Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/218
In today's episode, I'm going to be telling you to stop wasting money in your business.
I'm going to help you with five ways that you're potentially wasting money right now, just so that you can be aware and make the decision of whether or not it's time for you to stop that wastage.
Let's dive in...
These days there are so many opportunities to buy solutions, buy courses, and invest in ways to grow your business. It becomes really difficult to tell if what we are investing in is the right decision for our business.
There are so many investments that have a potential return (that may not be there) or that feel like they're a good idea but you're not sure if you should be investing your money there right now.
That is why I'm here to give you five ways that you might be wasting money so that you can keep an eye out for these things.
Something might jump to mind for you as you read along and you can sit down and really assess whether it is the right investment for you right now.
Here are five ways in which you may be wasting your money:
This is particularly prominent in self-study courses when what you actually need is a mentor or a team member to outsource to.
I made this mistake several times when I was starting out. I bought a course on how to create a website when I should have just paid someone else to build me a website (which I ended up having to do anyway). Even though I knew enough about Facebook ads that I could have hired a Facebook Ads Manager and known basically what it was that they were doing and what they were talking about - but would have been able to tap into their expertise and have them managing everything - I paid for a course.
I should have outsourced Facebook ads stuff way sooner, but I did TWO separate courses on it.
It's usually not something that's going to be in our wheelhouse, it's something that we should be getting someone else to do in our business.
Buying a self-study course when what you really need is someone to have a look at what you're already doing in your business is definitely a big one where people are wasting money in their business.
I see this a lot when people are launching. They think that they need to do launching courses and all of the different bits that go into launching, such as how to:
They spend money on all of these self-study courses when working with a launching mentor would have been a way smarter investment of both time and money.
Buying courses when you need to have a mentor or outsource it can be a really big source of wastage in businesses.
I see this one with a lot of people. They'll do their first launch of a course or program, and when it doesn't particularly convert well, they blame it on the fact that they didn't get enough leads or enough reach. Then they stick $10,000 in Facebook ads behind it, get 10 times the leads but still get really low conversion.
I would not be investing in something that's giving you more reach - whether that be ads, funnels, freebies, SEO of your website or any of those opportunities that are getting you lots more reach - until you know that when you get people into your world, you've got good conversion rates.
For most people, whenever I say that, they don't know what a good conversion rate is, or what conversion rate they've even gotten.
Instead of looking to someone else to tell you what a good conversion rate is, invest three months in trying to improve those conversion rates. Really feel like you've done everything you know and need to do in order to maximise that conversion.
THEN you can go and invest in reach.
That would be the order in which I would do those things to allow you to stop wasting money in your business.
How many people have got an online tool or a subscription to something, and they've been meaning to get to it but don't actually use it?
Perhaps you're in a membership but you're not actually engaging in each month, or you have an online tool or a platform that you have been meaning to get around to setting up but you're not actually using it.
Those things that you don't use but you're investing money in, it's wastage.
Really get honest with yourself: Are you likely to fix it in the next 30 days?
If no then cancel it because you're wasting money in your business.
Most online stuff when you go and cancel it, they try and keep you in by giving you a super-duper discount.
Most people don't do it because they think that it'll be more expensive when they come back to do it as a new customer. But for many things, when you cancel them, they'll do everything in their power to get you back as a paying customer again in the future.
Once when I was cancelling something, I got given a 30% discount offer when I was leaving. I declined the offer, but saved the customer service email address. I then sent an email six months later asking for the discount because I was thinking about coming back, they gave it to me and I got back my membership at a discounted rate.
If there are things that you're not using, go and cancel them. That wastage doesn't need to be there in your business, and you'll feel like such a grown-up if you do.
Again, this can be a big one with those self-study courses, but it also could be investing in going to conferences, virtual events, workshops, courses or anything where you're just learning, learning, learning, and you're not actually implementing or changing anything as a result of that learning.
Something that I do for myself is I balance the content I consume with the content I create and the things that I implement in my business.
If I enrol in a course and it's three hours a week of learning time, then I put three hours a week into my calendar for implementing learnings from that course.
