start. It's going to take some practise, it's going to take some tweaking and refining and also just learning how to find the words that work for you.
The reason for that is because we have different voices, we speak differently, we have different topic areas that we're helping people with and that is actually a good thing. You want to sink into sales conversations that feel like really comfortable conversations for you, therefore, you're going to need to find your words. That comes with practise.
The first S is building your skills.
I'm going to give you a really simple structure to a sales conversation, and I'm going to explain why each of those elements are part of that sales conversation so that you can see how empowering that structure can be.
For me when I'm doing sales conversations, my basic structure is:
1. Connect with the person
When we start the call, I don't just jump right into whether they're going to buy the program or not, I ask them where in the world they are, and for some information on their business. I want to understand a bit about that person and have some form of connection with them. I just keep that nice and brief, and I make sure in that connection that we have a shared understanding of what we're talking about.
So I'll ask them how they are, I'll talk a bit about my day and whatever's been happening for me, and THEN once we've had a little bit of connecting time, I will clarify exactly what we're there to talk about.
Some people can jump into a sales conversation with you and assume they're going to get a free coaching session first, so I want you to be really clear on the structure of what's going to happen in that call.
You can give people some insight into how it's going to unfold so that everyone's on the same page.
2. Qualify
This is where you learn how to ask really good questions.
This is where a lot of sales conversations let you down, especially when you're learning that aggressive sales strategy where you dial up the pain points.
That strategy isn't about understanding whether it's the right fit for people or not, it's about helping the person to see that it IS the right fit for them regardless.
I approach this very differently. I'm on a journey of discovery with the person that I'm speaking to, I'm not on a journey of discovery of how to sell this thing to that person.
When I'm talking about Take Off with someone, I tell them that I'm not going to pressure them into buying it, and that I just want us to work out whether it's the right fit for them or not.
I genuinely want to do that in that sales conversation because I'm not interested in pitching Take Off to people who it's not going to help.
I'm not interested in selling to people who I don't think are a really good fit for it, and who I'm not going to enjoy the process with, they're not going to enjoy the process, I'm not going to help them get the outcome, and they're not going to get the outcome.
If there are any red flags coming up for me, I want to know about them in the sales conversation.
I think that that's where some of those more masculine, aggressive, pushy sales conversation structures can make it really difficult for us because they do tend to silence the other person and only get them saying yes to you.
That's not how I do these things.
I will often also ask people for a bit of information about their business, what their income level is, what works for them, what they've tried in the past and all of those insights into what's going on for them.
This helps me to get a really clear picture of whether this is just going to be the same as what they've done before, whether there's going to be something different here, and also what stage of business they're at so I can accurately diagnose what their challenge is going to be and how they're going to get the most value for money either from working with me or from getting support from someone else.
3. Confirm
Once we've done that and I feel like we're on the same page and that I really understand what's going on for them, I will have a confirmation section of my sales call.
In that confirmation section, I'm just making sure I've understood accurately what they need and that we're both on the same page.
I will say something like, 'Look, it sounds to me like you've got all of the key pieces in terms of you understanding your niche, you know what your message is, you know what it is that you're offering, but you don't know how to bring all of those together to bring in good quality leads and convert them. Would that be accurate?'
I'm just confirming and giving my expert diagnosis of what I can see, to get insight into whether that diagnosis is accurate.
I will say something like 'It sounds to me like if you could get a little bit of hand-holding and direction on ..., and a step by step process for ..., that you'd really feel like you'd be able to get that momentum, achieve your income goals and be able to do it in the 20 hours a week that you've got limited to in terms of how long you can work in your business. Does that sound like I've got it right?'
I'm saying these things and I'm confirming these things just to make sure that we are on the same page.
Another thing that I might confirm (and it's usually a 50/50 as to whether I feel like this is necessary or not) is what the timeframe is.
For example, if your client has a deadline that they need to be making $4,000 a month before they go on maternity leave, then I will confirm that timeframe as well to make sure we're on the same page.
If we haven't discussed timeframes in the qualifying section, I make sure that I ask that question about timeframes.
I ask the questions:
For example, if someone is looking for a really quick growth trajectory without having any ad spend or team members and they're relying completely on organic strategy, I will confirm that with them and then be upfront with them that I don't think I can help them achieve that goal.
In that confirmation section of the sales conversation, we are being really upfront and honest with each other, we're getting on the same page, and I am confirming the value proposition that this person is looking for, and when they're looking for it by.
It's a really important part of the sales conversation.
4. Offer
Then and only then once I have that confirmation, I know that we're on the same page, we've agreed on some kind of timeframe that would be an appropriate goal that I would be comfortable with and that they would be comfortable with, THEN I make the offer.
My words are, 'Well here's what I would recommend...'
The reason why I make that recommendation is because I have just put all that energy and effort into understanding the person's business, what they're looking for and what they want, if I then say, 'Well, here's my offer', it actually disconnects from what we've just done.
I make it as a recommendation. Sometimes I'm recommending a program, sometimes I'm recommending VIP, and sometimes I'm recommending that they go work with someone else.
I make those recommendations based on my understanding of that person that I've just got from this sales conversation.
That means that when I do make that offer - when I make that recommendation - I'm very confident that it's the right fit for them. This also means that when I ask them how that sounds, I can be confident and quiet and listen to their response without being really attached to them agreeing that that's what they need.
If that recommendation is not the right fit for them, it's not what they are able to afford, it doesn't fit into their timeframes or they don't have the capacity to do that right now, we can talk about that, but at least I've made that recommendation with confidence.
For people who aren't adding structure to their sales conversation, when they do the pitch of what the offer is, they're doing it blind, they haven't done that qualification, they haven't done that confirmation, and so they're just basically saying what their pitch is without really having that shared understanding that the thing they're pitching is going to help them achieve the goal that they want to achieve and address the challenges that they're facing.
I need to be clear and confident that I'm making the right recommendation for that person.
5. Ask
I give them a simple recommendation - I don't go into all the details of all the inclusions and bonuses, I just say what I recommend, why it would be the right fit for them, and what they'll get from it.
Then I ask the question.
Sometimes I will say the price and the investment upfront, sometimes I'll just confirm that they actually want to do it.
I'm constantly checking how everything sounds to them. I go offer, ask, be quiet. Offer, ask, be quiet. Or recommend, ask, be quiet.
6. Close
In the close, I tell them what's going to happen from here.
It's a really simple structure - you've got the connection and introductions, qualify, confirm, offer and ask, and then refine and close.
That simple structure has really helped me, and I've built that based on my experience and practise doing sales conversations that feel really comfy for me.
There are often some things that we are told we need to do in sales conversations that make us feel really gross and that is why we're avoiding them.
1. No means no
If someone says 'No, I can't afford that right now', that is not an opportunity for you to then convince them of the value proposition.
If they don't see the value proposition in it through the qualifying and the confirmation process, and when you present the investment, they tell you that it's out of reach for them even with a payment plan, then no means no.
That's something that's really important to me.
I know that for other sales conversation strategies and teachers, they don't teach that, but for me, that's really important.
It's an issue of consent and rape culture, it's an issue of gaslighting and making women unsure of what their decisions are and making them doubt themselves, so for me, it's very important and it is a matter of principles and values that I respect the no.
2. Do NOT dial-up people's fear or pain in the process
I don't use any sort of manipulation in my sales process.
I will never try to manipulate people into buying my program by presenting them with what the negative consequences of not buying my program would be, and using emotional blackmail to get them into it.
It doesn't actually add to that process or empower people in that process in any way.
3. No pressure tactics or false scarcity
I don't:
If someone says that they need to talk to their partner and they'll get back to me, I'll tell them that that's no problem and ask when they would like me to follow up with them.
I will NOT tell them how I thought they were an independent woman who made empowered financial decisions on their own.
I don't in any way, shape or form, create any pressure, make any false scarcity or make people make a decision there and then on the call, because I don't like doing that, therefore, it's another matter of principle and values from me.
4. Does it feel empowering?
Then the final tactic and the final thing to think about when it comes to the shady stuff is to just ask yourself the question: Is this sales conversation empowering for them? And is this sales conversation empowering for me?
If the answer is no to either of those questions then there's something shady going on, and it's a call for you to look into why that doesn't feel like it's empowering, and how you can change that process.
I know that there's a lot in this podcast episode, but I also know how valuable it is to deal with the skills, structure and shadiness that come up in sales conversations.
If this is something that you realise you haven't actually put any time and energy into learning in terms of growing your business and how to get those foundational skills and learn how to do sales in a way that is empowering for your audience, I would love for you to come and check out my free training.
In this training, I cover the core base-level things you want to take care of in terms of skills, structure and strategy.
Make sure you go and check that out at tashcorbin.com/fasttrack.
I hope that you have found this really valuable.
If you've found it valuable or you've got follow up questions or lightbulb moments you'd like to share, make sure you come on over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let me know you've been listening to podcast episode 242 and let's continue the conversation there.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/241
"It doesn't have to be this hard. Choose the easy way." – Claire Riley
This episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast is a special Spotlight series interview with the one and only Claire Riley.
In this episode, Claire and I get down to business talking about the joy of consistent and strategic content in your business.
Claire also shares her AMAZING freebie, Batchie Content Planner. You can download this epic planner here: bit.ly/BatchieContentPlanner.
It's called Batchie Content Planner. This 90-day blog and social media content planner will help you to plan content that engages, helps and converts.
You can download this FREE quarterly content planner at bit.ly/BatchieContentPlanner.
Make sure you come and share your questions, comments and light-bulb moments over in the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs community using #podcastaha and the episode number (241).
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes in full at tashcorbin.com/240
In today's episode, I'm going to talk about why marketing tactics are NOT your biggest challenge in your business, and how to stop playing at the surface.
If you know me, you'll know that I love me some good questions. I love asking questions on social media, in conversations with people and also on my calls in my group program.
I love asking questions because I love understanding how people are identifying what they need to focus on in their business, what their big challenges are and what they want help with, because that helps me to make sure that my content is really relevant and I'm able to support people with the things that they want help with.
When I ask questions about people's biggest challenge with:
They'll ask me questions about why they aren't able to fill their webinar, whether they should be running a 5-day challenge or a webinar instead, why they're struggling with sales calls and having people saying they can't afford to work with them, not knowing how to price their online call or how to write an offer copy or sales page.
People are saying that their biggest challenge with growing their business is actually part of their marketing tactics.
I would say it is around 9/10 people that I speak to who would identify a marketing tactic as their biggest challenge.
But with all of my experience in the people that I've helped in this online business space, I can tell you hand on heart for most people, that is not actually their biggest challenge.
They are misdiagnosing their challenge as being something to do with their marketing strategy or their marketing tactics, when in actual fact, they've got a foundations issue in their business.
The foundations that I am referring to are your niche, value proposition and messaging, and your offer.
Those things need to be solid before any marketing strategy or tactic is actually going to work.
What do I mean by these foundations?
Having a very specific, very tangible niche allows you to:
The riches are in the niches.
All of these sayings are common and consistent because they're so true.
The broader your messaging needs to be to accommodate for a broad niche, the less likely it is to deeply resonate with your audience.
The broader your niche is, the less specific you are able to get about the tangible, practical day-to-day experiences that let your ideal client know they have a challenge.
When you are talking about your ideal client, if you are using the word 'or', 'slash' or 'and', then chances are you're not being specific enough, and therefore, it doesn't matter how great your ad copy is, if it's not specific and tangible, it's not going to resonate with people.
It doesn't matter how much money you put into ads, if you are trying to get in front of hundreds of thousands of people and your messaging isn't clear because you're not niched enough, then you're going to be wasting money on those ads - you're going to be building an audience that may not actually be ready to buy from you.
We want to make sure that we've got that niche foundation clear, first and foremost.
Once you've got that hyper-specific niche, then you can create deeply resonant messaging, and articulate your value proposition in a way that really resonates with your audience and your ideal clients.
That is what we want our online messaging to do.
Get really clear on your value propositioning and your messaging ecosystem.
Remember: Your message is not one sentence, and your value proposition is not three bullet points.
In the Take Off program, we build a messaging onion. That is how we articulate the value proposition and message across the different audiences in your business in a way that deeply resonates with those audiences.
You want to make sure you get that value proposition and messaging really clear as well.
Do you have something that people are ready, willing and able to buy? Have you proven that by making sales?
I would be making sure that you can actually make a sale of your offers and packages before you apply any marketing tactics or strategies to them.
You can make sales through connected conversations and reaching out to your existing networks before you ever need to use any of those broadcast marketing strategies to get in front of a cold audience.
That means that you are building based on tangible, practical results and things you've proven rather than just your theories alone.
Once you've got those three foundations really solid and really clear by making sales, it's then that we start to look at your broadcast marketing tactics.
The next thing I would say is that most people go straight to very high-level broadcast strategies - they go straight to the surface level stuff.
They look at long reach Facebook ads or guest posts on other people's Facebook pages or on other people's blog posts.
They're trying to get in front of as big an audience as possible, so they look at reach and the surface level strategies when it comes to marketing.
But if you focus on your conversion-based marketing activities first - your high touch, high conversion marketing and highly connected reach - rather than broadcast reach, you're then proving that your niche, value proposition and offers work for a warm audience.
The colder the audience, the more nurturing and warming up you're going to need before you get that conversion.
If you jump straight from making two sales to broadcasting and growing your reach by thousands of people without any nurturing or any way to warm that audience up, you're going to have a lot of reach and very little conversion.
We want to grow your business and your marketing strategy and tactics in a way that doesn't just jump straight to the surface, it builds that proof through making sales and growing your income as you go.
If this sounds like a really novel way of doing business to you and you've never heard me talking about Lean business before or getting that niche right first, I would love for you to come and check out my Nail Your Niche training.
You can register for my free Nail Your Niche training so that you can go through that process of making sure:
If that sounds like it might be a good fit for you, you can find that training here: tashcorbin.com/niche
As always, if you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to give it a review wherever you listen to the podcast.
Please come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group and let's continue the conversation there.
If you've got more questions, want to talk about your niche, want to share a lightbulb moment that came up for you in this podcast episode, just use #podcastaha, let me know you've been listening to episode number 240 and we'll continue the conversation over there.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/239
Today we have a fantastic listener question in relation to growing and converting your podcast audience.
If you've been thinking about having a podcast or you already have one, this is going to be a great episode for you.
Today's listener question comes in from Lilach Saperstein from All About Audiology. You can find out more about her business at allaboutaudiology.com or on Instagram at @allaboutaudiologypodcast.
Lilach'a question is:
"Hi Tash! My podcast has several different listener segments (parents of children with hearing loss, audiologists and related professionals, and students). Episodes include and address different topics, I bring on varied guests, and provide value to all these different kinds of listeners. Do you have any advice on growing the listenership further, and converting listeners to clients? It has been a steady growth and a wonderful journey of connecting with people around the world, primarily on Instagram. For some context, I have 45 episodes with nearly 20,000 total downloads and over 1000 followers on Instagram. Thanks!"
First and foremost, I want to say an epic congratulations for your consistency as well as growing your listenership already with your podcast.
For so many people, their podcast has the first 12 episodes and then it just disappears, so being able to maintain your listenership as well as your consistency with getting your podcast out there is absolutely amazing.
1. Reach - How do you grow the reach of your existing podcast?
2. Conversion - How do you improve the conversion from a listener into a paying client?
I'm going to cover those two issues separately in this Q&A episode.
First, let's talk about reach.
I want to answer this question not just about your specific situation, but also for anyone who has a podcast.
Being consistent and predictable, and having episodes come out on the same day every single week is a really big driver of listenership of a podcast.
If people can't accurately predict when that podcast episode is going to come out, it can really impact on your listenership.
When you have over 30 days without a new podcast episode, that can mean that some people who have been subscribed will automatically either be unsubscribed or asked if they still want to commit to that subscription. You might then find that your automatic downloads, whenever you release a new podcast to your subscribers, will significantly drop because you've had too much of a gap in those podcast episodes coming out.
I've been through this and I've done it several times in my journey as a podcaster, where I've struggled with that consistency and ended up having to rebuild my listenership which is a really big struggle.
Keep that consistency up if you want to make sure that you're consistently scaling the reach of your podcast.
This one is probably where you're going to have some struggles when you have a diverse range of listener segments.
Thankfully, you have a consistent topic and that topic can be very interesting and relevant to all of your listener segments if it's handled effectively.
Say you've got some episodes that are specifically targeted towards:
If you're separating those episodes out and making those episodes not relevant to the other listeners, more often than not, then that may impact on your reach and your listenership.
We want to make sure as much as possible that your episodes have relevance for all of your audience segments, and where they don't have relevance for other audience segments, that you're really upfront about that early on in the podcast episode so that you're not wasting anyone's time.
If someone's subscribed to your podcast or they've stumbled across it and have listened to three or four episodes, but two of them weren't really relevant to them and it took 10 to 15 minutes of listening before they worked out it wasn't relevant to them, then of course, that's going to really hurt in terms of your reach.
Be upfront at the start of the episode about what the topic is, and if it's not necessarily relevant to all audience members, letting them know who it is relevant for can actually be really helpful.
Even though people may not listen to that episode, you have demonstrated that you value their time and they're more likely to move on to other episodes that are relevant to them.
They are some of the core base-level things when it comes to podcasting and increasing your reach of that podcast.
This is what's going to significantly impact your reach, as well and growing your listenership.
You want to make sure that you take responsibility for distributing your podcast.
It's wonderful that those podcast platforms:
Have a think about ways that you can ensure that every episode of your podcast is distributed as far and wide as possible to relevant audiences.
For example, if you do an email newsletter consistently, you want to make sure that you're highlighting certain podcast episodes or the latest podcast episode.
On your social media channels, especially on Instagram, you want to make it easy for people to know that you have a podcast and how they can get to that podcast. Not just saying that you have a podcast generally, but directing them to a specific podcast episode.
When you talk about your podcast episodes, you want to make sure that you're very specific about the value proposition of that podcast episode and who it's for. Being active on Instagram is a great platform for you to make the most of the opportunity that comes with Instagram stories.
Whenever a new episode is available on your podcast, doing Instagram stories to talk about the topic, get people interested in it, and then let them know there's a podcast episode that dives into it further, is going to be really helpful for growing listenership.
If you've got a particular episode that's done very well, make sure that you put it in your social media schedule to consistently bring people back to it because clearly it's something that people have found valuable.
Take responsibility for distribution and re-distribution of podcast episodes because you will see that improves not only your listenership, but also your subscriber rates really quickly.
Other things to remember:
What I would suggest is to not try 12 things all at once.
Just pick one strategy that you're going to focus on, give it three to four weeks, see how it goes in terms of improving your regular download rates for your episodes, and then decide if you're going to keep doing that, or if you're going to let go of it and try something else.
If you decide to keep it, systemise that and get it working at scale before you start bringing in other strategies.
Too often I see people with podcasts who try a distribution strategy and it works, so then they add another distribution strategy which also works, so then they add another one and so on...
But they've never really systemised, outsourced, or scaled that startegy, so what ends up happening is every time they have a podcast episode to release, they end up needing to do 8 to 12 hours of time in actually doing all that distribution, and that's not scalable for you.
We want to make sure that we do it at scale in a systemised way.
Let's now talk about conversion.
Too often, I listen to podcast episodes where it's a really fascinating subject and I absolutely love it, but then the call to action is just to go and check out a random freebies page (or there's no call to action whatsoever).
There's no information on how I can find out more or discuss that with you if this is something I want to work on, or even a way to know how I might be able to work with you.
Make sure on your podcast episodes that you have a clear call to action for anyone who's listening along, finds it fascinating and wants to know how they can dive in further.
For most people, the conversion doesn't come straight from podcasts into paying you - although that is something that can happen, so make sure you give people that option. Generally, it's going to be a conversion from podcast onto your mailing list, mailing list into a lead magnet, and lead magnet into buying something from you.
For my Take Off program for example, I know what the most common journey from podcast to Take Off is. Let's say I do a podcast episode on niching, and then I'll have my Nail Your Niche freebie as the call to action on that podcast. They'll jump into that Nail Your Niche freebie, go through the email sequence - nurturing and getting my regular newsletters - and then when I launch the Take Off program the next time, they'll jump into the webinar or the challenge for that launch, and then they'll convert there in a live lead magnet for a that particular launch.
You want to make sure that you are growing that email list, and you're consistently nurturing them. Then you can let your email list know how they can dive deeper with you, work with you, or jump into a launch if you've got a product or service that you are launching.
The other thing I want to quickly touch on here in relation to conversion is the audience belief system that we have that if we can just get our stuff in front of a bigger audience, then it will automatically mean that we are going to get better results and sales in our business.
How many people (I've definitely had this thought) reading along have had the thought that if you could just get one podcast episode to go viral and have 200,000 people listen to it, then everything will be okay and your business will grow and you'll definitely make sales? Or if only you could just get that one post on social media to be shared by someone famous, then everything would be okay?
