Kat Millar

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Wondering what your passion and purpose in life is?

Since the dawn of time, human beings have asked themselves “What’s my purpose?”

If you want to be fulfilled, happy and content, finding your passion and purpose is one of the best places to explore.

When you know your purpose, you live a more meaningful life and feel a deep sense of fulfillment.

For some people, their purpose and passion in life are obvious. They have clear talents and develop them into skills they can use as their job or business.

For other people, like myself, the road is not so clear.

I’ve definitely been on both sides of knowing what I should do with my life.

Many of us enjoy a bunch of random, seemingly unrelated things.

When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life, I looked at the things I loved.

Writing, going to conferences, walks in nature, weight training, listening to books, playing the drums, latin dancing, sharing to groups, deep conversations, travelling…

I found it so confusing to try and figure out what things I should attempt to turn into a career and what things should be left as hobbies.

What it came down to was that I believed the lie that we can’t make money from the things that we love.

It’s a lie that seems to be so insidiously entrenched in our culture and it’s simply not true.

Many, many people make money doing what they love. They chose to refuse the notion that we must endure work in order to get money to pay for our hobbies and lifestyle.

I felt suffocated working in stale offices under fluorescent lights, amongst the politics, gossip and having to ask permission to take time off.

It took me a while to figure out that being a business owner was the best path for me. That my purpose was about helping others to find freedom through entrepreneurship.

It enabled me to do multiple things and combine multiple skills with my knowledge, experience and most importantly my passion to help people.

But after realising it, I still had to give myself permission to ‘go against the grain’ at the time.

I needed to give myself permission to stop asking “Who am I to do that?” and start asking “Why not me?”

I needed to leave my ‘safe and stable’ job.

Something that helped me to figure out my purpose was asking myself these 3 questions:

  1. What makes me most happy and fulfilled?

  2. What difference do I want to make in the world?

  3. What do I feel wired for and called to do?

In my heart, I knew I wanted to speak and write. I wanted to train and coach. I wanted to be a thought leader. I wanted to help people reach their potential. I would do these things if nobody paid me to do them. They made me come alive.

I needed to explore, to ‘date’ some things until the clarity came.

Clarity is not static. It doesn’t come from sitting in our house over-analysing everything.

You can’t think your way into finding your purpose; you have to ‘do’ your way into it. The more we act, the more we get clarity.

Clarity comes when we’re moving and doing things.

True fulfillment comes from designing your own life.

Do you want more clarity on your purpose?

Here are 3 actions that will help you:

  1. Ask yourself regularly “How can I use what I’m passionate about to help others?” This will expand your mind to endless possibilities that will give your life richness and meaning. We’ll fall short if we only focus on ourselves.
  2. Actively look for opportunities to get to know ourselves and others better. Research. Watch videos and listen to podcasts. Read every book you can get your hands on that calls to you. Seek guidance from people who can help you find your purpose.
  3. Pay close attention to the people and opportunities that show up in your life. They are there to either teach you something or help you on your path.

Follow these three steps consistently. If you do, you will wake up one day and realise that your life is completely transformed.

You’ll feel fulfilled, happy, and content because you’ll be passionately living your purpose.

Do you feel on purpose? What helped you get there? Post in the comments, I’d love to hear 🙂

 

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3 Things ALL Entrepreneurs MUST Have To Be Successful

If you’re the kind of person who wants to break free from ever having to work for anyone else ever again…
If you want to have the freedom and flexibility to wake up in the morning and do whatever you want, with whoever you want, whenever you want… keep reading.
 
I know not everyone is that kind of person. Not everyone is willing to break away from the security of a job, I get that.
 
But this is for you if you’re the kind of person who wants the fulfillment and growth that comes from the wild, crazy, amazing journey of entrepreneurship.
 
I believe that this is the most important time in history to be considering how to future-proof our income.
The world is changing at such a rapid pace with technology. Many jobs are being replaced and the trend is showing that more and more people are losing their ‘safe’ jobs every day. 
 
So, if you want to future-proof your income and your career, investing in learning business skills is one of the best ways of being able to provide for yourself, regardless of what’s going on in the economy.
 

The opportunities that we have now to start a business are incredible.

They’ve never been anything like this in history.

Even if you feel you’re not smart, you’re not good at technology or you don’t have enough experience, anyone who wants to can learn the skills.

If you want to have a successful business, there are three things that are absolutely crucial to have…
 
1. Clarity
 
The first thing that you need is clarity.
 
About 95% of people who I talk to about entrepreneurship are looking for clarity. They are looking for that crystal clear vision of what they want.
 