If I don't have the capacity to do the extra three hours of implementation, then I don't have the capacity to do the three hours of learning.
Really focus on balancing consuming and creating - education versus implementation.
I reckon that this one is going to make a few people cringe.
I have had several issues in my business where I just keep spending money to try and solve the problem, but all of the solutions are kind of the same. It's often just a different person with a better sales pitch or someone who's convinced me that it's going to be different in some way, yet it's not actually different.
If you've got a particular problem that just keeps coming up over and over again, invest in a mentor and stop wasting money in your business.
For example, if you've done four courses on how to get your niche in your messaging right and nothing seems to be working, then invest some time with a VIP mentor and get one-on-one support.
Maybe you've been trying to put together a course or a program, and you've done six different launch courses but just need to get a different way of solving it, then perhaps you need to hire a Launch Manager instead and just get someone else to do it for you.
You could be trying to get your content up on social media, you've hired several different social media content VA's, yet no one ever seems to get it right and it just doesn't ever get fixed long term.
Those are my five ways that you may be able to stop wasting money in your business quickly and easily.
Some leakage of money that might be going out of your business could help you to improve profitability if you stop it in its tracks.
If you are looking to grow your reach and grow your business without investing lots of money in it, I have a great free resource for you.
If you did resonate with point number 2 - Investing in reach when you haven't got great conversion - this training will show you exactly how to with $0 ad spend. It will help you get high conversion strategies working on Facebook so that you can know what's going to work before you start investing in that reach.
If that's something that you're looking to do, then go check that out.
I'd also love to hear YOUR confessions in the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook community on what lightbulbs you've had throughout this podcast and what actions you're going to take. Head over there, use #podcastaha, let me know you've been reading episode 218 and share which of those five leakage areas you're going to stop wasting money. If you have any questions, then please ask them as well.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/217
In today's episode, I'm going to show you how to be a go-to speaker and get more speaking opportunities. I know that more speaking gigs is on the list for many of you, so let's dive straight into this juicy episode...
Before I tell you HOW to get more speaking gigs, let's look at some of the benefits: Why is it that we should want to have more speaking opportunities in our business?
Whether your speaking opportunity is:
Those types of engagements get you really good reach.
We know that more connection equals more conversion, so it doesn't just get you better reach in your business.
Let's say you go to 20 webinars in a year and you purchase at two of them. Compare that to going to in-person events, speaking gigs, or workshops, where that person is selling something. The odds that you are going to buy from them at the in-person event is going to be a lot higher than the online.
If you are working with someone or going to someone's speaking gig online, and you actually get to see their face and hear them present, that is also way higher converting than if you were to read their free ebook or grab a checklist.
We know that speaking - particularly video, as well as in-person speaking - is high conversion and is really high-quality reach that you are getting for your business, particularly if it's the right audience for your business.
Other benefits include:
There are so many great benefits for your business, but if we just focus on those two core ones of having better reach and higher conversion, then it's a bit of a no brainer to look at bringing more speaking opportunities into your business.
But how do you get more speaking opportunities and become that go-to speaker?
It's really hard for someone to select you as a speaker if they've never seen you speak before. If you haven't had that practise, aren't confident, haven't presented or gone out there and got more got speaking gigs before, then you're not going to necessarily be giving off that very confident I've-totally-got-this-I'm-a-go-to-speaker vibe.
You need to find ways and opportunities to get lots and lots of practise as a speaker.
The beautiful thing with the online business world is that there are endless opportunities for you to practise being a speaker.
There are so many ways that you can practice presenting a particular workshop, giving a signature talk, dealing with Q&A's and all of the other things that come with being a speaker in your business.
If you're thinking that you just need to be picked and then you'll be a speaker, I just want you to stop and look for how you can get more practise FIRST.
Practise is such a powerful way of getting more and more opportunities. It creates this amazing snowball effect for you.
Stop waiting for other people to choose you as a speaker... choose yourself as a speaker.
My first speaking gigs in my business were me offering to do goal-setting workshops and business planning workshops for local business groups. I also did a bunch of local workshops on topics that I was really passionate about and invited people to come along to those.
I did some for free, I did some low cost, and I did some higher cost.