Often, when that huge leap in audience does happen, it doesn't translate into more sales, because you haven't identified and taken responsibility for your customer journey - not just through the process of hearing about you and then buying from you in one jump, but also through that nurturing process.
Have you got a really clear nurturing process that people go through that you know works to convert people into paying clients with you? And if you don't, that is something we want to be prioritising so that we can take care of that and make sure the podcast is doing its job.
At the end of the day, the job of your podcast is to grow your reach and audience, but also bring them in on that customer journey.
Thank you so much for this question Lilach, I hope that you have found my answer helpful.
I would recommend looking at:
Focus on those for a consistent period of time and see how they work, and then make a decision about whether you want to stop it or continue it, and whether you're going to bring other strategies into play.
The final note that I want to say about any podcast or any type of strategy in terms of whether it's going to work and whether it's going to reach the right people and convert them into clients, is to make sure that you are really clear on your niche, your value proposition and messaging, and your offer.
Very often we can get caught up in how we can get better reach, thinking that that is what is going to grow our business and get those results.
You need to have confidence and clarity on these three core foundations:
If you don't, then all of the surface level activities that you do in order to grow your audience, grow the reach of your podcasts and get more listeners, is not necessarily going to result in business growth.
If that is something you would like to work on - getting that niche, the value proposition and your offer clear - I'd love to also invite you to come and check out my new Nail Your Niche training.
It is a prerecorded training that you can do at your leisure (and you can also listen to it on double-time so you can get through it nice and quickly).
This will help you look at those foundations of your business and just make sure that you're very clear on, for you Lilach, each niche that you're focusing on, what the value proposition is for them, and then what the offer is that that person is actually looking for and how you express and articulate that in a way that has them saying, 'Yes! That's exactly what I need, how do I sign up?'
If you have found this episode of the podcast particularly helpful and you'd like to continue the conversation, come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha and let me know you've been listening along to episode number 239.
I'd love to hear from you if you are a podcaster or you've been thinking about podcasting:
Do you have a question you'd like me to answer here on the podcast? Go to tashcorbin.com/question, pop your question in there and I will answer your question as well as give you a shoutout and a link back to your channels.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/238
This is not really a marketing topic per se, but running a group of 33,000 women online, I see some things, and this is a conversation that I'd love for us to continue over in the Heart-Centred Soul Driven Entrepreneurs group. It is a pattern and trend that I see happening in lots of different ways and I wanted us to open up this conversation.
A big shout out to Vampire Weekend and their song Oxford Comma for that gorgeous description - dripping with disdain. It's such a powerful and emotive phrase, and I just love it. It's three words put together so perfectly.
Dripping with disdain can be about your industry or your audience, and I thought that this particular podcast episode could be about how by shining a light on some of that disdain that we might have for our industry or our audience, we can start to detox ourselves from the judgement that we might feel towards others.
Let's jump into this episode, it's going to be a bit of a meandering conversation, but I've got eight really powerful examples for you where it might be so helpful to shine a light on where this behaviour - even if it's not outwardly facing, it's just inward thoughts - can show up and how it is actually stopping you from growth in your business.
As you might have picked up from my introduction to this episode, it's not necessarily about fixing something so that your business will grow, or doing a certain thing so that you can get more clients. I do think it's really important for us to pay attention to our thoughts and feelings, especially as they relate to our industry, our audience and potential clients.
For me, that's where the biggest personal development and growth journeys have happened. I know for myself, there are still areas where I can have some pop-up thoughts that aren't necessarily helpful, but I don't ignore them, I pay attention to them.
They show me where I need to be changing my behaviour, showing up more authentically, or sometimes it's highlighting something in my industry or something for my audience that I need to step up, talk about and change.
By ignoring those things, I end up keeping myself small, or just judging quietly and not necessarily having the conversation.
I'm going to start with my points about industry, and then I'm going to talk about audience.
Here are some examples of places, and conversations that I've heard, where people have disdain for their industry.
Have you:
I know that this conversation pops up again and again in the Heart-Centred community and in the Take Off program, and I totally understand where it's coming from, and that some of those concerns that people have are very valid.
I know of coaches who charge $15,000 to teach people how to charge $15,000 to teach people how to charge $15,000...
That is totally a model of business that I've seen.
Has there been any material training or development or mentoring in actually changing people's lives for that $15,000? Or is it just finding more people to charge $15,000 to learn how to charge $15,000? Who knows...
I understand that we can see some of these examples and feel quite judgmental about how that's what the whole industry is in a nutshell and that we're not doing anything different (I've had someone say that to me in a VIP call).
If it is a giant pyramid scheme, we just can't see it and we're contributing to it, then aren't we culpable in this entire scheme and shouldn't we opt out of it?
The first thing I want to say to that is: It's not all of the industry.
I have worked with so many amazing people who have completely changed my life, not just in the way that I grow my business, but also in the way that I serve my clients and in my life outside of my business.
I absolutely love and adore the training, support and development that I have received from most of the people that I've worked with.
a. Realise that it's not all of it.
b. Look at the ways where you have been helped outside of the way that you make money.
Are there things that you have learned? Are there changes that you have made? Do you show up differently as a result of being in this industry, and therefore, could that change be something beyond being part of the cycle of paying a certain amount to charge a certain amount to teach how to charge that amount?
c. See this as an opportunity.
I know for myself that when people want to work with me, they are working with me because they see that I am not just in that pyramid-type model. They see that a lot of my clients don't teach people how to make money. My clients teach people how to look after their health and wellbeing, how to dial up their intuition, how to fengshui their home to improve their relationships, or how to attract their soulmate.
One of the big things for me when I am working with a mentor or coach is to look at whether their clients do exactly what they do, or if their clients work and impact people's lives in other ways.
There is an opportunity for you to differentiate yourself, simply by the fact that you're not part of that pyramid scheme. You can express your value proposition beyond teaching people exactly what you learned about how to sell something that doesn't actually change people's lives.
Whenever I am feeling that it's a giant pyramid scheme and I am judging people for it, in most cases, what it's doing is highlighting for me my fear that maybe I'm in that.
It is just this beautiful reminder to me that I need to be conscious of how I show up online, I need to be conscious of the contribution I'm making to the world, and I want to be 100% confident that my business isn't contributing to a giant pyramid scheme. I ask myself what I need to change, adjust or focus on in order for that to be true.
That's how I deal with it.
This one has particularly come up a lot this year with Black Lives Matter, white privilege, a lot of justification of white privilege, white fragility, and all of those things that have really come to the fore, particularly this year, and seeing industry leaders topple.
I've seen many people who I would have seen as leaders in my industry have a very hard and fast fall because they were unwilling to stop, listen, do the self-reflection, pay attention and acknowledge their own internalised racism, systemic racism, white privilege, and white supremacy. It could be very easy to look at those leaders and think about how they are horrible, or they didn't deal with it so you should opt-out altogether.
What I have also seen, especially this year, is the lifting of amazing voices and the demand at the client level for this to be addressed. People are voting with their wallets.
I have been able to hear from and see so many more amazing black women who run brilliant multimillion-dollar businesses.
I have moved from working with someone who had some problematic responses to Black Lives Matter, and I immediately cancelled my membership in their program and went and joined a different one.
A great example of this and a different way to look at it would if you wanted to sell swimwear and be in the swimwear industry.
The leading brands in your industry do not:
The leaders in the swimwear industry have mostly white, mostly skinny, mostly very tanned and problematic-from-a-sun-safe-perspective models. So you wanted to sell swimwear, but looking at the leaders in your industry, it would be easy to think that to succeed in that industry you have to do that, and you're not willing to so instead you're going to opt-out.
You wouldn't opt-out of that industry, you would stand up for what you want to see in that industry and you would have that inclusivity and that diversity as part of your business model.
That would be a point of difference for you, and that would ultimately end up being an advantage for you. Especially as more and more people are no longer willing to tolerate silence on:
I myself saw that all of the leaders that I could see in my industry were talking about the 4am club. They were talking about hustling, wanting it harder and dialling up people's pain and fear in the sales process, because 'you can totally fix them later when they buy from you'.
I didn't want to do any of that.
But if I had completely opted out of the entire industry because the people that I saw who were leading in that industry had problematic behaviours and beliefs that I didn't agree with, then all of the thousands of women that I've now supported to grow their businesses and market in a way that is completely aligned with their values and doesn't cause the triggering of trauma or dialling up people's pain points in the sales process, all of those thousands of women would have missed out and they'd probably be following the industry leaders and feeling the same as I did seven years ago.
When it comes to looking at your industry, notice where you're feeling that disdain for the leadership, and judgement of the way that other people are behaving. Instead of just expressing that disdain and judgement and doing nothing about it, turn it into something that's actually helpful and useful for your audience.
You will notice that when I talk about the problematic behaviours in terms of sales processes in my business, I don't just throw out disdain and judgement. I instead break it down to 'This specific strategy is not aligned with my values because of this, and this is what it does to people. I'm not willing to do that. So if you aren't willing to do that either, here's what I do. You might like to try to do this way as well'.
You have the opportunity to do that as well.
I've had many conversations, in particular in the last couple of months, where people are saying that they're not going to put anything out online anymore because every time they do, a couple of days later they see someone else putting the same thing up. They don't think it's fair that someone else is having free content written for them so they just won't create any anymore.
I had someone who I was talking to who had created a program that they'd given a specific name to, and then someone else who they saw as a peer came out with an unbuilt program that she started selling with the exact same name - she'd clearly just copied the name and wanted to get in with it first.
There's a lot of that.
On a Facebook Live earlier this year, I talked about a particular product that I was thinking about doing and a URL that I was thinking about buying, and three days after that, someone else bought that URL and put it instantly up for sale for $5,000.
The URL was something very specific to something that I talked about very clearly. It seems like it could be very likely that someone watched that video and went and bought that domain name, but does that mean I'm not going to do anything? Does that mean I just give up and that the entire industry is full of copycats?
Where are you putting your attention if you're constantly looking to find who is copying you?
What I ended up doing was just completely moving in a different direction with a different name for the same concept.
I felt like it ended up being better anyway, so it's no drama.
I could spend my time and attention getting really upset and angry about that, or I could spend my time and attention on building this program.
You can spend your time and attention looking for people who have copied you, or you can block those people and get on with your life. You can accept that there's a lot of coincidence and we all kind of end up sounding the same when we're talking to the same audiences, or you can just focus on your audience instead of focusing on your peers.
It feels as though it's an affront to you, it's an insult, and you make it mean so many different things.
At the end of the day, I have so much compassion for someone who feels that they need to copy my things and my work, because to me it says that that person is really low in self-esteem, and is really struggling to feel confident in their own content, in coming up with their own concepts and in coming up with their own way of talking about things.
If they're constantly resharing or modelling my work in their work, then sure it's not necessarily an insult and it's very flattering, but also it says more about that person than it does about me.
I don't judge someone who copies me, and I don't judge someone who copies someone else.
I understand what it feels like to feel like you desperately need to create something and you have no idea what to say, and how stuck that can feel. If the thing that gets that person unstuck is regurgitating something that you've done, then power to them, let's all help each other. A rising tide lifts all ships.
I'm not saying that you should let everyone copy everyone and that we should all just all regurgitate the same information. There are legal protections, there are ways that you can address it, but at the end of the day, is it even worth doing some of those things?
I had a conversation with someone who said that she has a girl who follows her, who likes every one of her posts, and then a few days later she does a very similar post on her own page.
And I just said to block her. If something upsets you that much, all you need to do is block that person.
But this person didn't want to block her, and every practical solution that I gave her, she made excuses for why she didn't want to that.
Eventually I just got to the point where I told her that the other option is to stop focusing on this copycat and stop checking whether they're copying her.
I think sometimes we prefer to stay in the space of feeling superior or feeling like we're better than someone than actually addressing the challenge that we think we're facing.
That's all I'll say on that one for now, but I do have a whole episode about copycats that you can find here: tashcorbin.com/185-how-to-deal-with-copycats
I think this one can be particularly difficult for people who are new to social media or who struggle with social media.
They say that they don't want to be a part of the noise.
To that I would say, yes, everyone is trying to share their content. We all want to speak to our audiences, but at the end of the day, your audience is going to resonate with your message.
Just because you might feel like it's a busy space to be speaking into, doesn't mean that people aren't sitting there waiting to hear from you.
I know for myself, there have been several times where I felt like no one was talking about the thing I needed people to be talking about on social media. Even when I googled it, I couldn't find anything. Then when I finally found someone who was having that conversation, I was so excited because I really wanted to learn that stuff.
The noise of the internet didn't get in the way, it was just that no one was having that conversation as far as I could find.
I understand the fear that you're just contributing to the noise of the internet, but think about your content and your posts as an oasis for your ideal client.
I've got a great example, of when I went to this amazing market over the weekend and there were all of these stalls (it's been a bit quiet on the market's front because of COVID).
I love just browsing when I go to markets, and I don't need to have conversations with every single person. But in this row of market stalls, many of the stallholders were standing in front of their market stall, and as I walked through this section, I was assaulted by noise and people talking at me trying to get me to come to their stall.
There was this beautiful lady who would have been at least in her sixties, and she had these beautiful handcrafted beads, buttons, jewellery and decorative things, and she was just sitting there quietly behind her stall, and I just naturally made a beeline to her stall.
I was looking at her things while she just sat there quietly and eventually we started talking about why she started creating these things, and we had this amazing conversation. And she wasn't loud.
You can just be this beautiful oasis of really useful information for your audience - you can be an oasis of calm confidence.
It was the calmly and quietly confident people at that market that I spent the most time engaged with because I didn't want to be yelled at by mostly dudes. I didn't want to know that his beef jerky was the best beef jerky in all of Southland, I didn't need to know how many different flavours of bath bombs that other guy had. Honestly, I didn't need them yelling at me. It was the quiet, calm, confident stallholders that didn't need to get out and pitch to me in desperation that I was really drawn to.
You can show up on the internet in that way as well, but you still need to show up.
Instead of being worried or judgmental about everyone yelling over everyone and the internet being really noisy, work out how you can show up in a way that reflects what you want to show up as, how you want to be seen, and how you want to contribute to what's on the internet.
They are the four big judgments I see of the industries that we might belong to.
1. It's a pyramid scheme
2. Leadership
3. Copycats
4. The internet's already too noisy
The other side of this conversation is where I see disdain for people's audience...
This one I really don't get, but I see it come up often.
I have an example from the Heart-Centred community, and this was many, many moons ago. I don't want to get into who it was or anything like that, but it was such a great example for me of not seeing the opportunity with your audience.
Every three or four months, I used to do a post on in the Heart-Centred group asking people what their astrology sign was and what their favourite thing was about being that sign.
There was someone who was a very experienced astrologer who saw this post as being particularly problematic.
There was one time where 700 people had commented on this post, and all the Leo's were teaming up with each other and bonding over being the same sign and sharing what they love about it. All these people were having these amazing conversations - it was one of the most beautiful posts that I've ever done in the group.
One time it really took off and there were all of these comments, and this very experienced astrologer saw people making assumptions about their sign or talking about their astrology in ways that she, as an experienced astrologer for multiple decades, could see were wrong.
Not only did she comment on the post saying that the post was a complete sham, a waste of time, no one knew what they were talking about and that I had posed the question wrong, she also reached out to me and told me to take the post down because it was so problematic and people shouldn't be talking about their astrological signs if they weren't actually informed about what it meant.
Some astrologers had put comments up saying that if someone didn't know what their sign was about then they would happily explain it to them. We had some astrologers adding extra things and adding statements - the astrologers were having a field day and everyone was having a great conversation. I loved it.
Then this person went through and commented and told everyone why they were wrong.
You could choose to see that this conversation about astrology was an affront - which is how she chose to see it - or you could see that this conversation about astrology was an opportunity.
The only difference as to whether you see it as an affront or whether you see it as an opportunity is your perspective.
Not only did I not take that post down (because I loved the conversation that was happening), but whenever that post came up again as a suggestion in my content planning for the group, I haven't done it. I haven't put that post up there the last three times it was suggested.
If this person had seen it as an opportunity and engaged in a really beautiful way without the disdain and without the judgement for their audience (because 90% of people on that post were their ideal client - they were semi-informed about astrology but loved talking about it), then that would have been an amazing opportunity.
Instead of seeing it as an opportunity, they saw it as an affront, shut the conversation down, upset a lot of people in the comments, and now hasn't had the opportunity for that conversation to be reinvigorated in the group since.
That person could have simply seen it as an opportunity, given some clarification about how there's more to it than that and that if anyone wanted to know what it meant for them and their busines, she would love for them to get in touch.
It is such a shame that that was a missed opportunity.
I know that this is a really extreme example, but I see it pop up all the time, where someone asks a question and they're basically screaming at you that they are your ideal client because they don't quite understand how to ask the question properly, and instead of being met with love and compassion and understanding, they are met with judgement and disdain, and completely put off the whole idea.
This happened to me many years ago when I joined a vegan group. I asked a few questions about veganism, and I was basically told that by asking that question, I was telling them that I'm not a proper vegan and so they wanted me to go away. They didn't say it in a nice tone at all, and it was so bizarre to me because it was full of vegan entrepreneurs who could have helped me with understanding some things about veganism.
I see this come up over and over again, people judging and having disdain for their audience asking questions that indicate they're probably ripe to have a conversation with you about this. They might actually either be really ready to work with you, or just before the tipping point of being ready to work with you.
I just wanted to bring that one up because I think that it can be easiest for us to jump to conclusions about why someone's asked a question or what they're saying or why they're saying it.
But at the end of the day, are you looking at that audience conversation as an affront or as an opportunity?
There are so many people complaining that their ideal clients won't invest in sessions with them but they will happily throw money down the toilet for the outcome from someone else.
It is so interesting to me that that is met with frustration, because that says to you all that you need to know for your messaging and marketing.
There is something about the other thing that makes it look like it's the right answer for those people. They're willing to invest in that, and when you share your product or service which you think solves the problem even better, they don't buy it.
That's a messaging issue. The key to resolving that messaging issue is in paying attention to and getting curious about where people are investing their money instead.
If you are getting frustrated or judgmental of your audience because they're spending money in the wrong spaces, again, instead of seeing that as insulting, see it as an opportunity for you to really nail your value proposition and address the messaging issue that means they're putting their money into something else other than the work that you are offering.
This one's a really interesting one because I see it pop up in a range of different ways.
I had a friend in a mastermind who ran a free challenge. There were all these people in her pop up group for her free challenge, and when the challenge finished, people were saying that since the group was closing, they should all make their own group and continue to support and help each other.
This person was like "How very dare they".
"How dare they think that they can go off and work on this without me when I have put all of my time and energy into doing this with them in this free challenge. If they wanted extra support and community, they could just buy my program and they would get everything that they need. But instead, they're going to go off and create their own splinter cell of people working on this together for free. How dare they."
It pops up with people who are working with someone, talking to each other, and forming networks with each other.
I actually did a program once where we weren't allowed to talk to the other participants, and when a couple of people got busted who knew each other outside of the work that they've done together, it was like a "how dare you" and they got booted out.
Again, that judgement or that disdain for them was an opportunity. Clearly people want to keep working with each other, and they want to keep talking to each other. They want to keep working on this thing, they feel like there's more for them to do but the group program or whatever is on offer is not the thing for them - they want something else.
It's totally okay if you want to set the boundaries and say that there can't be any splinter groups - that's your group, your rules, your program, your rules, your business, your rules - but don't judge people simply because they want to keep having that conversation.
If you can facilitate that conversation and keep them in your community to have that conversation then great. But if you're not interested in facilitating that conversation, then they're going to go and have that conversation elsewhere. That's totally legit of them to want to do that.
That's a really interesting one, and for me, it always creates this sense of asking myself how I can meet those needs without changing my boundaries.
If you find yourself feeling like "how dare they" about your audience or your clients as well, just pay attention to that one.
"If they can't see how valuable my work is, then I'm not there for them." Or "If they can't prioritise investing in working with me, then I'm not interested in working with them, I don't want to help these people."
I see this particularly in sales conversations:
"If they're not a quick decision maker and they're not willing to pay even the deposit straight away, then I don't want to work with them because they're not a quick decision maker."
"If they aren't willing to invest $6,000 in my program without talking to their partner, then they're not the kind of person that I want to work with because they're not independent."
To this I always say that you just don't know what's going on for other people. How can you know? And is that really how you want to show up in the world?
I don't see this as much in the Heart-Centred community, but I do see this in the online business world and particularly in places where those hardcore pressure sales tactics are used.
"I don't even want them to be in my audience". This one I see a lot with email marketing, "If they're not willing to put up with 17 emails for me in a week when I'm launching something, then they can just F right off" - I see that a lot.