Now the thing was clarity, is that we want to know the how before we start moving. People come to me and basically say, can you tell me what to do.
 
We get anxious to know the ‘how’.
 
I read a lot of books on business, entrepreneurship, mindset, high-performance, psychology, all these sorts of things.
 
And if you’re also a lifelong learner, you’re a bit of a sponge and you soak it all up, you’ve probably come across so many things that you could be doing. There are so many options that you can take.
 
And sometimes the enormous amount of options keep people stuck.
 
We could become a coach, we could go into P.R, we could be a Marketer or a Physio, or do a counselling degree or be an Author – there are so many options we could take, right?
 
I was talking to a lady today, who spoke about how when you go around in circles, it’s like being on a roundabout.
 
She talked about it the ‘Arc de Triomphe’ in Paris. You go up to the top of the tower and look down at this roundabout and there are so many cars on it and there are actually 12 different exits you can take.
 
She talked about this analogy that in life it’s like this roundabout, where we go round and round and round in a circle and we don’t know what exit to take.
 
But we actually need to start taking action in order to get the clarity, because you can’t steer a parked car right?
 
And this is the scary part for many people.
 
We are waiting to get the clarity before we move, but actually we need to start moving, and just TAKING an exit, knowing that we can always turn around and come back again and go onto another path.
 
Entrepreneurship is risky, and we need to be willing it try things, and have them not to work, and not frame them as a failure, but frame them as getting more clarity.
 
We can choose to see the ‘wrong’ way as a gift – as something that’s provided more clarity. Something that has cleared away some of the layers preventing us from seeing clearly.
 
Because sometimes we know what we want, but there are a lot of layers on top – beliefs, lies, things that we need to learn before we get success.
 
And so to get direction and clarity, it’s not going to come by sitting and thinking about it and analysing and staying stuck, right? We actually need to choose an exit and go for it and figure out along the journey if it’s right or not.
 
It is a bit of a process of elimination.
 

2. An entrepreneurial mindset

 
The second thing we need to have to be successful as an entrepreneur is an entrepreneurial mindset.
 
An entrepreneurial mindset is completely different to a nine-five mindset.
 
There are similarities, for example, you need to work hard, have commitment, show up and be consistent, be professional and all those things, but the entrepreneurial mindset is completely unique.
 
There are characteristics that you don’t need to have when you’re working in a nine to five job.
 
Those of you who know this journey, know what I’m talking about.
 
There’s a certain level of resilience that you need because you don’t have the certainty that comes more with the nine to five job.
 
Of course, working for someone else definitely don’t have the certainty like they used to. My Mum and Dad worked in the same career all of their lives, their whole careers.
 
But nowadays we tend to do lots of different jobs, and there’s a lot more redundancies happening, so all jobs are getting less and less safe, and, but when you work for yourself, you need to have the mindset of responsibility.
 
It’s knowing – if I need to figure something out, then the buck stops with me, rather than with the boss or your manager or your leader.
 
When you’re an entrepreneur, you ARE the boss, so it’s a completely different mindset.
 
It’s having the ability to wear a lot of different hats, to be the leader if you’ve got a team, you have to delegate well.
 
To be a strong leader, as WELL as that person motivating yourself -because you don’t have someone telling you what to do so, you don’t have that hierarchy. You ARE at the top of the hierarchy as the leader, but also the one doing the grunt work!
 
So if you go into entrepreneurship with a nine to five mentality, it’s not going to work.
 

3. The right tools

 
The third thing that you need to be successful as an entrepreneur is that you need the right tools.
 
When you pick up the wrong tools, it’s going to waste a lot of time, it’s going to set you back.
 
There is so much misinformation out there. There’s so much jargon and complex strategies, and people are more confused than ever.
 
As more and more people become entrepreneurs, there is more and more confusion. So knowing the right tools and the right systems to use – the right things that you should be spending and investing your time and the things that you shouldn’t be investing time in.
 
I didn’t know this when I started. I was doing so much content creation and doing so many emails and posts and all these things that weren’t getting a good result.
 
I wasn’t investing the right amount of time on the right things that were actually going to push the needle for my business.
 
I was spending about 80% of my time on things that were getting me no result.
 
And then I learned the right tools, the right software, the right strategy, and the practical things to go in the right direction.
 
So, you need the right mindset as you go into it. If you’re thinking wrong, it doesn’t matter how many of the right tools you have, you will sabotage yourself, every time.
 