I found that with in-person events, things that were free didn't particularly convert well. People would say that they would come but they wouldn't actually come, so in the end, I mostly just did low-cost in-person speaking events.
I'd do a $75 workshop that was a couple of hours long and it would be focused on a very specific, very tangible topic or outcome.
I did workshops on:
Those in-person workshops were my way of getting lots of speaking practise.
Before I started my business, I had run workshops dozens of times in the previous year. I had done presentations to audiences of 5 - 5000 people, I was a skilled facilitator of workshops, I'd done keynote presentations in my corporate role, and I was the president of the Youth Forum for a large government organisation.
Being a public speaker was something that I'd had lots of practise in, but I knew that speaking in my business was a different thing.
I needed to get practise at that as well and really build my confidence in facilitating those outcomes when it was my own business.
I was really prevalent in creating those speaking opportunities for myself so that I could practise bridging into the sales pitch at the end (if that was appropriate for that particular speaking event).
I chose myself a lot and created many speaking opportunities for myself.
From the very beginning of my business, I started a video blog because I knew speaking on video was something that needed to be a really big part of my marketing strategy. It was also such a great way for people to see me as a speaker.
I've done speaking tours, book tours, workshop tours, and conference, and I would say 90% of the speaking opportunities that I've had in my business have been things I've created for myself.
Choose yourself and create your own opportunities.
I think for a lot of people, they just think that being a good speaker comes with the territory with their business. They think they should just be good at it or they just need to practise and get speaking gigs and everything will be okay.
A lot of people resist speaking on camera because they've got some mindset issues around it. Some tell themself that they don't want to talk to a flashing red light and they're better with a live audience so therefore they won't create pre-recorded videos. Or there are some that are the opposite and tell themself that they're better pre-recorded so they won't do Facebook Lives, workshops, webinars or anything live.
For a lot of people, their resistance to speaking, and the reason why they haven't had a lot of speaking gigs, is actually because there is some mindset stuff going on for them.
There also might be some visibility issues, fraud complex, or it might simply be that they're afraid of messing up on stage and therefore, they're keeping themself away from those speaking opportunities.
I know for myself that it really helped me when I got some training in:
For me for in-person events, that training really helped me to build my skills as a speaker, which then made me feel more confident. This allowed me to come across more eloquent and confident, and I got more speaking events out of it.
There are also people who can help you get speaking gigs, so you can actually get help from people to get more speaking opportunities.
There are so many people who are specialist speaking trainers and speaking mentors, and part of what they do is they help you create speaking opportunities for yourself but also help you put yourself forward for other speaking opportunities as well.
It wouldn't hurt to get help if you're really struggling with this and it's something you really want to do in your business model.
Where I have been on stage at other people's events, most of those opportunities came from me going to that event in the first place.
Many conferences that I've spoken at, I was an attendee the first year and I came back as a speaker the second year.
A lot of the networking events or networking breakfasts that I've spoken at, they have come because I've attended that networking event previously. Opportunities come because I've attended as a participant and then I've asked great questions or I've really connected with the person who's organising it, or I've had a conversation with three people at my table and they've gone and told the organiser that they want to see me up on stage.
For my conference, the Heart-Centered Business Conference, almost half of the speakers each year are people who've been to the previous conference as an attendee.
We even have pitchfest, which is for ticket holders to pitch to become a speaker at the Heart-Centered Business Conference. I have so many people who reach out to me and say that they'd love to be a speaker at the conference, and I tell them that the first thing to do is grab a ticket and come to the conference so that I can get to know them, they can get to understand conference and then we can see if it's a good fit. More than half the people who I say that to, respond by saying that they don't go to conferences as an attendee, they only go as a speaker... well, they aren't gonna be a speaker at mine.
Really think about that. Are you saying that you want to be a speaker but you're not willing to go and support other speakers? You're not willing to go to support the event organisers, from whom you want to get speaking opportunities?
I think it's a really important thing - a rising tide lifts all ships and you give to get, not just get to give.
Going to more events is actually one of the really easy ways that you can become a more prolific speaker. You learn what works and what doesn't from speakers, by going to conferences and seeing people try certain things, do certain tricks, use that type of slide or do that kind of fun thing.