If someone doesn't want to receive 17 emails from you in a week and that makes them want to unsubscribe from your list, is it actually a they-have-to-put-up-with-it-or-else kind of scenario?
Someone that I see who does this really well is Denise Duffield-Thomas when she's doing an affiliate launch for a particular program. At the start of that affiliate launch, and in every other email that she sends about that affiliate launch, there's an option of unsubscribing from that launch if they don't want to hear about that program.
That's a really beautiful thing to be able to do without telling someone that they have to receive 17 emails about a launch or else they can just go away and that it's their problem.
For your audience as well, sometimes they can't see the value of what you are offering. It's not their job to find it - it is not their job to go on a treasure hunt and try and work out whether your product is the right fit for them or not.
You have a shared responsibility.
They need to show up and read some emails, or they need to show up and watch some videos, but you also need to make sure you're taking responsibility for providing enough information in that process that they can make that decision without having to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to find the information that they need.
Similarly, with the if-they-can't-decide-in-24-hours type thing, you don't know what other people are going through.
Even I don't invest in things more than $500 without talking about it with David. The reason why I do that is because we are saving for a house right now, and we have some big priorities for our money. We have some really big financial goals that we're going for.
The process of talking it out with him is really helpful for me as an extrovert, to get really clear on:
I also know I'm very susceptible to NLP in the sales process, and all of the trickery and tactics that make me end up having really big buyer's remorse, so I have a rule with myself that if I'm going to invest in anything in my business, I have to sleep on it for 48 hours.
That's just the rule.
To say, "Well I don't care if you have that rule, if you don't buy from me immediately, then you're not my kind of person", that is dripping with disdain. It's full of judgement.
Just because they have a different process of assessing whether something is the right fit for them, doesn't mean that they don't deserve to be helped.
That's a really big one for me. I think that in the online business world, there can be a tendency to be very dismissive of people who aren't excited and quick to jump in and willing to take everything that you say at face value and immediately trusting of you.
To me, that's actually a really great quality that I love in my audience.
I love that people take time to consider whether they're going to work with me. I love that people want to talk about it with their partners first because they're going to go fully into it if they do join. And I love giving people time and space to sleep on it, because I love getting time and space to sleep on it myself.
That's one where I've seen a tendency for this judgement and this disdain to creep in. If that's coming up for you, it's something to consider.
1. Getting frustrated with your audience and missing opportunities
2. "My audience will waste money on A, B and C when all they need is just a few sessions with me"
3. "How dare they"
4. "If they can't see what they're doing then that's their fault"
With all of these things that we've talked about in this very long episode of the podcast (and thank you for sticking with me if you're still here), my goal is not to tell you not to feel them, think them or say them (some of them please don't say), but that's not the goal of this podcast episode.
For me, the biggest shifts that happen are when I pay attention to my thoughts, and I pay attention to the way that I'm contributing to the conversation in my industry.
Think about all of these things we've talked about today:
When you pay attention to how you think about these things and your contribution to your industry in this space and to the conversations about these things, that can shine a light on why we feel this way.
We get to make a conscious decision about whether we want to continue thinking that way, whether we want to continue behaving that way, and whether we want to continue showing up and contributing to the conversation in that way.
I hope that you found it valuable, and as I said at the start of the episode, I want this to be a conversation.
Please come on over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, and tell me that you've been reading episode number 238.
I'd love to know:
I would love for this to be a group conversation because I think there's so much that we can learn from these experiences, as well as so much that we can change about what we see online that we don't agree with.
I know that the Heart-Centred community is a beautiful incubator of new types of thinking for online business. It is a community with new ways of showing up much more feminine, connected, vulnerable, open, and implementing integrity-driven practises in the online business world.
Come on over to Heart-Centred group and let's continue the conversation.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/237
Today I'm answering one of your listener questions, and this question comes from the fabulous Justine.
We're going to be talking about what to do when people say they cannot afford to work with you, and addressing the value proposition of your work.
Super juicy topic, amazing quality question.
Today's listener question comes from the fabulous Justine Dean. You can find out more about her at justinedean.com or on Instagram at @justinedeanofficial.
Justine writes in and says:
"Tash, what do I do when people say they love what I'm writing and they need what I do, but they cannot afford it? I'm guessing my value proposition isn't clear?"
This is such a great conversation for us to have, and thank you so much for writing in with your question.
Quick note: If you also have a question you'd like me to answer here on the podcast (and I'll give you a shout out as well), then just go to tashcorbin.com/question, pop your question in there and all of your details, and I'll answer your question on a future episode.
1. What to do when people say they cannot afford to work with you
2. Looking at your value proposition
I've got three areas that I want us to explore in answering this question.
If you are having a conversation with someone, and they love what you're writing about and your work, but then you start talking about how you can work together and they say that it sounds great but they can't afford it, first of all, always respect that 'no' when you get it, but also make sure that you don't pitch until you know it is a good fit and you have clarified the value proposition.
In the sales call process, I'm not starting the process by straight-up saying how much it is to work with me. I am starting the conversation by clarifying and qualifying: Is this what the person actually wants?
In the qualifying process, I ask lots of questions about:
Then before I go into any pitching, I use a confirmation statement.
I will say something like 'It sounds to me that if we could do ..., then that would address ...', or 'What I'm hearing you say is if we could do ..., then you would feel .... Have I got that right?'
For you Justine (Justine is a relationship specialist), you might say 'It sounds to me like if we could address all of the baggage and the stuff that you feel like you're carrying, then you would feel more confident to step back into the dating circles. Have a got that right?' Just get really clear and specific about what they are needing.
By doing that qualifying - asking the questions and finding out what the priority is for the person individually - and then making that statement of confirmation and making sure that you're both on the same page before you prescribe what you think the solution would be for them and whether that is working with you or not, you've already confirmed the value proposition.
The value proposition isn't just more stuff. So many people think that they improve the value of their products and services by adding more sessions, more bonuses, extra access to them, unlimited voxer support or unlimited email support in order to try and improve the value proposition.
But ultimately, the value of your work isn't just the process, it's also linked to the outcome.
What we want to make sure we're doing is confirming for your audience the value proposition of the before and after that you are facilitating.
This brings me to the second part of what I want to talk about, and that is really looking at your sales process and whether it's giving you the insight and information that you need to really scale and grow your business.
We can work on our messaging, value proposition, how we sell our products and services, our packaging on a broadcast level, (ie. putting it up on social media, talking about it consistently, sharing it with your audience, posting offers into groups or on your social media page, you can post great content that has a call to action to talk to you about whether you should be working together or not), but at the end of the day, if you're getting mostly crickets and people commenting saying that it sounds really great but they can't afford it right now, then you're not actually confirming or qualifying:
One of the things that I'd really recommend for anyone who's experiencing lots of comments saying that it's great but they can't afford it, is to actually set a goal for yourself to have as many conversations with people who might be your ideal clients as possible.
The more of those conversations you have, the more opportunity you have to qualify, practise that confirmation statement and really confirm and understand how your ideal client expresses the value that they are looking for in terms of before and after.
One of the things I want to say here is that even for myself, as I am scaling beyond the half-a-million-dollar mark in my business and I'm now having six-figure launches of my group program, I still have lots of sales conversations.
The reason why I continue to do that is not just because it massively improves my conversion rates, but also because it gives me really beautiful and powerful insight into the value proposition that my audience is looking for, and how to articulate and express that from multiple angles.
Even in the last launch of the Take Off program (which was not quite six figures - it was $99,000), out of the 45 people who joined the Take Off program, I had email conversations with about 20 people, and I had 15-minute chats with about 6 or 7 of those people as well.
I don't see that as a chore because I have to put more work into making that sale, I see that as an opportunity to find out what didn't hit the nail on the head with my value proposition for this person. Of course I want to make the sale if it's the right fit for this person, but I love to talk with them and find out what's missing in my messaging and what their concern is.
When you're working on your value proposition, you really want to make sure that you're having as many conversations as possible. It is through the conversation that you really clarify that value proposition - not through throwing spaghetti at the wall with messaging.
The other thing I want to say with value proposition is, as I said before, it's not about having more things in order to improve the value proposition, it's actually to improve the priority level that this person places on that outcome. The way that you do that is not by telling someone that this should be a bigger priority for them.
A great example of that would be if you worked in the health and wellbeing space.
I see this all the time. I understand you're really passionate about health and wellbeing, but when you just keep yelling at the internet that people should prioritise their health and wellbeing, you're not actually connecting with your ideal client where they are, and you're also not connecting to their priorities.
If they put their health and wellbeing at the bottom of the priority list all of the time, it's going to be really difficult for you to shift those priorities simply through broadcast marketing and content.
For you Justine, if getting back into the dating space and having a great experience of dating could link to your ideal client's current priority (which might be to have a really enjoyable lifestyle and travel a lot), then you're going to help improve the value proposition of that outcome that you are offering to people.
The other thing I love is for a lot of people when they're going through relationship work or getting themselves ready for dating or getting back into the dating space, it's a real journey of self-development and growth, and often, it's an opportunity to practise manifesting what they want in every area of their life.
I know that there are relationship coaches out there who link:
By linking those things together and actually showing and demonstrating that by addressing one certain thing, you're also going to address this other thing, it actually improves the priority and therefore value proposition of working with you.
For different people, the link between the work that they do in terms of dating and relationships and another area of their life is going to be quite different.
That is why I absolutely adore having conversations with people.
When I'm talking to people about making more money in their business, I don't just talk about making more money in their business for the sake of making more money in their business.
I ask people:
Why do you want to make more money in your business?
What would this mean to you?
How would that impact other areas of your life?
What's your priority other than making money?
If someone's talking about the fact that they could have more time with their children and they can have that more spacious lifestyle, I'm always sure to talk about that in my confirmation statement. I would say something like, 'It sounds to me, if we could get you hitting that $10,000 a month mark without having to do more than the 25 hours a week that you're doing right now, then that's not just going to help with the growth of your business, it's also going to allow you to have the lifestyle and the time with your children that's really important to you. Am I getting this right?'
Whilst we can make sweeping generalisations and make statements about what we think is going to be the priority for our ideal clients, that is most powerfully linked in a one-to-one sales conversation.
There are definitely lots of conversations to practise when it comes to value proposition.
This is a really out there point, but I think this is a really important one when it comes to value proposition and particularly having lots of people following you saying how lovely your work sounds but it's not a priority for them right now.
I know for a lot of people when it comes to building and growing their business on broadcast channels, and wanting to get those sales, we can start to feel like to improve our value proposition, we need to look more expensive, valuable and professional.
This can actually veer you in the wrong direction when it comes to getting that connection and conversion in your business.
If you are someone who feels like they always have to use the same six perfect pictures in their posts on social media, and you're constantly doing pictures with words over them, and it always looks like you're writing ads, then that can actually be part of the disconnect for people (and I don't necessarily think this is you, Justine, but I just wanted to cover on this for everyone reading).
If you look all polished and professional and perfect, then it can imply to people (consciously or subconsciously), that in order for them to get the same outcome, they also need to be perfect, professional and polished.
I know for you, Justine, that's not what your core message is actually about. Your core message is about that beautiful journey of self-exploration and letting go of some of that baggage whilst still being human in the process.
We need to give our audience permission to be human. We need to give our audience the confidence to believe that even if they don't do it correctly, they'll still move closer to their goal. Even if they don't show up perfectly, they're still able to access the transformation that you facilitate.
In our marketing and messaging, and particularly when we're trying to encourage people to go over that tipping point of having a conversation with us and investing in getting this outcome, we need to make people feel like they can get that outcome and that it's totally accessible to them. They don't need to have some kind of magic formula or show up perfectly or be hyper-professional or any of those things in order to be able to get that outcome.
A little exercise that I would recommend that you do is:
I want you to go and look at the last 20 posts on your Facebook page, and I want you to assess how many of those posts invite people to connect and have a conversation with you in an unthreatening, no strings attached kind of way.
It's all well and good to say 'obligation-free chat', but that sounds so sales, that people gloss over the fact that it's obligation-free.
I want you to start looking at when you're doing your call to action, is it really conversational, connecting and unintimidating? Or is it really formal?
Have a look at that call to action. I want to know how many times you've had a call to action, and how conversational that call to action is on your Facebook page.
I also want you to have a look and see, when you look at this from an objective perspective, does your Facebook page look polished and manicured, and like you've got a series of ads (ads for your free content, ad-style tips, ads for your products and services, ads for your freebie)? Does it look like a sequence of ads? Or does it look like an engaging conversational, let's-all-be-human kind of space?
If you can improve that sense of connection, engagement and that feeling of being allowed to make mistakes on your social media platforms - not just your page but also when you're posting in communities - then you're going to make that resistance point to jumping in and working with you a little easier for people to overcome, because they don't have a perception that they need to have their ducks in a row before they even come to work with you.
They don't need to do the groundwork or do all the practise work before they're allowed to have this outcome and work with you as well.
Hopefully that's been really helpful for you Justine and everyone else reading along as well.
I would love to know what you think about qualifying in the sales process, dealing with people saying that they can't afford it, and also that value proposition and dialling up that value proposition for your audience.
Come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let me know you've been listening to episode number 237 and let's continue the conversation over there.
I also want to encourage you if you have a question for me, go on over to tashcorbin.com/question, pop your details in there and ask me your question.
I would love to answer your question here on the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/236
In today's episode, I'm going to share my 5-minute post-call habit, and how this habit grows my business.
It's a really simple thing you can do that escalates and elevates your business results quickly.
We know as entrepreneurs that content is really powerful in:
We also know that messaging is one of the critical foundations that allows us to be deeply resonant in our posting and our presence online, helps us to connect to our ideal client and helps them understand our value proposition.
Messaging is such a big part of business because it covers so many different elements of what goes into our business model.
Our messaging shows up in our posts on social media, in our deeper content, on our sales pages and websites, and in our conversations that we have with our audiences.
Knowing that content is powerful and messaging is so critical to business growth and success, every group call that I facilitate and every VIP client call that I have is a goldmine.
Every single time I run a group call, every single time I run a VIP one-to-one call with anyone in my business, I take 5-minutes after that call. In that 5-minute post-call habit, I take that 5-minutes to note down three key things.
Whether the call was a large group coaching call for the Take Off program, or a very intimate one-to-one coaching client call, I take note of what challenges were brought to me on that call.
With the bigger group calls in the Take Off program, I'd probably note down three or four major challenges that were brought to me. In a VIP call, I'd note down one or two of the major challenges that were brought forward to me that someone wanted me to fix for them.
For your business, with your clients, your messaging, and your content, if you are working with a perfect ideal client and they come to a session with you and present you with the problem that they need you to fix, imagine how powerful that content is to then go out and find more people just like that one.
But how many of us jump from client session to client session, from call to call, and don't ever stop and take note of the exact thing that our ideal clients are asking us for when they have the opportunity to speak with us?
The first thing that I write down in that 5-minute post-call habit is what challenges were brought to me.
How did they describe:
That really helps me to refine my keywords, my key phrases, and the things I need to talk about in my content.
Being able to speak to my audience using words and phrases that THEY use to describe what's going on, is so powerful in my messaging.
It's all well and good for me to just diagnose their challenge as a niching issue, but if they think the issue is that they just don't know how to speak to their audience effectively, then I'm missing the mark with ships passing in the night if I don't use the words that they use to articulate that particular challenge or problem.
It is my job to help my audience bridge the gap between where they think the problem is, and what I can see the deep issue that may be causing all of that pain and strife that's coming up for them is.
If I could proactively go out and help 100 other people who had the same challenge, what would I need to say?
This is actually the basis of my content plan.
I talk about my 5-minute post-call habits so often in my client calls and in my group calls because it is such a useful way for people to refine their messaging and get clear on what content they need to be sharing.
Guess what question I get asked over and over and over again... How do you come up with content? What do I say on my blog? What do I post about on social media?
The answer is in tapping into the juicy resource that is the conversations you're already having.
If you're not having conversations with anyone just yet in your business:
a. Find ways to have those conversations
b. You will be very equipped from day one to know how to make sure that you maximise the return for your business from those conversations
Just to recap, my 5-minute post-call habit is to stop and write down:
1. What were the challenges that were brought to me in that call?
2. What are the keywords and phrases that my client used?
3. If I could proactively go out and help 100 other people who have the same problem, what would I need to say?
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I hope that's been a really helpful one for you.
If you aren't 100% sure on how to identify your niche, your target market or how to start having conversations with those people, then I would love for you to come and check out a new free resource that I have available.
It's based on a live training that I have run over six times in the last two years that I've now turned it into a self-study video training that you can access at any time.
All you need to do to access it is go and register here: tashcorbin.com/niche
As always, please come on over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let me know you've been listening along to podcast episode 236, and share what you thought about my 5-minute post-call habit. Let me know if you have any questions or aha's, and I'll see you over there.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found tashcorbin.com/235
This is a listener Q&A episode of the podcast, and the question comes from the amazing Claire, who wants to know how to scale her membership program to over 100 members.
If you've been thinking of starting a membership program, or you've got one that you'd love to scale to larger audiences, this is going to be a really helpful episode for you.
This listener question comes from Claire Riley. You can find out more about Claire on her website claireriley.co.
Claire asks:
"How do I scale my membership program?"
Claire has been running her membership program Batch It Crazy (yes, that sounds like something else but that's not what it is), for three years. She's got 35 active members as of when she submitted the question, and she's had over 70 members go through this membership in the time that she's been running it.
She said that the members are engaged, they love the program, she loves the content and the delivery, and she also said the launches work both with time-sensitive launches AND evergreen funnels.
Claire wants to know how she can scale this to bring in more members and perhaps even have some more self-study content.
This is a really awesome question.
Before I get to the specifics of Claire's question, I want to start by saying that I think memberships are absolutely brilliant. I especially love Claire's membership which I've been a part of before.,
Memberships are great because:
Whenever it comes to getting more people into a program - whether it be a course, membership or a mastermind - my core marketing strategy comes down to the three core things: reach, conversion and mindset.
The really interesting thing about Claire's question is that she said when she launches it and when she sets up evergreen funnels, they both work.
It clearly looks to me like your membership is doing well, it has a great conversion rate when you put it in front of your audience, and people buy it - so why haven't you actually taken the action to scale your membership program?
If you know that you want to get to 100+ members, you know both launches and evergreen funnels work, to me it's a simple proposition of more reach at the top of your funnel equals more conversion into clients at the bottom of the funnel.
What I want you to do specifically darling Claire, is to get clear on what the negative consequences of having 100 members in this program are.
There may be a clue in the last part of your question, which was about creating some more pre-recorded self-study content.
That gives me a clue that potentially you're worried that if you have more members coming into your membership, you're not going to be able to handle all those extra members. You're feeling like maybe there's something that isn't scalable on the inside of the program. The marketing of your membership is completely scalable, so for me, the first thing to look at is not reach or conversion, it's actually mindset.
Is it because you feel too busy?
Is it because you feel like your marketing strategy is too busy right now?
Why haven't you put in some really strong scalable strategies to get your launches in front of more people?
The most simple and obvious way to scale this membership is to simply put more money into your ad spend when you are launching, or put more money into your ad spend on your evergreen funnels.
Your homework for this episode is to deal with those mindsets things, and have a think about what the negative consequences may be.
You might think that there aren't any negative consequences and you want 100 people in your membership, but there's a reason why you're not scaling it.
I find it's always best to spend some time getting really clear and honest with yourself, and allowing yourself time to really go there.
If you have a subconscious fear that more than 50 people in there at a time is going to burn you out, then that's going to stop you from bringing more people in.
If you have a subconscious fear that more than 50 people in there is going to mean that your older members are going to feel like they get less time with you and they're not going to love it as much so they're going to drop out, then that's something that you need to be conscious of.
We need to bring those thoughts and beliefs to the surface so we can address them - both from a mindset perspective but also from a practical perspective. Is there something you can do to give extra love to people who've been in your membership for over a year?
In the Heart-Centred Business Academy, when I used to run it, I had a VIP level of membership.
VIPs got an extra call every month, so that was how I could reward people for staying a little bit longer, and make sure that those longer-term clients would feel like they're getting that extra time and attention from me without me having to give extra calls to every single person who was inside the program.
Have a look at those negative consequences, deal with any of the mindset or the practical ways that you can address that, then get that ad spend up and let's get more people into Batch It Crazy.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I hope it's been helpful for anyone listening along.
I'd love for you to come and have a chat in the group about this episode. If you're wanting to scale your membership program and yet you're not scaling it, or if you feel like you've hit your limit on how many people you can get in per launch, let's bring this conversation over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group and continue the conversation there. All you need to do is use the #podcastaha, let me know you've been listening episode number 235, and share your questions, comments, aha's, lightbulbs and discussion points about this juicy question that Claire has asked.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/234
In this episode, I'm going to hit you with a bit of a truth bomb, and that is that your ducks will never be in a row... so why wait to start your business?