And then you need the right tools because it doesn’t matter how good your mindset is, if you’ve got the wrong tools, if you’re using the wrong strategy, you won’t succeed.
 
If you’re looking for certain clients but you’re using the wrong message to attract them – the wrong language, images, branding, if there is no match between your message and your market, then it’s not going to work.
 
I’m going to be unpacking each of these 3 things at a deeper level and getting more specific on each of these three things in my videos over the next week.
 
If you’re a female and you’re around in Sydney on the 14th of November, I’m running a free meetup.
 
Sorry guys, this is a one-off evening for ladies.
 
I don’t do this very often for just the ladies, but I’m doing this because I have a heart to put the right tools into woman’s hands, the things that I wish that I had learned.
 
I believe that women need to set goals slightly differently to men and women have some specific characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses that I can address best by only talking to the ladies about it.
 
It’s for you if you’ve started a business or if you’ve been in business for a long time.
 
You are going to draw great strategies and tools from it and great habits of high performing female successful entrepreneurs.
 
Or if you don’t have a business. If you’re curious about entrepreneurship if you’re dabbling and want to put your toe in the water and find out what this world is all about.
 
And before you kind of make a leap, you might want to come and meet some other female entrepreneurs and make some new friends and meet some like-minded people and have a great time with the girls, then this is for you!
 

You can learn more here: bit.ly/sos-workshop

 
Bring your girlfriends!
 
Love to see you there!
Kat xx

 

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3 Crucial Keys To Creating Content That Connects

 

I’m excited to share with you in this video three crucial keys to creating content that connects.
 
And by connects, I’m talking about connecting with your ideal clients.
 
We can so easily get lost in a sea of noise, especially online, especially on social media. And if you think about where you’re putting your content, a lot of it is going to be driven on social media.
 
Social media is sending people away to your blog, to your email, to your website, to your landing page.
 
It’s crucial in social media that we know how to connect with our ideal clients to stop the scroll.
 
Because people can so easily just flick on by if we are not writing content that’s engaging and compelling and interesting, and is going to hook them and make them want more.
 
I’m going to be sharing three crucial keys on how to create content that connects, that lands, that stops the scroll, and is connecting with the people that you want to connect with.
 
Not everyone, not all of your friends and family and thousands of Facebook friends, but the people that you would like to have as clients, people that you’d love to do business with.
 
1. Be specific
 
The first way to create content that connects or the first key is to be specific.
 
When you’re posting your content, like you’re putting up a social media post with an image and a caption, you want to make sure that you’re not using vague, ambiguous, fluffy language.
 
You want to use very specific language. The type of language that you want to use that has specificity, ideally creates a visual in the person’s mind.
 
I gave an example on my group training program before, where when you have some something that’s vague, for example, “Be the best version of yourself,” it’s quite hard to grasp that and actually have an image of what that actually looks like.
 
Or you might say, “Go to the next level.” When you use that kind of language, it’s hard for that person to picture what you mean.
 
What does it mean to go to the next level? You want to actually spell it out for them in your content.
 
When you’re putting out a piece of content that maybe is talking about going to the next level or being the best version of yourself, you might describe specifically what that looks like.
 
If your ideal client is a busy, stressed out mum and you want her to be able to be a better mum, let’s say that’s what you’re coaching her on, you might say something like
 
“Be a mum that your child would be really proud of, with a house that you feel relaxed coming home to,” for example, because it’s very visual, it’s very specific.
 
It’s not just, “Be an awesome Mum.”
 
Or let’s say you’re coaching someone around their money mindset.
 
Instead of saying “Improve your money mindset, go to the next level in your finances and have a better relationship with money,” you would give some actual tangible examples.
 
You might say, “Every time you open up your wallet, you know that it’s fat, that you’ve got your savings in there, and that you’re free to go and purchase that really beautiful dress, because you’ve got your splurge fund waiting for you in your wallet.”
 
You can actually visualise the money in the wallet going to buy the dress, as opposed to just having a great money mindset.
 
Spell out examples for your clients through your copy, and do this through numbers and dates if you can.
 
So, for example, instead of saying, “I’ll help you grow your business” if you’re a business coach, you might say something like, “I’ll help you to attract five clients in the next five weeks.”
 
Or if you’re a personal trainer, “I’ll help you lose five kilos in five weeks.”
 
These kind of numbers that are very specific and tangible and concrete, are important in creating content that connects.
 
How can you be more specific in your numbers?
 
Let’s say for example, you’re sharing a statistic about some percentages. Instead of saying something like, “20% of people feel that blah, blah,” you might say, “One in five people feel blah, blah.” So if you’ve got a family of five, that’s one of you.
 