If you're not going to any events, if you're not actually there in the room at events supporting speakers and supporting event organisers, but you expect event organisers to pick you, there's a bit of incongruence there as far as I'm concerned.
Go to more events. Get out there and be an event supporter as well as a speaker at events.
It's so easy to grab a light, flick your camera on, start talking about your topic areas, start presenting and creating a connection with people. It really is one of the most powerful ways that you can start being seen as a go-to Speaker.
I had two really amazing opportunities this year (they were cancelled because of COVID-19 but they'll probably happen next year) which both came into fruition by the organiser seeing my podcast videos.
One person had been listening to my podcast on iTunes, heard about the shownotes, went to my website where it was on video, started watching my videos and then they went down the YouTube rabbit hole and started seeing what I was presenting on video there.
Another person found me on Youtube. They had my podcast Episode 147: How to increase your prices recommended to them by Youtube, then they watched another and another video, and reached out to me with an opportunity to speak at an event that they were running because they loved what I was teaching.
Start online and know that the more consistently you're speaking and showing up for your business, the more consistently you are creating potential opportunities for someone to see you, hear you or for you to be recommended to them as a speaker for these events.
They are my tips for you on how to get more speaking gigs and become the go-to speaker in your industry.
I hope that you found this really helpful.
If you've been reading along and think you would like to come to the Heart-Centred Business Conference, then please check that out here.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. If you've had any insights and “aha’s” from this episode, 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 episode 217, and tell us how you're going to get more speaking gigs.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/216
In today’s episode, I’m exploring how to tell if your niche is narrow enough, and what signs and pieces of information to look out for that will help you tell whether your niche is actually narrow enough or if you need to do some refinement.
Let’s dive in because this is a really practical one.
Your niche is the specific group of people that you focus on when you are marketing in your business.
A lot of people get very confused about niching and they mistake their niche for their modality or specialist area.
But your modality and specialist area are not people so they’re not niches.
The other thing that I see people do is that they try and articulate their niche as all the people that could benefit from their services.
I understand that we do have very broad groups of people that could benefit from our services and the transformation that we facilitate. But that doesn’t help you when it comes to getting specific in your marketing.
We want to make sure that when we select a niche, we’re not just selecting who you could help, but in fact, who you are focusing on when you market your products and services.
Your niche actually is the foundation of your business that informs the other critical decisions that you need to make.
For example, your:
If your niche is narrow enough, it’s much easier for you to make those decisions and answer the questions:
As you can see, by just making that one critical decision – that foundational decision of who you’re focusing on when you’re marketing – you can therefore inform all of the other really important decisions that you have to make as an entrepreneur.
I have three key areas where you’re really going to struggle if your niche isn’t narrow enough.
If you’re struggling with any of these areas, my number one piece of advice is to review and nail your niche.
Can you articulate your tangible and practical value proposition?
When I say tangible, I mean can you talk about the transformation that you facilitate, the intangible ways that impact on me (your client) today?
A great example of this is doing an energetic clearing.
Whilst it might be really lovely that you are able to do an energetic clearing, and it makes me feel better, if there isn’t a very real and measurable difference to my life today, then you’re going to struggle to have me convinced that I should be giving you money for that particular outcome.
You want to be able to really clearly define what it is that you stand for, what the core message of your business is, and the tangible and practical value proposition of working with you.
If that value proposition is clear, relevant to my current needs, and a bigger value proposition than the amount of money you’re asking for in return, then your messaging is going to really resonate. It’s going to have people saying that that’s what they need and you’ll be attracting in more clients.
If you are struggling with your messaging and articulating what you do in a way that’s tangible, real for people, relevant, and actually speaks to a challenge that they’re facing in that moment, then I would be reviewing your niche because it is not narrow enough.
In your messaging, I also like to look out for the word ‘or’, the word ‘maybe’ or any ‘slashes’. No slashies here.
If I say to you: What’s your value proposition? Who do you help? How do you help them?
And then you find yourself describing a massive range of different people in various potential circumstances using lots of ‘maybes’, ‘ors’ and ‘slashes’, then chances are that the actual problem is that you have not been specific enough with your niche.