If you are still waiting to launch your business or waiting to get something sorted before you're allowed to get started, then this is the episode for you.
When I talk to women in particular who want to start a business, I can get really frustrated because there are so many things that I hear these women say that they're waiting for.
Some of those things are valid, but most of them aren't.
What I wanted to do in this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, is break down some of those beliefs about what you need in order to be ready or allowed to start a business, and what else you could do instead.
Let's jump in and look at all of the things that people say they need before they're allowed to start a business.
This is the biggest one that I see.
People don't want to start their business yet because they haven't:
When I first started my business, I just picked a colour and I got started. I had some photos taken by a friend of mine who was a photographer, but to be honest with you, they were totally off-brand with what I was actually going for in the end because my business model and my branding developed over time.
It wasn't until I was several years into my business that I really felt like I found the right branding. In the meantime, I'd made hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Instead of waiting to find the perfect branding and then starting your business, what if you first started your business and got a deeper understanding of your niche and what you want your brand to stand for. Then go and create that branding with a great provider that you can pay for with the profits from your business, and who can give you great advice on how to really connect with your audience.
I have so many people that have already started their business, yet they're still not out there talking about their services. They're still not actually taking action and moving forward because they feel like their messaging is off, they need to find the perfect message first and THEN they'll be able to grow their business. They feel that they need to find those perfect words, that perfect catchphrase, have that perfect sales page or elevator pitch, and once they figure that out, then they're allowed to have a business.
Speaking purely from my own experience, I didn't know what my messaging was going to be when I first started my business. In fact, I had a very different niche and very different ideas about what I needed to say in order for people to understand my work and what would be of value to them.
The best way to make your messaging really resonant and stand out to your audience is to start talking to them sooner rather than later.
Instead of waiting to craft the perfect theoretical message, and then getting out and starting to talk to your audience, why don't you just go and start having conversations? This will help you to understand how your audience describes their challenge, what your audience is looking for, and how you can speak to them in a way that really resonates.
That's another way that you might be waiting for all your ducks to be in a row before you're allowed to start a business.
As you can see, you don't actually need it to be perfected before you get started.
I've even had members of my programs and VIP clients who have come back to me and told me that they haven't done certain things in their business because someone said that they need a website before their business can actually be legitimate. All of these beliefs that you have to have a website in order to seem legitimate or to be allowed to get your business off the ground and started are ridiculous.
I've been very open about my own journey with this, but it's not just my experience in relation to having a website.
One of the great examples I would give is a person who's in the Take Off program, who has now just surpassed a $15,000 month in her business. She's been in business for more than three years now and she still doesn't have a website. She simply has a Facebook page, a way for people to pay her and a way to reach her audience through Facebook.
You don't have to have a website in order to have a business.
Of course, a website is brilliant as a foundational part of your marketing, but wouldn't it be awesome if you could pay for that website out of the profits of your business? Wouldn't it be awesome if you created that website once you'd worked with a few clients, so you had absolute clarity about what you needed to say on that website, and what your content needed to include in order to really resonate with the right people?
My first website said nothing. It was pretty and it was very professional, but at the end of the day, it did nothing to get clients into my business. In fact, it took over a year for me to make a sale on my website. All of my sales in my first year of business came from social media and having conversations with people.
You don't need a website.
I see this one happen in so many different ways.
Some people say they need to get their list to 1000 people before they start promoting products or services. Some people say they need to have 1000 followers on their Facebook page, or that they're just going to do a bit of Instagramming and get their followers up first because that creates the social proof and then they can start selling things.
Basically what you're saying is that you need to have an audience before you're allowed to start your business.
That's not actually true.
You could build your audience with thousands of people who aren't your ideal client and who aren't ever going to buy from you if you don't actually get started building your audience through the lens of building your business.
If you separate those two things out, chances are, you're going to have an audience that loves you and loves what you share on social media, and you're going to have your niche - the people who are actually going to buy from you - and they're going to be two very different groups of people.
Instead of thinking you need to build the audience first, build it as you go.
Instead of thinking that you have to hit some certain number before you're allowed to grow your business and before you're allowed to start selling things, focus on what the audience is that you have access to today, and how you can sell to them.
One of the beautiful ways that you can do that is actually through existing communities.
I facilitate the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, and in that community, there are over 33,000 women, and I openly encourage them to promote to that audience. You don't need your own audience, I'm going to let you have mine. I'm going to let you join the Heart-Centred community, become a member and contribute to that community, and you can promote to that audience.
You don't need to wait to get 1000 followers on your own Facebook page, you can promote to existing audiences when it's done really well.
This could look like needing:
This one doesn't happen as much these days. I think people are really starting to see that there are so many opportunities online. It's really easy to buy an audience and it's really easy to buy fame if you want to, and that doesn't necessarily mean you have a legitimate audience anyway.
I do see it a little bit more in the influencer space - attaching your success to someone else saying your product or service is a good thing. Some think that if that person would just endorse it, then everything would be okay.
Speaking from experience, both myself and many of my clients in the Take Off program have been endorsed, have had that media coverage or have had some level of fame that doesn't necessarily equate to business success.
Of course, there are ways to create momentum from that, but if you haven't been growing your business before you get that coverage, then chances are that when you do get the coverage, people are going to be seeing copy, messaging, imagery, and even products and services that don't necessarily resonate.
I always say that your audience will never be as small as it is today. Now is the time to get started on experimenting with your messaging, your content, and your products and services because when you test them on a smaller audience and then scale, you're scaling something that you know works.
I know that there is a lot of security and safety that comes from knowing you've got your expenses covered for six months before you start your business. I know there's a lot of security that comes from being able to invest in a $25,000 mastermind as your starting point into your business. And I know many people who are still saving so that they can start their business.
I totally understand where they're coming from, and I totally understand different people's needs for different levels of security. But I also know that for a lot of people that I speak to, that requirement for having savings in the bank, needing to have more money set aside, needing to have $25,000 to invest in a program because that's how they're going to succeed, is actually stopping them from taking the powerful action that would get them growth in the first place.
You might feel like you need to quit your job and just be in your business full time in order for it to be able to start, but most of the people that I've worked with actually started their business on the side of a job, or they started it during maternity leave, or whilst they were still working in a family business.
I know that that was because I come from a massive baseline level of privilege, in that I was university educated and I had a handsome six-figure salary. Even if I spent six months trying to grow my business and ended up $15,000 in debt having tried, my worst-case scenario was going back and getting another consulting job.
I had a lot of security, even though I didn't know what the job was that I would fall back on. Even though I didn't have savings, I still had a lot of privilege in that space to be able to do it.
I believe when you're first starting a business, even if you've just got an hour a week to put into it, there is always something that you can do.
The reason why I encourage people to just get started immediately is similar to the whole principle of investing. The best time to start investing was ages ago, the second-best time is right now.
It's exactly the same with starting a business. The best time to start an online business was probably five years ago, but the second-best time to start a business is today.
The reason why is because those actions that you take today, will have compound interest effects on your results in years to come.
Similarly to that compounding interest effect, it is so powerful to make small decisions and take small actions on a consistent and regular basis.
You're going to make more money from compounding interest, if you are investing $10 a week for years and years, then if you have a big chunk of money and you just have it sitting there and you never contribute again.
I'm not talking about giant big actions that you need to take. It can be as simple as opening up three spaces a week to work with clients, and investing an hour a week in marketing and admin.
It doesn't have to be massive.
Those little actions that you take now will have such a compounding interest effect on your business growth.
In the short term, you're bringing in clients so you've got income, you're testing your messaging, and you're working with people who can help you refine what it is that you offer.
In the long term, you're growing your audience, and nurturing and warming that audience up so that when you do decide to go more fully into your business or scale things up a little, you're not starting from scratch, you're starting from a really solid platform.
The whole reason for me doing this podcast episode is to encourage you to know that there is always something that you can do to get your business started sooner rather than later.
Join a couple of Facebook groups, do the bare minimum activities to try and make a couple of sales. Prove to yourself that this business is viable, that there is an audience for the work that you're doing and that you are someone who can do a little bit of work consistently to grow this business.
If you do want to get this business off the ground and you're done with waiting for your ducks to be in a row, I have a beautiful free resource for you.
It goes for just over an hour, and what I do in that is break down the myths about what you need in a lot more detail and give you a step by step strategy to actually get your business started the fast, simple, easy and lazy way.
Go and grab the free resource here: tashcorbin.com/fasttrack
As always, if you've got any questions or lightbulbs that have come up for you as a result of listening to this episode, head on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, and let me know you've been listening to episode number 234. If you're ready to stop waiting and you just want to get your business started and make a public declaration that today is the day, then go and use that #podcastaha in the Heart-Centred group and share your commitment with us.
There are thousands of women waiting to cheer you on and share your excitement for finally getting started.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
In this Spotlight episode of the podcast, I am interviewing the one and only Leonie Dawson.
Leonie Dawson was the second Australian woman that I ever discovered as an entrepreneur when I started my business. I started following Leonie back in 2014, and it has been an epic journey ever since.
In this interview, I get to peel back the curtain and ask some really juicy questions about the success of her multi-million dollar business over the years.
Leonie also shares her wide range of freebies which can be found here: leoniedawson.com/free
And if you want a quick summary, I’ve even popped some key points below. ENJOY!!!
Leonie has a wide range of free goodies on her website, from colouring pages to marketing workbooks and so much more.
You can find it all here: leoniedawson.com/free
Make sure you come and share your questions, comments and light-bulb moments over in the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs community using #podcastaha and the episode number (233).
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/232
In today's episode of the podcast, I'm going to help you identify your target market.
If you're really struggling with how to make the decision about where to niche or who your target market should be, this is going to be a great episode for you.
Before we jump into how to decide on your target market, let's get really clear on what your target market actually is.
Target market is another way of describing your niche. Your niche or your target market is the specific group of people you focus on when marketing your business.
They are focusing on all of the people they could help, or the people who could really benefit from their services. They're focusing on all the people who could experience a great shift if they were able to work with them.
At the end of the day, that is not a niche and it's not a target market. When we are growing our business online, we need to be very conscious and very selective about a specific group of people that we are going to focus our marketing activities towards.
The reason being is that we have never had the capacity to expose our businesses to as big an audience as we do today. Due to that and the fact that we're competing with a lot of noise on the internet, we need to be able to create deeply resonant messaging and offers that have people feeling so certain that that's what they need and that they want to work with you.
In order to achieve that, our messaging needs to be relevant, tangible, specific and deeply resonant.
There is a marketing phrase that says that if you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to nobody.
That is more true today than ever before.
In addition to that, if you try to speak to everybody, your messaging is very fluffy, it's usually very high level, the examples that you give could apply to anyone and therefore you are not stopping the scroll and your messaging just doesn't hit the mark for people.
When it comes to growing a business online, niching is a critical foundational decision. In fact, it's one of the first foundation decisions that we need to make, especially if you're going to market online.
If you are stuck in a geographic location and you're working with people who are physically located near you, then that is a niche decision that's kind of been made for you because you have a geographical location as part of your niching.
If you are able to work with anyone around the world, that is when it is even more critical for you to be very specific about who your niche will be.
With this episode today, I have a very special resource for you.
In that training, I walk you through in a little bit more detail why niching is so important, what a niche is, what a niche isn't, and the five most important niching decisions that you need to make when you are marketing online. It's specifically to marketing services online.
I won't repeat all of that training in this podcast episode, but I do want to encourage you if you've never watched my Nail Your Niche training before - or it's been a while since you've watched it - to watch that training specifically.
To add to that training and those five niching decisions, in this podcast I wanted to give you some prompts on how you can decide what your niche is.
It's all well and good to know what the decisions are that you need to make about your niche, but how do you actually make that decision?
I've got four things that I'm going to give you today that are going to help you to make that decision.
If you've been through the same journey that you are now facilitating as a business owner, then you when you were first starting through this journey could be what your niche is.
Let's say you were in chronic pain and you discover this beautiful healing modality. You taught it to yourself, you healed yourself and now you teach that modality to other people so they can heal themselves as well. That means that your niche and the decisions that you make about what your niche might look like, could be you before you discovered this particular modality.
That can absolutely be a way to make your niching decisions easier.
Just pick you from however many years ago, and look at what your situation was back then. That can definitely be one way of making a decision around your niche.
It's better to start with something than to start with nothing.
If that's a starting point and you end up refining it later, that's absolutely brilliant.
When I first started my business, I thought I was going to be career coach (but that didn't last very long), and then I knew I wanted to work in entrepreneurship, businesses and teaching people marketing online. I initially just looked around at who my friends were and what they had in common.
Something that I noticed, was that I absolutely adored creative people - artists, people who did handicrafts, sewing, making amazing mosaics, pottery, artworks, all those things.
In my friendship circles, the people I hung out with in my old job, and in my family, I connected with a lot of people over arts and crafts. I really adored crafting myself - I wasn't an artist but I was definitely a crafter.
I knew that that particular subset of people in my life really struggled with the business and marketing side of making a living out of their arts and their crafting.
That's the niche that I actually chose.
It wasn't a me five years ago thing, it was the people I absolutely adore hanging out with, and I knew that putting my skills with their amazing talents would create incredible results. That's how I made those niching decisions.
Look at people you adore and people you really want to hang out with. Why shouldn't your business be filled with people that you love hanging out with and spending time with?
I think that's a really beautiful thing.
I'm definitely this kind of person these days.
As soon as I started my own business, I was a convert. To every person I spoke to who was complaining about their work, I'd just tell them to quit and start a business. My friends would get so frustrated with me and I would get so frustrated with them while trying to tell them what they're missing out on and that they need to just start a business, forget working for someone else, screw the corporate structures and smash the patriarchy.
I would get so passionate about having a business and entrepreneurship.
Even now to this day, when I find out that someone is a business owner, an entrepreneur, or they're giving something a go themselves, I just love and adore them.
I went and had a blood test at the doctor's surgery a few days ago, and the nurse asked me what I did for my job, so I said that I work with people online, I have my own business, and I teach social media, marketing and sales strategies to people online.
I gave her the laypersons explanation of what I do, and she told me that she's just set up these Airbnb's in our local area, and maybe she should go and follow me because she doesn't know how to spread the word about them. And I got so excited for her that she was embarking on this opportunity to create some form of other income outside of her work and be in business for herself and she was wanting to learn about social media and marketing.
I had to bite on my tongue to not offer to have a coffee catch up with her where I could teach her everything I know over coffee because I'm just so passionate about that type of work.
You might find that there is a certain person or a certain type of thing that you get so passionate about that whenever anyone says any inkling of an idea that they might be interested in that as well, you just completely latch on to it and get really passionate and ranty.
That's definitely a space that you might want to be niching in.
At the end of the day, it is better to choose and pivot than to not choose and keep going round and round in circles and staying un-niched.
The longer you stay un-niched with your marketing and messaging online, the longer it's going to take for you to develop a bigger audience, get your conversion working and really get that resonant messaging so people want to buy from you.
Hopefully you've found these beautiful tips helpful for how to select and make those decisions around who your target market or your niche will be.
As I said, make sure if you haven't watched it before, come and check out my Nail Your Niche training.
If you have had any lightbulb moments or questions as a result of reading this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let me know you've been listening to episode number 232 and tell me what your insights are, if you've got any follow up questions, or maybe if this has helped you to make that niching decision.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/231
Today's episode of the podcast is one of our Q&A episodes, and I have a brilliant question from Nicole, who's asking for help on pivoting her niche and what to do with her existing audience when she does so.
If you're doing any adjustments to your niche or messaging, this is going to be a great episode for you to read or listen along to.
This brilliant question comes from the fabulous Nicole Moorey, and you can find out more about Nicole at nicolemoorey.com.
Nicole asks:
"Hi Tash, I'm excited to be narrowing my niche to wellness entrepreneurs, etc. as per your recommendations. This new niche represents only a small portion of my existing vaguely niched email community. How do you recommend I pivot my messaging and marketing in a way that gently and kindly lets my existing community realise I'm pursuing a new direction - whilst also helping my new niche? Some of them have been loyal friends and followers for a few years, so I want to be sure to make this change in the best way possible for everyone."
First and foremost, I want to say to Nicole that that is so beautiful.
I think for most women entrepreneurs, our desire not to exclude anyone and our struggles with niching can sometimes come back to our feelings and experiences on the playground where we didn't get picked for something or we were excluded.
I think it's such a beautiful thing that you are thinking of your audience at this time, and you're wanting to bring them along on the journey with you if it's the right fit, or let them go gently if it's not.
I've got some ideas for you, Nicole, on how you can really make this transition as easy and gentle for your audience as possible, bringing along the right people and gently letting go of the people who may not be a fit anymore.
Before I jump into my advice and tips, I want to quickly clarify for anyone who hasn't heard my training about niching before, your niche is the specific group of people you focus on when you are marketing your business.
Your niche is not everyone you could help, your niche is everyone you want to help. Your niche is not even everyone you could market to, your niche is the specific group of people you focus on when you are marketing your products and services - when you are marketing in your business.
With that in mind, I've got five tips for you, Nicole, on how you can start to refine that niche and bring your audience with you.
Those niche decisions that you make are behind the scenes decisions in your business.
You don't ever have to say to your audience, "I'm no longer working with everyone else, I'm only working with wellness entrepreneurs."
But as your business moves forward and you express examples and share content that's specifically tailored for wellness entrepreneurs, then that's going to deeply resonate with those wellness entrepreneurs. For some people, they may realise that that doesn't resonate for them, but for others, it may still be helpful.
Let's say you've got someone who has a photography business, and they've been on your list for years and they absolutely love and adore who you are and the work that you do. Just because your content is now targeted towards wellness entrepreneurs, doesn't mean that that person doesn't eventually want to work with you. It's totally up to you about whether you choose to work with that person or not.
It's not about who you serve, it's about who you focus on with your marketing activities.
You never need to come out of the closet and say that you're specifically working with a certain niche now, but because you incorporate those niching decisions into the way that you message and the way that you market, you are naturally going to start attracting more wellness entrepreneurs into your work.
Your messaging content and offers will simply move the right people closer and not move the wrong people any closer.
You don't need to ever reject anyone when you decide to refine your niche.
All you're going to do is know that you have a content ecosystem that is consistently moving people more and more towards the centre and getting warmer and warmer in your audience. The wellness entrepreneurs in your audience are going to move faster than the non-wellness entrepreneurs because your content isn't designed to move them any closer.
Without ever having to reject anyone, through your messaging, content and offers, you will naturally magnetise those people who fit within your niche, and you'll be less likely to magnetise those people who don't.
You don't ever have to reject anyone.
While someone might not fit that rigid niching that you've now selected (because I do recommend that you make that niching very tight, specific and clear), that doesn't mean that they decide that they can never get any value out of being on your mailing list, following you or even one day working with you.
I've got a great example of this to share with you. I specialise in helping women entrepreneurs who are wanting to start and scale their online business.
I do teach leveraging and launching in my Accelerator, and I teach startup in the Take Off program.
Recently I had a lady reach out to me who's been following me for two years and has a product-based business - she doesn't sell services.
I specifically share content and have courses that help people with that one-to-one service-based type business, and going into one-to-many service type business - selling digital products but not physical products.
But I had this lady reach out to me because she's got to the point in her business where she really wants to start scaling her marketing. Even though she sells high-end products, she reached out to me and asked if she could buy a VIP session with me - despite the fact that she knew I usually work with service-based businesses - so that I could have a look at her online messaging, marketing and channels, and to see if there's any advice that I have.
I had a look at her website, I had a look at what she was doing, and I told her that we should book in a VIP half day so that I could go through and give her product-based business all the help that I could.
If I had looked at her website and thought that I couldn't get her the return on investment because it wasn't where I specialised, I could have referred her on to someone else.
But based on what I saw of her business, I said yes and she's booked in to do a VIP day with me in a few weeks time, and we get to work together even though she doesn't specifically fit my niche.
They get to make the decision, you just want to empower them with all of the information that they need to make that decision.
If someone doesn't specifically fit your niche and they decide they still want to work with you in some way, or they want to pay you for your services, or they still want to be on your mailing list because they're getting little dribs and drabs of great information here and there - that's totally their decision.
I know that I have a lot of people on my mailing list and who listen to my podcast every single week who do not fit my niche. They made the decision that it was worth their time, energy and sometimes money to invest in learning from me because they got so much value out of it, even though maybe they don't necessarily fit my specific niche.
That's their decision.
That's not my decision to make for them.
You could decide to just keep staying un-niched for the next two years and continue going round and round in circles and not really resonating with anyone with your messaging. But you've made a decision that by getting specific, you are going to be able to sell more effectively and deliver more effectively for your clients.
I just wanted to do one tip in here to check-in and make sure you're viewing this as a positive thing, not only for you but also for your audience.
At the end of the day, your decision to niche is actually a decision to accelerate the growth of your business, but also be able to serve the people you do want to work with, much more deeply and much more effectively.