Suddenly it’s a bit more tangible, it’s more concrete. Someone can think, “Ah, I get it. Like one in five, that’s one out of me and my five group of friends.”
 
And it’s very specific. I know it means the same thing, 20%, but it’s having things that people can grab onto and feel and see and visualise and experience through words on the page.
 
2. Be consistent
 
If you want to connect with people, it’s not going to happen with a post once every two or three weeks.
 
You want to create consistency so that people start to trust that you’re going to keep turning up and giving them great value for free.
 
Pick a time, a date, a day of the week where you’re going to consistently show up.
 
So for me at the moment this year, I show up every Wednesday night, usually around eight o’clock, and I share great content with you guys.
 
This is something that’s consistent, that I do every single week. And then I actually get it transcribed into a blog and I put it up on my blog every week.
 
When you’ve got a consistent schedule, people will start to trust you; people start to realise that you’re the expert in that area and that you have a lot to say about your topic.
 
Because whatever you’re talking about, whatever your topic is, you want to position yourself as the go to person, as the expert, as the authority about that topic, right? And it’s quite hard to do that. In fact, it’s very hard to do that if you’re not being consistent.
 
How often are you showing up with content? If you want to grow your business faster and get more clients, you need to be regularly showing up.
 
Ideally, I would recommend two social media posts a day. So something in the morning and something later on in the afternoon or at night. You want to have one piece of valuable content every single week as well as your social media posts.
 
Your social media posts are like your micro blogs, little pieces of education, inspiration, information that educates people, gives them value, and it’s just small snippets.
 
They’re getting to know you, like you, trust you through your regular posts. If you’re not doing much at all at the moment, start with what you can do.
 
You might think, oh twice a day, there’s no way I could do that because I’m only doing it let’s say once every two weeks.
 
So you might say, “Okay, I’m going to do it three times a week, and then by let’s say come January, I’m going to be doing it five times a week.”
 
And so wherever you’re at, I recommend that you set a goal to move up to one to two times a day.
 
And for your one weekly piece of content that you show up on video and/or on blog or an article or some piece of written content that you put on your website and then you point people to it through social media like through LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook for example.
 
You share that piece of written content.
 
You might put it in your Facebook group and you might write the article on LinkedIn and you’re doing that piece of valuable content at least once a week.
 
If you aren’t a huge fan of writing, then show up on video. It’s a lot quicker.
 
It’s easier to prepare; people are more forgiving if you stumble over your words as opposed to getting it wrong in a written form.
 
If you don’t want to show up on video, then you’ll need to write. Write an article, go back the next day, tweak it, change it, run it through Grammarly.
 
Make sure that it’s well-written and professional, and get that up onto your website every single week.
 
3. Be emotional
 
If you want to connect with people, be emotional. There’s so much research overwhelmingly saying that even the most left brain amongst us makes decisions based on emotions, not logic.
 
We justify it and back it up with logic, but we make the majority of our decisions based on emotion.
 
So if you are wanting to influence someone for positive change, to take action, to download your lead magnet, or come to your event or sign up for a free coaching discovery session with you, to use that influential language that connects with them, we need to move people emotionally.
 
And we can do this through emotional language, through feeling language. And we can also do it by telling stories.
 
Instead of just chucking up some stats and facts and data, you might throw in a story.
 
You might say, “Today I was having coffee with a friend, and we got talking about blah, blah.” And you just paint a little scene of when you came up with this concept, and now I want to share with you … “Based on that conversation, I want to share with you my top three ways to blah, blah.”
 
So you’re just adding that little story in so that it’s not just, “Hey, here’s my tips and …” Anyone on the internet could share their tips, but no one has the same stories as you. So that’s that way to also make it pretty unique.
 
Ok to recap: number one, to create connect that connects.
 
Number one is to be specific. Number two, be consistent. And number three, be emotional.
 
So which one was your favorite tip and which one are you going to actually take action on?
 
What are you going to go and do?
 
How can you be more specific in your language? How can you give concrete, tangible results and benefit-driven language through your content?
 
Is that something that you feel like you need to do more of, or do you feel like you just need to work on being more consistent? Showing up more often, maybe having a schedule?
 
Maybe like me, you want to commit to doing a Facebook Live every week or doing a blog and maybe having a theme around it, like you might have Motivation Monday or I used to have Feel-good Friday.
 
I know a lot of people don’t want to commit, but it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done this year, actually.
 