If you struggle to articulate your offer in a very specific way that solves a specific and tangible problem, then:
a. You’re going to struggle to sell it
b. You have not been specific enough with your niche
A great way to measure whether your offer is specific and tangible enough, is… does it sell?
When you have conversations with people about working with you, are you actually making sales?
When you post about your offers on social media, do you have people responding saying that’s exactly what they need?
Or do they just say that that sounds really lovely? Whilst that is a compliment and is nice to receive, it does not mean that you have nailed that specific intangible problem that you solve.
If you are struggling to really get specific with your offer, or if you’re struggling to decide on WHAT you should offer, then what I would say is: Go back and review your niche and make it more specific.
The questions you need to answer are: Is it 100% clear to you where and how you should be marketing? Have you got 100% clarity on exactly what your marketing strategy should be?
If not, chances are that you actually don’t have a specific enough niche.
If you are still tossing up between Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and all of the other channels that you could possibly be marketing on, then chances are you haven’t actually gotten really specific about your niche.
When you are specific about your niche, it’s really clear where you should be focusing your energy and attention on in the first place.
Particularly in HOW to market as well. It’s not just about WHERE in terms of channels because I know even if you have a very specific niche, portions of your ideal clients might be on different social media… but there is definitely a front runner.
People come to me and they ask if they should be doing a webinar or an Ebook as their freebie. If you can’t tell me what your ideal client would prefer, then it may be a clue that your niche is not narrow enough and you need to get more specific.
You can see how that one decision of your niche can really inform all of the other parts of your marketing, messaging, products and services.
This is why when I work with people either as VIPs, in my Take Off program, or in any other space where I’m supporting people with their businesses, the first thing we work on is niching. The first part of the business value proposition that we work on is getting that niche clear. It informs all of the other decisions. It literally is the first foundational decision, yet so many people are more worried about their branding, marketing, what social media they should be on, and working on all of these things in an un-niched way.
Then they have to go back and change it because it doesn’t work and it doesn’t create that organic momentum of its own, due to the fact that they were not speaking to a specific niche with their marketing.
For the next 60 days, focus down on a very specific niche and just see what it feels like and how much easier it makes your business and marketing decisions.
Then I’m convinced that after 60 days, you will be able to either clarify that it’s not quite right and you need to pivot your niche in a specific way, or that it’s totally working and you’re going to continue as is.
I have never, ever, ever in all of my time working with thousands of entrepreneurs, worked with someone on their niche and then had them say that they want their niche to be really broad again after the 60 days of getting really specific.
What happens is that when people really get that niche right, and when they see how much easier it makes life when they have niched, they are converts. They are screaming from the rooftops for all to listen to Auntie Tash because she knows what she’s talking about.
I was in niche resistance initially as well. But then I saw how much easier it makes it for me to create my marketing strategy, to get clear on my messaging and to craft offers that really do sell like hotcakes and resonate with the right people.
I hope that these few signs to tell whether your niche is narrow enough has been helpful for you.
I wanted to leave you with one last question…
If you have been promoting your business for a few months or even a couple of years, and sometimes have other people asked what it is that you do and they CANNOT answer that question clearly, then that is also a big alarm bell to go back to the drawing board and get specific with your niche.
The beautiful thing about this is that it’s always a great time to review.
I consistently review my niching decisions in my business.
Every quarter, I have it as part of my CEO date with myself to look at my niching and see where I may need to adjust a little, or where I may need to refine some more.
The beautiful thing is that even when I’ve made decisions to niche that have been the wrong niche, I have realised that and gotten clarity on what the right niche is so much faster than if I had just stayed un-niched.
The resistance to niching for a lot of people is this worry that maybe:
Rather than staying un-niched and continuing to run around in circles trying to work out how to grow your business, it is much more powerful to focus down on something narrow, and then adjust it as you go.
Keep making those minor nudges and little shifts because then you are actually moving forward instead of being stuck without a niche, going round and round in circles.
If you’re not becoming known for your work and who you work with, then that’s also a clue that potentially your foundations need some work.
If you’ve been listening along to this, and thinking 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!