Because of that, it means that really at the end of the day, everyone is a winner.
If they are within your new refined niche, they're going to get much deeper, much more specific and much clearer support from you, as well as much higher quality content.
If they aren't in your niche, they get to make the decision of whether they stay for the content that you are delivering, or if they should unsubscribe and unfollow to save themselves some headspace.
It doesn't need to be a harsh decision, it doesn't need to be a big piece of rejection for people, it doesn't need to be a hair tossing storm on their way out, it can actually be a really beautiful thing and a positive move.
I want you to view this positively because I see it as a very positive move for your business.
Nicole, I know you've been to my niche training and know what I'm talking about when I say remember your golden nuggets.
I've got a resource for you below so you can go and watch it, but in summary, what I mean by gold nuggets is think about yourself when you're niching as really focusing on a very specific tunnel.
You're tunnelling really, really tightly with the smallest tunnel you can choose because that means you're going to move through that tunnel faster.
What happens when you're tunnelling and you've got a very specific niche, is that if you have someone who doesn't fit that niche ask to work with you (like my beautiful product based lady), that is like having a gold nugget fall out of the ceiling of your tunnel.
You're tunnelling through with this very specific niche, and a gold nugget falls from the ceiling and into your lap when someone who's not in the tunnel comes to you.
At that point in time, you get to decide: Am I going to keep this gold nugget? Am I going to say yes to this client and work with them? Or am I going to hand this golden nugget over to someone else?
Sometimes I have people who come to me who don't fit my niche and they ask me to help them, and I tell them that I don't think that I'm the best person for the job and I point them in the right direction of someone who could help them much better. I hand that golden nugget over to someone else and I keep tunnelling with my very specific niche.
If that tunnelling analogy has piqued your interest, I have a great free resource for you.
In this training, I:
You can find that beautiful Nail Your Niche training here: tashcorbin.com/webinar
Nicole, thank you so much for your question and thank you to everyone for reading along. I hope you found this episode really helpful as well.
If you'd like to submit a question for these Q&A podcast episodes, simply go to tashcorbin.com/question, pop all your details and your question in there and I will answer it on the podcast in coming episodes.
Please come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, using #podcastaha share your aha moments and any questions that you have about this episode of the podcast. Let me know you've been reading podcast episode 231 and we can talk about this further over there!
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/230
In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you feminine time management strategies that boost your productivity.
Traditionally, when we think of things productivity and time management strategies, we can associate them with jamming more things in and really hustling. Getting up at 4am, getting stuff done before the kids wake up and the sun wakes up and even while the early birds are still sleeping. Do more!
Productivity was about jamming in as much as possible. It was about making sure that you extracted every possible inch out of every possible second.
Time management strategies were not about how to make things easier or more effective, time management was all about how to make sure you can do 100,000 things in four minutes a day, and jamming as many of those four minute increments in as you could.
What I have discovered, and something that I've had to detox myself from, is just how masculine dominated those productivity and time management strategies are, and how much they can really drain my energy and end up being really ineffective for me.
It is by embracing a more feminine energy orientation towards time management, productivity, and getting results in my business.
I believe that we are a balance of masculine and feminine energy, and I 100% believe that we want to keep those things in balance.
I'm not saying it's all just the feminine energy or it's all just the masculine energy, but for myself, I know that with the corporate background that I have, my experience of my education - being in high school and particularly in university - I have been really focused on those masculine dominated time management strategies.
I do need to detox from some of that programming that says that the masculine orientation is the best way to do it because I know for myself that that just isn't the case.
My question to you is: What if you could achieve more and have better outcomes, but do it in less time and with less work?
One of the big things I want to say before I even jump into my time management strategies with you, is to just notice how you feel when I say a word like 'easy'. How much have we been told that easy equals wrong? That easy is the cheat's way?
What about how you feel when I say the word 'lazy'?
What about the word 'fun'? Can growing a business, being productive, getting work done and getting results be fun?
They are the three words that I focus on whenever I'm going for a big goal.
Easy, lazy, fun.
ELF is my little acronym for it.
With ELF, I'm able to pay attention to my thoughts and feelings about those words and look for ways where I'm making things hard, where I feel like I need to look like I'm really diligent, and where I'm sucking the joy out of the thing that I'm doing.
I've got five tips for you on how to really embrace more feminine time management strategies and boost your productivity.
I don't know how many times I was told this and how many times I brushed it aside because I believed that I was a really productive person so I could have a longer list.
I know from experience that having a longer list overwhelms.
Having a longer list makes you less productive.
Think about it: If you are looking at your to-do list and there are 100 things on it, and you get 6 done for the day, do you feel like you've totally smashed it and nailed it for the day? Or do you feel like you've only done 6% of your tasks and that's not very good?
On the other hand, if you had a list of three things to get done for the day and you get them all done, how do you feel at the end of the day? How does that translate into your energy the next day?
Often we have a very short term focus when it comes to our to-do lists, and we overestimate what we can achieve in the short term, and underestimate what we can achieve in the long term.
This is because we have giant to-do lists in front of us and we only ever make tiny, incremental progress in those giant lists, comparative to the number of tasks that we've given ourselves.
Go through that list of things that you have been transcribing from page to page to page in your to-do planner, and start crossing some of those things out.
Which of those things are just not a priority right now?
Some of those things might need to be put somewhere else. You can outsource them to someone else, or you can put them in your toy box to play with later because it's not a priority for you right now.
Some things you might need to have on your urgent to-do list and get them done.
But I challenge you to get really honest with yourself about how critical it is for that thing to get done today.
What are the chances you are going to have a successful day and tick it all off? What are the chances that there's still going to be something left at the end of the day?
Every day when I write down my to-do list for the day, I write a to-do list that I have 100% confidence that I will absolutely smash. Usually it's three or four things.
If I finish it early and I want to go and play with some other things, I've got plenty of options lurking away in my toy box and in other spaces. I can also take things from the next day or from future plans and get some things done early.
But when I keep my to-do list small, I absolutely nail the productivity thing because I am in momentum. I feel successful and that feeling creates a snowball effect of its own.
If I'm not experiencing that feeling that I nailed it today at least four days a week, then I end up feeling like I'm behind and like there's so much to do.
That feeling creates more of it, and it snowballs its own feeling.
Make your to-do list smaller and start saying no to things.
Sure it might be nice for you to jump on and do that free interview, but it's not a priority for you right now. Yeah, it would be great for you to create a new freebie and a welcome sequence and an upsell, but right now your focus is on getting sales conversations and having connected conversations with people.
The other thing that I see when people have their to-do list far too big, is that they choose the things that aren't actually going to move them forward.
When I challenge you to get to the four most important things you need to focus on, then you are going to have to focus on the things that are going to move you forward.
You can't get distracted by those one percenters. You have a very small number of things that you're able to write onto your to-do list, so you have to pick the ones that are going to have the biggest impact. You're also less likely to avoid those things by distracting yourself with the other less important things that are on that ginormous list.
Make a smaller list and say no to things.
Give yourself space to:
One of my experiences in the corporate world that I had, was when I was in a consulting role and one of the things I had to do for each project was an end of project report.
In most cases, we would be allocated two days of time (16 hours) to do that end of project report. I actually ended up getting in the habit of taking those two days as work from home days when I knew I had that report to work on, and I would get that report done in two or three hours.
But it was two or three hours at the end of each day.
I'd do my work from home day, and I would batch cook up some beautiful food, get my laundry done, tidy the house and do some painting, and then I'd sit down for a couple of hours at the end of the day and really smash out that report.
With that space of playfulness, tidying and moving my body, I was actually getting that report clear in my mind.
I am a very spatial bodily thinker and processor. By doing that, I was able to craft an end of project report that would normally take two days of sitting at my desk staring at my screen, in two or three hours.
The reason why I started doing this at home was because when I was in the office and I was on my two days of report writing, I would get in so much trouble because I would be distracting people, and I'd be staring out the window telling people to look at something outside because I wasn't actually in the right space and I hadn't done my processing to write out the report.
If I sat there and forced myself to stare at the computer screen, I couldn't do it.
I'd get in trouble sitting at my desk distracting everyone - helping someone with something, going and tidying the kitchen and coming up with ideas for a social event for the workplace - so my boss would have to tell me that I had to stop talking to other people. She actually moved my desk so that I would sit and I wouldn't talk to anyone else. (Even though talking to other people was mostly helping them... well sometimes I was distracting them). I would sit staring at the computer screen with this blinking cursor, and I'd just be looking at a white page. I would be staring and I could not get it clear.
When I decided that I'd work from home instead and I gave myself that freedom and that space, rest and creativity, then the two hours that I did put into report writing were effortless.
I know that I'm the same with my business.
For three hours before I sat down to record this podcast and a couple of others that I've recorded before this one, I was out walking in town, having lunch, and just giving myself some spaciousness. I knew which podcast episodes I was going to be recording, and the spaciousness allowed me to remember of the story of being at my desk in my consulting role, and that's how I decided I'd share that in my podcast today.
I know for myself that if I give myself spaciousness before a big task, I get that task done more efficiently and more effectively.
These days, I record my podcasts in a single take mostly off the cuff with a couple of points that I have on my screen. But I can only do that if I've had space.
If I force myself to try and record podcasts between busy, busy, busy, busy, I stumble over my words, I can't process it properly, and I can't string my two sentences together without making lots of mistakes.
Give yourself rest, playfulness and creativity.
I have another cool story for you on this one, and this came out of a conversation I had with an amazing lady called Aesha Kennedy. If you don't follow Aesha, please do go and follow her, she's brilliant.
I was talking to her about creative outlets because in 2017 when I did a big review of my business, I had 37 different products and services that people could buy.
Through a conversation I had with Aesha about this, I recognised and realised that what I was doing was funnelling all of my creative energy straight into my business, and in doing so, I actually broke my business.
If I had given myself a creative outlet outside of my business during the two years before 2017, I have no doubt that I wouldn't have tried to get that creative energy from my business, and I wouldn't have tried to use my business as my only creative outlet, thus feeling like I'm constantly in this space of needing to create things for my business.
The reason why this was something that happened for me was because at the time in 2016 and 2017 in particular, I had huge goals for my business, and I wanted to be the most productive that I could be.
If I was to decide that I'd spend three hours playing with some paints and mucking around, I couldn't justify that time.
But it's easy to justify creative time in your business because it could make you money, it could get you followers, and it could grow your business.
There's using your business as a creative outlet, and then there is using your business as your only creative outlet.
By giving yourself space, having rest, and especially by having creative outlets and social outlets other than your business, the time that you spend on your business can be focused, much more effective and more likely to get you results.
I speak to so many creative entrepreneurs and so many women who talk about the fact that they need to create six different programs because they need to express their creativity. They need to write a book, they have to have events, they have to do this and that, and they label themselves as multi-passionate.
I honestly believe if you want your business to grow exponentially, quickly, easily and effortlessly, you need to be really specific, narrow and hyper-focused.
For many people, the best gift you can give your business is getting your creative outlet in other spaces, so that your focus in your business can be refined.
Many of the behaviours and habits that we get into in our business come from programming.
I know that if I work on my business and do some social media stuff sitting on the couch, I feel like it's not as productive as when I'm doing it at my desk. But sometimes I do just need to go and sit on the couch.
When I am working on web pages, design or those sorts of things, my favourite way to do that is in the recliner, legs up, with my little lap table and just playing with things in that position. That is actually a really productive time for me to be doing creative things.
I love getting down on the floor and working as well. Sometimes I'll feel guilty for sitting on the floor and working, and it's because of this programming telling me that I need to be sitting at my desk and working in a certain way for it to be productive time.
If you've got someone else in your home or someone else who's witnessing you, and you are doing something that doesn't look like you're being productive, sometimes we can do productive things to keep up appearances.
Something that I like to do every single day is to step outside, get my feet in the grass and play with Munchkin, and I noticed - especially at first - my thoughts about worrying that someone would see and think I'm bunking off and not being productive in my business.
It was so fascinating to just pay attention to those thoughts, concerns and worries that I had about productivity, time management and what I should achieve in a day.
I'd tell myself that I couldn't take time off because I was launching, or I couldn't go to the movies during the day because I needed to be really focused on a certain income goal. But in fact, the opposite is true for me. If I go to the movies during the day, I have a really productive morning and a really productive afternoon because I know I'm going to the movies in the middle of the day.
A project will expand to take up the time that you give it, and 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort.
When you have limited time to work on your business, and you have a four dot point to-do list, that means you're going to focus on the 20% of things that get you 80% of your results, and you're going to get them done really quickly because your project can only expand to the time that you give it.
For me, I know that if I'm out walking every day, looking after my body, taking time to go to the movies, and finishing early three days a week to spend time with my partner, I'm actually more productive. I'm more effective.
The measure that I have for my business success is not focused on how many things I can get done and tick off my to-do list, the measure of success in my business ultimately is: How much money does my business generate, and how many people can I serve?
If I can do that in an hour a day, why not do it in an hour day?
Why is it more worthwhile if I've worked hard for it?
That is all programming and we need to pay attention to those thoughts and feelings.
This is probably the big one for me with productivity.
When I had big projects to achieve in corporate and when I had big deadlines coming up, I would eat terrible food, work long hours, give up my exercise, sleep less, drink less water and drink more coffee and alcohol.
At the time, it was very short term focused - I just had to get the thing done and smash it out. But I have no doubt upon reflection, that if I'd kept my boundaries about my work time, if I had looked after my health and wellbeing, if I drank lots of water, not resorted to coffee and alcohol, and not skipped the exercise, I would have actually still been able to meet those deadlines.
I would have still been able to achieve those goals.
Again, it's this programming of 'If something requires my effort, energy and attention, I need to stop looking after myself. I need to sacrifice some things.'
For me, the things that I cannot sacrifice anymore and I refuse to sacrifice because I know that if I do, it actually makes me less productive are:
Those things are just non-negotiable for me now because I know that when I get those things and when I really look after myself, that's when I get the best out of myself anyway.
When I'm launching, I go for two walks a day instead of just the one. I ramp up the nourishment, the timeout and the fun, because that gets me better results.
The outcome that you're striving for is not working 16 hour days - that's not why you started a business.
You did not sign up for this so that you could work really long hours and burn yourself out.
Why did you decide to start this business? Why are you going for the goals that are going for right now? What is the outcome that you are chasing?
The fastest, most effective and productive way for you to achieve that outcome is not burning yourself out, it is by really making sure that your time management and productivity strategies are a balance of the masculine and the feminine.
For 90% of the people I talk to, the thing that they need to work on is bringing up the feminine and reducing some of the masculine. Whipping yourself into shape doesn't create sustainable long term productivity outcomes.
I was talking to someone a couple of days ago, and she had set herself a goal of a $10,000 month. When she'd set that goal, she'd mapped it all out specifically with what clients she was going to get, how she was going to sell her course for $150 and do this launch, and on the second last day of the month, she had someone getting in touch with her who was interested in getting her services with some consulting and doing a VIP package with her. They wanted to get her doing two months of some very specific work absolutely in her zone of genius, and their budget was $10,000.
We were having a conversation about it because she said for two days, she was ummming and ahhing about whether to take on the project or not, not because she wasn't really sure if she wanted to do the project, but because she already had a plan of where that money should have come from. She didn't realise that what she was doing was trying to stick to the process, instead of just being clear on the outcome.
In the end, she was so excited to take it on, but initially she was resisting it because it wasn't the hard work that she had thought she was going to be putting into place.
If your goal is to bring in $10,000 and someone decides that they want to gift you $10,000, do you brush it aside and say that it doesn't count because you want it to come from a certain thing?
For most people, when it comes to productivity and time management, they're not focused on the outcomes they want to achieve, they're focused on the hours that they want to work. They're focused how many hours they want to work and what they want to get done in a certian amount of time.
They're focused on the inputs and the outputs, and they're not actually focused on the outcome itself.
Get clear on the outcome because at the end of the day, if you can get to that outcome the easy, lazy and fun way, then why wouldn't you?
To recap, my time management strategies and tips are:
1. Create a smaller to-do list and say no to some things
2. Give yourself lots of space for rest, creativity and processing
3. Pay attention to those thoughts and feelings, and notice where your programming is telling you that you need to work harder
4. Nourish yourself
5. Get clear on the outcome that you are aiming for
This is going to be a really juicy conversation for us, so I'd love for you to come over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let me know you've been listening to episode number 230 and share with me any lightbulb moments or questions that you have about feminine time management strategies and boosting your productivity.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/229
This is a very special episode of the podcast as I'm joined by Tammy Guest in this Spotlight interview.
In this interview, Tammy and I talk about the new opportunities that are arising in the online business world, particularly in the health practitioners space.
Tammy also shares her free checklist How To Pivot To Online Consults Checklist. You can access this freebie at tammyguest.com/online-consults-checklist
"I'm learning to fly helicopters and I really feel like there are so many lessons in things that you are most fearful about.
Whether it's tech, whether it's taking that next step, pulling away from the computer or the textbooks and actually doing the webinar that you want to do, or whether it's turning a helicopter into wind and flying up really high, or turning the engine off and hoping that it'll come back on at the bottom of an emergency landing.
You're not going to know until you do it.
You need to feel the fear. Because it's scary as. Even just signing up for a free program or something - it's kind of scary!
Do it anyway. Feel the fear. You're not going to know unless you cut the engine and see if it comes back on again.
The thing that gives you the jiggles, is the thing that is pushing you right up against the edge of your comfort zone. That's why you're jiggling so much because you haven't been there.
You can either contract back in and stay the same with the same old results, or you can jiggle your way through it, feel the fear do it anyway.
There will be something on the other side of it, and no one can tell you what that is until you go through it." – Tammy Guest
There's a massive shift in the online space for practitioners in particular.
If you're a practitioner who's reading along, Tammy has a checklist that's specific for you. It will go over the essentials you need to successfully transition to online consults and virtual practice
It's super easy and you can download it here: tammyguest.com/online-consults-checklist
Make sure you come and share your questions, comments and light-bulb moments over in the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs community using #podcastaha and the episode number (229).
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/228
In today's episode, we are going to be answering the question: Where do you go to get help when you're first starting a business? And how can you launch that business really successfully?
This is going to be really pertinent for those of you who are in the early stages of business, and who are really wanting to make sure you're getting to sustainability and profitability in your business quickly.
When it comes to starting a business - and especially one online - there are so many options. There are different options around:
You can often get into the space of not knowing what to do because you've got too many options in front of you.
Who do you turn to for help? How do you decide where you're going to get your startup advice from?
Especially if you're looking to hire a mentor, work with someone, buy a course, or have someone help you with this process. How do you choose someone that you are going to invest in working with?
What I wanted to do today was break it down into six pieces of the decision-making process, and why I think these are really important for startup especially.
Before I go through these six decision points, I also just want to start by saying that I think it's important when you're in startup to not have too many experts that you're following at once.
Yes, I think you should explore when you're first starting out, to look for all the possibilities of who might really resonate with you, who's a great mentor, and who could really help you who specialises in your industry. But then I think it's important to make a decision and really focus down rather than overwhelming yourself and spreading yourself thin.
I know a lot of women who followed fifteen to twenty different people in startup, and all that did was left them going round and round in circles because sometimes the advice they were getting was conflicting. Sometimes the priorities were conflicting too. All of the mentors said that you need to grow your list, but some said to do it early and some said to wait until you had your messaging clear. All of that confusion just winds up with you doing a lot of work but not making a lot of progress.
So yes, explore. But I think when you're in startup, it's important to just really focus down on working with one to three mentors maximum in a range of different ways if you want to, but really keeping it quite narrow.
I made this mistake. The first ever person that I discovered who helped people starting a business is the person I paid US$4,000 to because I didn't realise how many options there were out there.
At that point in time, I was working in corporate, I wasn't really on social media that much, and I had had limited exposure to the business coaching world, business mentoring, and particularly people who helped startups.
I came from a consulting background, so the types of business consultants and business coaches that I saw in my industry really worked with large scale organisations and mostly production-based organisations - factories, manufacturing and all of those sorts of things.
Take some time to explore at first, and don't just sign up with the first person that you like or the first person that says something that resonates with you.
I think it is important to have a period of exploration and just getting to know some people.
When you are listening to this person's podcast, how does it make you feel?
When you go through the email sequence of getting to know someone and signing up for something of theirs that's free, how does that email sequence feel?
What language do they use when they're speaking to you?
Do you feel empowered in that process? Or do you feel like you're so far behind, you're totally freaked out, and there's no way you're going to succeed unless you hire that person immediately?
If you don't like that experience or if that experience leaves you feeling a little bit uneasy or traumatised, then chances are, you're not going to implement what they teach you because you're not going to want to make other people feel that way.
Whenever I'm looking to work with a mentor, buy a new course, buy a membership program, or jump into a mastermind, the first thing that I do is observe their strategies. I go to someone's podcast, I go to their website, and I sign up for two or three different things.