It’s the first year that I’ve committed to every single week, and it’s amazing. I’ve never produced so much content because I’ve committed, I’ve told it publicly that this is where I’m going to be showing up, and so I make sure that I do it.
 
Whereas if I was like, “Oh, I’ll just do it when I feel like it,” it definitely wouldn’t be that often. So you just want to put it into your schedule, put it into your life.
 
Or maybe you feel like your content is a little bit too logical, a little bit too bland, a bit stats-heavy or facts/how to-heavy and you might want to start adding in some more stories into your content.
 
If you’re in Sydney tomorrow I have an event in Sydney called ‘How To Create Content That Connects‘, it’s a Meetup in the City.
 
I’m going to be sharing more of my top secrets on how to create content that connects.
You’ll pick up lots of tools and examples of powerful words and phrases that you can use in your content.
 
Also, you’ll learn the mistakes to avoid; there’s a lot of mistakes that I see all the time that people are making on social media and on their emails and blogs with the content.
 
I’m talking about the biggest mistakes to avoid, the most important words to use, the words that keep the brain going. I call it “green language”. And also the red language, which actually stops the brain.
 
There’s neuromarketing in there where we’re actually talking to the subconscious mind through our content to help people take action through planting seeds, through the copywriting.
 
I’m going to be sharing some of my best content creation secrets.
I’d love you to come along, meet some new people, meet some other like-minded entrepreneurs and have some free snacks and drinks and have a great night.
 
So don’t be trick-or-treating. Come to this event instead. You can wear a Halloween costume if you want, and you can go trick-or-treating before or after, but come, because you’ll love it.
 
If you as a business owner or wanting to be, then you don’t want to miss it.
 

Here’s the link: bit.ly/content-oct

 

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3 Secrets To Creating More Engaging Content

 

I did a poll recently in my Facebook group Amplify Your Influence asking “What do you need the most help with?”

And a lot of people said how to create content, and how write in a way that’s influential and engaging and compelling.

As business owners, we need to be able to capture people’s attention and to be able to keep people engaged with what we’re saying.

This so that people can get to know us better, because the more that people get to know us, the better we can help them.

If you’re not getting to know your people and if your people are not getting to know you within your tribe or community, it’s very hard to influence them.

Think about the people who most influence you, for example.

It’s probably people who you already have consumed a lot of this stuff, maybe you’ve watched videos, maybe you’ve read their articles, listened to their podcast, maybe they’ve got some stuff on YouTube.

The people who influence our lives are people that we know and respect. And I don’t mean we necessarily know them in person, but we know them because we’ve consumed a lot of their content.

Why have we consumed a lot of their content?

Because they know how to engage. They know how to be compelling, influential. They know how to hook us in. They know how to keep us watching, keep us listening.

And in this economy where attention is so valuable, it’s so valuable to be able to capture people’s attention and to be able to inform them, educate them, inspire them, empower them, entertain them, all of those good things, we need to know how to have engaging content.

Also, Facebook really likes it when we are getting engagement, when we’re getting comments and likes.

When Facebook sees that people like your stuff, that people are engaging, that people are responding well to it, they are going to show it to more people.

So if you’re about to launch a program or an offer or some kind of course that you’re putting out, maybe you’re about to release a book or a coaching series, something like that, one of the most important things is to plan out your social media content really well before the launch.

This is so that Facebook has seen that you’re getting a lot of engagement and they’re going to push your posts about that launch out to the community even more.

There are two main reasons that we want to have engaging content to build the trust with our following.

Firstly, to be able to help them provide value, help them go from A to B, help them solve their problems.

Most people are consumed with their problems.

So if you show up and you give a solution, if you give them help, tips and tools and tricks and secrets, things that you’ve learned along the way, they will keep you top of mind.

They don’t need to be groundbreaking, earth-shattering things, by the way, because a lot of people just need reminders.

They need to bring things top of mind.

So if you show up and go, “Hey, have you meditated today?” … it’s not like no one’s ever heard that concept before. But it refreshes it for them.

It doesn’t have to be a brand new concept to be valuable, it can be a reminder.

You could be that breaking someone’s day up with a little bit of inspiration, something funny, something that that’s helpful, depending on your ideal clients, your target market.

I teach a lot of secrets to attract clients through content. But here are three of my favourite secrets to creating more engaging content.

1. Wrap your posts with questions

Wrap your posts, sandwich your posts with questions.

When you start with a question and your caption and your social media caption, and by caption I mean you’re posting your image and you’re putting the writing with the image, you want to start with a question as much as possible whenever it’s relevant.

A question hooks people in as opposed to a statement.