Fast-Track Your Start-Up is my free training that helps you to understand how niche actually informs messaging, offer and your marketing decisions. It’s all about building your business and getting money in the door quickly by building a business to your innate strengths.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
Show notes can be found at tashcorbin.com/215
In today's episode, I'm going to share with you what I would do differently if I had to start my business over again.
I've done this type of podcast episode every year since I started my business and it is so much fun to look at what I would do if I was starting a business from scratch today.
Let's jump in...
I absolutely love doing a fresh version of this podcast every year.
When it comes to starting a business, if I were giving you advice based on what I did when I first started my business back in 2013 without taking those changes into consideration, then I wouldn't often be giving you very good advice.
A lot of the core marketing and messaging strategy has been particularly similar, and I would still give the same advice to this day when you're starting a business. But there are many things that I would do 100% differently.
I want to make sure that I'm upfront with you about what I would do differently if I were to start my business all over again today...
When I first started my business, I signed up to work one-on-one with a business coach on a VIP day. All I had was six hours. In those six hours, we did a lot of amazing theorising, and we came up with some great models and ideas.
But ultimately, when I went out to implement some of the things that I had learned, a lot of them didn't work.
I had no one to go to to get insight and feedback on why it hadn't worked for me and what I was supposed to do now... How do I continue to get out there and find new clients?
I invested US$4000 when I first started my business in that one VIP day, and I would definitely not do that again.
Then I could work with someone, go out and do homework, do some work behind the scenes, and then come back and get feedback on what I had done. I could also get redirection if something I tried didn't necessarily work.
Due to the fact that I did all of my coaching and mentoring with a business mentor when I first started my business in one go, it was all based on theory. My mentor wasn't familiar with the type of people that I wanted to work with in the online business world and she didn't have a lot of experience or connections in that space. This meant that when I tried some of the strategies that she had recommended, they didn't actually work.
I can see upon reflection why they didn't work. Over time, I learned what was going to work for my target market and my ideal clients, but I didn't have the benefit of having ongoing check-ins with a mentor over an extended period of time.
That would have made such a difference to my first six months in business.
I say this every time I do this type of podcast episode, but it was such a silly idea on my part to initially DIY my website.
Granted, back then we didn't have a lot of the awesome tools that we have these days. Squarespace wasn't a thing and we didn't have the tools that you could use to DIY your website.
Even now, if I was starting my business from scratch, I would not get behind the scenes of my website and try DIY it. I would just wait until I could put aside enough money from sales in my business to build that website.
When I first started my business, I DIYed my website a couple of months in, and I didn't get a single sale through my website until about five months into my business.
I did some big website updates after that and I actually ended up hiring someone to do my website for me because the DIY course that I bought was way too techie for me.
I know for myself and also for the businesses and entrepreneurs that I work with now, that there is no way that you need a website before you can start making sales.
If I were to start my business over, I would hold off on having a website. I'd just use a Facebook page and the free tools that were available to me to get my business off the ground, make some sales, get money in the door and really prove what the right messaging and brand was first.
Then I would just hire someone to build me a nice and simple WordPress website.
That's how I would do it if I were starting my business all over.
After working with that VIP coach for one day, I just tried to work things out myself for a little while. About two months in, I decided I was going to invest in a social media course. Unfortunately, that course only had five people in it.
Whilst it was great and I made amazing connections with those people - two of which I ended up being in a Mastermind group with - there weren't enough students in that course in order for me to actually have access to a great ready-made network.
I see a huge difference between the people who, when they first start their business, join a small program versus the people who join something that's got hundreds of people in it. It really does open up so many more opportunities for you when you have other peers going through the program with you.
There are enough people that you don't have to necessarily be partnering up with every single person that's in the program with you, compared to when there are only six people in there.
I would definitely look for a social media course and social media marketing course that had more students in it than the one that I joined because it wasn't really a big enough program to get the networking benefits from it.
I can see now that if I had had a better network of other entrepreneurial people who were going through courses with me and that I saw as peers and colleagues, it would have really sped up my business growth, especially in the first six to twelve months.
When it comes to my marketing, I wouldn't really make any changes.