Over the next few weeks, I observe what that email onboarding process is like, and how that person makes me feel. If I can go to a webinar or a challenge, or listen to a video training of their's, I will do that as well, to see how much they truly put into their content and how much they're just using it as a long-winded fear-inducing sales process.
If they do that to me, then I'm not going to buy from them.
Often, the success that those people have achieved is because they have wholeheartedly adopted a fear-based marketing practise - even if they don't realise that they have.
A lot of people have learned sales and marketing from other people who've built it on fear-based marketing, and those people have learned it from others.
I've seen marketing coaches and people who are mentoring in business, and they claim that they don't teach fear in the sales process and that they do it as an empowered and feminine sales process. But when you see what it is, it is completely using neuro-linguistic programming, and manipulative fear-based tactics to get you to buy what they want you to buy. They just don't realise it because they're not discerning as to what they're doing to people in their sales process.
Do you feel like you can do this and that you're so excited to be there? Or do you feel like you HAVE to buy something in order to be able to make it?
That's a big indicator of how they're going to teach you, and therefore the way you are going to make your audience feel as well.
This is a little bit controversial, but it's so important that you are working with business strategies, mentors, programs, and courses that are appropriate for where you are now, not where you want to be.
I understand that it would be magnificent for you to have a $25,000 ads budget, a team of ten people and to be able to have a 100K launch in the next couple of weeks - I totally understand how amazing that feels.
But if you still don't have clarity on what your business model is, your ideal marketing strategy or you don't have the budget for that, then signing up to work with someone who expects you to have that budget and who expects you to have that level of support, is actually going to create a big gap for you that you're not going to be able to fill.
I've even had it myself where I've facilitated some more intermediate and advanced programs and masterminds, and people have joined and said that they're not there yet but they're going to work really hard, catch up and do all of the things that I'm teaching. Most of the time, I'm able to say to them that it isn't appropriate for the stage of business that they're at and redirect them somewhere else.
But sometimes I haven't even known.
I once had someone join a mastermind of mine, and she lied about how much income she was bringing into her business because she thought she could make the big leap. When it came down to it with the strategies I was teaching and the things that we were trying to do, she didn't have the solid foundations to actually get the results. We ended up having a conversation and she moved into something else with me.
They WANT to be ready to sell, promote and launch courses, they WANT to be ready to invest thousands of dollars in Facebook ads, and they WANT to be ready to hire a team of six people, but they're not ready and they buy programs that are too far beyond their stage of business.
Jumping into advanced programs is going to really highlight the holes in your foundations if you are still in the early startup stages of business, and if you don't have:
I have people come to me about the Take Off program in particular. They say that they've been in business for 18 months, so they're not really in startup and don't need help starting a business. They say that the Take Off program isn't for them, but when I ask a few simple questions in regards to where their clients come from, how many followers they have, and how often they send out their newsletter, it's clear to me that they don't have any of those foundations in place.
I have to stop saying that the Take Off program is for startups. Instead, it's really about nailing your business foundations and getting you to the point where you're making that consistent 5K - 8K a month.
Many people want to believe that they're not in startup anymore, but really, they are in terms of building their online marketing system, building their presence online, and nailing the attraction and conversion strategies for their clients.
I want to encourage you as much as possible to work with mentors who specialise in helping you where you are. NOT pretending that you're miles ahead because you think that you can leap into that without having those foundations in place.
When I'm joining a program, I always ask:
Sometimes I've been sold things where they tell me that it's for every stage of business, and then I jump in and they're operating from the assumption that everyone can spend $4,000 a month on Facebook ads.
When I joined that particular program, I had no budget for Facebook ads.
I could maybe spare a couple of hundred dollars, but I didn't have consistent clients yet, so how was I supposed to find $4,000 a month? The program was only $1,000, and yet there was an expectation I was spending multiple thousands of dollars a month on Facebook ads.
When I asked the person before I joined the course what the prerequisites were and what I needed to know, there was no mention of the fact that I was going to be asked to spend $4,000 a month on Facebook ads. AND they had a 60-day refund window, but you had to show the receipt for Facebook ads that you'd spent over $5,000 on Facebook ads in the 60 days. How is that a refund window? Anyway, that's a whole other conversation.
Make sure to ask these questions first:
This point is a range of different things that you just want to consider depending on your specific situation.
For example, if you are a health practitioner, you might want to work with someone who specialises in helping health practitioners.
Especially in the world of psychology and other specific medical spaces, you need to have certain things in place. There are certain rules that apply to you in your marketing, such as not being able to use testimonials or not being able to advertise in certain ways.
If you are starting a network marketing business, find someone who's actually a specialist in helping people start a network marketing business, because usually you have regulations and rules to follow. You can't promote on social media or you can't talk about certain things on social media.
It's best to work with someone who is familiar with your industry as a minimum, but also if you can, someone who has success in your industry. This may make it more effective for you getting that help starting a business.
If you are starting a product-based business and you want to sell physical products, I'm not the right person to mentor you in your startup journey.
Of course I can help you with some of the social media stuff and you can listen to my podcast because most of this can be applied to service and product-based businesses. But I tell people not to join the Take Off program because it's specifically about selling your services as a coach, mentor, trainer, web developer, graphic designer, etc.. It's about selling services and moving into digital products eventually - like courses and memberships and those sorts of things - but not physical products.
You want to make sure that if you're going to work with someone, you understand what their specialisations are so that you have that information to decide whether they're going to be the right fit for you.
You can also look at things like their results in their own business, results of their clients, social proof, testimonials, and those sorts of things. Although I give about a 0.5% weighting to social proof results and testimonials these days because a lot of coaches are out there telling people to fake it.
It was very disappointing, but I even discovered that someone was saying that they'd made $100,000 in sales for the month, and when I reached out and congratulated her saying that she could buy that car she'd been wanting, she told me that it was actually that she got a free spot in a $50,000 program as a deal for letting someone into her program so it wasn't actually cash. I was shocked that she was out there saying on social media that she'd achieved something that she hadn't actually achieved.
I don't pay a lot of attention to results, social proof and those kinds of things.
If I can see someone that I know has done that program, I'll reach out to them privately and ask what their experience was, and I'll ask very specific questions. I won't just ask what they thought of it, I will ask questions like:
Especially if the person is an affiliate for it, I don't just ask them if they liked it because it's in their best interest to say that they loved it and it was amazing - but they don't actually tell you what they did.
I asked someone recently what they thought of a program, and they said that it was amazing and they loved it. Then I asked my more specific questions about how long it had taken this person, and they said that they only did the first two modules but they really loved being in the community and surrounded by amazing people. And for me, that wasn't what I was looking for.
I was actually looking for some step by step guidance.
If you're going to ask someone about it, ask the key questions so that you can get some really useful information about whether it's the right fit for you or not.
This is the final piece of advice that I have about getting help starting a business.
For example, I am a raging extrovert and quite happy on camera. Some people come work with me because they're the same and they know that they can work with me. They know that the strategies I teach them are closely aligned with who they are and what they can do.
But I also have a lot of people who come to me as a business mentor because they are the opposite. They are introverted, and they're not as confident on social media. They want to expand their comfort zone and experiment with some more forward-facing, video-based strategies.
I want you to just take some time to reflect: Are you looking for someone who's really similar to you so that you can model what they've done and design your business in the same way that they've designed theirs? Or are you looking for someone who's a little bit different?
This is where I think having one to three people that you follow closely in your startup journey and that maybe you work with, can be really helpful.
That can be really helpful to give you that balance and nudge you out of your comfort zone. But also, make sure you've got someone you can model from who is more aligned with who you are, and how you are going to show up as well.
As a little bonus on this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I have a free resource for you - especially for those of you who perhaps need help starting a business or getting those foundations in place.
When I say starting out, I don't mean you've been in it for 10 minutes... I mean that you still don't have that consistency of your processes in terms of marketing online - you haven't got the results, and you don't have the scalability.
In this training, I take you through the key foundations that you want to actually get implementing as quickly as possible, so you can start making money quickly in your business.
By doing this and getting that money in quickly, you can then make some decisions about the model, the messaging and the niching, because you've got those solid foundations in place.
As always, come over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, and let me know that you've been listening to episode number 228. I'd love to know: What are your questions, lightbulb moments or decisions as a result of reading this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast?
Something I haven't done consistently on this podcast is asking you to review the podcast as well. If you can find the review section and give me a review (making sure you let me know who you are so I can give you a shout out), that would really help me to get this podcast in front of other people.
It's how people get to find the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, and of course, it always gives me some really good warm fuzzy vibes when I get people's review and feedback on the podcast as well.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/227
In today's episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I'm going to be answering one of your questions. I have a fabulous question from Ali, who asked how to be more consistent on social media the easy and lazy way.
This question was submitted by the fabulous Ali Bengough.
Ali is the face behind Ali Jayne and you can find her at facebook.com/alijaynecoach.
Ali's question is:
"Hi Tash! Do you have any tips on how to create a social media ecosystem the easy and lazy way, such as with batching? I find the consistency difficult to maintain, particularly when I need substantial time to retreat and recover my energy when dealing with heavily emotional client work. Thanks so much!"
Thank you, Ali, for this question. It's something that I get asked quite regularly, and if you haven't already checked out my previous Q&A episode where I answer a question about social media for introverts, I think that that would be a great one to check out as well.
For you Ali, I have six specific tips on how you can be more consistent on social media in a way that feels easy and lazy, and allows you to really enjoy it as well.
If you absolutely adore being in Facebook groups and engaging with people, then make that the core part of your strategy. If you love doing little snippet videos, then do that. And if you love having deep and intense one-to-one conversations with people, you can do that on social media.
What we want to do is actually create a social media strategy that plays to your strengths and really lights you up so that you can be more consistent on social media.
Social media is social.
Whether what you love is:
You can totally do any of those.
Find the social media strategy that brings you the most joy.
Don't just come from a place of wondering how much this strategy will make your business. If you don't enjoy your social media strategy, we're going to pick up on that energy. If you're just dialling it in, thinking about how much hard work it is and that you don't want to be doing it, we're going to pick up on that in your language, in your tone and also in the energy behind your posts.
Enjoy your strategy.
High conversion strategies require you to be in front of fewer people because you don't need to reach as many in order to get the conversions that you need for business sustainability and success.
A high conversion strategy would be showing up in a couple of small groups where you can step up, be a leader, and be known for your business in that particular audience and get lots of referrals from that space.
That way there's a high level of people knowing, liking and trusting you, and there's a much higher conversion rate because people are feeling very connected to you.
Something like inviting people to send you a private message and taking the conversation one-to-one quickly, working with a few people and talking with a few people but doing it all one-to-one, is much higher conversion than just broadcasting onto social media over and over again.
By bringing together point 1 (find your joy) and point 2 (find a way to make it high conversion - and therefore you don't have to reach as many people) you'll be able to make it as easy as possible.
There are many people who can help you with batching your content and scheduling it up. You don't even need to do the scheduling part yourself.
But if you're doing it yourself for now, set aside a small portion of time once a week or once every two weeks or even once a month, where you schedule up one post on your Facebook page per day for that period of time.
If you're scheduling things up once a month, then schedule a post for each day for the next 30 days.
Something nice and simple that helps you to make it as easy as possible and allows you to be more consistent on social media.
Not all of your content has to be written exactly on that day and published organically on that day.
You can batch and schedule up some content.
I find this is really helpful for people who do intense work such as yourself, Ali. Sometimes it's three or four days in a row where you just cannot be on social media and you really need to retreat.
If you've scheduled things up and you know that at least your minimum posts are going onto social media, then you can do that without guilt or worry.
Your minimum posts are going up, you don't have to panic too much, and everything is taken care of.
Sure, it would be better if you could show up and be present with your audience more consistently. But if there are times when you need to retreat, you can do so with confidence and without feeling as though you're sabotaging your business by taking time off.
That's the last thing we want you to feel when you are looking after yourself.
I think this is where a lot of people get drained by social media. They are on social media eighteen times a day, scrolling randomly, replying to that one message from someone, looking through their notifications, and they don't have boundaries or structure around the way they are on social media.
I separate my business time on social media from my playtime on social media.
In my business time on social media, I usually dedicate about 25 minutes a day, where I have a set list of things that I do, and I don't divert from that plan.
I will check any messages and respond, I will reply to any notifications or comments I need to reply to, and then I will jump into my own Facebook page, see what's going on and see if I need to do anything organically. I'll jump into my own Facebook group and do something, and then if there's time in my 25 minutes (which there usually is) I can also jump into a couple of other Facebook groups, share some posts in there as well, cheer a few people on and do some commenting.
If I've done that 25 minutes - and I try and do it as early in the day as possible - the rest of my time on social media is joy time.
I'm consistent, I'm there for 25 minutes a day, five days a week - I'll usually have one day on the weekend that I skip and one day during the week that I skip - and I'm consistent, but I'm very boundaried with that time.
Whilst the kettle is boiling, if I choose to also scroll through social media, see what everyone's up to and message a few friends, that's my playtime. That's personal time. It may be that some of the things I do in that playtime overlap with my business, but it's extra, and it's not a minimum requirement. If I don't do it, I don't have a problem with that because I have met my minimum requirements for the day on social media.
Be consistent on social media, but be boundaried about it.
Outsource as soon as you can.
Especially when you are batching up content and someone else can do the scheduling for you.
My first ever Facebook scheduling hire was someone who I paid US$8 an hour through Upwork and I hired her for two hours per month.
It cost me US$16 per month to outsource my content scheduling onto my Facebook page to someone else.
I still made the content - I was in that stage of creating videos, making little boards in Canva and writing up all of my content. All I did was just send the person a spreadsheet with all of the information in it - dates, what they had to post, and where the link to the image or video was if they needed it - and they did the scheduling part.
At first, it took me longer to set up that system than if I had just kept scheduling it myself. But I knew if I created a little system and I got it working at least efficiently enough that I could hand it over to someone else quite quickly and easily, that that would pay dividends in saved time and energy over and over and over again.
Setting up the spreadsheet and filling in the content probably took me two or three hours the first time, and then it got quicker and quicker and quicker, but the whole time, my US$16 per month stayed stagnant.
I was putting less and less time into my social media, but putting the same amount of money and getting much better results from that consistency.
Make sure you outsource as quickly as you can, get into the habit of creating systems and processes for yourself because it's actually in that structure that you will find so much freedom.
I can jump on video and talk as much as I like. It doesn't drain me, in fact, it really energises me. So to me that feels way easier than writing out 100 posts for 100 days.
I would much prefer to show up on video more consistently, than show up with written stuff, writing long-form captions and all of those sorts of things.
90% of what I do on social media is whatever was easiest for me at the time.
It is allowed to be easy, and that's often a mindset issue more than a strategy issue.
You think in order for your social media to work well, you have to:
That is just not true.
20% of what you are doing is getting you 80% of your results. You just need to know what that 20% is, and make sure that that's not the part that you skip when you feel like just doing the minimum.
If you're just doing the minimum, do the 20% that gets you 80% of your results.
That's usually the high connection, high conversion strategies, and being very present with your audience.
There's absolutely no need to overcomplicate it.
I hope you found that helpful, Ali and everyone else reading as well.
To summarise, here are my six tips on how you can be more consistent on social media the easy and lazy way:
Please come on over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, and let me know you've been reading episode number 227. I'd love to know which of those six things you are going to try in the next few weeks to make your social media strategy easier, lazier, more fun, more joyful and more effective for your business because you're able to show up more consistently when you find the easy way.
If reach and conversion are areas you’d like to focus more on, and you do a lot of selling on Facebook (or if you’d like to), I actually have a free resource for you.
This is a free training that helps you to make more money from Facebook by getting better rates and better conversion.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/226
In today's episode, I'm going to be answering the question: Are you overcomplicating your marketing?
I have a really simple startup marketing plan that will help you to grow your business really quickly.
I'll be honest with you, when I ask women who are starting their business what they're doing in order to get their business growing, and growing their audiences, I feel tired just listening to all the different things that they're doing.
They are:
If this is resonating with you by just reading this, I just want to let you know that it doesn't have to be that hard.
Particularly when you're first starting out in business, you don't want to be spreading yourself thin amongst dozens of different strategies to market yourself.
You want to be focusing on the things that work and making the things that you've decided to focus on work as effectively as possible before you add anything else to the equation.
For so many people, I think the reason why we overcomplicate it is because there's so much advice out there in the online business world about what you must be doing in order to be successful online.
I just saw a post in a Facebook group that I'm in, and the opening line was, "If you are not on LinkedIn every day, you are losing money". This is just the same fear-based stuff that gets women so tied up in knots about what they should and shouldn't be doing in order to grow their business, and it leaves you confused.
First and foremost, people are telling you that you HAVE to do a specific strategy because they are going to sell you a course on how to do that strategy. They're going to sell you coaching on how to do that strategy.
Of course, everyone's got their opinions and their ideas about what it takes to grow a business and what the best strategy is. But at the end of the day, if they're trying to convince you that their one thing is the only way to do it, the either:
a. They have a vested interest in you believing that because they're going to sell something to you.
b. That's the only way that they know how to do it, so they'd prefer that you believe that that's the best way because that's the way that they specialise in.
I want to share with you my simple three-part marketing plan.
You can use this three-part marketing plan, regardless of whether you:
However you want to grow your business, this simple three-part marketing plan is a really beautiful way for you to keep your marketing strategy contained.
Focus on what works, and make the things you choose to focus on work more effectively. We want to get you to the point where you're making consistent, reliable, predictable, sustainable income from your marketing efforts in your business.
Sound good? I think it's really sexy and really simple.
The beautiful thing is, this three-part marketing plan can be tailored to your specific strengths, your specific niche, your specific market, and it can absolutely work for everyone.
1. Reach the right people
2. Convert the right people into paying clients
3. Nurture your mindset
That is my three-part startup marketing plan.
Until you are making $5,000 to $10,000 a month in your business, you don't need to do anything more complex than that.
With the simplicity of that marketing plan, you should be able to be having five to ten really high-quality lead conversations with people about whether working with you is the right fit, and converting a good chunk of those people into paying clients.
It's very reasonable to expect that you're making a good $5,000 to $10,000 a month out of that very simple marketing plan.
I have used this simple marketing plan to hit $25,000 a month in my business. I have helped women in startup use this marketing plan to hit $15,000 a month, $20,000 a month, $30,000 a month and I even had a client who had a $45,000 month with a very simple marketing plan based on this.
The key to keeping this simple is to pick one strategy per step.
For your reach, have one focus point - how are you going to get in front of the right people for your product or service?
You could:
So you have your one key way of achieving that outcome in your marketing strategy.
What is your strategy to reach the right people? Do you have ONE that is better than all the others? And are you dedicating the majority of your time on reach to the one that works?
Or have you been getting some traction in Facebook groups, some traction on Instagram, some traction on LinkedIn, some traction from networking events, some traction from doing guest posts and podcasts, some traction from Pinterest and visitors to your website, and you're doing none of them particularly well, you're just doing all of them pretty poorly.
That's the situation that I see so many people trapped in. They think they need to do everything, and in the end, they end up doing none of them particularly effectively.
Or they've got one strategy that's actually working really well for them, but they don't put any time or energy into that strategy because they're so busy chasing shiny objects that are gonna get them more reach, more high-quality clients and much better conversions. They've been convinced that they're missing out, and their FOMO (fear of missing out) has driven them away from the strategy that was actually working for them in the first place.
Of course, some of those strategies are scalable, and some of them are not.
For example, posting in other people's Facebook groups is not particularly scalable. If you want to go and reach more people, you're going to need to be in more groups and you're going to have to put more time in.
But when you are initially growing your business and marketing your business in Facebook communities, and you have done that consistently, you are testing your messaging, making sure you've got your niche sorted, practising your sales conversations, your conversions, and working out what the best product or service is for your ideal client.
It does not need to be completely scalable out of the gate. You don't need 4,000 leads to make a sale, you need one quality lead to make a sale - that is all it takes.
Instead of looking for strategies that get you thousands of reach and really low-quality leads, low-quality reach, low connection reach, and it's not actually working for you, focus on strategies that get you high connection, and therefore that makes your conversion strategy (part two of this) so much simpler and easier.
Again, the secret is to choose ONE conversion strategy.
You might choose Instagram to be your reach strategy, and your conversion strategy is to get people engaging in direct messages with you, and having lots and lots of direct message conversations with people.
I was just working with a VIP client a couple of weeks ago, and she told me that she doesn't really have a promo strategy for her VIP work, it's just that whenever she does Instagram stories, Facebook stories or Lives, she has three or four people private messaging her asking how they can work with her. And that's actually a strategy. It's a really beautiful strategy because it's high connection, high conversion and it's getting her lots of client inquiries who are then turning into paying clients.