So you might say, for example, you’re posting a photo of you at an event. So you can either say, “Here’s me at this event, amazing event.”

Or you could say, “Do you love going to live events? Do you love the energy of a live audience? What’s one of your favorite things about going to an event? Do you ever find that awkward moment when you ask someone to have a selfie and they don’t want to? Has that ever happened to you?”

You’re hooking people in with a question.

You might start with a problem.

“Do you ever feel frustrated at this? Do you ever struggle with this? Do you ever wonder blah, blah, blah?” So a question at the start of your post and then a question at the end of your post. So a question at the end gets the person thinking.

You might want to say, “What’s your favorite tip?”

You might share three tips and you say, “What’s your favorite?” You might ask, “What’s one thing that you can do today to feel blah, blah, blah.” like whatever you’ve just talked about in your post.

So you’re not just posting for posting sake, you’re posting so that you can actually provide some value and get someone thinking, get them thinking outside of their normal way of thinking outside of their box and challenge them.

Throw out a challenge to get someone thinking a little bit differently.

You don’t want to try and change everything in one caption. It’s just having one main idea. In speaking we call it knocking over the one domino. The domino effect that you knock over this one domino and it affects everything else.

So think about your topic, the thing that you help your clients with. Think about your topic and what’s all different ways to share about that topic. And you’re wrapping that caption about that topic or whatever…

For example, my topic is influence, but underneath that, I’m talking about content for example, in this video.

So one thing is how to engage, how to get people to engage. That’s my one domino purpose for this live video. And then within that one big idea, there are three different secrets.

You don’t want to try and push over too many dominoes. It’s just one domino, one big idea, how to get people to engage, but then there are three secrets.

So whatever your topic is, underneath that main umbrella topic, let’s say your main thing is confidence, you help people get confident.

So underneath confidence, you might have the topic of positive self-talk for example. And then you might say, “Here are my three secrets of how to use positive self talk to get a promotion.”

And so the whole idea of that post is to help someone get a promotion through their positive self-talk.

But you’ve got three tips. I hope that makes sense. So you’ve got that one big idea and you wrap it with a question.

So you put a question at the start, a question at the end.

Not every single post requires it, but I want you to challenge yourself to think before you just post statements, how can you actually turn it into questions?

All right. Secret number two, and it’s not a secret at all, a lot of people do it, but a lot of people actually forget to do it…

2. Share simple stories

When you share simple stories, not a whole hero’s journey and the turning point and the protagonist and antagonist or whatever it is, the hero and the villain.

You don’t have to make it complex, you can literally share a simple story.

You might say something like, “I was out walking in the Bush the other day and I came across a Kookaburra and blah blah blah…”

And you tell a little bit of a metaphor from that story.

So you just share stories behind the scenes in your life.

It doesn’t have to be complex. You just want to draw people into that story. If you’re just posting facts and figures and tips and how-tos in steps without any story, it can be a little bit dry.

People could just Google that, right?

So you want to inject your personality, you want to inject some visuals to what you’re sharing and actually bring it to life.

3. Have a balance between credibility and vulnerability

Credibility is basically sharing with your audience the experience you have, the qualifications you have, the cool things you’ve done.

So maybe you’ve spoken on a podcast or maybe you have been interviewed or you’ve written a guest blog post for someone, you share that with your community.

So you’re sharing, that’s credibility. That’s positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. And you’re also positioning yourself as the authority. So that’s your credibility.

But if you just show up and talk about how amazing you are all the time, people aren’t going to like that.

You don’t want to put yourself on a pedestal above people. You also want to balance that with vulnerability by being very transparent in saying something like, “You know, I still struggle with this sometimes.”

Or, “I still find this hard and I find myself in a hot mess on the bathroom floor crying.

And then I have to jump on and do a Facebook Live. Who relates?”

So you’re actually showing yourself to be a really real, normal person. You’re not trying to be all polished and perfect all the time.

And finding that sweet spot and the balance between being professional, and personal.

It should be in both. Not trying to be like everyone else and trying to have it super polished, but just showing up and being real and speaking from the heart. You can do this by not over-planning things.

So for example, with these Facebook Lives, I just plan my three points.

I plan the top title and then I just speak from the heart because I know my content.

So I haven’t planned word for word, so I’m not constantly losing connection with you by reading notes.

You’ll notice that I’m always looking at you. Well, I’m actually looking at a lens on my iPad at the moment, but it feels like I’m looking at you because I’m not so caught up in my notes. That’s where you got to stick with where your credibility lies.