I used Facebook groups to get my first clients and my existing networks, but really I just tried a bunch of different things, and when something worked, I doubled down on that strategy.
I'm really proud of myself for how quickly I got into the groove of online marketing, considering I had zero experience when I first started my business.
I got to $20,000 in my sixth month of business and that was so phenomenal. It completely blew me away how quickly and effectively I was able to develop my marketing strategy and my messaging. This occurred by me just working it out as I went along. I didn't have an ongoing business coach or mentor, the social media course that I did didn't cover organic marketing strategies, messaging, copywriting or any of those sorts of things.
With this approach, I started crafting and experimenting with offers and messaging that I thought would be useful and resonate with the people that I wanted to work with.
When it comes to my approach to marketing my business when I first started, I would still do exactly the same things as I did back then.
I ran a webinar a month from three months into my business onwards for the first two years, and I would definitely still do that again.
Webinars were one of my biggest ways of:
When it comes to the way that I marketed, I am really glad that I worked out what was going to be a good fit for me and really resonate with my clients and my business.
It took off and I'm so grateful that it did.
When I first started my business, I did some experimenting with Facebook ads. I did three rounds of Facebook ads with a $1,000 budget per round.
It was in month four, month five and month eight of my business that I did these Facebook ad experiments.
For my $1,000... I got zero return.
This resulted in me becoming a bit shy about exploring Facebook ads.
I hadn't learned how to scale my marketing beyond warm audiences, so I needed to really refine my messaging and marketing so that it worked for cold audiences as much as it worked for warm audiences.
The Facebook ads strategy that I was learning wasn't necessarily being taught by someone who had great experience with getting results for clients. It was just taught by someone who was experimenting themselves, had found something that worked for them specifically, and was telling other people what they should do without having proven results with clients in other industries.
If I were to start my business all over, I would be a bit more discerning about where I get my advice in relation to using Facebook ads. I would definitely scale up faster, especially in terms of Facebook ads, consistent list growth and regular newsletters to my mailing list.
I think that those things would have made a huge compounding interest kind of impact on the ongoing growth of my business.
For the first two to three years of my business, it was 50% easy, fun, playing and doubling, but the other 50% of it, I would get too close to the end of the month and realise that I really had to hustle just to be able to pay rent.
I'd say that it was because I was ready to scale some of my marketing strategies, but I was too shy to use ads. I was also a bit resistant to being more consistent with my list growth and scheduling things up.
It took me a long time to get into the groove of both consistency and investing in paid advertising.
I would do that a lot faster if I had my time again and were to start my business all over.
When I first launched the Take Off program, which is my signature program for helping people start a business, I launched it and I had 13 students in the first round.
Then as that first round was coming to an end, I had some of those students saying that they wanted to continue working with me due to the change that they've seen in there business with clients, marketing and many other aspects of their business. They wanted to know what was next, so instead of relaunching the Take Off program once I'd finished the first round, I created an entirely new program and launched that.
Then the only people who really purchased that new program were people who had done the Take Off program before. This meant that I actually ended up only making six sales of that program in the first launch of it. Then I did a relaunch to a broader audience and made about 30 sales in the second launch of it, but it was a low-cost product so it wasn't a sustainable income for me.
If I were to start my business all over, I would relaunch the Take Off program as soon as the first live round had finished. I would have relaunched it four or five times before I ever created another product again. Looking back, if I had relaunched the Take Off program and got it the momentum that it deserved way back then, it would be a much bigger program today.
I am still working on consistently relaunching that Take Off program and really nailing my messaging, marketing and launch strategies for that program so that those launches can run on autopilot.
I'm really lucky these days when it comes to launching the Take Off program because all I really do is fill in my launch document, give it to my team, and then turn up and run my webinar.
I know that if I had done that way back when I first launched the Take Off program in 2014, it would have been a very different story in terms of the launch and growth trajectory of that program.
They are the six things that I would be doing differently if I was restarting my business from scratch today in 2020.
If you have any questions or ahas from today's episode, come on over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let me know that you've been listening to episode 215 and share your lightbulbs, things you're going to do differently and questions relating to this episode.
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