It's a strategy, it's just that she didn't realise it was a strategy, and it's working really well.
When I was talking to this particular client, she was thinking that she needed to set up an automated funnel and automated webinars in order to get VIP clients in. She was really worried that she wasn't doing the right things to get VIP clients in the door. But her strategy was working really beautifully.
Your strategy for conversion could be as simple as direct message strategy.
It could be a little bit more complicated and you could run a live webinar each month.
I really love a live webinar because there are so many add-on benefits for the long term growth of your business with that as your conversion strategy.
My initial reach strategy when I first started my business was getting my offer out onto social media and into Facebook communities. My conversion strategy was then offering a two-hour low-cost introductory session with me. About 60% of the people who did an introductory session with me ended up working as a VIP in a longer-term one-to-one working relationship.
To be honest with you, I went to a bunch of webinars in about my sixth and seventh month of business because I'd hit a 20K month in month six, a 10-12K month in month seven, and I was worried that my strategies weren't scalable.
I was seeing all of these fear-based things about 'missing out on money', and 'not doing it right', blah, blah, blah.
So I was going to these webinars, and they were basically telling me that what I was doing wasn't scalable, it wasn't going to work so I shouldn't do that anymore because I have to sell courses, it has to be passive and it had to be leveraged.
I totally second-guessed my business and ended up sucking the income out of it because according to these people, I wasn't supposed to work one-to-one with people, it's trading dollars for hours so it's not scalable.
Meanwhile, I'd been making 20K a month and growing my business really organically with fun and easy things.
Yet here I was being led to believe I was doing it the wrong way.
When it comes to mindset, I always say the most powerful mindset practise is one in which you can notice, uncover and clear out any of the limiting beliefs and mindset blocks that come up for you as you go.
Your mindset practise might be that you:
I don't mind what your mindset strategy is, but I really do think that it's so valuable for you to find your one key thing in each of those three stages.
If you can just focus on making those work, you will simplify your marketing strategy, make your business so much more enjoyable, get to choose the one thing that you love and enjoy doing the most, and you get to easily create business growth and momentum.
It will allow you to easily learn how to get the right messaging, the right sales, ask the right questions and understand your ideal client really deeply in a way that helps you facilitate a big transformation for them. You will really create that connection and engagement so that your audience continues to snowball and grow.
How amazing is that?
The thing with this is that when you simplify your marketing strategy right down the way that I'm suggesting, what ends up happening is if it doesn't work, you can identify what's not working and why it's not working.
Let's say your reach strategy is Instagram. You're posting on Instagram consistently, using hashtags, learning all of the tips and tricks on how to reach new people on Instagram and get in front of all the right audiences, and yet you're not reaching anyone on Instagram. You're not getting any engagement and it's not working.
By having committed to that as your reach strategy, if it's not working, you know that it's not actually the strategy that's the problem, it's actually your messaging and niching.
Anyone can grow an audience on Instagram.
Every market has an Instagram based audience that you can grow.
If you're learning the Instagram tips, tricks, tools and strategies, you're implementing them and doing the right things, but it's not getting you the results, the issue is not Instagram.
It also helps you to be much more precise about what needs to be fixed if things aren't making progress and achieving results for you in your business.
Similarly, if your conversion strategy is to use webinars and you put together a webinar and don't get enough signups or you get lots of signups but no one converts into the sale, the issue is not the webinar.
The issue is not the strategy, it's not the vessel that you use to get the result, it's the niche and the messaging within that vessel that clearly isn't working.
By simplifying your strategy down, not only do you make it easier for yourself to implement that marketing strategy in your business, you also make it easier to work out what's not working and what needs to be improved.
It makes it MUCH easier for you to see when you change something, what the impact of that change is.
You don't have fifteen different things all going on at once and you change something here and you change something there and then all of a sudden you've got a little bit of extra momentum (but have no idea why so you just keep doing all fifteen things).
If that sounds really appealing to you and you would love to start growing your business with a very simple startup strategy, I have a great free resource for you.
It's an hour and a bit of video training in which I take you through how you can get from where you are to consistent income in your business the fast way. It’s all about building your business and getting money in the door quickly by building a business to your innate strengths.
I’d love for you to go and check that out
As always, come on over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let me know you've been listening to episode number 226, ask your questions, share your lightbulb moments, and tell me what you're going to simplify in your business.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/225
"Faith + action = belief." – Suzy Ashworth
This is a super special episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast because it is a Spotlight interview with the one and only Suzy Ashworth.
In this interview, Suzy and I discuss mindset, messaging and growing a business.
Suzy also shares her free masterclass How to Master Your Message. You can access this incredible freebie here: suzyashworth.com/masterclass
If you want to uplevel your business, the first thing that you need to do is go back to your message.
It doesn't matter whether you're looking to hit your first $5,000, $20,000 or $50,000 month... whenever you're wanting to uplevel, you start with your messaging.
That's why Suzy has created her free masterclass How to Master Your Message.
You can find it here: suzyashworth.com/masterclass
Make sure you come and share your questions, comments and light-bulb moments over in the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs community using #podcastaha and the episode number (225).
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/224
In today's episode, I'm going to be answering the question: Are webinars dead?
I've got some surprising stats that will tell a different story.
It's no secret that I love and adore webinars.
In the last episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I answered Mel Gorry's questions about how I deal with webinar gremlins and mindset blocks, and I professed my undying love for them.
I also have another podcast episode where I talk about why I love webinars so much.
Before we jump into whether webinars are dead or not (they're totally not), I want to make sure that we're clear on what a webinar actually is.
A webinar is a web-based seminar. I want to be 100% clear that I don't care what you call it. You might call it a masterclass, seminar, online training, workshop or a webinar - whatever you like to call it is totally up to you.
The key things that make a webinar a webinar (in my opinion), are that it's free and it's live. Whether you present over slides or face-to-camera, or you do it Q&A style, I don't care. But it's live and people register beforehand with their email.
In the context of talking about whether webinars are dead or not, those are the things that make a webinar a webinar.
Hopefully, we're on the same page there. If you've got any questions about that, go into the Heart-Centred group, use #podcastaha, and say "Episode 224. What about this? Is that a webinar? What about if I do it this way? Is that still a webinar?"
Ask me your questions and I will keep an eye out for them.
They have many far-reaching impacts in your business, such as:
I wanted to talk through some specific statistics that helped me to realise and understand that even though there are lots of very facetious people out there saying that webinars are totally dead, webinars are NOT dead.
If you buy into that belief that webinars are dead without giving them a go for your own business, then you may just be missing out on one of the most effective tools to grow your audience, your list and your income in your business.
According to the Digital Marketing Organisation, a recent survey in March 2020 found that over 73% of marketers still rate webinars as the highest converting lead magnet. They rate it as one of the most powerful lead magnets for generating sales - whether that be VIP one-to-one sales or course-related sales.
Furthermore, when it comes to launching a course, membership, mastermind or group program, over 90% of people who launch still use webinars as one of their lead magnets in that launch process.
The fact that 90% of people are still using them doesn't necessarily mean that you have to and that it's the best strategy for you. But I think it does give an indication of the power of the webinar and how effective it is as a launch tool, lead magnet and way of getting in front of a large portion of your audience, helping them move forward and presenting the next logical step of working with you - whatever that may be.
This seems like a pretty good clue that webinars are not dead.
The second statistic I want to share is the conversion statistic.
These numbers come from a range of sources, including:
I've put some ranges because different places quote different conversion rates for different lead magnets and things like that. This will allow me to give you some ranges of conversion.
The conversion rate from a static lead magnet (ie. eBook, checklist, pre-recorded video), into people buying a group program, course, membership, or mastermind, the average industry conversion rate for a static lead magnet is between 0.5% and 1%.
The second group or cluster that I found was challenges. Whether it's a 5-day challenge, 7-day challenge or a 30-day challenge, the average conversion rate from a challenge into a paid product or service, with no ads supporting the conversion was 1% to 2%, and with ads was 2% to 3%.
The ads that I'm talking about there are when you use ads to make sure the people who signed up for your challenge are actually watching the challenge videos. When you're using those ads with that type of strategy, you can increase the conversion from a challenge into buying a group course, membership, mastermind, or any of those sorts of things.
The interesting information on all the challenge-based launching training that I've seen, is that most marketers and people who teach launching, recommend that if you run a challenge, you also run a webinar. Because a lot of people don't complete challenges.
That means under 5% of people who sign up for the challenge actually do all of the days.
This is why a lot of marketers recommend that you want to capture in all the people who signed up for the challenge and run a webinar so that they're at least moving forward in some way, shape or form - even if they don't finish that challenge.
People will readily sign up for a challenge, but they don't actually complete it to the extent that they complete a webinar.
This is where it gets really juicy, because if the completion rate of a challenge is less than 5%, what do you think the completion rate of a webinar is?
If we include people who come live as well as people who watch the recording, completion rates of webinars are still around 50%.
25% of people who sign up for a webinar show up live, and 25% of people who sign up for a webinar, watch the recording.
That's 50% of the people who sign up for that lead magnet actually watching and completing it.
It also really shows when it comes to conversion rates.
I've seen industry averages for webinars be between 3% to 7% being quoted in different spaces by different marketing gurus.
For myself, I've had webinars that have converted between 3% and I think my highest was about 14.5% conversion. That means that up to 14.5% of people who signed up for the webinar ended up buying the thing that I was promoting.
My 14% conversion rates have mostly been on products and services that are under $1,000. My best conversion rate for the Take Off program (which is $1,995) was 11%.
I'm still very pleased with an 11% conversion on a webinar. It says to me that webinars are still a really amazing strategy for bringing people in, educating them on what it's like to work with you and presenting an offer that may be the right fit for them.
I've seen women in the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook community (particularly women that I've been working with through the Take Off program and VIP) who talk about webinar conversion rates up to 21%.
21% is the highest I've seen, and I'd love to hear from you if you've had a better conversion rate on a webinar. But for me, this is really powerful because what it says is that you don't need to get thousands of people registered for something in order for it to actually work and create a really big return on investment for your business.
That is some really juicy stats for you to think about when it comes to growing your audience, getting those sales in the door, and also the level of lead generation you need to do in order to get the sales that you want to get in your business.
This final stat is a little bit outside of the box. Maybe you think that it's a counterpoint to the fact that webinars aren't dead. This stat actually comes from Facebook ads, and that is that out of all of the gated styles of ads that you could run (where people click on a link and then they go and sign up for something), webinars are the most expensive leads.
It's cheaper to get a lead for a challenge, it's cheaper to get a lead for a static freebie, and it's cheaper to get a lead for someone to sign up for a free video series.
Webinar leads are the most expensive out of all of the freebie lead magnet type ads that you can do.
Yet, if we link back to the first step that I shared, 73% of digital marketers still use webinars, and 90% of launches still use them as well.
Even though they are the most expensive type of lead you can generate through ads, they are still being used by 90% of people launching.
I would really encourage you to experiment and play with webinars as part of your strategy before you decide you don't want to do them.
I say to the ladies in the Take Off program, that they are absolutely free to have a business model that doesn't include webinars... ONCE they've done a webinar.
The fear of doing webinars, the imposter syndrome and all of the mindset wobbles that come up, is often worse than the process of actually just doing the webinar.
I really do encourage you to give it a go, then you can decide if webinars are dead or not.
The final thought that I want to leave you with, is actually a thought that I discovered from a very well known (but I will leave unnamed) launch specialist.
Previously in his launch training, he has been very clear that running a three or four-part video series is what he thinks is the best way of launching courses, memberships and digital products.
Last year for the first time ever, I heard him say people really value connection, and that running your webinars live and having that as a lead magnet is probably something that's a bit non-negotiable these days because people need to feel a sense of connection to you.
This guy had previously been flogging software and launch strategies that said to just pre-record your webinar and pretend that it's live (I totally hate that strategy). Now even he is saying that it's worth it to show up live because if people are asking questions on your fake live webinar, and you're not answering their questions, then that's going to be a disconnecting thing for them and they may actually be convinced NOT to buy from you because they're not being seen by you. Whereas you're better off to just run it live, answer people's questions, help people to feel seen and create that connection with them.
To which I say hallelujah, welcome to the world of the ladyposse because that is what we do in the Heart-Centred Soul Diven Entrepreneurs community, and we know that connection maximises conversion.
It's a bit of an invitation for you to be a nosey parker and unpick my webinar strategy.
If you've been reading this and thinking that it's time for you to run a webinar and that you're going to really look into how to do it effectively, then at any time, you can go to tashcorbin.com/webinar and my next webinar will be on that page for you to register for.
What I want to invite you to do is not to register for it to get the content (although if it's interesting for you then that's a bonus), but to go and register for it so that you can look at the process.
Pay attention to the:
I love signing up to other people's webinars to see how they do it, how I'm treated through the sales process and how they make me feel.
Just take a little bit of a nosey parker, look around at the way that I facilitate webinars because you might be surprised.
If you've only ever been to those really salesy, aggressive webinars, you might be surprised at how amazingly connecting and effective webinars can be, and how little you need to resort to the trickery, spammy tactics, fear and the pressure and the "You have to buy before the end of the webinar" stuff.
I don't do any of that in my webinars.
Yet, I often exceed industry averages of conversion, and sometimes get 3-4 times the conversion rates that industry-standards say that you should get for webinars.
I really want to role model for you that you don't need to use those fear-based marketing strategies, and to tell and show you that you can absolutely run a really connecting, empowering, heart-centred webinar.
You don't have to dial up the fear and the pain points. You don't have to do any of those things for webinars to work as a strategy in your business. In fact, I'm finding by using empowering strategies, really heart-based strategies, and not using any of those fear and gross tactics, that my webinars are converting even better.
I would love for you to check out my webinar through the lens of:
As always, come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, and share if you've had a lightbulb moment, if you want to make a commitment to doing a webinar or if you've got any follow-up questions. Let me know you've been reading episode number 224, post your question or your comment and we will continue the conversation over in the group.
If you’re ready to “fast track” your business, get it off the ground, and build a business model around your strengths, I have a great free resource for you!
It’s all about building your business and getting money in the door quickly by building it to your innate strengths.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/223
We have another Q&A episode of the podcast today, and I've got a brilliant question from Mel about facing up to the mindset blocks and gremlins that might rear their head when you are creating and promoting a webinar.
This will be strongly focused on your webinar mindset and is going to be a really helpful one.
Before we jump into Mel's brilliant question today, a quick reminder that if you'd like me to answer your question on the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, and give you a lovely little shout out as well, you can submit your question HERE.
Today's question comes from the amazing Mel Gorry who you can find on Instagram at @melissa.gorry.
Melissa asked a great question about running a webinar, and I love this because I love Mel so much. If you don't follow her, please make sure you go and check her out. She is a business and marketing specialist who specifically works with women who have chronic conditions or other reasons why they have limited energy and therefore need to build their marketing and business strategies in a way that works with that limited energy.
Mel is absolutely brilliant at what she does, and I absolutely adore her so I'm super happy to be answering her question today.
Mel's question is:
"When launching and releasing my first webinar, sooo many mindset gremlins reared their head. I was so unprepared and didn't know how to combat it!
Why does this happen?
What are the best strategies to combat and build resilience to those mindset blocks?
And Tash, what came up for you in your first webinar?"
Great questions and I'm really excited to talk about this one today!
It's a great way to get in front of a lot of people at once, to talk about your services, and to help people move from where they are to where they want to be. It also does great things for growing your list, building your audience, and creating momentum on social media.
There are so many reasons to love webinars, and if you haven't watched my podcast episode previously that is about why I love webinars so much, then go check that out because I am a big webinars fan.
Think about the fact that when you start a business, it is one of the most powerful personal development journeys you can go on.
When you think about why it's such a strong personal development journey, it's because it brings up all your stuff.
If there's a self-sabotage or procrastination bone in your body, you're going to find it when you start a business.
You need to ask for money, you need to be seen and visible, talk yourself up, and talk about your services.
Knowing that starting and growing a business is the ultimate personal development journey and brings up all that mindset stuff for us to be able to pay attention to it and clear it, then when we think about a webinar, it's the one part of running a business and marketing strategy, where every single one of those things come into play.
It's no surprise that a webinar is something that can bring up a lot of those mindset blocks for us.
We want to be paying attention to those things so that we can clear them and move through them. This allows us to expand, receive more, work more effectively in our business, get more done and whatever else it is that we need to do.
Whilst it may be annoying that it brings up all of your mindset blocks, you really need to celebrate that it brings them up because that's exactly what we want to do.
Notice what those thoughts are, notice what those gremlins are, and then use the tools and strategies that we have in our toolkit to uncover, clear and release them.
It's actually a really beautiful opportunity to grow your mindset and undertake a leap in that personal development journey that comes with starting and growing a business.
The second part of your question that I'm going to answer is what came up for me when I ran my first webinar.
I ran my first webinar in 2013 when I was a couple of months into my business journey. The webinar was called 12 Steps to Creative Success and it was a webinar on how to grow a creative business, whether you are an artist or a crafter or any kind of maker.
That was my niche when I first started my business (well, my second niche).
I only had 13 people sign up for that webinar, despite the fact that I thought I had spewed up content about it onto the internet for two weeks solid.
I felt like everyone in my entire world must have known I was running this webinar and must have been sick of hearing me talk about it.
When I finished the webinar, due to the fact that I had only had 13 people sign up, I did a little review of my marketing and how I'd shared it.
I had shared the information about my webinar three times, and I thought I had told everyone about it and I was all over the internet.
It was really interesting that I thought I had done all the right things but in essence, I had been very quiet about this webinar and expected people to sign up for it the first time they ever saw it.
The only way that I was talking about it was just by copying and pasting the promo copy that I was going to be using. I sent the same promo to my list, as well as putting it in those two Facebook groups.
Really it's a miracle that those 13 people signed up, to be honest with you.
Only one of those 13 people showed up live because I didn't send out any reminder emails. It was only when they first signed up for the webinar that I shared the link of how they could join and watch it. There were no reminders sent to anyone, so only one person showed up.
It brought up a lot of the "Who am I" stuff because I hadn't had a successful artistic or creative business at that point in time. I had a lot of imposter syndrome stuff coming up, feeling like I knew how to do the business part but I wasn't someone who'd already done this before. I felt like I was still growing my business but I knew what worked on social media and what sorts of things I could encourage people to do.
At this point, I had already been working with two clients in creative businesses, but I still felt lots of stuff coming up of, 'Who am I to say I can help people with this? Who am I? There's no way that I am the right person to be teaching people this', and I got really freaked out before I ran that webinar.
BUT my desire to share the 12 step process I had developed and been working on with my VIP clients, outweighed my fear. I'm really grateful that it did because it meant that even though I was really worried about it, had the imposter syndrome and I only had 13 people sign up, I knew that even if just one person heard this 12 step process and it made their business growth journey easier, then my job was done and I would have been of service.
That was a really interesting thing to reflect back on so I did a lot of journaling and self-reflection on:
I really do encourage you to tune into that desire to serve and that desire to tell people what to do and help them.
Tap into your desire to really show up and make a difference in even just one person's life because that will help with a lot of the webinar mindset wobbles that can come up when you are creating and launching a webinar.
All of that being said, here are my top four tips on what to do about the mindset stuff when you are creating and launching a webinar.
Whenever you are freaking out about something that you are going to do, you are focusing on yourself instead of focusing on your audience.
Whenever you notice that, shift it.
Think to yourself: Okay, clearly I'm talking about myself and worrying about myself right now. But what about the people who are waiting for this information? What about the people who are sitting there thinking that no one understands them and that no one is going to be able to help them?
Specifically for you, Mel, think about all those beautiful women who think they can't be successful in business because they're not well. The women who think that they can't be successful and do all the things that they need to do because of a physical limitation with their energy. That makes me really teary thinking about it and about all those women we are depriving of the amazing Mel Gorry because you're a bit worried about your mindset wobbles. You've got your imposter syndrome happening or whatever is happening for you.
When you focus on them instead, it really does make a huge difference in how you feel and the energy that you bring to that webinar.
I talk about this a lot, but when I first started my business, I had a post-it note on my desk that said, "Do it for her". Those four words really drove a lot of what I did in the first six months of my business because it wasn't about me.
It's very easy to make it all about yourself when starting a business, but at the end of the day, it's about who you're here to serve.
"Do it for her" was what it took to get me into that service mindset whenever I was feeling wobbly.
This is a practise.
When I first ran my webinar, it was just the one person.
Your audience will never be as small as it is today.
The number of people who sign up for your webinars will never be as low as it is today.
Take the pressure down. You don't need to be perfect. Just see this as practise.
Even if you completely mess it up and the 25 people who signed up to webinar think that you don't know what you're talking about, that's only 25 people out of billions who are out there in the world that you can serve.
Nine times out of ten when you do mess it up, people don't think that you're terrible and that they'll never work with you again, it actually makes people realise that you're human, and it can be more engaging than if you get it perfect.