My credibility lies in helping business owners to grow their business through specific marketing strategies. One of them being content creation. So I can speak about this topic all day. I don’t need notes.

So you just have your little prompts. I just put a little piece of card with a hole cut in the middle around my lens so I can just refer to my three key points, but other than that, I’m just talking to you about something I love talking about, something that I know about, and that’s what you can do as well.

So often people put off doing a Facebook Live because they think they’ve got a plan every word. You don’t. If you had to plan every single word, you’d probably not do enough of them.

It’s actually better to get something out there that’s unperfect, I’ve never done a perfect Facebook Live ever, but people still get value from that. I always get people saying, “I needed to hear that. That was really interesting. I’m going to try that.”

You don’t have to be perfect to be able to help people.

Now I’m going to recap the 3 secrets.

Number one is to wrap your post with questions, a question at the beginning, a question at the end as much as possible.

This is by the way, how to really get people engaging and hooking people in.

Number two is to share simple stories. Share a simple story that happened in your life recently, today, yesterday. You might share some big significant story from years ago, but you don’t have to.

And then number three is to have a balance between credibility and vulnerability. So that you are talking about your expertise and your authority, but you’re also balancing that with a good amount of humility, transparency, and sharing how you struggled as well.

If you would like to know more tips on how to create content that connects and engages and draws people in and builds that trust and that rapport with people so that they will take that next step towards you, I’m running a free workshop on Thursday the 31st of October in Sydney.

It’s Halloween, so hopefully you’re not trick-or-treating that night and you can come and check out the workshop, or maybe you go trick-or-treating afterwards or before.

I’ll be sharing how to create content that connects, lots more specific tips and tricks, the exact words to use and not use in your content, mistakes that people make when it comes to creating content and copywriting.

I’m to go through seven steps of how to create engaging content and loads more. It’s action-packed. I’m going to be putting on some snacks and you get to meet some other like-minded entrepreneurs, so come along and join us.

Learn more about the ‘How To Create Content That Connects’ Workshop

 

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How To Use Your Tonality To Come Across More Confidently

Want some simple hacks for how to use your voice to come across more confidently?

 

 

In order to come across more confidently, we have 3 ways to do it:

  1. Our body language (posture, gestures, facial expressions etc.)
  2. How we say it (tonality)
  3. What we say (the words)

This is part 2 of a 3-part series on confidence about the different communication styles of confidence.

In part 1 I share how to use more confident body language.

In this article, I talk about tonality – how we say things.

Our language is like musical rhythm and melody. There are seven notes in the musical scale. And we can take our voice up and down.

Think about the pitch, the power, the pauses and the pace of the way that we speak. We can use the variety of these things within our tonality to come across more or less confident.

At both a conscious and an unconscious level, we can tell when someone’s confident by the way they express the words coming out of their mouth.

The words coming out of our mouth is only about 7% of communication – that means about 93% of our communication is body language and tonality.

Tonality makes up about 38% of our total communication.

To come across more confident as a business owner or in the workplace, it comes down to three things – our body language, our tonality and the words we speak.

You know very quickly when someone is unconfident.

Think now about an unconfident person – the way they speak.

Our brain is wired to be able to pick up if someone is certain and confident and sure themselves or not because we tend to trust people more if they’re more confident.

So you’re already doing this at an unconscious level.

Now think of the most confident person you know. Think about the tonality, how they actually speak. They do certain, predictable things that project confidence.

What are those things? Here are 3…

1. Speak With More Volume

People who are confident, generally speak louder.

There are quiet people who are quietly confident too and don’t feel the need to speak loudly.

It’s about finding the sweet spot.

You will probably know where you sit in the spectrum.

The most important thing is to bring awareness to where you’re at and whether you need to speak louder, clearer and stronger.

I’m sure you’ve been in a meeting where there’s someone who speaks super loud, and they actually get a lot of attention. Even if it annoys you, they do generally come across as more confident if they’re speaking louder.

Sometimes it’s to compensate for them NOT being confident.

But in many cases, when people want to increase their confidence, I notice that they could increase their volume.

So, if you want instantly be noticed or respected more and if you want people to perceive you as more confident, start increasing your volume.

I used to speak so quietly. I was so unconfident and when I was in a meeting, I would speak so timidly and shy.

I remember being in this boardroom meeting when I first was working for a big company. And my Supervisor asked me to speak, and she kept saying “Speak up Kat, we can’t hear you”

I remember not liking the attention not liking people’s eyes on me. And so I just spoke really, really quietly.

But, as soon as someone speaks quietly, for example, if someone stands up in a meeting or at a networking event and speaks really softly, it’s often a sign they’re not too confident in what they’re saying.

If you’re really shy and timid and nervous about what you’re saying, you’ll probably speak really quietly, and you probably won’t get that respect and that confidence from other people that you’re looking for.

If you currently speak quietly and you want to be heard more and be more confident – you may need to turn up the volume knob.

I’m not saying shout… I’m saying project confidence.

Even if it feels uncomfortable (which it probably will), if you’ve been speaking quite quietly for a long time, it’s going to take practice.

Confidence is going to come as a by-product of competence.

As you take lots of action in your life, and get better at stuff and build your skill acquisition and you get more knowledge you become more confident.

As you start facing your fears and doing things like public speaking and Facebook Lives and webinars or going out and making sales calls, you will find it way easier to speak with confidence and naturally have a higher volume.

Whatever it is that you’re doing to face your fears and get stronger and more confident as a person will help.

That’s going to be a byproduct of being more confident naturally.

But you can also be perceived as more confident instantly by just turning it up, so that’s an easy little hack you can do straight away.

Just start speaking louder and you will most likely be perceived as more confident.

2. Take your intonation across, or down

Intonation is the rise and fall of your voice. Think of musical notes.

If you are asking a question, it’s ok to go up in your intonation at the end of the question.

But if you go up in your intonation when you end your statements, it sounds as though you are questioning what you’re saying.

you’re when you’re

When you’re speaking to a client or potential client, speaking on video, on a webinar or at a workshop, you want to make sure that when you’re making statements that go across or down in their inflection.

In order to come across more confident, you want to train yourself to only go up if you’re asking a question.

If you’re not asking a question, go straight across, or go down. Deal?

This is particularly common with women. Often women speakers go up at the end of their statements.

I’ve had to really work on this habit and I still am not perfect at it, but working on it.

I tended to have a bit more of an apologetic way of speaking that I’ve had to really work on and train myself out of it.

One way to do this is to read yourself books, such as children’s storybooks and practice coming down or practice going across in your statements.

Newsreaders are brilliant at this. So if you do want to practice this, if you do find yourself going up a lot, then you might want to pay attention to newsreaders because they’re actually trained to go across and down.

Unless you’re asking a question or unless you’re trying to build rapport, and going up is a way of softening what you’re saying. So if you’re saying something harsh or direct, you can add that little flick up at the end, if you just kind of want to soften it a little bit and not come across quite so forceful or direct.

You’ve got to know who you’re speaking to, what they’re going to respond with.

And remember, it all comes down to outcome, what outcome do you want? If you’re going to show certainty and have people respect you and listen to you, you do not want that ‘questioning’ inflection, unless you’re asking questions.

3. Lower your pitch

People who speak with a deeper voice are typically seen as having higher status. A new study in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests lowering your pitch also increases how you perceive yourself and makes you feel more powerful.

The study showed that students who spoke in a deep voice were perceived as more powerful by both themselves and their peers.

The implications are summed up by the researchers simply:

” This would add a simple and generally available instrument to your strategic arsenal: your own voice. The lowering of your own voice could then be used not only to influence others but also to influence yourself.”

I used to have a higher voice, and I trained myself to speak lower. Now a lower, a lower pitch is again a byproduct of becoming confident. So my voice actually got lower.

Just practice it, and you will no doubt come across as more confident. S

If you have a high pitched voice, like a higher note on the musical scale, straight away your positioning, authority and expertise often lowers in the mind of the listener. It usually happens at an unconscious level.

If you think about it, often mums who have quiet, soft or high pitched voices, often get the Dad to step in. And often that masculine can bring a feeling of safety and trust.

I remember when I was a kid the blinds caught on fire. I distinctly remember wanting my Dad to come home and hearing his voice as he came in, it was like I felt safe with that lower, deeper voice.

I’m not saying be overly masculine, but just by having that slightly lower pitch, you likely will find that you’ll get more respect and will come across as more confident.

So those are three ways you can have come across more confident by using your tonality.

1. Speak with more volume

2. Take your intonation across, or down

3. Lower your pitch

Give it a go. I’d love to hear what you think.

Remember to be real. there’s a side of you that’s confident turn up that side.

Don’t be fake. Don’t be inauthentic. Don’t come across super weird.

Just adjust those ‘knobs’ on your tonality and bring the bring the volume up, bring the intonation across and bring the pitch down and you will definitely find that people perceive you differently.

Test it out and let me know how you go.

I wish you all the success in coming across as more confident!

Kat xo

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