Take the pressure off yourself to get it perfect.
Embrace that feeling of it being a practise, and allow yourself to experiment and learn to get better at it.
I remember in my first YouTube videos, I was so breathy and weird on camera.
Whenever we get a big influx of Take Off students, I reshare one of my very early YouTube videos with them because I know how much it makes them feel better about what they're doing. I was terrible. I was sitting on my balcony and the wind kept blowing my hair up, you can hardly hear me, there's a truck that goes behind me, and I thought I was doing this amazing, super casual type thing on my video, and it was terrible.
So just know that it gets easier, and you get better at speaking to your audience.
With practise you'll get better at facilitating that webinar, moving people through the process, dealing with the chatbox, the screen, the slides and all of the things that are going on at once.
You will forget to record your webinar at some point along the way as well (it's usually a bit of a rite of passage), but it will get easier.
I think that's such a beautiful thing to remember.
It takes practise. It'll get easier. The way that it gets easier is by doing it more consistently. That's how you'll get better at it.
See this as an opportunity to uncover what those gremlins are, and then use the mindset tools in your toolkit to work through them.
If there's something showing up when you're in webinar mode, even if it's not showing up in other spaces in your business, it will be impacting your decision making in your business.
Bringing it to the surface is actually a good thing.
It will allow you to use those tools in your toolkit to work through that mindset block or whatever it is that's coming up for you.
Some mindset tools could be:
If you found a mindset practise that really helps you - especially one where you're paying attention to those blocks, what's coming up and having strategies to clear them - that's going to be really helpful.
A big thank you to the amazing Mel for her brilliant question about webinars, especially in relation to mindset blocks and the gremlins that come up.
If you've had a lightbulb moment, have any follow up questions from this podcast episode, or if you've got a tip on how to address the mindset stuff that comes up when you are running webinars please share it. I want you to come over to the Heart-Centred Soul Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let us know that you've been listening to episode number 223, and share your comments, lightbulb moments, questions and your tips on how to overcome those mindset wobbles that can come up when we are running webinars.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
If you want to ask a question and have me answer it here on the podcast, simply submit your question with all your details HERE.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/222
In today's episode, I'm going to share with you my copywriting tips to increase connection and conversion.
This is a really good one and I want you to listen closely because I have six EPIC tips for you, and they are all really meaty ones.
First and foremost I want to say that, yes you can:
BUT if those copywriters are any good, they're going to have a bunch of questions for you. Those questions are going to be really difficult for you to answer if you don't at least try to learn and practise how to write your copy yourself.
Doing your own copy is a really smart part of truly nailing your messaging, your value proposition and how you talk about your work, regardless of whether you can afford to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to copywriters or not.
I would recommend holding off in the early stages of business and just practising and learning how to write about your business in your own words first.
This is really critical, especially as your business starts to grow because you can't outsource every piece of writing that you'll ever have to do for your business. I know so many entrepreneurs who say that they're a terrible writer, that they aren't good with words and they just don't know how to talk about their work.
But instead of asking yourself if you should do your copywriting or not, ask yourself: How can I become just dangerous enough with my own copywriting so that I can get those results? So that I know how to speak to my audience, and therefore I know how to hire a great copywriter? So that I know how to answer their questions, and I know how to create pieces of content and copy that I need to without always having to ask someone else to do it for me?
It doesn't have to be that you write your own book yourself or you write everything yourself, but some kind of writing for your business is a non-negotiable skill.
Here are my six tips on how you can improve your copywriting to increase the connection that you create with your audience and increase the extent to which it converts people into paying clients with you.
This is a hyper-focused, hyper-effective copy for your business.
Expecting yourself to write the perfect sales page the first time around is like expecting yourself to be able to do a double toe-triple axel spin on the ice when you first get in a pair of ice skates.
It's not about doing it perfectly the first time around.
What you want to do is write it as best you can and practise and refine as you go.
The same goes for every offer that you write, every blog post, every tip that you share on social media, all of the posts where you're sharing your story, the emails that you send your newsletters, it all comes down to practise.
I know so many people who are still waiting to be good at writing before they put out their first newsletter. In reality, you would be way better if you had started back when you decided you needed to be better.
Allow yourself the opportunity to practise.
Don't just practise behind the scenes and refine behind the scenes, practise by actually speaking to your audience.
In most cases, the way that we think we need to write in order to connect and convert is very different from the way we actually need to write.
We often over formalise our language or think we have to write in these big broad general sweeping terms with shiny sparkly words, and that's actually quite disconnecting, but you won't know that for your audience until you start writing to them.
Whether it be practising with:
It's important that you start approaching this as writing practise as quickly and effectively as possible.
It's all a practise.
You have two ears and one mouth. You write with one hand (in most cases), and that is an important balance to have.
Many people are so busy trying to tell their audience what they need them to hear, that they're not actually listening to what their audience says in return.
I don't know how many times people come to me so frustrated saying that people need to work on A, B and C, and whenever I talk about it, they respond by saying that they need F and that these people just don't get it.
To them I say: You are focusing on the wrong thing. Your audience is telling you exactly what they think the problem is. They're telling you exactly what they think the need is, and what they think their priority should be. All you need to do is link F (the thing that they think they need) to what you know is the real thing going on for them.
Then all of a sudden, you're meeting your audience where they are, and you're helping them with what they need and what they think they need. You're also moving them forward and closer to understanding the deeper challenge and the deeper issue that's going on.
Listen to the replies. Read the replies. Listen to your audience.
Hands up if when you first started your business, you got out there and you didn't ask any questions.
That was me. When I first started my business, I thought that I had to be the expert.
I thought I had to tell, tell, tell, tell, tell.
All of my posts on social media were me giving great advice and sexy tips and "Look at how smart I am! I know how to do everything. Look at all these amazing tips I'm giving you!"
I would often do little question posts on my Facebook page because I was told that you want to get comments and engagement on your Facebook page. But if after three hours they didn't have an answer, I would delete them because I didn't want people to see I was asking questions and getting crickets in return.
What I really should have been doing is leaving those questions up there because you never know who's going to stumble across them.
Back in 2013, the lifespan of a post on Facebook was billions of times longer than one now anyway, but also it helps me when I go back and look over what I've shared, posted and asked in the last month, to see which questions get great answers and lots of engagement and which questions get crickets.
Ask your audience lots of questions (although don't always end with questions because we know you're doing it because you want engagement).
Just don't be afraid to ask questions. Asking questions doesn't say you don't know what you're doing, it says you're keen to understand how you can support others better.
Consistently ask your audience really helpful, meaningful questions that not only help you with looking at where you need to be meeting a need but also ask questions that help THEM as well.
Ask lots of yes/no questions, would you rather questions and open-ended questions.
Backtracking to point number two, make sure you LISTEN to the answer.
Particularly in the spiritual entrepreneur spaces, the healer spaces, and some of the more generalist business coaching spaces.
I see people struggle because their modality can help everyone.
Their modality is working at the highest of levels, and you can get caught in this trap of constantly speaking up in the clouds and talking about broad brush things that obviously everyone wants (ie. would you like to be more productive with your time? Do you want your business to go to the next level? Do you want your children to be happy?)
You need to get more tangible. Speak to my 3D reality:
Keep it conversational.
When I tell stories on social media, in emails or in my podcasts the way that I would tell them over dinner with a glass of wine, they are the ones that get the most engagement. They are the ones where people are relating and thanking me for my honesty and help.
That is where people really connect with my messaging and my copy.
Be tangible and conversational as much as you can.
This is a big one when it comes to copy.
The 'advert trap' is where everything you post and write looks like an advert.
You'll know what I'm talking about:
You're trying to make it look like it's sharp and polished and professional, and all you're doing is making it look like an ad.
Studies have shown that people distrust advertising more than any other form of written content. Yet, so many entrepreneurs try to make everything look like a polished ad.
This also happens with the photos and the images that go with those posts. Is it ALWAYS your professional photos that ALWAYS have your logo in the corner? ALWAYS has some perfect words around it and ALWAYS has your brand colours somewhere with a border or something?
I understand it's important to have visual synergy and for things to look like they're on-brand as consistently as possible, but there's a big difference between the perfectly polished advert version of you, and the real and raw and connecting conversational version of you.
If you're on Facebook where people share stories and personal insights and what happens to them, then speak in Facebook style language. Post it as though you were posting an update to your friends about that hilarious bus trip you went on. Post it with a selfie of you in the throes of whatever it is that you're talking about.
Don't be afraid to be HUMAN because social media is for humans.
It is a social platform.
Whether you are on Instagram or Facebook, doing videos, static, or written, as much as possible try and make it not look like an ad.
People don't trust ads. Make it look like content that is organic to that platform.
This is a big one that applies to all five of my previous tips.
I talk about niche a lot, and I understand you probably think I sound like a broken record by now, but too many people are trapped in trying to speak to everyone.
Instead what your copy does is resonates with no one.
So many people think that they've got their niche down because their niche is busy mums who have a business and want it to be more successful. But I've never met a mum that isn't busy, and I've never met an entrepreneur who doesn't want their business to be more successful.
An age range is not a niche.
We really need to get educated on what a niche is.
It is a specific subgroup of people that you focus on when you are marketing your business.
It's not:
Your niche is the specific group of people that you focus on when you are marketing your business.
There are five core niche decisions that you need to make that cover demographics, psychographics and sensor graphics.
It's not just about demographic decisions or writing a long-winded love note to your ideal client.
It's about making those five important decisions so that you can know exactly how to speak to your ideal client, the type of language you need to use, and the types of questions you're going to ask so that you can listen out for their answers and get out there and start practising talking to those people.
That is why I am so excited that my free resource for you today is my new Nail That Niche training you can access whenever you like.
Normally I reserve my niche training for live training only. However, I have run the live niche training five times already in 2020, and every single time we get hundreds and hundreds of new people signing up to this. There are always people asking questions and when I ask about their niche, they are unclear and they have not made those important decisions.
Make sure you go and check it out HERE.
If you are struggling with copywriting or messaging, or you're struggling to really create that connection and conversion with your clients, I always say start with niche and I highly recommend you go and check that one out.
Please head on over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, let me know any insights and questions that you have using #podcastaha and the podcast episode number 222.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/221
"For you to have the impact and income that you deserve, you need to truly look within and find out what puts you in flow, and then focus on that and solely on that and success will be yours."
– Natalie Sisson
This episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast is a Spotlight interview with the amazing Natalie Sisson.
Natalie and I got down to business discussing what it really takes to have five-figure months.
In the interview, Natalie shared her free quick-start guide and audio - Get Paid to Be You: 10 steps to monetise you and do the work that matters. You can access this epic freebie here: nataliesisson.com.
And if you want a quick summary, I've even popped some key points below. ENJOY!!!
It's called Get paid to be you: 10 steps to monetise yourself and do the work that matters.
In this quick-start guide and workbook, Natalie covers how you can earn revenue by packaging your knowledge and skills, expertise and personality into it.
Get it here: nataliesisson.com
Make sure you come and share your questions, comments and light-bulb moments over in the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs community, using #podcastaha and the episode number (221).
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/220
In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the fact that business is NOT just about having an epic strategy. We're also going to check in on your entrepreneurial mindset.
You probably know that I am a big lover of an EPIC business strategy.
I love talking about all the different parts of business strategy, marketing, sales, and all the different ways that we can reach new people and convert them into clients.
I adore business strategy and that is why it is the core focus of my business and why I love mentoring people about their business strategy and marketing in particular.
However, I also know that for a lot of people when it comes to putting a strategy in place, implementing it AND seeing the results from that strategy, the thing that often lets them down is themself.
I know how powerful a great strategy can be for business growth. But I also know that when I have clients in my programs and working with me one-to-one, those who have consistent mindset support - as well as working with me on their strategy - are the ones who get the best results.
I've got six tips and pieces of advice that you might be interested in exploring to see if you need to get some extra support with your mindset.
I also have a really epic resource for you at the end of today's episode, so make sure you stay tuned for that.
Being an entrepreneur is one of the biggest personal development journeys you could ever go on.
Simply by acknowledging this, we actually open ourselves up to a lot more lessons, and gain the ability to pay attention to what's going on between our ears when we are engaging in business activities and trying to grow our business.
Think about it: When you start your own business, you are the person with whom the buck stops.
If you set yourself a goal or a task and you don't do it, in most cases, there's no one else to blame. It is just you and your thoughts that you are left with at the end of the day.
It is something that really brings up a lot for us, and we need to pay attention to that, be mindful of it and have some strategies and processes to work through it.
Trust me, if you've got a gap in your personal development, if you've got some blocks around being seen, saying yes to money, asking for what you want, or any of the core activities that go hand in hand with having a business, they will show up.
Just by acknowledging that starting a business and growing a business is a very big personal development journey, I think it just ticks you off on the right track.
You just know that you are open to it and you're keeping an eye out for those things as they pop up.
For most people, they go from being in a standard job to being their own boss in their business.
When that happens, you instantly lose the person you normally revert to. You have no safety net of knowing that:
What this does when we start our businesses, is it often puts us in the space where we look for that role to be fulfilled by other people.
When I first started my business, I went to my partner and told him about all my strategies. Whenever I decided I was going to do something, I would talk it over with him. It was almost as though I was waiting for him to tick it off like a boss would, and approve my idea so that I could go and try it.
He had no idea about online business. He was not at all in the space where he could advise me on that, but I just needed someone to give me that permission slip, and he was very good at asking a few questions and then just telling me to do what I thought.
That was great that he played that role for me, but at some point, I needed to take responsibility and say that I no longer want my partner giving me advice on my business or asking for permission from him.
If you have a parent who has their own business, you can sometimes fall into the habit of asking for their advice on everything that you do and needing permission from them. It can be anyone really. You just look for someone to fill the role of a boss for you.
Sometimes you hire a coach and you don't do anything without their permission. You give them an undue sense of responsibility for your business and then start to divert responsibility into their hands.
This ends up leaving you in a dependent relationship with a business coach or a mentor.
This happens because you don't have that normal role to revert to, you decide that actually the clients are the bosses. You then become beholden to THEIR beliefs, THEIR decisions and THEIR opinions about what you should be doing in your business.
None of those situations are particularly healthy, so we want to make sure that we have that personal development journey and entrepreneurial mindset to be able to recognise where we are handing over that sense of power and control.
We want to take that authority and position of responsibility in our business. Don't try and look for a boss or create a boss in a place where you shouldn't.
Accept and acknowledge that you're the boss.
When I was working in jobs and had bosses, the roles where I was the most effective and where I did the best work, were not the ones where my boss was completely mean to me. They were the ones where my boss was really supportive and created the environment that I needed to thrive. They gave me great resources and were very encouraging to me.
Yet when I started my business, I was the worst boss in the world. I was mean, I was nitpicky, I was overly critical, I didn't allow myself breaks during the day, and I made myself work long hours. Even when things went right, I just moved on to the next thing, never stopping to celebrate my successes. When things went wrong, I blamed myself and went into a really bad spiral of negative thoughts, shaming myself and feeling guilty.
It took a lot of personal development and recognising my own thoughts about myself and how I was treating myself, for me to change that behaviour and my entrepreneurial mindset.
Part B of accepting that you're the boss with your entrepreneurial mindset, is recognising what makes a good boss for you.
What environment makes you thrive and be the good boss that you need? Because YOU are the boss of yourself in your business.
We can get away with a lot of unconscious patterns when we're working in a job because someone else sets our price, tells us what we're going to be paid, helps us work out our priorities, and calls us out when we haven't hit a deadline.
Whereas when we're working for ourselves, sometimes these unconscious patterns come to the surface because we need to be mindful of these things.
They show up big time when you have your own business.
It could be something like leaving tasks to the last minute. When you're working for someone else, you might have strategies and ways that you work to ensure that you don't leave things to the last minute or that if you do, you do it in a productive way. But if you haven't been conscious of that, when you start a business, become an entrepreneur and start working for yourself, those unconscious patterns all of a sudden come racing to the front of the screen and you can absolutely see them playing out when you stop and pay attention.
I had unconscious patterns of:
When I was growing my business, it was really challenging because I didn't want to put posts up on social media talking about the fact that I was starting a business and not having success stories yet. Yet that's what I needed to do in order to start building an audience and bringing people along on the journey with me.
It took a lot of mindset work for me to acknowledge that I was trying to go from starting a business quietly to being successful in business overnight (and only then was I allowed to share things on social media). I needed to embrace sharing the journey, sharing the mistakes and sharing starting my business even if it didn't quite go to plan.
Lots of unconscious patterns come to the surface when you are starting a business. It's our job as part of our entrepreneurial mindset work to pay attention to those patterns and to notice them without judgement.
This one is a big one for me. I didn't realise how many blocks I had to success. If you'd have asked me when I first started my business what the negative consequences of me having a successful business are, I would have been completely baffled that you thought there could possibly be any. I would have told you that I don't have any blocks to receiving or making money. That I don't have any blocks to being seen because I'm a total exhibitionist extrovert. I was made for the entrepreneurial journey.
My fear of asking for what I want, of being seen as failing at something, of being seen as a try-hard, of following up with people when they were late with a payment or had a default on their payments. I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. My fear of being seen as salesy or aggressive in my marketing strategies.
I had so many blocks - money blocks, visibility blocks, action taking blocks, results blocks. I had all the blocks. It was just that I had learned to adapt in the corporate environment so that I could thrive even with these blocks. But when I started my business, I needed to really uncover and clear them.
Understanding how many blocks come up for us and all the ways that we unconsciously and subconsciously sabotage ourselves was a big one for me. Not just in terms of sabotaging the results, but even sabotaging ourselves and stopping ourselves from even taking action.
I don't know how many times in the last seven years since starting my business I have known exactly what to do and yet just not done it, and I could not figure out WHY I wasn't doing it.
That is a huge clue that there are some blocks popping up.
It's not until we actually take the action of booking in a sales conversation and totally fudging up that sales conversation that we realise that we have blocks about asking for the sale.
It's not until we are about to do a Facebook Live or we set up a launch plan that includes lots of Facebook Lives and we go to click record that we realise that we're really blocked about being seen on video and being unscripted. Or there may be some visibility blocks popping up for you there.
It's not just about theoretically working out where you might be blocking yourself based on what's happened to you in the past, or just sitting meditating on it and working out what the blocks are and then healing them.
We need to actually (and this is point number 6) pair our entrepreneurial mindset work with our strategy work.
If you're not going out there and taking the action, then you're never stepping outside of that comfort zone, therefore, you never really see where those blocks might be showing up.
It's not until you do a launch and it's a flop that you realise you've got blocks around asking for the money because it was too easy.
It's not until you actually take that action and pair the strategy and entrepreneurial mindset work side by side, that you have those mindset growth areas revealed and therefore you know what to work on.
We want to make sure that these two pieces of work go side by side.
I know a lot of mindset specialists who would love to say that it's 80% mindset and 20% action/strategy, but I don't agree with that.
Typically what I like to do in my business is that I try to aim for a 50/50 balance.
50% of the money that I invest in learning is learning business strategy, and 50% is in learning mindset work or getting support from mindset practitioners.
50% of the time that I invest in my business is working on the strategy and implementing the strategy, ie. marketing, social media, delivery, client calls, and 50% of the time that I put in is working on my entrepreneurial mindset
That might seem a bit excessive to a lot of people and even the mindset practitioners that I hear saying it's 80% mindset, don't put 80% of their time working on their mindset. They're still putting 80% of their time working on the strategy and 20% of their time working on their mindset because they think that they're really fast and effective at it.
But I want to be really clear about this, for me going and doing yoga is a mindset practice, so I include that in my mindset time. When I'm waking up in the morning, going for a long walk, listening to great podcasts, pumping myself up, listening to great music, and getting myself in the right headspace for the day - that's all mindset work.
Working with a practitioner, doing my EFT in the mornings and tapping in the shower, that is mindset work.
Getting advice and support from someone who specialises in money blocks or visibility or some of the self-sabotage that's coming up, that is mindset work as well.
I aim for 50% of my time, my money and my energy to be dedicated to my business strategy and implementing strategy, and 50% of my time, my energy and my money goes into my mindset, and working on and implementing entrepreneurial mindset work.
It has really served me well as I've grown my business over the years.
There are my 6 points on growing your entrepreneurial mindset:
I did promise you at the end of this episode that I have a special resource for you.
If you are looking to pair mindset and strategy, it is the perfect balance because every second day is strategy work, and every other day is mindset work.
This program is one in which you set yourself a nice juicy stretch income goal (and I'm going to show you how to do that) for a 30 day period. Then over 30 days, you do one teensy module a day and it alternates between strategy and mindset over the course of the 30 days.
The strategy work includes:
The mindset work is about:
You can sign up for the Udemy waitlist, receive all the updates AND get the early bird discount HERE.
Go check that out and thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.